Mr. John Redmond in a recent article on Home Rule declared that there was no Ulster question. He might have as truthfully declared that there was no such thing as matter. From the moment Home Rule was introduced the Protestants of Ulster spoke with no uncertain sound against it. In the days when Mr. Gladstone was denouncing the attempt to break up the Union he had a large and enthusiastic following in Ulster, but the moment he surrendered to Parnell, Ulster Liberals bade him a final good-bye, and combined with their Conservative neighbours for the purpose of combating the attacks on the Legislative Union.
Since 1886 Protestant Home Rulers have been as scarce in Ulster as white blackbirds. As showing the hostility of Protestants to Home Rule, it may be noted that out of a thousand non-episcopal clergymen in Ireland in 1892, only eight were in favour of Home Rule, and of these eight there were some who made reservations. Ulster Protestants, whether episcopal or non-episcopal, were almost to a man opposed to Home Rule in 1886 and 1893, and the feeling of opposition has not
It is sometimes said that Irish Protestants object to Home Rule because they fear it would destroy their ascendancy, but there is no Protestant ascendancy in Ireland to-day. In fact, since the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869, there has been no religious ascendancy in Ireland. All parties and all denominations stand on an equality. If the Protestants occupy a larger share of the official positions than the Roman Catholics, it is because of their superior education. For the greater part of sixty years the Queen's Colleges in Belfast, Cork, and Galway were banned by the Roman Catholic Hierarchy, so that the majority of the Roman Catholic youth of Ireland did not venture to attend them, and were thus, by the intolerance of their ecclesiastical rulers, deprived of university education. Almost all the Government offices are filled by open competition, and the best educated man selected. The Roman Catholics have no real grievance in this matter.
The people in Ulster know from the lessons of
Ulstermen know that Mr. Redmond's promised safeguards would not be worth the paper on which they were written. No one in Ireland, whether he be Unionist or Nationalist, seriously imagines that Home Rule would not greatly increase the power of the Church of Rome in Ireland. If Mr. Redmond even tried to thwart the power of that Church he would be speedily driven from public life. No one knows this better than Mr. Redmond, who has had experience of how ruthlessly the Roman Church crushed the Parnellites after the divorce case. Ulstermen are not prepared to submit their
But if there was no religious question whatever, Ulstermen would still be opposed to Home Rule, on the ground that it would have the effect of breaking up an Empire which they have had such a large part in building. Ulstermen know that the surest way of creating prosperity in Ireland is by maintaining the undivided rule of the Imperial Parliament. Ulster possesses no natural advantages over the other three provinces, and yet under the Union Ulster has progressed as satisfactorily as any other part of the United Kingdom. The reason for this is not far to seek. The brain and sinew of the men of Ulster have been applied to the building up of industries. In the other parts of Ireland the Nationalists have been too prone to spend their energy in promoting agitations. If the methods applied in Ulster had been applied to the other districts, we should hear less of poverty and discontent.
The total rateable valuation of Ireland is a trifle over £15,000,000 while that of England is £203,000,000, Wales £9,000,000, and Scotland £32,000,000.
The valuation of Lancashire is £25,000,000 and that of the West Riding of Yorkshire £14,000,000, or only a little less than that of Ireland. London and Lancashire have each larger populations than Ireland. The amount of income-tax raised in Ireland last year was £1,825,234; in Great Britain, £58,679,860.
Ireland has very little mineral wealth compared with Great Britain. On the railways in Great Britain 507,903,360 tons of minerals and merchandise were carried in 1910; in Ireland 6,331,362 tons, and of this amount the railways terminating in Belfast carried 43.47 per cent. The total railway receipts of Great Britain last year amounted to £119,451,549 and those of Ireland to £4,402,655; the railways having their termini in Belfast contributing 38.04 per cent. of this amount. The capital of the Irish railways amounts to £44,114,441, while the capital of the Yorkshire and Lancashire is £69,988,806, London and North-Western £125,041,616 and Great Western £98,236,890.
The commercial and manufacturing districts are mainly to be found in Ulster. Under the protection of the Imperial Parliament Ulster has been able to build up her industries, but the larger part of the rest of Ireland has not got the business qualities that are necessary to the building up of industries.
As showing the effect which Home Rule would have on Irish credit, it is only necessary to point out that when Mr. Gladstone introduced his Bill in 1893, Irish securities depreciated to the amount of £5,000,000.
Since Mr. Asquith's pledge to make Home Rule the first item on his programme next year, Irish securities have been steadily declining. All over Protestant Ulster there are thriving industries, and the very existence of these industries depends on the maintenance of security. That security certainly would not exist under Home Rule. The linen industry, for example, is a great source of wealth and employment in Ulster, but what prospect would there be for it under the rule of Mr. Patrick Ford? Here are a few extracts from the Irish World (Mr. Ford's organ) on the Linen Trade of Ulster:
I was much impressed by an article by John F. Finerty, in which he has the wisdom and courage to declare that the destruction of the linen industry in Belfast was a matter that Irish Nationalists have no cause to deplore.
