TOPICS OF THE DAY
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THE TRIUMPH OF THE ACT OF UNION.
IN another article of our issue we have dealt with what our critics, friendly and the reverse, have called the Spectator's fads and our wearisome insistence upon them. Shortly, our defence is that our fads have a way of turning out winners. If this article had not been written before the publication of the reports of the Home Rule debate in Thurs- day's papers, we could have pointed to that debate as a com- plete justification for one of our most insistent fads—the Exclusion of Ulster. A reference to our files during the first half of 1914 will show that not a week palsed without our devoting one, and we are afraid sometimes two, leading articles to the subject ! We insisted that the only policy which we could be certain would save the country from civil war and preserve the Union was the demand that the six- county area must be excluded from any operation of the Home Rule Bill. We knew that this demand, if persisted in, must unmask Home Rule, and show the British public, as nothing else would show them, what was the real nature of the Nationalist movement—would show that it was a move- ment for domination rather than for liberty, and that what the Nationalists were asking for was not, as the mass of the Liberal Party supposed, the right to local autonomy, and the liberty for Nationalists and Roman Catholics to conduct their own affairs according to Nationalist and Roman Catholic ideas, but the power to coerce that portion of Ireland which desired to remain under the Parliament at Westminster. We in effect offered to test the truth of Unionist belief that what the Nationalists were really asking for was disruption. Much as we, as Imperialists, disliked breaking up the United Kingdom, much as we deplored the abandonment of the small Protestant minorities in the South, and in spite of our feeling that we were consenting to a grievous injury to what we care for as much as the Nationalists—the interests of Ireland as a whole—we urged the people of North-East Ulster to agree to abandon any attempt to resist or veto Ifoine Rule for the South and West and South-West—thaWs, for two-thirds of Ireland—provided that Protestant and Unionist Ulster was excluded. We feel sure we make no false claim when we say that the Spectator played a great part in inducing the Ulster Protestants to assent to Exclusion being thus made a test case. The argument which ultimately prevailed upon them was expressed by us as follows. ' If the National- ists are sincere in their principles of local self-government, they cannot deny to North-East Ulster that right to decide how it will be locally ruled and locally administered which they claim for themselves. If, however, in spite of the con- cession involved in the acceptance of Exclusion, the National- ists declare that they will not take local autonomy for them- selves unless it carries with it the right to force the rule of a Dublin Parliament upon a portion of Ireland to which such rule is repugnant, then we shall know the real nature of Home Rule. The Nationalist demand will appear in its true colours as a demand for the coercion of North-East Ulster.'
But our policy of Exclusion was no mere piece of wrecking tactics. We always insisted that if our contention as to the nature of Home Rule proved wrong--i.e., if the Nationalists showed themselves willing to apply their own principles to North-East Ulster, and so Home Rule came by consent— no irreparable harm would be done. People like ourselves would think that a bad system of local government likely to impoverish Ireland was being set up, but in any case we should not have sown the seeds of civil war. On the other hand, we should have given the Nationalists the opportunity to show us all that we were unfair in thinking that what they wanted was to dominate and exploit Belfast and the North, and not merely to govern according to Irish ideas that Part of Ireland which desired to be governed in that way. 11 the Nationalists were dealing fairly with the English and Scottish people, and not, as we alleged, telling one .story here and another story in Ireland, and were not using Home Rule as a lever to extort independence and the destruction of the Parliamentary Union, then Ulster's acquiescence in Exclusion should give the Nationalists a magnificent oppor- tunity for showing their good faith and sincerity of purpose.
Wednesday's debate has amply shown the wisdom of the course which we began to advocate in 1912, and advocated week by week- up till the beginning of the war. The Prime Minister spoke in our spirit and employed almost our language when he said that the Government were prepared to extend self-government to the country that asks for it. " We are not prepared to extend it to a country that does not ask for it." Mr. Lloyd George went on to say that Home Rule could be had " upon a free basis, but with freedom for the whole of the people. Freedom means freedom for all, not merely for a section." Therefore he proposed an amendment to the Nationalist motion in the following terms : " This House would welcome a settlement which would produce a better understanding between Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, but considers it impossible to impose by force on any section or part of Ireland a form of government which had not their consent." That is exactly the Spectator policy of 1912 and onward, lock, stock, and barrel—the authentic Spectator fad of the Exclusion of the six-county area. Mr. Asquith, when he came to speak, did not reject it, did not, we believe, desire to reject it. As we argued so often before the war, all his speeches showed that he was at heart an Exclu- sionist. He clearly believed Exclusion to be an absolute necessity if, or rather as soon as, it was demanded by North- East Ulster. Mr. Asquith, as we noted, locked every other door for escape from civil war, but he never locked the door labelled " Exclusion of North-East Ulster."
What was the result of the Prime Minister's offer of Home Rule at once, subject to the right of Exclusion—for an offer of such terms it clearly was ? The result was that Mr. Redmond with passion and indignation rejected the notion that the Nationalists should do as they would be done by. His speech was a parody of Cromwell's immortal words : " Every sect saith: Oh, give me liberty ! But give him it, and, to his power, ho will not yield it to anybody else." Cromwell went on to add that liberty was a natural right, " and he that would have it ought to give it " ; but that by no moans consorts with Nationalist ideas. Lest Mr. Redmond's speech should not bo a sufficient unmasking of the Nationalist purpose and the true meaning of the demand for Home Rule, the Irish Home Rule Party made the fact more abundantly clear by their dramatic withdrawal from the House. If the Nationalists were not to be allowed to gainsay the principle that it was " impossible to impose by force on any section or part of Ireland a form of government which had not their consent "—in a word, if they were not to be allowed to coerce North-East Ulster— they would, temporarily, shake the dust of Westminster from their feet. They had no use for a Parliament in Dublin " cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd" by the callous and cold-hearted principles laid down in the Prime Minister's amendment !
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