Incidents of my life, professional, literary, social, with services in the cause of Ireland / by Thomas Addis Emmet.
- Thomas Addis Emmet
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Incidents of my life, professional, literary, social, with services in the cause of Ireland / by Thomas Addis Emmet. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.
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![future, unless the country becomes more prosperous. The number of imemployed persons in England is appalling and rapidly increasing. England can no longer prosper as a manufacturing country nor by her commerce alone, as she has ceased to be “Mistress of the Sea,” for reasons which I cannot enter upon. The unemployed, with a great proportion of the people now crowded in the towns, must in the future look to the cultivation of the soil for their support, and the Govern- ment will have to put them back again on the vast tracts of country once thickly populated, but now held by the wealthy for shooting purposes. England’s condition has much in common with that existing in Ireland, but the Government has not yet appreciated for her own welfare that the need for moving the people from the large towns to the country is more urgent than the necessity existing in Ireland, as great as it is, for clearing the congested districts. In one instance, however, the people have become patient and tolerant from the suffering of centuries, and possess an all-abiding faith in God’s mercy; while in England, should the Godless masses, who are the denizens of the London slums and the manufacturing towns, ever rise in their might from starvation, the horrors of the French Revolution will be outdone in response to the brutal instincts which these people are supposed to possess by the world at large. The critical condition of England insures the fullest measure of Home Rule and future prosperity for Ireland. A plea for Home Rule to be established as a necessity in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland would be the only course against which the plausible objection of dismemberment of the Empire could no longer be urged. This plan is perfectly feasible and the only one which could be brought into operation without delay, after the English people under- stand the urgent necessity for its adoption. I have given this subject much thought and can claim to have origi- nated this solution of the difficulty in gaining Home Rule for Ireland, one perfectly feasible if the English people could be brought to realize the urgent necessity for its adoption. I have frequently given public expression to these views and in different letters written by me for the consideration of the public. More recently I have done so in the second edition of my work—Ireland under English Rule [vol. ii., page 261], where I have reproduced this letter and have advocated a Home Rule legislature for England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, by which England would be chiefly benefited. The fault finder will doubtless hold that in advocating the plan of Home Rule for each portion of Great Britain, the position of the Irish people will be compromised. This is not true. To a certain extent it](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28034776_0538.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