These words have never been repudiated by any Nationalist leader. They are not the sort of words that the Nationalist agitators would care to use on a British platform, but for all that, we know by experience that their sympathies are with Patrick Ford, rather than with the men who have built up the Ulster Linen Industry. Because Ulstermen have shown that the country can be made prosperous and contented under the Union they are hated by the Nationalists. Ulster is a standing refutation of the charge that Ireland's backwardness is due to the Union. Ulster provides by far the larger part of the Imperial taxes at present raised in Ireland, and if further taxes were needed by an Irish Parliament and this may be taken as a certainty the burden would fall on the Ulster industries. Ulstermen would be helpless in an Irish Parliament, and the representatives of the farmers in the South and West would take care that
Mr. Birrell says he is anxious to allay the fears and suspicions of the Protestants, but he has not done much during the time he has been Chief Secretary to quiet these fears or remove these suspicions. By his University Act he has handed over higher education in three parts of Ireland to the Roman Catholic Church in total disregard of the great Liberal principle that no denomination should have any privilege in respect of its religious creed. He has also established the principle that public funds shall be used for the purpose of denominational teaching in primary schools. Under Home Rule the Roman Catholic authorities, who claim to be supreme in all educational matters, would take care that Protestant Ulster was forced to pay for the teaching of Roman Catholic doctrines. English Nonconformists object to State money being used for sectarian teaching, but unfortunately many of them are endeavouring to place Irish Protestants under a Roman domination which would use the public taxes for the support of Roman Catholic training. They talk, of course, about safeguards, but Cardinal Logue, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, cares nothing for these so-called safeguards. On the passing of the Irish Universities Act, Mr. Birrell declared that the new Universities would be non-sectarian.
An Irish Parliament would have power to tax Protestant industries out of existence, and to establish a religious ascendancy as intolerant as the one that exists in Quebec to-day. If paper safeguards have been found worthless by the Protestants of Quebec they would be found equally worthless by Irish Protestants.
Ulstermen who realise the aspirations of the Nationalists are prepared to make any sacrifices rather than allow this new ascendancy to be established.
Home Rule would not build up; it would pull down and destroy what it has taken many years of laborious effort to establish. The men who were the authors of the Land League and the Plan of Campaign, and who adopt such brutal methods to-day for crushing out fellow-Nationalists who refuse to accept every detail of their programme, cannot be trusted to treat the loyal minority fairly. The people of Ulster are satisfied with the present position they hold in the Empire, and they are determined to remain citizens of the United Kingdom on equal terms with Englishmen and Scotsmen. They ask for no special privileges for themselves, and they object to their rights being impaired in order that special privileges may be granted to others.
Ulster's progress has taken place under the Union. Belfast was a small and insignificant town at the time the Union was consummated. In 1783
In 1837 the tonnage of vessels clearing from Belfast was 288,143. In 1892 it had risen to 2,055,637 tons, while last year it was 2,800,285 tons.
Of the Irish contributions to the Customs revenue in 1909 Ulster contributed £2,119,353, as against £911,826 from the other three provinces.
Even as things stand at present Ireland could not afford to pay the extra cost which a local Parliament would entail, but if Ulster were cut off from the rest of the country the remaining three provinces would be in a hopeless financial condition. The arguments used by the Nationalists in favour of an Irish Parliament separated from Great Britain because of the differences of race, religion, and ideals apply with even greater force to Ulster in its relation to the Nationalist parts of Ireland. If, according to the Nationalist theory, Celtic Ireland ought to be divorced from the United Kingdom, then there is no reason whatever why Protestant Ulster or, indeed, Protestant Ireland should be forced into a Dublin Parliament. The Irish Parliament would be sure to legislate on lines abhorrent to the minority, and from the very
Those who imagine that Irish Unionists will accept a Home Rule Parliament after a mere verbal protest are under a serious delusion. In 1893 Unionist Clubs were established and every able-bodied Unionist was enrolled. The first object of the clubs was to defeat Home Rule by constitutional means, and the second was to make the rule of an Irish Parliament unworkable in Ireland. And just as elaborate measures were taken to attain the first object, precautions were taken to give effect to the second. People who are not in earnest do not go to the expense of arming and drilling. Irish Unionists felt that it was wiser to run all the risks of civil war rather than submit to the tyranny of a Dublin Parliament. They felt that the Nationalists unaided could not crush them by force of arms, and they were confident that the British people would never coerce them by employing an
There are no differences among Protestants on this question. Presbyterians, who are chiefly concentrated in Ulster, are just as determined as Episcopalians; and be it remembered that Presbyterians went out from Ulster by thousands in the eighteenth century rather than submit to intolerance, and they furnished the American Colonists with many leaders, who were among the most determined advocates of Independence. A recent writer in the Times says of the Ulster leaders that they are men of high intelligence whose minds have been broadened by education and by the liberalising effects of their world-wide commerce. But unless I greatly misread them, the old Adam is by no means dead in them yet. The character which led their ancestors to resent and to avenge in the American Rebellion the wrongs
This is no over-statement of the case. Irish Unionists hope that Great Britain in its wisdom will not establish a Parliament in Dublin; but if the worse comes to the worst, then they will confidently defy it, and one thing is certain, that the descendants of the men who held Londonderry, in face of pestilence, fire, and sword, against overwhelming odds, will never submit to be ruled by their hereditary enemies.