Speaking at a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council at
Belfast on Tuesday, Sir Edward Carson surpassed himself in the lucidity and force of his description of the situation in Ireland. He said that he understood the Cabinet were again trying to make a settlement of the Irish question. " I am therefore going to talk to them in the most frank possible way." He explained that anybody who said that Ulster did not want a settlement was stating a ridiculous falsehood. " But a settlement must be a settlement, not a surrender." Americans nearly always forgot what an Irish " settlement " meant for Ulster—what the Protestants of Ulster were asked to give up. Ireland was spoken of in America as having " no Constitutional government," whereas she in fact had double rights, for she had double the number of Members of Parliament to which she was entitled. No settlement was worth talking about which was unsatisfactory to 75 per cent. of the population and would not be accepted in any case by the other 25 per cent. Yet every settlement which had ever been proposed for Ireland was of that sort.
Previous page
