TOPICS OF THE DAY.
AN APPEAL TO ULSTER.
THE great majority of the people of Belfast and of the counties of North-East Ulster are determined that they will not be driven out of the United Kingdom without a struggle, and that, even if driven out, they will in no circumstances consent to be placed under the domina- tion of the Southern Irish and ruled by a Parliament and Executive installed in Dublin. They have a perfect right to insist that if one part of the United Km' gdom can claim self-government of the kind claimed by the Irish Nationalists, a similar claim must also be allowed. to North-East Ulster. The only way to bar that claim is to say that Ireland is an indivisible unit, and can never by any possibility be broken up. But there is no legal, moral, or historical ground for thus declaring Ireland to be an indivisible unit which can claim self- government though a part of the United Kingdom, but can bar the claim to self-government made on behalf of any portion of itself. Ireland never was a single political unit, nor, again, is Ireland. a homogeneous country, or even a country in which there is always a local majority of Nationalists and Roman Catholics of the Celtic or Iberian race. In Belfast and the counties of North- East Ulster the local majority, in many cases in over- whelming numbers, are Protestant in religion, Teutonic, or at any rate English-speaking, in origin, and anti-Nationalist in politics. In fact, the majority in North-East Ulster have all the grounds for claiming self-government which are held. in the rest of Ireland to justify the demand for it. That being so, is it to be wondered at that the people of North-East Ulster are determined to resist the attempt to force them, not merely out of the United. Kingdom, but under the domination of Southern Ireland ? Hitherto, however, the Ulstermen have felt unwilling to bring these facts and arguments before the people of England and Scotland. With characteristic chivalry, they have declared that they will not make even an argumentative demand for self-government. And for this reason. They declare that by doing so they would appear to be deserting the cause of the Protestant and non-Celtic, and therefore non-Nationalist, minority in the South of Ireland. Thus many of the strongest arguments against the proposals for breaking up the United Kingdom, and establishing a Parliament and an Executive in Dublin, are never heard by the English and Scottish voters.
With all possible respect for the motives which inspire the Ulstermen on this point, we are convinced that they are wrong. In our opinion, they are not really doing what is best for the minority in the South by refusing to say :—" We do not want Home-rule in any shape or form, but if we are to be driven out of the United Kingdom, then we claim that the counties of North-East Ulster in which there is an anti-Nationalist majority must either remain under the British Parliament with the status of English counties, or else be given a separate Parliament." If they will take up that position, they will almost certainly destroy the chances of a Home-rule Bill being passed, and thus they will far better serve the interests of the minorities in the South than by refusing to make the demand in question. The attempt to establish a Parliament solely for the South and West of Ireland would almost certainly be a failure. In all probability, indeed, the Nationalists would make the inclusion of Ulster a sine qua non. In private, though not of course in public, they would tell the Government that unless Ulster were forced under the Dublin Parliament it would be quite impossible to find a financial basis for the new Government. To put it brutally, unless the Dublin Parliament has got the rich city of Belfast and the manufacturing districts of the North to tax, it will be bankrupt within six months. Publicly this argument will no doubt take the form of a declaration by Nationalists that they can never consent to the breaking up of their beloved country, and we shall hear Mr. Redmond and his colleagues thundering forth the most splendid Unionist sentiments on Nationalist platforms. The Government would then have to decide whether or no they shall refuse an amendment establishing a Parliament for North-East Ulster. If they assent, the Irish will refuse the Bill. If they reject the proposal for two Irish Parliaments, then the monstrous injustice of forcing unwilling people under the rule of those they hate and distrust politically will stand out in all its naked cruelty. From this contemplated act of Parliamentary oppression would emerge what is, when all is said and done, the bed-rock foundation of the Unionist case. The Parliamentary Union of these islands may have certain inconveniences, but, after all, it is the scheme of government which divides us least, which gives the maximum of protection to minorities and most prevents injustice and tyranny. The executive and legislative Union of these islands did not grow up from the whim of any one statesman, or from the desire of this or that interest to tyrannise, but because such a Union was found to be the only just and reasonable way of securing good government for the British Isles. The Union with Ireland, like the Union with Scotland, became politically inevitable. It is not founded upon wickedness or corruption or stupidity, but on practical common- sense. The moment an attempt is made to dissolve it, it will be found that on the balance the Union is the least of evils, and if maintained will ultimately become the greatest good. In spite of many bad. things, we say without the slightest fear of contradiction that Ireland has been happier and more prosperous since the year 1800 than at any other period. of her history, and that the improvement in her condition due to the Union has been developing at an accelerated pace. The last thirty years have marked an enormous advance in the happiness and prosperity of the Irish people over the thirty that preceded them.
