By Ulster, I mean the six counties, Antrim, Down, Londonderry, Armagh,
Tyrone, Fermanagh, with the important adjacent Unionist sections of
Monaghan, Cavan, and Donegal, in all of which taken together the
Unionist population is in an unmistakable majority, and in which the
commercial and manufacturing prosperity of the province is maintained by
Unionist energy, enterprise, and industry.
The relation of Ulster to a separate Irish Parliament, with an Executive
responsible to it, is a question which demands the most serious
consideration on the part of English and Scotch electors. The Ulster
Scot is not in Ireland to-day upon the conditions of an ordinary
immigrant. His forefathers were "planted" in Ulster in the troublous
times of the seventeenth century. Although at the end of the reign of
Queen Elizabeth peace had been secured all over Ireland, war was renewed
in the Northern province early in the seventeenth century. The uprising
was speedily crushed, and the lands of several of the rebellious nobles
forfeited to the Crown. In order to prevent a repetition of lawlessness,
the forfeited estates were entrusted to undertakers, on whom the
obligation rested of peopling them with settlers from Great Britain.
This scheme was devised in the hope that through the industry,
character, and loyalty of the new population, the Northern province at
all events should enjoy peace and prosperity, and become an attached
portion of the King's dominions; and that eventually its influence would
be usefully felt throughout the rest of Ireland. This policy was carried
out under the rule of an English King, himself a Scot--James VI. of
Scotland and I. of England. Large numbers of settlers were brought over
to Ulster, many of them English, but the majority Scotch. We Ulster
Unionists who inhabit the province to-day, or at least the greater
number of us, are descendants of these settlers. The overwhelming
majority are passionately loyal to the British Throne and to the
maintenance of the integrity of the United Kingdom.
These things being so, it seems to Ulster Unionists that a grave
responsibility rests on their English and Scottish fellow-citizens, with
regard to our position, should any constitutional changes be imposed
upon our country. We are in Ireland as their trustees, having had
committed to us, through their and our forefathers, the development of
the material resources of Ulster, the preservation of its loyalty, and
the discharge of its share of Imperial obligations.
It cannot be denied, on an examination of the history of the last three
centuries, and especially of that of the one hundred and ten years since
the establishment of the Legislative Union, that, through good report
and ill report, and allowing for all our shortcomings, we have not
unsuccessfully fulfilled our trust. Our forefathers found a province,
the least favoured by nature of the four of which Ireland consists, and
it is to-day the stronghold of Irish industry and commerce. Its capital,
Belfast, stands abreast of the leading manufacturing centres in Great
Britain; it contains the foremost establishments in Europe, in respect
of such undertakings as linen manufacturing, ship-building, rope-making,
etc. It is the fourth port in the United Kingdom in respect of revenue
from Customs, its contributions thereto being £2,207,000 in 1910, as
compared with £1,065,000 from the rest of Ireland. Ulster's loyalty to
the British King and Constitution is unsurpassed anywhere in His
Majesty's dominions.
The North of Ireland has contributed to Imperial service some of its
greatest ornaments. England owes to Ulster Governors-General like Lord
Dufferin and Lord Lawrence; soldiers like John Nicholson and Sir George
White; administrators like Sir Henry Lawrence and Sir Robert Montgomery;
great judges like Lord Cairns and Lord Macnaghten. At the recent Delhi
Durbar the King decorated three Ulster men, one of them being Sir John
Jordan, British Ambassador at Pekin. Ulster produced Sir Robert Hart,
the incomparable Chinese administrator, who might also have been our
Ambassador to China had he accepted the position.
The Ulster plantation is the only one which has fulfilled the purpose
for which Irish plantations were made. The famous colonisation on both
sides of the Shannon by Cromwell entirely failed of its design, the
great proportion of its families having, through inter-marriage, become
absorbed in the surrounding population.
