ULSTER AND REBELLION.
[To TER EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—How is it that the Spectator's sense of perspective and its honesty cannot be applied to Ireland P As a party opponent I learned to respect your ability and your courage. For many years I would have been disappointed without the week-end company of the Spectator, but its society recently has some- times bored and generally annoyed me. Bored about Cadburys and Marconis, and angry when you touched Ireland. Can you not see that you have got the pyramid upside down when you assume, as you do consistently, that the Government are forcing Ulster to break the law P What is the use of rebuking Sir Edward Carson for a breach of etiquette in his reference to the Royal prerogative when you justify his intention to defy the King's signature ? And, of course, the King's writ. Why not apply the same topsyturvy reasoning to Suffragists. Why not argue that Christabel Pankhurst and Company can hold the Government responsible for bloodshed because women are refused self-government? Again, let me ask, is it honest to justify resistance to law because an impossible amendment—never really desired by anybody—has not been accepted P You were brutally frank in your arguments when you asked Unionists to support the excision of North-East Ulster from the Home Rule Bill. You said it would wreck the Bill. Why go on repeating an empty formula about refusing the Ulster minority the same treatment as the Irish minority ? You know that it is utterly impossible to give logical effect to abstruse proposi- tions about minorities. Do you think the vain repetition of such "logic" takes anybody in ? And then—why prolong the agony by talking about postponing the Home Rule Act for six months or more after it becomes law? Do you expect any one to believe that the Prime Minister and the Irish leader will deliberately choose political suicide ? Neither of them is built that way. No, Sir, face the issue. You must either prevent the Home Rule Bill from reaching the Statute Book or accept its consequences. For these consequences the Spectator will share the responsibility. Ulster is not really concerned about the present Bill or any other Bill obtaining the sanction of the British elector. Sir Edward Carson has made it clear that the approval of the Bill by British electors would not affect his view of Home Rule in any way. He will talk treason just as freely in carefully guarded phrases when the Spectator has accepted the inevitable as he does now. Don't you know this P
But why add to your crime against law in Ireland a foul untruth by writing—as you do in your current issue—that Nationalists " hate and despise them (the people of Ulster) because they are Protestants ?" As a Protestant of Ulster parentage who knows the Southern Catholic intimately I can find no milder language than that I have used to characterize this statement. To put the matter to the teat, let any Englishman venture to make your suggestion to an Irish Nationalist. He will find out very quickly the proverbial danger of interfering in a family quarrel. If he wants to gain applause from any Nationalist crowd I recommend him to denounce—not the Protestants of Ulster, but Catholics of the type of the Duke of Norfolk. If the Spectator is not aware of this elementary fact it should not write of Irish politics. If it does know the fact and conceals it, the time has come when its contributions to any form of politics may safely be
[" Be my brother, or I will slay you," is no doubt the maxim of Mr. Redmond and his followers, and apparently also of our irate correspondent.—En. Spectator.]
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