(To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") SIR,—I have read
with much interest your article in the issue of May 12th entitled "America and Ireland," and I have no doubt that it will exercise a beneficial influence on the minds of your American readers; they will certainly fully appreciate your statement of the complete analogy between the positions of Ulster and Western Virginia. Writing, however, as an Irishman and an "Ulsterman, who has -taken a prominent part in organizing Ulster's resistance to Home Rule, I hope that you will permit me to express disagreement with one of your arguments. You say that we want to give the majority of the Irish people what they ask for in the way of self-government, and later on in your article you state that what they ask for is the Dome Rule Act. Is this, I ask, a correct statement of their demands ? Some English people may have thought, before the two recent Irish elections, that (he Home 'Rule Act would satisfy Nationalist aspirations; but now they know what we Irishmen bare known all through this controversy, that what the majority of Nationalists want is an absolutely independent Republican . Government. No doubt the English speeches of some of the Nationalist Members of Parliament have been composed for the purpose of persuading Englishmen that the Irish people have accepted the Home Rule Act as a final settlement: .but *very
intelligent Irishman knows that an overwhelming majority of the Nationalists regard the Act merely as a step towards the realization of their old ideal of "Ireland, a nation, free from outside control, and taking her place amongst the nations of the world."
Assuming, then, that this statement fairly expresses the demands of the majority of Irish Nationalists, are you prepared to set lip an Irish Republic, with a generous subsidy, and with the full accord and blessing of England? Unless I am greatly mistaken, Great Britain will never surrender to such a demand as this; she will never be so insane as to set up an independent commonwealth on her western flank—a commonwealth, too, which would be composed of individuals the majority of whom have never shown the slightest concern for the welfare and the security of the Empire. Surely, too, we may rely on the sympathy of American politicians in refusing this form of government which the Nationalists are demanding. Americans will remember that their Southern States, fifty years ago, demanded an independent government, and that this demand was refused, and rightly refused; they will remember that the majority of the States were then prepared to endure the horrors of civil war rather than sonsent to separation and disintegration. Let us, then, follow the example of democratic America, and, cost what it may, hold
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