TOPICS OF TIIE D.Y.
THE ULSTER PROBLEM ONCE MORE.
WE claim a verdict against the Home Rule Bill on the admissions made by Mr. Winston Churchill. If we accept the principles laid down by him in the Second Reading Debate the Government ought not to have introduced the present, but another and a totally different, measure. Here are Mr. Churchill's admissions : " I admit that the perfectly genuine apprehensions of the majority of the people of North-East Ulster constitute the most serious and, in my humble judgment, the only serious obstacle to a thoroughly satisfactory settlement of this question." He went on to declare that it was impossible for a Liberal Government —or any British Government—" to treat cavalierly or contemptuously the sincere sentiments of a numerous, well-defined community like the Protestant North of Ireland." " We may think them wrong or un- reasonable, but there they are. We may think their opinions are prejudiced, but their opinions are facts of the most stubborn kind." No one on the Liberal side of the House, ho declared, would deny that it is the right of every citizen, nay, the duty, provided the circumstances are suf- ficient, to resist oppression. But though that was a great and far-reaching principle it could only be applied with great moderation if societies and States are to retain their coherent strength. He then went on to ask whether citizens have the right, even if there is no oppression, to resist an Act of Parliament which they dislike, and drew a most statesmanlike picture of the great dangers of the new disposition which was apparent to offer unconstitutional resistance to acts of the Legislature. On one point, however, there was, he declared, very little dispute in regard to Ulster. " Whatever Ulster's rights may be, they cannot stand in the way of the whole of the rest of Ireland." [This final statement is clearly as applicable to Ireland as to Ulster. " Whatever Ireland's rights may be, they cannot stand in the way of the whole of the rest of the United Kingdom."] The above is, we think, • a perfectly fair statement of Mr. Winston Churchill's admissions. Where do they lead us ? Assuredly not to the Homo Rule Bill, which takes no account of the wishes and desires of North-East Ulster. What they ought to have led to was a Bill in which North-East Ulster, or the counties in which the Protestants and Unionists are in a majority, would be exempted from the operation of the Bill and from the jurisdiction of the Dublin Parliament and Dublin Executive. But Mr. Winston Churchill would no doubt tell us, if we could compel him to be frank, that it would have been impossible for the Government to produce such a Bill : (1) because the Irish Nationalists would not have accepted it under any considerations ; and (2) because it would not have been possible to have constructed a financial scheme from which North-East Ulster had been cut out. Very likely. But that is not an argument for the Government's Bill, but an argument, and a con- clusive argument, for leaving the matter alone and for holding, as we Unionists hold, that the Legislative Union is an absolute necessity. It is not merely the form of government which divides Ireland least, but the only form of government which can secure a reasonable measure of social and political welfare to Ireland and to the rest of the British Isles. It is for those who want to disturb the status quo and to make a new Constitution to prove their case.
The only way by which Mr. Winston Churchill could have escaped, or have appeared to escape, from the argu- mentative blind alley into which he had got himself by his admissions would have been by arguing that *here is some- thing sacred about a political unit when it is an island. He might, that is, have argued in a Unionist vein that you cannot go on breaking up political communities indefinitely or allowing fragments of the whole to stand alone, and that in the case of the British Isles the indivisible unit which cannot be disintegrated is the island. Ireland must be treated all together and no one part exempted, because Ireland is an island. But unfortunately Mr. Winston Churchill and his colleagues are absolutely estopped from using such an argument as this, for if they use
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it down falls like a house of cards the whole federal scheme of which they tell us Home Rule for Ireland is but the first instalment. If Scotland is to have a Parliament of its own and Wales also a Parliament of its own, which, moreover, is to include one of the counties of England, then it is clear that there is nothing sacred. about an island, and that the island is not the indivisible unit. If you can break up the island. of Great Britain you can break up what the old geo- graphers called the island of Parva, Britannia,.
Perhaps careless readers of these words may say that they are of no effect because Scotland and Wales were once separate nations, and that to obtain the right to a Legislature of its own a community must be, or must once have been, a separate nation. But from this argument the Government are as much debarred as from the island. argu- ment. Ireland is not and never was a separate or a homo- geneous nation. When the English kings obtained their overlordship of Ireland, Ireland was a bundle of separate kingdoms and entirely without the marks of nationhood— a common race, a common tongue, and a common religion —and she has remained without thorn ever since. When Ireland was first conquered, or half conquered, there was fierce disagreement between the Celtic Church and tho Roman Church, and that disagreement had only been totally overcome for seventy or eighty years when the Reformation brought a further and even fiercer difia agreement between Protestants and Roman Catholics. There followed the introduction into North-East Ulster of men of Scottish and English race and language. Instead of Ireland being a nation Ireland is two nations. The men of North-East Ulster differ in religious creed and in political ideals and aspirations from the people of the South quite as strongly as do the people of Scotland from the people of England, or, again, the people of Wales from the people of England. Therefore, as we have said, the Government is estopped from urging their so-called settlement of the Irish question, not only on the geographical plea that Ireland is an island, but also on the moral plea that Ireland is a nation, or, again, that she is inhabited by a homogeneous popu- lation. Finally, the plea of the local majority cannot be applied, for North-East Ulster renders that plea unavail- able. If the will of the local majority is to prevail it must prevail in Antrim, Down, Armagh, and Derry as well as in Cork or Clare.
