To sum up, the attitude which we want Ulstermen to
take up is this :—" We protest against any form of Home-rule because we believe it will produce ruin to ourselves and to Ireland as a whole, and will bring untold miseries in its train. If, however, Britain is foolish enough to insist on giving local autonomy to people merely because they ask for it, at any rate she has no right to apply her principle only to one section of Irishmen. If, therefore, the British people insist on Home-rule, we in the first place demand that any county or city in Ulster in which a majority of the people ask to be left out of the Home-rule Bill, and to become counties of England, ought to be allowed to do so. [Ireland has the common law of England, and therefore the said counties and cities would naturally come to England and not to Scotland.] If you refuse our request that those counties and cities of Ulster which wish to do so may remain outside the scope
of your Bill, you at any rate cannot refuse the demand which we next make. We make this demand most reluctantly, because we know- it will not conduce to good government, though it will conduce to better government than your scheme. It is that there shall be Home-rule for the North as well as for the South—a Parliament at Belfast as well as a Parliament at Dublin—and that a majority of the inhabitants in any city or county of Ulster shall be allowed to choose whether they will go under the Belfast or the Dublin Parliament."
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