TOPICS OF THE D.A.Y.
THE ULSTER PROBLEM.
WE are convinced that the great mass of moderate Liberals do not realize in the least what the Government have done in their name by rejecting Mr. Agar Robartes's proposal for exempting from the operation of the Home Rule Bill those counties of Ulster in which there is an overwhelming local majority against living under a Dublin Parliament and in favour of remaining under the Parliament at Westminster. That being so wo make no excuse for setting forth what must be the results of such a rejection, and setting them forth from the Liberal point of view. To put the matter quite plainly, by rejecting any and every proposal to exempt North-East Ulster from the operation of the Bill, the Government are preparing for themselves a task which we do not exaggerate in calling odious, nay, intolerable, to a groat number of Liberals—the task of coercing the chief counties of Ulster. Liberals, as a rule, shrink from the use of arms even against a foreign enemy. They most sincerely regard force as no remedy. They dislike inter- fering use the police even to hinder strike pickets from nter- fering with free labour. They are deeply agitated by the thought of employing soldiers even to prevent the forcible closing of mines or the stopping of railway trains from running. That being so, how can they contemplate with equanimity the forcing of a million of unwilling Ulster- men under a Dublin Parliament by the use of the rifle and the bayonet ? Are they really pre- pared to employ such methods in Ulster ? Assuredly they are not. Yet we find them supporting the Govern- ment in rejecting absolutely the policy of exemption—a policy which would have prevented their being exposed to a course so painful—rejecting, that is, the proposal to fit the Home Rule machine with a safety-valve which, whether it would spoil the symmetry of the Home Rule scheme or not, would, at any rate, prevent an explosion. What is the explanation of a situation so extraordinary ? It is, we believe, to be found in the fact that the moderate Liberal does not even yet realize what the situation in Ulster really is. He is feeding himself with the hope that Ulster will not fight—that -Ulstermen will prove in the end what he calls reasonable and right-minded. We can assure him that he is utterly mistaken. It may be that the Ulstermen will be behaving as thoroughly bad. citizens and bad men in refusing to obey the Home Rule Bill when it is passed. On that point we are not going to argue at present. All we want to point out to the moderate Liberal before it is too late is the consequences which must follow the policy of rejecting the amend- ment excluding North-East Ulster if that policy is per- sisted in. We would implore Liberals who cherish the delusion with which we are dealing to read the very striking letter signed " Ulster Democrat " which we pub- lish in to-day's issue. The writer of that letter, as he tells us, is not himself in favour of violent courses, but he knows Ulster and he realizes what is going to happen if the Home Rule Bill is passed without the safety-valve of exemption. The Ulster people will not obey the Home Rule Act, and will force upon the Liberal Government the intolerable dilemma either of shooting men down in the streets—shooting them down, remember, not by twos and threes, but literally by thousands—or else of allowing an Act of Parliament to be openly flouted and dis- obeyed. No doubt we shall be told that the Govern- ment can get round the difficulty by patience and tact. The clever financial devices of the Bill, it will be urged, make it impossible for Ulster to organize passive resist- ance. The tax collectors under the Act are to be Imperial officers, and so employed by the Parliament at Westminster. Therefore the great weapon of the passive resister—refusal to pay taxes—is knoi,ked out of the Ulsterman's hand. The form of self-consolation thus indulged in by moderate. Liberals is, we say without hesitation, founded on a total misconception of the situation. The Ulstermen have not the slightest intention of turning into passive resisters of the kind we saw in England during the agitation against the Education Act. Ulster's plan is a very different one, and it is a plan which will not evaporate in talk, but one which will be carried out at all costs. What the Ulster Unionists will do if the Bill passes is to ignore it entirely. They will refuse wherever they are in a. local majority all recognition of the Dublin Parliament, the Dublin Executive, and the Dublin courts of law. They will not wait to be attacked, but will at once form a. Provisional Government of their own to keep order and to provide as far as possible for their local needs. Further, they will not allow elections to take place for the Dublin Parliament, nor will they permit the officers of the Dublin Government to show their faces in North-East Ulster. Such action will no doubt be described as revolutionary, arbitrary, rebellious, treasonable, and will also, no doubt, technically fully deserve such description. But that will not prevent it from taking place. The result must inevitably be an almost immediate conflict between the Imperial Power and the Ulstermen. The Dublin Parliament and the Dublin Executive will say to the Imperial Government : " Are you going to allow an Act of Parliament solemnly passed at Westminster to be defeated by this hand- ful of rebels ? If you are, the whole structure of your Act goes by the board. We cannot work it. If you are not going to allow this, than you must use all the forces of the Crown to stamp out rebellion and to enforce the will of the Imperial Parliament. You must, that is, seize the members of the so-called Provisional Government, prosecute them for treason felony, and treat the city of Belfast and the counties of Antrim, Down, Derry, and Armagh as districts in armed insurrection deserve to be treated by any Government worthy of the name." That is the demand to which the Imperial Government and the Liberal Party will have to say " Yes " or " No," if the Bill is passed without the exclusion of those parts of Ulster in which the anti-Home Rulers are in a majority.
