Professor Dicey, in a lecture delivered on Wednesday to the
Oxford Liberal Unionist Association, suggests that if Irish Home-rule were carried, the Protestants of Ulster, feeling themselves betrayed, might join the Roman Catholics in a demand for independence, which would in many respects be better for Ireland than the sort of irresponsible government to which they would be subjected if England guaranteed their subjection to Irish Home-rule without interfering with the injustice which Irish Home-rule would imply. Such a defection of the Ulster Protestants would certainly not be impossible, if they had given up all hope of the collapse of the house of cards which Mr. Gladstone proposes to construct. But we think it certain that the section of our own nation who would resist to the last the subjugation of Ulster by British interference, would be far too large and powerful to admit of the sort of despair which such a compromise with the Nationalists would imply. We do not believe that the danger Professor Dicey foresees is "within measurable distance," or anything like measurable distance, as yet. A temporary defeat at the polls would not drive the Protestants of Ulster to such, we will not say kill-or-cure, but rather to such kill- -or-cripple remedies as that.
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