We do not desire to make bad worse by personal
invective or by crying over the milk that has been so plentifully spilt in Downing Street, in Parliament, and in Dublin. We must, how- ever, register a strong and indignant protest against the line which the Times took in its Irish leader on Wednesday and still more against the letter headed " Sir Horace Plunkett's Appeal" In Sir Horace Plunkett's letter there is a deliberate attempt to make the people of North-East Ulster responsible- for the evils which are now blasting Ireland as if by a cloud of poisoned gas.
• Sir Horace Plunkett appears to imagine that the Ulster people are acting as they have acted from some taint of original sin. He seems to assume that no good patriot could dream of giving to the men of Protestant faith and English and Scottish blood and loyal affections, who live in the Six County Area, the right of self-determination. It may be remembered how in the Biglowe Papers the pious Editor declares that the
" Liberty's the kind of thing that don't agree with niggers." So Home Rulers tell us in effect that self-determination is the sort of thing " that don't agree " with loyal Unionists and Protestants. It is a vile injustice to put Ireland under the heel of Great Britain, but a positive virtue to put North-East Ulster
under the heel of the Sinn Feiners ! The Ulstermen are appealed to as a kind of political pariahs. Even men so naturally depraved as they must surely have some sparks of decency loft. Therefore Sir Horace Plunkett sternly orders them to save the situation.