Ulster Unionists, therefore, having conspicuously succeeded in
maintaining the trust committed to their forefathers, and constituting
as they do a community intensely loyal to the British connection,
believe that they present a case for the unimpaired maintenance of that
connection which is impregnable on the grounds of racial sentiment,
inherent justice, social well-being, and the continued security of the
United Kingdom and of the Empire. They cannot believe that their British
fellow-citizens will, at this crisis, turn a deaf ear to this claim.
Three or four decades after the Ulster plantation, when, in the midst of
the horrors of 1641, the Scotch colony in Ulster was threatened with
extermination, it appealed for help to its motherland. It did not appeal
in vain. A collection for its benefit was made in the Scottish churches,
supplies of food and several regiments of Scottish soldiers were sent to
its aid, and its position was saved. We are confident that the
descendants of these generous helpers will be no less true to their
Ulster kith and kin to-day.
The history and present condition of Ulster throw an important light on
what is currently described as the national demand of Ireland for Home
Rule. There is no national Irish demand for Home Rule, because there
never has been and there is no homogeneous Irish nation. On the
contrary, as Mr. Chamberlain long ago pointed out, Ireland to-day
consists of two nations. These two nations are so utterly distinct in
their racial characteristics, in their practical ideals, in their
religious sanctions, and in their sense of civic and national
responsibility that they cannot live harmoniously side by side unless
under the even-handed control of a just central authority, in which at
the same time they have full co-partnership. Ireland, accordingly,
cannot make a claim for self-government on the ground that she is a
political unit. She consists of two units, which owe their distinctive
existence, not to geographical boundaries, but to inherent and
ineradicable endowments of character and aims. If, then, it is claimed
that the unit of Nationalist Ireland is to be entitled to choose its
particular relation to the British Constitution, the same choice
undoubtedly belongs to the Unionist unit.
But Mr. Birrell, for example, would tell us that the Nationalist unit in
Ireland is three times as large as the Unionist unit, and that therefore
the smaller entity should submit, because, as he has cynically observed,
"minorities must suffer, for that is the badge of their tribe." But a
minority in the United Kingdom is not to be measured by mere numbers;
its place in the Constitution is to be estimated by its contribution to
public well-being, by its relation to the industries and occupations of
its members, by its association with the upbuilding of national
character, by its fidelity to law and order, and by its sympathy with
the world mission of the British Empire in the interests of civil and
religious freedom. Tried by all these tests, Ulster is entitled to
retain her full share in every privilege of the whole realm. Tried by
the same tests the claim of 3,000,000 Irish Nationalists to break up the
constitution of the United Kingdom, of whose population they constitute
perhaps one-fifteenth, is surely unthinkable.
Other writers in this volume have discussed Home Rule as it affects
various vital interests in Ireland as a whole. It remains for me briefly
to point out its special relation to the Northern province--
1. _Home Rule, in the judgment of Ulster, would degrade the status of
Ulster citizenship by impairing its relationship to Imperial
Parliament._ This would be effected both by lessening or extinguishing
the representation of Ulster in that Parliament, and by removing the
control of Ulster rights and liberties from Imperial Parliament and
entrusting it to a hostile Parliament in Dublin. Ulstermen would thus
stand on a dangerously lower plane of civil privilege than their
fellow-citizens in Great Britain. To place them in this undeserved
inferiority, they hold to be unjust and cruel.
