" THE PROPER WAY TO COERCE ULSTER."
T 0011 at it and judge it how wo will, Sir Edward 41 Carson's speech to the men of Ulster in Belfast on Friday week is a great fact. It is yet one more notice that the people of North-East Ulster do not mean to take lying down the message of " fraternal greeting," according to Radical ideas, which is being sent them by the present Government. This message, stripped of rhetoric and flummery, is : " What is good for the Nationalist and Roman Catholic majority in the south of Ireland is much
The earliest, or racing, edition of the Star has no leader. "Captain Coe" and the prophets and tipsters want the undivided attention of the reader. When, however, the racing is over, the voice of the earnest Liberal is allowed to be heard, and high moral principles appear where before " Naps " ruled
supreme.
too good for the Protestant and Loyalist majority in North-East Ulster. The policy of the Liberal Party is that the will of the local majority shall prevail in Leinster, Munster, Connaught, and a portion of Ulster, but that in the rest of the last-named province the policy shall be reversed and the will of the local minority, not the majority, shall prevail. If anyone belonging to the majority in North- East Ulster complains that this application of Liberal principles is unjust, we tell him straight out that he is a grumbling rebel. We warn him that if he dare make any attempt to assert the rights of the local majority in North- East Ulster or to appeal to the principle of local self- government which we have proclaimed in the rest of Ireland, we will shoot him. We mean to use all the power of the Imperial Government to deprive him of his rights in the United Kingdom. We shall compel him to stay where we have put him, i.e., under the government of the Southern Irish, and to obey whatever laws affecting his rights and liberties and religious convictions are passed by the Southern Irish Parliament." That, in effect, is the message which the friends of civil and religious liberty and the men who are so humane that they can hardly bring themselves to believe that it is lawful to arm in the defence of their native country against a foreign invader, and who profess that they would endure almost any wrong rather than appeal to arms, are sending to their fellow countrymen in North-East Ulster. Though they have the words of Liberalism and popular rights on their lips, when those principles are asserted by the men of North-East Ulster they act like the recruiting sergeant in Thackeray's " Barry Lyndon." As soon as the sergeant had got his man safe across the border into Prussia and the recruit ventured to protest against an infringement of his rights, the sergeant struck him across the mouth with his cane—" Hound, you mutiny." According to Liberal newspaper writers and speakers, this is the spirit in which the Liberal Party and Government ought to meet the protests of Ulster. This is their " short way " with Ulster.
That this is the manner in which the Nationalists would coerce Ulster we do not doubt for a moment. They are at heart Jacobins and authoritarians. They have many old grudges against the people of North-East Ulster, and they hate and despise them because they are Pro- testants. Even the small number of so-called " enlightened " Nationalists, who at heart if not in name have broken away from Rome, hate the Protestants of Ulster quite as strongly as do the most bitter of old-fashioned Irish Roman Catholics. To these men the Ulster Protestants stand for all that is stupid and obscurantist and "impos- sible," and they would very gladly see them taught a lesson. " Shoot them down like the traitors to Ireland that they are. That is the way to coerce the Black North." Such is the advice that is being assiduously whispered into the ears of the Government by the Nationalist leaders. In spite, however, of this policy of " thorough," and in spite of the tone of menace and bluff at present adopted by the supporters of the Government, we do not believe that the mass of the Liberal Party will easily agree to this way of coercing Ulster, assuming for the moment that they desire to coerce Ulster at all, of which we are as a matter of fact very doubtful. Even if we assume that they endorse the policy of coercion in the last resort, we believe that they will insist that every other means of coercing Ulster must be attempted before recourse is had to the repeating rifle and the machine-gun. Already the moderate Liberals, like the neutral part of the community, are beginning to consider whether there is not some better way of dealing with Ulster. But the moment the thoughts of men are turned in this direction, it is perceived that there is, in fact, a far easier and more effective way of coercing Ulster than by horse, foot, and artillery—that is, the coercion of a general election previous to the passage of the final stages of the Home Rule Bill.
The Unionist leader has told the Government in plain terms that if they insist on passing the Home Rule Bill into law before the people have had an opportunity of voting on the measure at a general election, the Unionist leaders and party will do their very best to help and support the Ulstermen in their refusal to be forced under a Dublin Parliament and Executive. On the other hand, Mr. Bonar Law, speaking for an undivided party, has told the Government that if they were to get the assent of the country for their Bill at a general election, held before the third time of asking, the Unionists would feel that they could not then support the men of the North in resistance to an Act, however bad, which had been endorsed by the electors. They would in that case use all their influence to prevent armed resistance in North-East Ulster. Now when that fact becomes plain, as it is becoming plain, we say without fear of contradiction that the ordinary man will argue, even if he desires in the last resort to coerce Ulster, as follows. He will insist that a general election is the proper method of procedure. And that while that tremendous weapon is still in the hands of the Govern- ment, and while they claim, as they do, that their Bill inspires confidence in the country as a whole, they cannot possibly refuse to use this method of avoiding bloodshed. The proper way for Liberals to coerce Ulster is by a general election before the Bill becomes law.
