ULSTER AND THE IRISH SETTLEMENT.
WE have always held that the Ulstermen are not only the salt of Ireland, but the salt of the Empire. Joined to their native courage, their steadfastness, their responsibility, and their sense of duty and self-sacrifice they have, however, a certain wildness and over-emphasis of language, caught, no doubt, from those among whom they live. The fact that they have had to live toujours en vedette has made them assume an attitude which has often in the past seemed to the comfortable, prosperous citizens of England suspicious and domineering. That is a venial fault. Judge Ulster by her deeds, not by her language, and there is no part of the United Kingdom or the Empire which will come better out of the supreme test. While the rest of Ireland has been burning in its own political madness, the North-East and non-Celtic Ireland has not been fiddling but earnestly working out her own salvation. And remember this. She has worked out her own salvation, industrial, moral, and political, without any outside help or encouragement. Angry Nationalists sometimes try to impose on ignorant Englishmen the notion that it was easy for the people of Belfast and the North to win their prosperity. "They won it because they were favoured by the connexion with Britain and have been the spoilt children of the Union." "That statement is probable, but certainly false "—to quote one of Mr. Gibbon's footnotes. Nothing is farther from the facts. Belfast has never had anything else but the cold shoulder from the British Government and from Dublin. The subsidies, the loans, the Government schemes of development, the pensions and the places, the smiles and the good things of the Castle, which have been showered on the South Irish during the last fifty years have never come her way. The old fat scandals of the Established Church and of the land system, the sinecures of the law and of officialism, have poured no gold into her lap. She won her place in the industrial world solely by her own vigour and industry, like any of the great towns or industrial districts of England or Scotland—for example, Middles- brough or Newcastle.
If the Belfast correspondent of the Times is not misinformed in the telegram published in Thursday's paper, Belfast and what we have termed the moral Ulster, the Ulster of the six counties, are going to give the greatest possible proof of their devotion to the Empire. Though their hearts are sad within them --who can wonder that this is so ?--and though they have the gravest doubts as to the future, Ulster Unionists are going to put aside all thought of their own selfish interests, and to assent to the proposal that the Government's loins Rule scheme shall be tried in those portions of Ireland in which there is a local Home Rule majority. In our opinion, they are wise not to pronounce a cold non possumus to Mr. Lloyd George's scheme, and this we feel will be the general opinion of English Unionists. But when we say this let us not forget how great must have been the temptation to the Ulstermen to stand alocif, to avenge all the threats and injuries and insults of the past five years, and to wreck the Home Rule compromise.
But even though they resisted this temptation, there were other adverse influences quite as potent. They have seen their warnings as to the toleration of the forces of ievolution and revolt come true, and half Ireland in flames because, in spite of those warnings, the sentimentalists of the Irish , • Office pretended that a tiger could be turned into a domestic I cat by calling it "poor pussy" and offering it a daily ration of- cream and fried sole. In a word, they had every excuse for looking at the great political problem with which they were presented in a narrow and self-regarding light. Unless, how- ever, all the omens arc at fault, and the telegram from Belfast in the Times to which we have alluded is ill-founded, they have put aside all this, and in spite of their fears and their disgust they have determined to think of the Empire first and Ulster second. They have decided not to use the power which the Sinn Fein revolt has undoubtedly given them in order to veto the Government's last chance for carrying out the policy of reconciliation.