2. _Home Rule would gravely imperil our civil and religious liberties._
Ireland is pre-eminently a clerically controlled country, the number of
Roman Catholic priests being per head greater than that of any country
in Europe. Her staff of members of religious orders, male and female, is
also enormous, their numbers having increased during the last fifty
years 150 per cent., while the population has decreased 30 per cent. It
is undeniable, therefore, that in a Dublin Parliament, the overwhelming
majority of whose members would be adherents of the Roman Catholic
faith, the Roman ecclesiastical authority, which claims the right to
decide as to what questions come within the region of faith and morals
would be supreme. Great stress has lately been laid in Nationalist
speeches from British platforms on the tolerant spirit towards
Protestants which animates Irish Roman Catholics. We gladly acknowledge
that in most parts of Ireland Protestants and Roman Catholics, as
regards the ordinary affairs of life, live side by side on friendly
neighbourly terms. Indeed, that spirit, as a consequence of the growing
prosperity of Ireland, had been steadily increasing, till the recent
revival of the Home Rule proposal, with its attendant fears of
hierarchical ascendency, as illustrated by the promulgation of the _Ne
Temere_ decree, suddenly interrupted it. But the fundamental fact of the
case is, that in the last resort, it is not with their Roman Catholic
neighbours, or even with their hierarchy, that Irish Protestants have to
reckon; it is rather with the Vatican, the inexorable power behind them
all, whose decrees necessarily over-ride all the good-will which
neighbourly feeling might inspire in the Roman Catholic mind. The _Ne
Temere_ decree affords a significant premonition of the spirit which
would direct Home Rule legislation. It is noteworthy that no Nationalist
member has protested against the cruelties of that decree as shown in
the M'Cann case, and Mr. Devlin, M.P., even defended what was done from
his place in Parliament. This action is all the more significant in view
of the fact that during the Committee stage of the 1893 Home Rule Bill
Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Redmond, and his Irish Nationalist colleagues voted
against, and defeated, an Ulster amendment which proposed to exempt
marriage and other religious ceremonies from the legislative powers of
the Dublin Parliament. It would be intolerable that such litigation as
in the Hubert case at present in progress in Montreal, arising out of
the Marriage Law of the Province of Quebec, should be made possible in
Ireland. No paper safeguards in a Home Rule Bill could prevent it.
Again, a most serious peril has just been disclosed in the publication
of the _Motu Proprio_ Papal Decree, under which the bringing by a Roman
Catholic layman of a clergyman of his Church into any civil or criminal
procedure in a court of law, whether as defendant or witness, without
the sanction previously ob tamed of his bishop, involves to that layman
the extreme penalty of excommunication. The same penalty appears to be
incurred _ipso facto_ by any Roman Catholic Member of Parliament who
takes part in passing, and by every executive officer of the Government
who takes part in promulgating, a law or decree which is held to invade
the liberty or rights of the Church of Rome. This is a matter of supreme
importance in our civil life. It was one of the questions which, in
Reformation times, led to the breach between Henry VIII. and the Pope.
In a Dublin Parliament no power could resist the provisions of this
decree from becoming law. As a matter of fact, the liberty of speech and
voting attaching to every member of the Roman Catholic majority in a
Dublin Parliament would be under the absolute control of their
hierarchy. Each Roman Catholic member would be bound to act under the
dread of excommunication if he voted for or condoned any legislation
contrary to the asserted rights of his Church, or which conflicted with
its claims. Not only would the legislative independence of a Dublin
Parliament be thus destroyed, but the administration of justice would be
affected on every Bench in the country, from the Supreme Court of Appeal
down to ordinary petty sessions. A grievous wrong would be inflicted on
Roman Catholic judges and law officers, some of whom are unsurpassed for
integrity and legal ability. It is contrary to every principle of
justice to place these honourable men in a position in which they would
have to choose between their oath to their King and their
duty--arbitrarily imposed upon them--to their Church. Jurymen and
witnesses would be equally brought under the sinister influences of the
decree, and confidence in just administration of the law, which is at
the root of civil well-being, would be fatally destroyed.
