TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE UNIONIST " INCITEMENTS " TO ULSTER. THE Gladstonians are not fair to the Unionists upon the Ulster question. They accuse them, Lord Salisbury more especially, of " inciting " Ulster to re- bellion, which it is logically as well as morally impossible for them to do. Their own case rests too completely upon the right of the United Kingdom to govern Ireland, even if Ireland should temporarily, or out of any dreamy mis- conception of its own interest, refuse to be so governed. The wildest Unionist has never doubted for a moment the right of Ireland, if elevated by the weakness of Britain into a separate State with a Parliament of its own, to coerce Ulster if it can ; all he has doubted being the right of Ireland to call in a " foreign " Power—foreign, that is, in the opinion of the majority—to settle an intestine quarrel. That right was denied by Liberal Europe to the Hapsburgs in the case of Hungary, and the claim of the Hapsburgs to govern Hungary was at least as good as the claim ofthe Southern Provinces of Ireland to govern Ulster. The body of Unionists, however, are not raising even this question, but simply pointing out that Northern Ireland may refuse to obey Southern Ireland, and that if it does, British sympathies will be divided in a very marked and dangerous way. Not to mention that no people not utterly debased can help sympathising with another people which is ready to perish rather than give up union with it, there is a question involved which is at least as much moral as political, and on which moralists have never arrived at anything like a fixed conclusion. They all acknowledge a general duty of submission to "the powers that be," a duty, of course, most marked, as well as most easy, when they help to elect those powers ; but they are not all agreed as to the limit of the rights which those powers may claim. Can they transfer unwilling subjects to another authority than their own? Legally, of course, they can, for they do after every war, and half the provinces of Europe have been at one time or another ceded in that way ; but have they the moral claim, so that the transferred population loses its right to resist the transfer by force ? We cannot answer the question with certainty, but it has been consistently answered by all Liberals in the negative. We venture to say there is not a Liberal in the country, who knows any history at all, who has not approved of Hofer's insur- rection in the Tyrol ; yet Hofer's only ground was that the Tyrol had been transferred from one German dynasty to another, from the Hapsburgs to the Wittels- bachs. No doubt the Hapsburgs were at the time anti- French, while the Wittelsbachs were French agents ; but the legal transfer still retained the Tyrol within the German Empire. Bavaria was a State of the Empire just as much as Austria. The case is, in truth, precisely on all-fours with that of Ireland, with this difference only, that in the latter instance the same person would remain nominally Sovereign in both countries. There would, therefore, be an immense difference of opinion as to the justice and expediency of using British power to suppress rebellion in Ulster ; and as rebellion is at least possible, the Unionists, in pointing out this objection to a Home-rule Bill, are performing a clear duty. They do not deny, as is alleged, the right of Ireland, if Home-rule is conceded, to pass laws for Ulster; they only point out that if England is asked to enforce those laws, there will be a doubt, which may extend to the soldiery, and produce consequences absolutely ruinous to that willing obedience in the armed force upon which social security in every State—in America, for instance, and Switzerland, as much as in any Monarchy—must in the end depend. Nothing could be imagined more dangerous or more shocking to men's instinctive sense of justice than the emplo7ment of British officers to put down, by killing on a large scale, a movement with which they sympathised, and which, so far as the Empire was concerned, would hardly be considered a rebellion at all. [Of course it is rebellion against Ireland; but then, that is not the ques- tion, nobody doubting, that we know of, that if Ireland can of her own strength subdue Ulster, she would, if made a self-governing State, have a right to subdue it.] It seems to us that it is not only the right but the duty of Unionists to state these dangers dearly, and that to amuse them of making such statements in order to "incite to rebellion" is even ludicrously unfair. They do not enjoy the danger, but lament it, and because they lament it, urge that it should never be incurred.
Sometimes, however, the Gladstonians shift their ground, and with an amusing though natural want of logic, say that the danger is unreal ; that Ulster is always threatening to die in the last ditch, and dies in its bed nevertheless ; and that the threat is nothing but the last argument of men worsted in peaceable discussion. Well, it may be so ; and if it is so, Gladstonians, with Sir W. Harcourt at their head, are making a mighty pother about nothing at all.. They see that the spectre is a stage property, yet loudly condemn their adversaries for devilish necromancy in calling it out of the grave. That is hardly fair; but still, it may be the right opinion as to the unreality of the spectre's appearance. Far be it from us to say when or how far any party in Ireland is in earnest up to the point of suffering anything unpleasant. The brogue is in Colonel Saunderson's mouth as well as in Mr. Sexton's ; and where there is brogue there is bragging, or at least a, toleration for bragging as a mode of expressing sentiment. But we must confess that to us, as outsiders, the danger appears quite serious enough to justify the Unionist. warnings. In the first place, the Northerners say in the plainest way that they will not obey an Irish Parliament, and as their interest is to conciliate or to control that Parliament, there is an a priori probability that they mean what they are saying. Then it is very bitter for Protestant Saxons to be placed under Catholic Keith, and to be reduced at a blow from what was more or less a position of ascendency—not legal ascendency, but as- cendency in traditional influence—to one of subordination. The change would be a shock to any community, and to Britons in particular the shock may be unendurable_ Britons are very orderly persons, and very fond of lands, houses, and money ; but they do not accept them readily at the price of submission to any laws but their own. In, the whole world, so full of our countrymen, there is not one place where twenty thousand Englishmen and Scotch- men are gathered together, and where they permit others to legislate against them. They either glide away, as they did from Java ; or they rebel, as they did in Texas ; or they force a compromise, as they are doing within the Transvaal. We see nothing in the position of Ulster which should make its inhabitants more tractable than usual, and one or two things which may make them less so. The majority in Ireland will be guided by the Roman Catholic Church, not unwisely perhaps, for that Church is at least wiser and broader than they are ; and the minority will be guided to an immense extent by an incurable suspicion of that Church, of its ends, of its means, of its promises, and of the uses to which it puts all powers. That difference will of itself tend to make overt resistance probable, and it will be greatly intensified by another. The majority in an Irish Parliament will wish to spend in a large way. Irish- men hold the Continental ideas about the sources of pro- sperity, and will want to " encourage " and " foster " and " assist " and " guarantee " all manner of industrial enter- prises, railways, harbours, fisheries, manufactures, and experiments in agriculture. They will also desire an immense multiplication of offices, a lavish outlay on educa- tion, and probably some extremely " humane " but expen- sive and demoralising modification of the Poor-Law. They will very soon need money in quantities, and as they can only get it by taxation, they will lay on taxes, and the taxes to draw must be adjusted so as to tap the wealth of the North. The wealth of the South, what there is of it, is agricultural, and cannot be touched, be- cause its owners will be the voters who elect the House. There is a root of bitterness in that situa- tion enough to cause a dozen rebellions, and if we add to it that the great officials will not be Protestants, that the Services must be filled with Catholics, and that even the police will be controlled by the majority alone, the historian will see reason to expect most serious civil discord. There may not be civil war, because the line taken by human affairs is always incalculable ; but to say there is no reason to expect it, is nothing less than foolish. There is reason, and in pointing out that fact with any energy they possess, the Unionists are only performing a duty as plain as the duty of any citizen to warn his neigh- bour that his chimney is pouring out red smoke. That is not equivalent to setting fire to the chimney, though the Daily News seems to think it is
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