say that in the past the government
and treatment of Ireland by Great Britain have been what they should
have been. Mistakes, dark, black, and bitter mistakes, have been made. A
people denied justice, a people with many admitted grievances, the
redress of which has been long delayed. On our side, perhaps, in the
conflict and in the bitterness of contest, there may have been things
said and done, offensive if you will, irritating if you will, to the
people of this country; but what I want to ask, in all simplicity, is
this, whether, in face of the tremendous conflict which is now raging,
whether, in view of the fact that, apart from every other consideration,
the Irish people, South as well as North, are upon the side of the
Allies and against the German pretension to-day, it is not possible from
this war to make a new start?--whether it is not possible on your side,
and on ours as well, to let the dead past bury its dead, and to commence
a brighter and a newer and a friendlier era between the two countries?
Why cannot we do it? Is there an Englishman representing any party who
does not yearn for a better future between Ireland and Great Britain?
There is no Irishman who is not anxious for it also. Why cannot there be
a settlement? Why must it be that, when British soldiers and Irish
soldiers are suffering and dying side by side, this eternal old quarrel
should go on?....

"If there ought to be an oblivion of the past between Great Britain and
Ireland generally, may I ask in God's name the First Lord of the
Admiralty [Sir Edward Carson] why there cannot be a similar oblivion of
the past between the warring sections in Ireland? All my life I have
taken as strong and as strenuous a part on the Nationalist side as my
poor abilities would allow. I may have been as bitter and as strong in
the heated atmosphere of party contests against my countrymen in the
North as ever they have been against me, but I believe in my soul and
heart here to-day that I represent the instinct and the desire of the
whole Irish Catholic race when I say that there is nothing that they
more passionately desire and long for than that there should be an end
of this old struggle between the North and the South.

"The followers of the right honourable gentleman the First Lord of the
Admiralty should shake hands with the rest of their countrymen. I appeal
to the right honourable gentleman here in the name of men against whom
no finger of scorn can be poi