The Government, he continued, in framing their Bill, had treated
Ireland as a whole, and to exclude Ulster would wreck the whole Bill. Besides, the population of Ulster was far
from homogeneous; throughout the whole province Protestants stood to Roman Catholics in the relation of nine to seven; and the claim that. a small minority concentrated in North-East Ulster should have the right to frustrate the aspirations of the great mass of the Irish people could never be admitted by any legislative assembly founded on democratic principles. Mr. John Redmond dismissed the threats of civil war as negligible, quoting the unfulfilled predictions of Mr. Disraeli in his speech on Irish Disestablishment. He did not wish the triumph of Home Rule to be associated in the minds of its opponents with the memory of a bitter political defeat. But concessions could only be made to genuine and reasonable demands and not to tactical manceuvres, such as the present proposal.
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