Whatever doubt may be cast on the credentials of these
four Manchester Liberals, the facts on which the Report they have signed is based are unassailable. An even more notable sign of the awakening of the Liberal conscience comes from Scotland, where the President of the Ardrossan Liberal Association, in a letter addressed to the Glasgow Herald of Friday, the 8th inst., warns his fellow-Liberals against the dangers of coercing Ulster in language equally remarkable for its courage, its eloquence, and its good sense. Mr. Shearer, a lifelong Liberal brought up in the school of Gladstone and Bright, finds the great bulk of his party in danger of forget- ting the essential principles of Liberalism itself. He notes the glaring inconsistency of those who see a potent argument in favour of the grant of Home Rule in the number of Coercion Acts in the past, and yet urge the Government to apply to Ulster measures of coercion compared with which all former Aots of that nature rolled into one would be but as a molehill compared to a mountain. He notes that Ministers, while prepared light-heartedly to plunge into civil war, recoil in dismay from taking the verdict of the people. "Is Liberalism," he asks, "become a Juggernaut, rolling ruth- lessly onwards and relentlessly crushing everything that happens to obstruct its path P I say that those who would thrust Nationalist rule down the throat of Ulster at the point of the bayonet are no true Liberals, but are infected with a spirit of tyranny and despotism which is utterly hostile to the genius of Liberalism and is a negation of its fundamental principles." He ends by declaring that the only way for Liberalism to escape the reproach of having sacrificed Ulster to party exigencies is to grant Exclusion to Ulster.
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