HOME RULE.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " BP ECTATOR." I
SIR,—It is difficult to follow the reasoning of your corre- spondent, Mr. Crosbie, in the Spectator of April 27th. He complains of your estimate of Nationalist Ireland, but, instead of furnishing materials for correction, he attacks Unionist Ireland. Some of his statements are part of the stook-in-trade of Home Rulers and demand an answer. He uses the term "Orangeman" as an abusive variant for Unionist. An Orangeman is a member of the Orange Order, and, although all Orangemen are Unionists, all Unionists are not Orangemen. Some of the most prominent are not. Those who know Orangemen in the flesh fail to dis- cover what discredit is conveyed by the name; but as Radicals think there is some, let them at least be accurate and confine the word to its proper use. Orange Ulster does not claim to dominate the rest of Ireland. It objects to being subjected to domination by Nationalist Ireland. The attitude of the people of Ulster towards. Disestablishment, Land Reform, and the Belfast University are cited as examples of political obtuseness. As to Disestablishment the answer, assuming in Mr. Crosbie's favour that Disestablishment was an enlightened policy, is that a considerable number of the Ulster people supported it. It must be remembered that before 1880 political divisions in .Ulster followed those of England, and that in 1869 there was an Ulster Liberal party. All but .a small minority of the survivors of that party are Unionists, and are now acting in complete agreement with their former opponents. How can the political obtuseness of an existing party be shown by the fact that some of its members were wrong forty years ago P Land Reform in Ireland practically means the Act of 1881 and the Land Purchase Acts. The policy of the Act of 1881 was to extend the Ulster custom to the rest of Ireland. This seems rather an instance of the rest of Ireland thinking in 1881 what Ulster had thought generations before, Land Purchase was and is a Unionist policy. It is the fact that there was no strong demand for a Belfast University. It is too early to say whether or not the University will be a success. But it is impossible to say that people who considered that the ideals of a University would be more probably attained by an institution drawing its students from a wider area and afford- ing a meeting-place for all creeds and classes are illiberal or
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