The adjourned Irish debate was then opened by Lord Lyming-
ton, who condemned the proposed Bill as bristling with arrange- ments which must make it both irritating and temporary. Then came the Attorney-General (Sir Charles Russell), who ignored completely the Irish antecedents of this question, and assumed as a matter of course that the Irish Legislature would be all that the heart could desire in its strenuousness for passing and for enforcing right laws. He replied to the threats of the Ulstermen by showing how similar threats, which meant nothing, had been uttered at the time of the Disestablishment of the Irish Church; and he insisted that it is the object of the Government to substitute for "an unreal and a paper Union a Union founded on mutual good-will." Mr. Westlake pointed out that the difficulty of the situation,—at least as regarded Ulster,—was identical with that involved in the relation of Croatia to Hungary. It came from within, not from without, and was due to the claim of Ireland to hold a reluctant Ulster within its grasp, just as Hungary claimed to hold a reluctant Croatia within her grasp.
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