THE ULSTER UNIONISTS.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—Ifnionist Ulster is .grateful to the Spectator for defending it so vigorously and powerfully against what seems to be a con- spiracy of a section of the Press to make it appear to the British public to be the villain of the piece vaguely described as an Irish Settlement. Your insistence on the right of Unionist Ulster to demand to be separated from the rest of Ireland if the rest of Ire- land demands to be separated from Great Britain, and the striking parallel of West Virginia and President Lincoln's -view of the matter, are most effective. Readers, however, who have only this aspect of the matter before them may be misled as to the real attitude of Unionist Ulster. They may think it is a selfish and rather narrow-minded and short-sighted community which is indifferent to the welfare of the United Kingdom and the Empire and the rest of Ireland, as long as it is exempted from the effect of the legislation it objects to; and it may be accused of being ready to abandon its fellow Irish Unionists outside the six counties.
May I explain that Ulster Unionists are absolutely convinced that the setting up of an Irish Parliament would be dangerous to the Realm and the Empire and injurious to the welfare of every part of Ireland, and that their determined opposition to Repeal and Home Rule at all times during the last hundred years has been due at least as much to this conviction as to their personal detestation of the prospect of being placed under the rule of an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive ? It was not with alacrity but with reluctance that they accepted the proposal that the present Prime Minister made to them in 1916 to refrain from active opposition to the establishment of a Home Rule Parliament if six counties were exempted. Conditionally and under protest, they accepted the arrangement on the strength of assurances from representatives of the Coalition Government then in office, by whom it was offered as an alternative to civil war and disaster or the immediate putting into operation of the HomeRule Act for all Ireland. Ulster Unionists never asked for or accepted any such scheme of separate treatment on its merits, but because if, as they were assured was the case, the British Parliament and people had definitely accepted the Nationalist argument that Ire- land, owing to racial, religious, and historic reasons, had a right to claim separate treatment, then, for precisely the same reasons, Unionist Ulster had the right to claim separate treat- ment from the rest of Ireland; and moreover Ulster Unionists considered, in the circumstances as represented to them, that it was their duty, believing Home Rule to be a bad thing, to keep as large a fraction of Ireland out of it as possible without embarking on a civil war in the midst of the great European conflict, believing also that by so doing the danger to the Realm of the experiment of an Irish Parliament would be somewhat diminished, and the period during which the rest of Ireland would suffer under it shortened. The statement that Ulster Unionists had deliberately abandoned their brother-Unionists in the South and West was industriously circulated by enemies of the Union, and, taken together with the feeling that no Government could be much worse than that of Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Birrell or Lord Wimborne and Mr. Duke, has brought about an unfortunate weakening among a section of Southern Unionists. To go into more details on this subject would not be permissible or expedient while the Irish Convention is still sitting, but I may add that Ulster Unionists believe that, when the history of these times comes to be properly understood, it will be seen that they do not require explanations or apologies for what they have done, but that they deserve credit and the thanks of all their fellow-subjects in the United Kingdom, not only for the men, the ships, the munitions, the aeroplanes, &c., they have provided for the war,
and for their loyal and law-abiding conduct, but above all for having saved the Realm, by their determined attitude, from the extreme danger of entering upon a great war with two Parlia- ments in conflict with each other within its horders.—I am, Sir,
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