What considerations remain for the Government to urge when they refuse to apply their own principles to North-East. Ulster ? Only the pitiful and pettifogging plea which Mr. Winston Churchill used when he hinted that the Ulster people do not ask for separate treat- ment. "Do the counties of Down, Antrim, and London- derry ask to be exempted from the scope of the Bill ? Do they ask for a Parliament of their own or do they wish to remain here ? Is that their demand ? We ought to know." If Mr. Winston Churchill thinks he is going to get off by this artfully concocted question he is greatly mis- taken. He says that the Liberal Government ought to know. But there is something else which not only the Liberal Government but the people of England ought to know, and that is, that when people puts his question in this way he is not sincere, or in earnest, or really expressing a willing- ness to meet the demands of North-East Ulster if they are made. He knows perfectly well that if the people of North-East Ulster were to ask to be left out of the Home Rule Bill the Government would toll them, with crocodile tears, that unfortunately their demand was impossible. Mr. Winston Churchill, however, thinks he can run the risk of a demand which, if accepted, must be abso- lutely fatal to the Bill, because he knows that the Ulstermen, who are better at action than at dialectics, think that by making that demand they would appear to be deserting their co-religionists and co-Unionists in the South, and so would appear to be saving themselves at the expense of others. Ho is trading upon the high—we had almost said the Quixotic—spirit of the Ulstermen. But Mr. Winston Churchill must remember that there are other people to be considered in this controversy besides the Ulstermen and the Nationalists. Those people are the people of England. They do not on the ground of a punctilio mean to disregard the perfectly reasonable plea that if there must be so evil a thing as Homo Rule North-East Ulster shall, at any rate, be exempt from it en the Government's own principle—the principle that the will of the local majority must prevail. This is not a battle of special pleaders, or, again, an encounter of duellists in which one of the combatants is to be placed at a disadvantage because it is a point of honour with him not to use a particular thrust. There are thousands of moderate men in England and Scotland who feel that, bad as Home Rule is, they are not going to have it made even worse by a condition of civil war. They bate any break-up of the Union, but they claim, and they mean to enforce their claim, that those who propose Home Rule shall not be allowed to propose it in a form that is certain to bring resistance to the law of the laud. If a dangerous but unnecessary surgical operation is to take place it shall at least be made with the minimum instead of the maximum of danger. To take another analogy which we have used before in these columns. If a very dangerous form of steam-engine is to be placed upon the streets it should assuredly be fitted with a safety-valve calculated. to avoid the worst form of explosion.
We do not desire Home Rule. We are certain that it will bring misery, pain, and confusion to Ireland as a whole if it is carried, and will prevent that slow process of healing which the incorporating Union produced. It will once more impoverish Ireland and embitter the relations between her and the sister island. But, at any rate, if in the end it is to come—which may Heaven in its mercy avert !—let us have it in the least and not in the most objectionable form. We must not be debarred from choosing the lesser rather than the greater evil, because scheming and cynical politicians have managed to place the people of Ulster in a position which makes them shy of demanding exemption from the Bill.
In closely contested trials in our courts the public is sometimes astonished to see that the person who is evi- dently the most important witness of all is not called, or, if called, what should be the most important question is not put to him or to her. Neither side for one tactical reason or another likes to run the risk of obtaining this particular piece of evidence, and therefore there is often a danger of the witness not being called or the question asked, unless the judge or the jury is strong enough to insist that, whatever the consequences, this piece of know- ledge shall be brought before them. Surely there is some mat of moderate and independent views in the House of Commons sufficiently free from the ordinary party trammels to insist that the question of proposing an amend- ment in Committee which will exempt from the operation of the Bill those counties of North-East Ulster in which there is a Unionist majority. We feel sure that, though because of the point of honour the people of North-East Ulster do not like to make this proposal for themselves, they would not resent it being made by Englishmen or Scotsmen. As a matter of fact the proposal would really be a relief to some of the most sincere of Ulster Unionists, and for this reason. They know that if the proposal were carried the Bill must at once be withdrawn, for with it must fall the whole financial scheme and also the whole of the assent which has been obtained for the Bill from the Irish extremists. But if, as of course is certain, the Government refused, the Ulstermen of whom we speak would not suffer. After such a refusal the doubts of many mon on the question of actual resistance to a Dublin Parliament would be resolved.
They would be able to feel : " We asked to be exempted from the operation of the Bill. Our request, contrary to all right and principle, was refused, and therefore that right to resist unjust legislation which even Mr. Winston Churchill admitted accrues to us in full." Again, if the question is raised in Parliament, there will be thousands of men hero who will feel very differently in regard to suppressing Ulster's resistance to a Home Rule Bill. If the question is not raised in Parlia- ment many men here who have not followed the controversy very closely will say : " Why are these Ulster people making this disturbance now ? If they really were determined not to go under a Dublin Parlia- ment, the matter ought to have been raised at Westminster. It is too late n ow. ' If, however, the question had been raised in Parliament and the Government had rejected the demand made by those who desire to prevent civil war—that is, if the Government and all concerned had been openly and fairly warned of the consequences of not fitting a safety-valve to their dangerous engine, then we may be certain that the sympathy both of comprehension and of approbation for resistance in Ulster will be far more potent. Plain. men here will say : " The Government were warned of what would happen if they insisted on forcing the Ulster people under a Dublin Parliament. They would not heed the warning. Now we see how true it was. The Ulster people are only doing what they told us they would do, and we have no right to condemn them."
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