We have appealed above to the people of North-East Ulster to declare that if the principle of Home-rule is adopted, they must be given the benefit of that principle as well as the people of the South, because we believe that such a claim must destroy the Government's Home-rule project. But even if we are wrong, and the Government turn a deaf ear to the people of North-East Ulster, and by the use of the gag and the " guillotine " force the rule of a Dublin Parliament and a Dublin Executive upon them, we shall be none the less certain that our advice is right. Rightly or wrongly, Ulstermen are determined, if the Home-rule Bill is passed, to refuse to acquiesce in it. But clearly their moral power to turn themselves into passive or active resisters to Dublin laws and Dublin taxes will be enormously strengthened if, as an alterna- tive to the Government's Home-rule Bill, they have asked. for separate treatment and a Parliament of their own. If they do not make that demand, the people of England and Scotland. will be inclined to say :—" If you object to being under the Dublin Parliament, why did you not ask for a Parliament of your own instead of merely trying to prevent the Southern Irish having the form of government they desire?" If, however, the people of North-East Ulster, though unwilling to be thrown out of the United Kingdom, have in the last resort asked for self-government, and have had that request refused, they will have immensely strengthened. their right to resist, and will have given the voluntary Government which it is understood they mean to create, in the event of the attempt being made to rule them from Dublin, a sanction which could not be obtained in any other way. They will be able to say :—" Though we hated being separated from the rest of the United Kingdom, we were willing, if you forced us to do so, to govern ourselves, because we recognised that, though the policy was utterly wrong, you had a moral right to insist on our administering our own affairs and making our own laws. What we will never admit is your moral right not only to separate us from Britain, but to place us under the oppressive rule of the Southern Irish. Such an act of oppression as that justifies us in exercising the ultimate right of insurrection which belongs to every free man " As we have pointed out elsewhere, the only argument which the Liberals on their own premisses can use to beat down the demand of the Ulstermen for a Parliament of their own is that Ireland. is an indivisible unit, and cannot in any circumstances be separated. That argument is a pretty difficult one to apply when it is proposed to deny that England is a unit, and to tear off certain Western counties—i.e., the Welsh counties—and erect them into a separate governing unit. But let that pass for a moment. We will merely deal now with this belief in the indissoluble unit. Perhaps the best way to meet it is to quote a remarkable passage from one of Abraham Lincoln's speeches, his address to the Legisla- ture at Indianapolis, Indiana, which he delivered on February 12th, 1861. The air was then full of all sorts of proposals for splitting the American Republic backwards and forwards and sideways. Speaking of the advocates of such fissiparous scheming, Lincoln remarked that " in their view the Union as a family rela- tion would seem to be no regular marriage, but a sort of free-love arrangement to be maintained only on passional attraction." He went on to deal with the idea of the indissoluble unit,—the idea that a State or States could be broken off from the Union, but that the people inside the State had no right to make any claim of a similar kind:— "By the way, in what consists the special sacredness of a State ? I speak not of the position assigned to a State in the Union by the Constitution; for that, by the bond, we all recognise. That position, however, a State cannot carry out of the Union with it. I speak of that assumed primary right of a State to rule all which is less than itself; and ruin all which is larger than itself. If a State and a County in a given case should. be equal in extent of territory, and equal in number of inhabitants,in what, as a matter of principle, is the State better than the County ? Would an exchange of names be an exchange of rights upon principle ? On what rightful principle may a State, being not more than one-fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation, and then coerce a proportionally larger subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary way ? What mysterious right to play tyrant is conferred on a district of a country by merely calling it a State ? Fellow- citizens, I am not asserting anything ; I am merely asking questions for you to consider."
The questions which we have italicised. are questions which go to the very root of the matter. They contain Ulster's case in a nutshell. We appeal to the political sense of the people of Ulster to let these questions come before the United Kingdom, even though it may seem as if to do so will involve some neglect of the minority in the South of Ireland. We are convinced that if them questions are placed before the people of the United. Kingdom, they will defeat the scheme of the Government for destroying the Union. Their scheme, remember, is not an honest scheme either for recog- nising Irish nationality and giving to Ireland that Colonial self-government which would make her an inde- pendent nation, with absolute financial and legislative independence like that belonging to the daughter-States of the Empire, or for giving her an honest system of improved local government. It is a treacherous amalgam which now masquerades as local government, now as national independence, but which in truth violates the principles of both. It is due not to a real desire to solve the Irish question or to improve the position of the Irish people, but solely to the fact that Mr. Redmond has the power to turn the Government out or to keep them in office. If Mr. Redmond did not possess that power, does any sane man believe that we should hear any more of projects for establishing an Irish Parliament in Dublin with an Irish Executive responsible to it ?
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