We are sure that the men of North-East Ulster have done right. We remain, as we have always been, Unionists —i.e., defenders of, and believers in, the wisdom, justice, and practical statesmanship of the Act of Union. We hold that the legislative and incorporating Union pro- vides the best form of government for a country with Ireland's history, and divided as she is by cross-currents vi race, creed, and political aspiration. Were the island homogeneous, and did the local majority throughout Ireland correspond with the majority in Ireland as a whole, the case Tor Home Rule might be unanswerable. Ireland, however, is not homogeneous, and if she is to remain one and indivisible the Union is the best compromise. But though we still believe that the Union holds the field as the soundest way of sett:ing the relations, not only between the two islands, but between the two Irelands, the Ireland of the South and West, of the Celt and the Roman Catholic, and the Ireland of the North, of the Saxon and the Protestant, we recognize that in existing circumstances it is impossible to resist the demand that a Home Rule settlement shall be tried subject to a bona-fide agreement to leave out that homogeneous portion of Ireland roughly described, as the six counties- i.e., the area in which the proportionate majority of anti-Home Rulers is, roughly, as great as the Home Rule majority in the rest of Ireland. The Times correspondent in Belfast informs us that the scheme for what he calls "the New Ulster" will be accepted on Monday at a meeting of the Unionist Council. There is much regret, he tells us, and some misgiving, but "the overwhelming pressure of Imperial necessity will do its work." That, we believe, represents the facts, and it is a momentous tribute to the political wisdom and foresight of the Northern Unionists. As we have said, but must say once more, we share their regrets and their misgivings, but we absolutely and whole-heartedly endorse their determination to keep the area of New Ulster, not only outside Home Rule, but inside the Union and under the Parliament at West- minster. More than this they might no doubt have claimed, and so have wrecked the so-called policy of conciliation ; but more it would have been unstatesinanlike, and at this moment unpatriotic, for them to claim. They will have the thanks of all true Imperialists here and overseas because they did not insist on their pound of flesh, but agreed to stand by and see the Home Rule Act applied to the rest of Ireland.
To attack the leaders of the Unionist Party as the Morning Post attacks them in Thursday's issue is a piece of political injustice so monstrous that we feel sure our contemporary will soon repent its words in sackcloth and ashes. They may have made a mistake. We do not think they have. But to speak as if they had betrayed Ulster is preposterous. Here we must also protest most strongly against the hoary and ten-times-demolished scare- crow paraded by the Morning Post—i.e., that to leave the New Ulster out of the Home Rule scheme is to betray the Unionists of the South. It is to do nothing of the kind. The Ulster Unionists, still under the Imperial Parliament, will be the best and most efficient protectors that the Southern Unionists can possibly have. They will hold hostages, or, if it is pre- ferred, pledges, moral and physical, for the prevention of the ill-treatment of the Southern Unionists which no Nation- alist Parliament or Government in Dublin can possibly ignore. The Ulster Unionists can afford to pass by this cruel, this ungenerous, this false suggestion that they have saved them- selves at the expense of the loyalist minority in the rest of Ireland.
The Times correspondent goes on to point out that it is feared that unless Mr. Redmond can exercise as much influence with his followers as Sir Edward Carson with his, there will be discord and dissension. He tells us, for example, that one of the representatives of the llealyite wing, "which is much stronger in the country than in Parliament," says that "the acceptance of such a scheme "—which is, in essence, a scheme for leaving out that part of Ireland in which the majority loathes Home Rule, and letting it apply only to that part of Ireland in which the majority desires it—is enough to discredit any Government and to disgust any honest Home Ruler, and proceeds to speak of it as "hateful, pernicious, and repulsive."
We had hoped to be able to say no more on the subject till the Unionist Council at Belfast had endorsed Mr. Lloyd George's compromise. We must, however, note one other point made by the Times correspondent. Ile tells us that the Bishop of Raphoe and Mr. Devlin, the two great Nation- alist powers in the North, "will only recommend the accept- ance of the compromise as a purely temporary expedient, and on the understanding that the whole question will be reopened after the war." If this is to be the attitude of the Northern Nationalists, undoubtedly the Northern Unionists would have ground for breaking off negotiations even at the last moment. We most sincerely trust, however, that they will not take advantage of this fact, but will treat this unworthy attempt of the Nationalist extremists with the contempt it deserves. It will be the duty of every English and Scotch Unionist who, like ourselves, is encouraging the Ulster Unionists to do a painful and dangerous duty, to see to it that in no circumstances shall the inhabi- tants of the New Ulster—of the six counties—be asked to go back on the compact they are now making, unless, of course, they see the rest of Ireland so wonderfully well governed that they of their own free motion come to the Parliament of the United Kingdom and demand in- clusion within the area governed from Dublin. The notion of a settlement on the basis that it is all to be torn up, possibly only six months hence, and coercion applied to Ulster the moment the war is over is preposterous and unthinkable. Clearly she must have an adequate assurance from Unionists here that the settlement, if it is made, shall be a real settlement, and not a temporary device—an honourable contract, not a trap. Whatever settlement is made must be a settlement in creed faith, and both sides must agree to abide by it, unless and until one side can convert the other to its own views. Better no agreement at all than one which is to be the preliminary to a new faction-fight. To suggest a compromise for the duration of the war only' is the height, not only of political bad faith, but of political fatuity.
Previous page