3. _Home Rule would involve the entire denominationalising, in the
interests of the Roman Catholic Church, of Irish education in all its
branches._ To secure this result has long been the great educational aim
of the Irish hierarchy. How they have succeeded as regards higher
education Mr. Birrell's Irish Universities Act (1908) gives abundant
evidence. The National University of Ireland, created by that Act, which
on paper was represented to Nonconformists in England as having a
constitution free from religious tests, is now, according to the recent
boast of Cardinal Logue, thoroughly Roman Catholic, in spite of all
paper safeguards to the contrary. Persistent attempts have been made to
sectarianise the Irish primary National School system, founded seventy
years ago, and which now receives an annual State endowment of
£1,621,921, with the object of safeguarding the faith of the children of
minorities, on the principle of united secular and separate religious
instruction. That system worked so satisfactorily through many decades
that Lord O'Hagan, the eminent first Roman Catholic Lord Chancellor of
Ireland, declared that under it, up till his time, no case whatever of
proselytism to any Church had occurred. But gradually a sectarian system
of education under the Roman Catholic Church was developed through the
teaching order of Christian Brothers, whose schools are now to be found
all over Ireland, and which in many places now supplant the
non-sectarian schools of the National Board. The strongest efforts were
made to bring these sectarian schools into the system of the National
Board, and thus entitle them to a share of the State annual endowment.
There is no greater peril to the religious faith of Protestant
minorities in the border counties of Ulster and elsewhere in Ireland
than the sectarianising of primary schools by Roman Catholics. A few
years ago a Protestant member of a public service was transferred upon
promotion from Belfast to a Roman Catholic district, in which his boys
had no available school but that of the Christian Brothers, and his
girls none but that of the local convent. I shall never forget the
expression of that man's face or the pathos in his voice while he
pressed me to help him to obtain a transfer to a Protestant district, as
otherwise he feared his children would be lost to the faith of their
fathers. Given a Parliament in Dublin, the management of education would
be so conducted as gradually to extinguish Protestant minorities in the
border counties of Ulster and in the other provinces of Ireland. It is
here that a chief danger to Protestantism lies.
4. _Home Rule will seriously injure Ulster's material
prosperity--industrial, commercial, agricultural._ The root of the evil
will lie in the want of credit of an Irish Exchequer in the money
markets of the world. The best financial authorities agree that if
Ireland should be left to her own resources, there would be, on the
present basis of taxation, and after providing for a fair Irish
contribution towards Imperial defence, an annual deficit in the Irish
Exchequer of £3,000,000 to £4,000,000. An Irish Government in such
circumstances--consols themselves being now some £23 under par--could
not borrow money at any reasonable rate of interest. Ever; if the
British taxpayer were compelled to provide for the deficiency, either
by an annual grant or by payment of a divorce penalty of £15,000,000 to
£20,000,000, or by both, a prudent investor would fear that the annual
dole might at any moment be withdrawn should, for instance, John Bull
become irritated by the action of a Dublin Parliament, say, in declaring
enlisting in His Majesty's forces a criminal act; or that the capital
gift would soon be frittered away in the interests of agitators and
their friends. He would simply refuse to invest in Irish stock.
Now, a fundamental condition of commercial and industrial well-being is
financial confidence. If the Public Exchequer of a country lacks
confidence, it is a truism to say that consequently commercial
confidence must be gravely impaired. The magnates of Lombard Street and
Wall Street would view their Irish clients with unpleasant reserve.
Irish bankers would in turn restrict advances to their customers, and
these again would limit the credit of those with whom they transacted
business. Curtailment of industrial enterprise, the shutting down of
many manufacturing concerns, with consequent depreciation of buildings
and plant, as well as increase of unemployment, would follow. Already,
since the present Home Rule crisis has become acute, the handwriting on
the wall has been made evident in the depreciation of leading Irish
stocks to the extent of 15 to 20 per cent. Every one in trade would
suffer from the diminution of purchasing power, capital would shrink,
income and wages decrease, and the incentives to emigration, which is
already depriving our population of some of its most hopeful elements,
would be dangerously increased.
All these tendencies would be stimulated by the social disorganisation
which would certainly follow Home Rule. Unionist Ulster, from the Ulster
Convention of 1892, to the Craigavon demonstration of 1911, has been
consistent in her loyal determination that no Parliament but the
Imperial Parliament shall control her destinies. It is an ignorant
mistake to say that she is weakening in this resolve. The steadily
increasing Unionist majorities in contested Ulster seats at both
elections in 1910 conclusively prove that she is more staunch than ever
in her Unionist faith. She would certainly resist the decrees of a
Dublin Parliament and refuse to pay its taxes. The result of its passive
resistance would be civil disorder, which would certainly gravely injure
her industrial welfare, especially that of her artisan and working
population. But Ulstermen ask, What is industrial prosperity without
freedom? And if, in defence of freedom, they should suffer disaster, the
responsibility would lie with their fellow-citizens in Great Britain who
would impose a hostile yoke upon them.