People inspired with a kind of foolish cunning have pointed out that this dilemma will not arise for the Liberal Party because it will be the Unionists who will be in power after the Home Rule Bill has become law. The first result of that Act will be automatically to cut away some forty members who now support the Liberal Govern- ment. There will also have to be a dissolution immediately following the passing of the Bill, at which it is almost certain that the Liberal Party will lose thirty or forty seats. But this means that a Unionist Government will almost certainly come into power a very few months after the Home Rule Bill is passed. Therefore, it is argued, it will be a Unionist Government that will have to coerce Ulster. A. Unionist Government will, of course, do nothing of the kind. If they are faced with the dilemma which we have just set forth what they will do is either to repeal the Home Rule Bill or else to refuse to hold office. But that is not a solution of the problem which Liberals can con- template with satisfaction. If Ulster has to be coerced it will be by the Liberals and the Liberals alone. Of that there can be no doubt.
There is yet one other aspect of the problem which must be faced by moderate Liberals. We would ask them to realize the following facts. By rejecting the demand for the exclusion of North-East Ulster Liberals are in the first place enormously increasing the moral force behind those Ulstermen who are determined to resist the application of the Act to those portions of Ireland in which they live. After the rejection they will be able to say to Great Britain : " You were warned. in the fullest and clearest way what would be the consequences of attempting to force us under a Dublin Parliament. You deliberately rejected. the demand of the local majority not to be driven out of the Union. You refused to provide a safety-valve for your Bill. If bloodshed now is the consequence of that rejection the guilt will be upon your heads and not upon ours." But that is not the whole of the consequences of rejection. There are tens of thousands of men in this country whose whole attitude towards the coercion of Ulster will be changed by the rejection of the demand. for exemption. If that demand had not been made they would, when Ulster resisted, have said : " It is now too late for the Ulster people to object to the Bill. Their friends should have asked for exemption when the Bill was before Parliament. As they did not do so, they cannot now be heard ; we must apply the Act." If, however, after the Government have been warned, the policy of exemption is deliberately rejected, they will feel free to support Ulster in asserting by physical force her demand to remain in the Union. Here, indeed, we speak for our- selves. Much as we dislike the notion of resistance to the law of the land, however bad that law may be per as, we should feel, after the rejection of the plea for exemption, that we could with a perfectly good conscience support the men of North-East Ulster in their refusal to be turned out of the Union. The rejection of the demand for exemption alters the whole moral situation. That being so we would once more, and with all the force at our command, implore moderate Liberals to reconsider the position, and before it is too late insist upon fitting the Home Rule Bill with the safety-valve of exemption. Remember that in asking moderate Liberals to do that we are not asking them in any way to abandon their principles or to act contrary to their conscientious feelings—to do wrong that good may come of it. By fitting the Bill with a safety-valve, and by exempting those parts of Ireland in which the local majority is against Home Rule, Liberals will instead of acting against their principles be applying them. As Mr. Balfour pointed out on Tuesday and as we have so often urged in these columns, every argument which the Liberals rely upon for passing their Home Rule Bill applies with equal force to the exemption of Ulster. Unless there is something sacred in the governmental unit of Ireland, a supposition which is absurd, the Home Rule and the Federal arguments must be applicable to North-East Ulster. Home Rulers cannot even rely on the fact that Ireland is an island, for at this very moment they are proposing to follow their Irish Home Rule Bill by measures which will break up the homogeneity of the island of Great Britain. They cannot even rely upon the argument of " an ancient kingdom " because they are going to apply their Federalism to Wales, which was never an ancient king- dom as was Scotland. However, we do not want to deal with questions so abstract or metaphysical as these. Our simple object is to try to induce Liberals to avoid the horror—no other word will serve—of forcing the men of North-East Ulster under the Dublin Parliament by the use of English bayonets.
Let us express once more our absolute conviction that any such attempt must inevitably lead to blood- shed not on a petty but on a great scale. We are not going to use the language of sentiment or rhetoric upon such a subject. It is far too serious for that. Any man who will face the facts for himself will understand what must happen. In all sincerity, then, we ask Liberals first to face the facts and then if they still insist that there must be a Home Rule Bill to take the only way to prevent the bloodshed which they know, and we know, they detest beyond measure. Their only way is to exempt from the operation of the Home Rule Bill any county of Ulster in which there is a majority in favour of remaining under the Parliament at Westminster. Those who pretend otherwise are either ignorant of the facts or wilfully, and so criminally, refusing to face them.
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