TOPICS OF THE DAY.
SIR EDWARD CARSON'S SPEECH.
SIR EDWARD CARSON has been very roundly abused for his strong language at the great Orange gathering in Belfast. We are not going to deny that his language was less calm and i moderate than it might have been, and that the effect of his speech in this country would have been greater if he had been 'somewhat less aggressive. But even granted this, his so-called violence and lawlessness have been very much exaggerated. In any case, such criticism comes very ill from those who speak no words of condemnation for the oratorical excesses of Mr. de Valera and his followers, or even for their cruel and bloody acts, for the cowardly murders of Magistrates and policemen, and for the intimidation and oppression of loyal men which are being carried on throughout the South and West of Ireland. Though Sir Edward Carson's words were strong, if they are both carefully and fairly studied it will be found that he has not changed his position at all, but maintains as always his essential point—that full British citizenship, if it once belongs to a man, is a thing of which you have no right to deprive him against his will save under dire necessity.
But the suspended Home Rule Act does deprive the people of North-East Ulster of their full British citizenship, and therefore Sir Edward Carson and those who follow him are performing a duty when they demand the repeal of that Act. It has gained no virtue by being put upon the Statute Book and remaining unenforced for five years— unenforced because the men against whom it is a menace were dying for us in Flanders, Syria, and Mesopotamia, while many of the men who favoured the Act were either refusing to fight our battles or were actually killing our soldiers in the streets of Dublin. But as a matter of fact Sir Edward Carson does not really go so far as this, though it is a claim not in itself unreasonable. He does not make any absolute denial of the right of the majority to do even a personal injustice. What he does assert is that in localities where the will of the majority is against changes which will deprive them of their full rights of British citizenship, and will for purposes of legislation take them away from the Parliament that now makes laws for them and place them under another and hostile Parliament, the right of resistance accrues —a right which every free-born man holds must i9. the last resort belong to him. Needless to say, that right can only be exercised in extreme cases and on the rarest of occasions, and many wrongs must be borne without resistance if imposed by the will of the majority of the community. The cases are rare indeed in which the sacred right of insurrection exists. But one of them, the chief of them indeed, is the right of a man to retain his full citizenship, and not to be excluded and deprived of that right against his will. The majority cannot without wrong and injustice unmake a Briton, or render non-British a portion of the United Kingdom in which the great majority of the inhabitants passionately desire to remain in the United Kingdom.
Remember that this is the essential character of the claim of North-East Ulster. Though under the threat of persecution and injustice at the hands of those of different race and religion, men and leaders may lose their temper and show for the moment anger and indignation rather than cool judgment, what the men of North-East Ulster are doing is attempting not to exercise dominion over others who differ from them, but merely to resist their own political exile. The men of North-East Ulster are not so foolish or so unjust as to make a demand to veto Home Rule in any shape or form for those parts of Ireland which desire autonomy. North-East Ulstermen may think it unwise or dangerous to destroy the unity of the United Kingdom, and they have a clear right to exercise such thoughts and to put them into words. But they make no claim to prevent Parliament doing a thing because they think it foolish. All they claim is that they themselves, and the area which they inhabit and in which the men who are Protestant in religion, largely English or Scots in race and intensely British in all their aspirations, shall not be deprived of the thing they value most —i.e., full British citizenship— and shall not be driven out of our household, and moreover driven into a household where they have had the clearest and fullest warning that they will be treated as enemies. We challenge any one to read carefully Sir Edward Carson's speech and then to show that there is anything in it which is contrary to what we have just said—i.e., which asserts a claim to veto Home Rule in the South and West, or which is not merely a claim that Ulster shall not be robbed of her birthright. As a proof of what we are .saying we may note the fact that Mr. Clynes, the Labour Member, anxious to attack Sir Edward Carson and to put him in the wrong by a care- fully prepared question, could not place the matter higher than by asking the Prime Minister whether his attention had been drawn to the statement of Sir Edward Carson " that if any attempt is made to take away from Ulstermen their rights as British citizens he will call out the Ulster Volunteers."
However, if it can be shown that we are wrong, and if any competent legal authority will be willing to say the t Sir Edward Carson was guilty of an incitement to rebellion or of any other treasonable act, then by all means let him be prosecuted for the offence in question, and let it be tested in a Court of Law whether he has or has not committed a crime against the State. We are sure that Sir Edward Carson would be the last man to implore his fellow-country- men not to bring him to the test, and to decide whether the demand to resist deprivation of the full rights of British citizenship provides a case in which a British jury would find a verdict of " Guilty." We do not suggest that the trial should be before a Belfast any more than a Dublin jury. If those who are now carping at Sir Edward Carson for his disloyalty mean business and not mere vituperation, let him be placed on his trial at the Central Criminal Court.
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