Under Home Rule, agricultural Ulster would also suffer. Very many Ulster
farmers are now occupying owners. But a large number have not yet
succeeded in purchasing, and these eagerly desire the privilege of doing
so. Mr. Birrell's 1909 Act has already practically strangled further
land purchase in Ireland, and if he intends that its completion should
be the work of a Home Rule Parliament, the Ulster tenants ask where
would the £75,000,000 to £100,000,000 necessary to accomplish the
process, come from?[66] They know that the procuring of such a sum from
an Irish Government would be hopeless, for they are aware that
Englishmen have better judgment than to allow their Parliament to lend
further money to a country over which they had relinquished direct
Parliamentary authority, and whose Exchequer would be bankrupt. Home
Rule would thus permanently relegate the agricultural population, not
only of Ulster, but of Ireland generally, into two classes living side
by side with each other--one consisting of occupying owners, the other
of rent-payers without hope of ownership. The evil results in
discontent, friction, deterioration of agricultural methods and lessened
production would inflict serious injury on Ulster prosperity.
Again, Home Rule would involve Ulster industry and commerce in excessive
taxation. No one who is aware of the passionate desire amongst Irish
agitators and their friends for lucrative jobs, of the efforts that
would be made to subsidise industries with Government funds, of the
determination of the clergy to have their monastic, Christian Brothers',
monastic and convent schools largely supported by the State, and of the
impossibility, in view of the social disorder all over Ireland that
would follow Home Rule, of reducing further the police force or the
Judiciary, entertains any doubt that retrenchment in Irish expenditure
would be impossible. On the contrary, Irish taxation would increase, and
as recent legislation has placed upon Irish farmers imposts greater than
they think they can bear, the additional revenue would be sought for
mainly from the industrial North. But with business disorganised,
incomes decreased and unemployment increased, the yield of taxation
would be much reduced, and the rate must therefore be made higher. All
this would fortify Ulster in her determined refusal to pay Home Rule
taxation, and the bankruptcy of the Dublin Exchequer would be complete.
It is from having regard to considerations such as I have outlined, and
of the validity of which she is profoundly convinced, that Ulster has
registered the historic Convention declaration, "We will not have Home
Rule." Her position is plain and intelligible. She demands no separation
from her Nationalist countrymen. On the contrary, she wishes, under the
protection of the Legislative Union, to live side by side with them in
peaceful industry and neighbourly fellowship, with the desire that they
and we may in common partake of the benefits conferred on Ireland by
generous Imperial legislation and repay it by sympathetic and energetic
contribution to the service of the Empire.
But if Home Rule legislation should be passed contrary to Ulster's
earnest and patriotic pleading, then she claims--not a separate
Parliament for herself, but that she may remain as she is in the
unimpaired enjoyment of her position as an integral portion of the
United Kingdom and with unaltered representation in Imperial Parliament.
She wishes to continue as an Irish Lancashire, or an Irish Lanarkshire.
In this relationship to Great Britain she is confident she will best
preserve, not only her own interests, but also those of her fellow
loyalists, Roman Catholic as well as Protestants, whose lot is cast in
the other provinces and whose welfare will always be her responsible and
earnest concern.
But if this demand--based on loyalty to the King and Constitution, and
founded on the elementary right of British citizens to the unimpaired
protection of Imperial Parliament--be refused, then the only alternative
is the Ulster Provincial Government, which will be organised to come
into operation on the day that a Home Rule Bill should receive the Royal
Assent; and under that Provisional Government we shall continue to
support our King, and to render the same services' to the United Kingdom
and to the Empire as have characterised the history of Ulster during the
past three hundred years.