It will be a vital danger to the country and to the empire, if at a time when a demand from Ireland for larger powers of self-government is to be dealt with, there is not in parliament a party totally independent of the Irish vote.”(154) Loud and long sustained have been the reverberations of this clanging sentence.
Morley highlights the critical need for an independent party in Parliament to address Ireland's demands for self-government.
Share
More from John Morley
They might learn how the true gentleman speaks of one whom he cannot but admit to have devoted a long life to the search of truth, and allow to have sacrificed every personal prospect to the promulgation of that which appeared to him as…
If they, situated exactly as we are, decline to join, we are not bound single-handed to make up the deficiencies of the rest.
It is a case so to speak of “limited liability.” We are bound in honour—you cannot put a legal construction upon it—to see in concert with others that these arrangements are maintained.
For this line of contention he was called an “unpatriotic trumpet of disaster,” and other names commonly bestowed on all men in all countries who venture to say that what chances for the hour to be a popular war is a blunder.
Other voices in this conversation
