TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE ULSTER COVENANT. THE signing of the Ulster Covenant, which takes place th_sday,isg a great fact. For ourselves, though we may be critical about points of detail, we hold that the people of North-East Ulster are morally and politically justified in the action they are taking and mean to take. But even if we thought their action could not be justified, and if we condemned it instead of sympathizing with it, the fact of the Covenant would remain important in the highest degree—impossible to ignore, to laugh down, or to explain away. All rulers, whether they be kings who imagine that they rule by Divine right, or Parliaments and. their delegates, who claim to represent the people, must find sooner or later that there are limits to their powers. There are some things which they cannot do, or at any rate which, if they insist on doing, will have consequences which must render the task of government so embarrassing and so difficult that if they are well advised they will stay their hands. The abstract or legal, or even the moral right to do certain things does not necessarily make it wise to do them. No doubt a supreme government cannot always be held in check by the thought that it will meet with resistance from a section of the community. In many cases the express has to go forward, taking its chance that the crowd stand- ing in front of it will clear out in time. There are other cases, however, where the resistance offered to its passage may very possibly throw the express off the rails, and so may make it foolish or worse to "drive ahead." The resistance which North-East Ulster is setting up to the Home Rule Bill is a case in point. We are convinced that the Liberals will find it impossible, without another and direct appeal to the electorate, to scare the Ulstermen off the line. If they try to rush the train through on the assumption that the Ulster Protestants will jump clear at the last moment, a disaster of an appalling kind must occur. No abuse of Sir Edward Carson and the other leaders, no railing at the Unionists for not keeping the men of North-East Ulster in order, no abstract arguments designed to show that what is virtue in Ireland as a whole is a crime in North-East Ulster, will alter the fact that if the present Home Rule Bill is passed into law the people of the North will not obey it—will not, that is, recognize the institutions set up by it.
We have stated the fact. We now desire to ask the Liberal Party, "What do you mean to do about it ? " By the Liberal Party we do not, of course, mean the hacks who, in effect if not in so many words, would declare that they will do what the Government and the Party whips tell them, but moderate Liberals who sincerely believe in Liberal principles and Home Rule principles, but at the same time do not want to provoke anything approaching civil war. In all probability the first thing which a moderate Liberal, prepared to face the facts and not merely to ignore them, would say would be : "Tell me first what you mean to do about• it. You moderate Unionists in effect assert that we are not to carry out the policy in which we believe because the people of North- East Ulster forbid it. That, we admit, is a dis- quieting and disagreeable fact ; but do not forget that the local majority in the rest of Ireland, and so in two-thirds of the country, say in effect that they forbid us or any other Government to continue to govern Ireland from London. Therefore," continues the moderate Liberal of our thought, "the Unionist position is as bad as that of the Liberals. The country is as it were between two fires, and the real problem is whether to give satisfaction to intransigent Nationalists or to intransigent Ulstermen." The dialectical dilemma is ingenious, but it will not frighten or put out of court any straight-thinking Unionist. In a case of this kind the Unionist policy must prevail, putting aside all thought of the merits, not because it is the best, or makes most for good government or national efficiency, but because it holds the field. When there is a conflict of opinion and a conflict of will such as is presented when the Nationalists forbid the dropping of the Home Rule Bill and the Ulstermen forbid its being carried into law, surely the wise course—nay, the only reasonable course—is to maintain the status quo. It is idle to say that this is unfair to one side, because such so-called unfairness must always exist in human affairs. Beati possicleutes is a fact which cannot be got over by a charge of injustice. The policy which is in existence has a natural advantage which cannot be taken away from it. Therefore the wise ruler without any prejudice in favour of the Union or against Home Rule must, we contend, in the present circumstances say that the Union must continue, because its abrogation, at any rate in the way proposed in the Home Rule Bill, would lead to disaster. When to move a coach means that it will go over the precipice, the prudent driver stops still, no matter how much the coach may be exposed in the place in which it is to the assaults of wind and weather. To argue thus in favour of the status quo is, of course, only another way of saying what we have said so often in these columns. The Union was not a piece of political wickedness on the part of Pitt and his supporters, but an inevitable act, the logical result of trying, without success, every other form of regulating the relations between the two islands. The Union, considered in the abstract, may be open to every sort of objection, but when it is compared with other systems it will be found to have, at any rate, one supreme if negative merit: it is the form of government which divides Ireland least—which least invites the heterogeneous population of that country to blow out each other's brains or to cut each other's throats.
