This is the earliest moment in our parliamentary history when we
have the voice of Ireland authentically expressed in our hearing.
Majorities of Home Rulers there may have been upon other
occasions; a practical majority of Irish members never has been
brought together for such a purpose. Now, first, we can
understand her; now, first, we are able to deal with her; we are
able to learn authentically what she wants and wishes, what she
offers and will do; and as we ourselves enter into the strongest
moral and honorable obligations by the steps which we take in
this House, so we have before us practically an Ireland under the
representative system able to give us equally authentic
information, able morally to convey to us an assurance the breach
and rupture of which would cover Ireland with disgrace.....What
is the case of Ireland at this moment? Have honorable gentlemen
considered that they are coming into conflict with a nation? Can
anything stop a nation's demand, except its being proved to be
immoderate and unsafe? But here are multitudes, and I believe
millions upon millions, out-of-doors, who feel this demand to be
neither immoderate nor unsafe. In our opinion, there is but one
question before us about this demand. It is as to the time and
circumstance of granting it. There is no question in our minds
that it will be granted. We wish it to be granted in the mode
prescribed by Mr. Burke. Mr. Burke said, in his first speech at
Bristol:
"I was true to my old-standing, invariable principle, that all
things which came from Great Britain should issue as a gift of
her bounty and beneficence, rather than as claims recovered
against struggling litigants, or at least if your beneficence
obtained no credit in your concessions, yet that they should
appear the salutary provisions of your wisdom and foresight--not
as things wrung from you with your blood by the cruel gripe of a
rigid necessity."
The difference between giving with freedom and dignity on the one
side, with acknowledgment and gratitude on the other, and giving
under compulsion, giving with disgrace, giving with resentment
dogging you at every step of your path, this difference is, in
our eyes, fundamental, and this is the main reason not only why
we have acted, but why we have acted now. This, if I understand
it, is one of the golden moments of our history--one of those
opportunities which may come and may go, but which rarely return,
or, if they return, return at long intervals, and under
circumstances which no man can forecast.
There have been such golden moments even in the tragic history of
Ireland, as her poet says--
"One time the harp of Innisfail
Was tuned to notes of gladness."