Now if there was bad faith, which we deny, it
must have been bad faith on the part of some individual. Whom does Mr. Redmond accuse ? We should like to think Mr. Redmond was acting like a gentleman and a man of honour, but if he is he ought to make no general charges but have the courage to say boldly whom he is aiming at We have only to add that if Mr. Redmond is correct in saying that the Lloyd George scheme for the exclusion of the six-county area is never to be -revived, then Home Rule is as dead as Queen Anne. The Government are pledged to introduce an Amending Bill, and there is no power on earth that can now prevent that Amending Bill taking the form of the exclusion of the six-county area. If that was certain, as it was, the moment the Lloyd George scheme was rejected, it is made ten times more certain by the refusal of Nationalist Ireland to bear her share of the burden of defending the Empire, and forcing the whole of that burden upon the people of England and Scotland. Does any sane person suppose that you eould get any soldiers in the British Army to shoot down the people of North-East Ulster if they resisted the Home Rule Act being applied to them ? But if this is un- thinkable, and the Nationalists will not accept Home Rule for the twenty-six counties alone, the Home Rule Act can never be carried out.
Previous page