No doubt it will be said in reply that this is in effect what the Government are going to do. They intend, we shall be told, to pass the Home Rule Bill into law over the heads of the House of Lords next May. But they will enact that the Bill is not to come into operation for six months, and they will take care, nay, they will solemnly pledge them- selves, to hold a general election before the six months have run out. By this means they propose to keep their bargain with the Nationalists—the bargain that if the Nationalists would vote for the Budget they would not dissolve till they had passed Home Budget yet have a general election before it becomes necessary actually to apply the Act to Ulster. If the Government are really so foolish as to contemplate this plan, and really imagine that in that way they will be able to trick the people of Ulster into non-resistance, they are living in a fool's paradise. The Ulster people may be pig-headed and unreasonable and all the rest of it, but at any rate they are not fools, and they are also, by general consent, anything but a patient or phlegmatic people. We may be quite certain that as soon as Home Rule is the law of the land the people of Ulster will act. They are not going to wait to be hit before they move. They will have seen the rifle deliberately loaded and brought to the shoulder, and with the true instinct of fighting men they will realize that their only path of safety is nto knock down the rifle at once, and not to wait till it has been fired. They will not, of course, act before a law is passed forcing them under a Dublin Parliament, i.e., before they are deprived of their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom, but the moment this outrage is the law of the land they will take action. We are not in their secrets, but we are as certain as we can be of anything that they will obey the instinct of self-preservation. They will argue : "If, now the Bill is passed, we do nothing and wait till another general election, our acquiescence is certain to be used against us. It will be used, that is, in the English and Scottish constituencies as proof that we really do not object so very much to Home Rule and that our protests were bluff." " Look how quiet Ulster is and how calmly she takes the Bill. Only be patient and even the bluff will die down," will be the sort of language that will be employed on every Liberal platform. Yet another argument which will be used by the politicians of the North, and from their point of view with good reason, will be that if they resist at once and before a general election, they will have the sympathy of the Unionist Party in England, whereas if they wait till after a general election, six months hence, by which time to a very great extent the people of England will have for- gotten about Ulster, they will very possibly be deprived of a great deal of Unionist help and sympathy. Every consideration of policy as well as every consideration prompted by the hot blood of Ulster will then induce them, nay, compel them, to act vigorously and to act at once.
The leaders have no doubt great power over the organi- zation of the Covenanted men of the North, but there are things which leaders dare not do even with the best- disciplined force in the world. We may be sure that Sir Edward Carson and his colleagues would not find it possible to take the passage of the Home Rule Bill into law " lying down," even if they desired so to do. What step exactly they will take, as we have said above, we do not know, but in all probability they will begin the active organization of that Provisional Government which it is clear they will have to create in order to carry out the Covenant. Remember that the Covenant to them is an absolute reality and not a picturesque piece of pageantry, as it seems to so many people in England. But they will not only create a framework of government. They will create, or rather draw the curtain away from, that organized and armed force upon which the Provisional Government will have to rest. They will further, we may feel sure, call to their aid the supporters of Ulster in the United Kingdom, in America, and in the Colonies, and they will appeal for the funds required throughout the British Empire. But when they have done this the British Government must do one of two things. They must either dissolve instantly, or else they must by the force of arms destroy and stamp out the Provisional Government of the North and the armed force which will be supporting it. No doubt they can do that if they use enough troops and are not afraid of a big butcher's bill. But do they really suppose that such action will help them at the general election which must in any case soon follow ?
Belfast and North-East Ulster held down by eighty thousand men on a war footing, with batteries mounted on Cave Hill ready to shell the city, battleships and cruisers in Belfast Lough, and constant collisions between outposts and patrols, even if there are no bigger actions, varied very possibly by counter outbreaks against Protestants in the South of Ireland, are hardly the conditions under which a Government would care to go to the polls. No doubt the Government count upon the stubbornness of Englishmen when their blood is up, and on their saying, right or wrong, " We will not be defied by the local majority in North-East Ulster or anywhere else—except, of course, in the South of Ireland." That is possible, but we venture to say that in a case like that which we have been depicting the common sense of Englishmen is much more likely to prevail. Instead of becoming angry with Ulster they will be asking everywhere, " Why were we put to all this trouble, humiliation, and bloodshed when it might have been avoided so easily by holding the general election, not now, when it is too late to prevent bloodshed, but when it was obviously the best way of coercing Ulster? Why has a Liberal Government deliber- ately chosen to coerce with bayonets rather than with votes ? The whole thing is a scandal and a folly, and we cannot support the Government in carrying it any further." The result of a general election held under these conditions would, we predict, be the biggest political landslide ever witnessed in our history.
The Government can look forward and see the possibilities and probabilities as well as we can, and they know as well as we do, or they soon will, that Ulster really means business, and therefore from their point of view must be coerced in some fashion or other. When they have reached that point it is to us incredible that they will not realize that the best way to coerce Ulster is by a general election. If they do not realize this, or, realizing it, if they do not act upon it, then we say to them, in no rhetorical spirit, but in the spirit of soberness and truth, that every drop of blood that is shed in Ulster will be required at their hands. The nation too will say to them : " You could have avoided blood- shed by dissolving before the third passage of the Act. For purely party reasons you refused to do this, but preferred to risk shedding the blood of your fellow countrymen. From this time forth every one of you shall be a marked man, shall be under the ban of every true lover of his country and every hater of civil strife, be he Liberal or Unionist, Whig or Tory. Your hands are red with the innocent blood ; the brand of Cain is on you."
Mr. Asquith and his colleagues are brave men, but they are not so brave as to run the risk of such national con- demnation when they can avoid it entirely by the simple method of dissolving before and not after the third time of asking the Lords to pass the Home Rule Bill.
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