The moderate Liberal of our thought would probably not be satisfied with our argument. He would go on to say that some way out of the impasse must be found, and that he cannot consent to a mere non possum= and the main- tenance of the status quo. We do not agree; but let us try to put ourselves in the position of the moderate Liberal, and think what he would propose if he were left to himself and were not governed by the need of having to get a. Parliamentary majority to keep his party in office. Surely in the circumstances the natural thing would be for him to say : "Let us carry out our governing principle, that the will of the local majority is to prevail. Let us, that is, allow those counties of Ireland in which there is a local majority in favour of Home Rule to come together and enjoy a local Parliament and a local Executive in Dublin, but also let us allow those counties in which the local majority tell us in such vehement terms that they will die rather than be turned out of their present place in the United Kingdom and be placed under a Parliament in Dublin, to have their way and remain under the Parliament at Westminster. That may not be a very symmetrical arrangement, but at any rate it would prevent bloodshed, and would not force upon any community a Parliament and a system of government to which the majority passionately object." For ourselves we see, of course, plenty of vital objections to Home Rule even when limited to the South, and must oppose it strenuously as thoroughly injurious ; but we are not now talking about what we as Unionists desire, but are trying to put ourselves in the position of the moderate Liberal. He, at any rate, will find no objection to the proposal, as he is in love with Federalism and subordinate Parliaments. The more the merrier in the matter of Parliaments appears to be his maxim. He is not even likely to make the objection that it is wrong to break up an ancient geographical unit like Ireland, for has not one of his leaders, unreproved by the Prime Minister or by any of his colleagues in the Cabinet, specifically and in detail proposed to break up England into eleven or twelve Federal units ? Why, then, we must ask, does not the moderate Liberal who believes in the abstract advantage of breaking up the 'United Kingdom and of giving the Nationalists self-government, but also does not desire to coerce the local majority in Ulster and force upon them a system of Dublin rule, which he has to admit they dislike as much as the Nationalists dislike London rule, propose to leave the counties of North-East Ulster out of the Bill, and so get a settlement which, if it does not satisfy anybody entirely, at any rate sacrifices nobody completely ? The answer, of course, is that, though this would be the natural and reasonable thing for the moderate Liberal to propose, he dare not propose it, because if he did the Irish Nationalists would refuse any longer to support the Liberal Government, and Mr. Asquith and his cob leagues would be turned out of office. We therefore reach this strange conclusion, that we are running the risk of a great political disaster, not in order to do justice to the Nationalists or to improve the Government of the -United
Kingdom, but to keep the present Liberal Government in power. The United Kingdom is to be broken up or decen- tralized, not in the best and safest way, but in the worst and most dangerous way in order to keep the present Ministry in office !
The excuse sometimes offered for a paradox so damaging is that a Bill with the North-East counties of Ulster left out would not satisfy the Ulster people, and that therefore it must not be considered. That is surely not sincere when coming from a Liberal. No doubt it would not satisfy the Ulster people any more than it would satisfy Unionists like ourselves, and no doubt both we and they would oppose it, but at any rate it would avoid civil war. Remember that the people of the North have said that they do not want and will not have a separate Parliament for Ulster, and here, surely, they have a right to decide. They have, however, never said that if they are left out of the Bill, and if the political status of their citizens remains as it is now, they will still rise in insurrection. They would, of course, do nothing of the kind. They would grumble but they would not revolt. Admitting this, the next argu- ment is that the Bill would not be accepted by the rest of Ireland. Very likely ; but surely that is not an argument for having instead a worse Bill or a civil-war-provoking Bill, but for having no Bill at all. If the only just, reasonable, and safe Bill from the Liberal standpoint is one which is not acceptable to the Nationalists, then surely the proper thing is to say that the Irish question is not capable of solution along Home Rule lines, and that the Union, even if imperfect, must be maintained as the best system of governing Ireland.
We must remember that if this conclusion is reached it is not after all such a very terrible one. If the present Home Rule Bill fails, there will not be very many tears of regret shed in the South of Ireland, though there will be plenty shed from a passionate sense of relief in the North. All that will happen is that Ireland will continue in that path of economic improvement which, Heaven be thanked ! she has already entered upon. If the present Government were to propose to spend the extra two millions a year with which they are now proposing to endow an Irish Government, on hastening on land purchase they would, we venture to say, do far more to content the rural population than they will ever achieve by the present Home Rule Bill. As for any defects in Irish administration, there is not the slightest reason why the Liberal Government should not, if they like, revolutionize that administration by eradicating its defects and making it less wasteful and more efficient. In any case we would in all sincerity ask the moderate Liberals to face the facts as regards Ulster, and to draw the necessary conclusions. We do not for one moment believe that they are so mad as to say that if they must have some system of Irish Home Rule they would rather have it plus a civil war in Ulster than a Home Rule system which only applied to two-thirds of Ireland. If the Nationalists reply to this that they will have no Home Rule at all if they are not to be allowed their full pound of Ulster and Protestant flesh, moderate Liberals can, it appears to us, only say that in that case, if the Nationalists really prefer no bread to three- quarters of a loaf, then the Union must contine to hold the field.
But we shall be asked, How is the Liberal Ministry to retain office ? We confess that if we were Liberals we should not be deeply moved by this argument, nor, we believe, will the normal Liberal be moved if he can free himself for a moment from the cant of party. And even from the party point of view he would not lose. Nothing, we imagine, would do the Liberals more good than to have a. rest, especially if they were turned out by the Nationalists. That would be a far safer fall than the one which they are likely to get if the present Home Rule Bill is passed without an appeal to the country. That means at best a week's street fighting in Belfast, with a butcher's bill of three or four thousand. That is what the Liberals have got to face.
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