The Framework of Home Rule

The Framework of Home Rule

by Erskine Childers
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date: 24/02/2021

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Ireland was the oldest and the nearest of the Colonies. We are apt to forget that she was ever colonized, and that for a long period, although styled a Kingdom, she was kept in a position of commercial and political dependence inferior to that of any Colony. Constitutional theory still blinds a number of people to the fact that in actual practice Ireland is still governed in many respects as a Colony, but on principles which in all other white communities of the British Empire are extinct. Like all Colonies, she has a Governor or Lord-Lieutenant of her own, an Executive of her own, and a complete system of separate Government Departments, but her people, unlike the inhabitants of a self-governing Colony, exercise no control over the administration. She possesses no Legislature of her own, although in theory she is supposed to possess sufficient legislative control over Irish affairs through representation in the Imperial Parliament. In practice, however, this control has always been, and still remains, illusory, just as it would certainly have proved illusory if conferred upon any Colony. It can be exercised only by cumbrous, circuitous, and often profoundly unhealthy methods; and over a wide range of matters it cannot by any method whatsoever be exercised at all. To look behind mere technicalities to the spirit of government, Ireland resembles one of that class of Crown Colonies of which Jamaica and Malta are examples, where the inhabitants exercise no control over administration, and only partial control over legislation.

ISBN:
9781465557018
9781465557018
Category:
Fiction
Format:
Epub (Kobo), Epub (Adobe)
Publication Date:
24-02-2021
Language:
English
Publisher:
Library of Alexandria
Erskine Childers

Robert Erskine Childers was born in London in 1870. His parents both died when he was a child, and he was raised at his mother's family home in Ireland. In 1899 he volunteered for service in the Boer War and wrote a popular account of his experiences, following this up with The Riddle of the Sands (1903).

He moved to Ireland after WWI and was elected to the Irish parliament where he was a delegate in the negotiations for the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1922. When the terms fell short of full Irish independence, Childers joined the Republicans in the ensuing Civil War. He was arrested by the Free State government, court-martialled, and executed by firing squad in 1922. Ned Halley is an award-winning journalist

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