THE RIGHT OF REBELLION.
[TO THB EDITOR OF THE ..SPECTATOR."3
Stn,—" Ulsterman " accuses me in your issue of August 31st of misrepresenting the attitude of Unionist Ulster on Home Rule. At the same time he apparently admits that Ulster has never yet adopted in public the attitude which you and he claim is hers. For fear lest Home Rulers should score a, tactical point in the House of Commons, Ulster, we are asked to believe, refused to make her position known during the debates on the Home Rule Bill. But surely it is no time for small tactics. It is all important that at this crisis Ulster should state her claim in the clearest and most unmistakable terms. Is it, as I hold, a claim to veto the grant of any measure of Home Rule to Ireland or any part of Ireland P Or is it, as you interpret it, merely a claim to veto the inclusion of the predominantly Unionist counties in the Home Rule scheme P If it is the former,
do you still persist in justifying the enforcement of the Ulster claim by rebellion P Is it not of the first importance, before you give advice which will assuredly never be translated into real civil war, but may help to revive the horrors of Belfast riotousness, that you should make absolutely certain that the Ulster case is as you have stated it P
May I say that if I thought that Ulster would suffer any moral, spiritual, intellectual, or material loss from Home Rule I would advocate the exclusion of the Unionist counties as enthusiastically as you do. But I believe that Ulster stands to gain as much from Home Rule as any of the other pro- vinces. Her intellect, her imaginative life, her moral energies, are all darkened now by the cloud of sectarianism which the politicians have called into being by an evil magic. Ulster needs to be liberated from that deadly cloud. Her hatred of self-government is not hatred of the realities of self-govern- ment; it is hatred of a nightmare vision of self-government. How is Ulster to be released from this nightmare vision except by Home Rule P Yet, until she is released, she will never produce the great race of noble citizens, craftsmen and writers and builders of ideal cities, which it is within her genius to produce. That is one of the chief reasons why I, a Protestant Ulsterman, am a Home Ruler.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[We find no difficulty in answering Mr. Lynd's question. We have always regretted that the Unionist leaders failed to press the claims of Ulster to exclusive treatment, the denial of which we regard as a justification for forcible resistance in the last resort. But that claim was made in Parliament by a Liberal member, and was derisively rejected by the Liberal Government. The only alternative offered to Ulster loyalists is a measure which forcibly dispossesses them of their citizenship, and the enforcement of such a measure we hold them to be justified in resisting by force..—En. Spectator.]
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