THE "SPECTATOR" AND ULSTER. [To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIB,—In relation to the Irish business you have often permitted me to disagree with your views, but to-day let me write that your attitude as to Ulster is supremely wise. I hope devoutly to see the Home Rule Bill reach the Statute Book; with its passage a very repulsive incident in England's history, the incident of 1911, closes. Yon, Sir, are equally determined that the Bill must not reach the Statute Book, and this being so, if I, as to Ulster, represent a large body of English Home Rulers, and the editor of the Spectator the Unionists of England, we ought jointly to win the next elections on the cry. of "No coercion for Ulster." This is a good cry; it is a cry that will bring in a great mass of decent Liberals who, after Chinese slavery votes, and votes for predatory Socialism, are really anxious, as they tell me and you, to regain in some measure their self-respect before they go hence. Many voters are older than in 1906, and thus the great Judgment Seat looms larger. Other voters, if not more moral, have in the interval sobered up. You recall Abraham Lincoln's remark that what alarmed him more than the Day of Judgment was the day of no judgment. Thus these two important elements in the body politic, namely, the fugitives from justice, and the ebrious and emotionalist, now shamefaced, will decide the next elections.
The writer is a mere item in an aggregate, probably a million strong, ardently waiting for the opportunity to turn out this Government. But if the Home Rule Act is on the Statute Book and we have given a great victory to the Tories, what then.? Just let us know what the next step is to be. However frank and however reactionary you are, still you will get our votes this time because we have been shocked; but, that done, what are you going to do to keep us within the lines for the next election after P I should like to think aloud for a few minutes to say what I and my friends want. Two or three years since I wrote to you our distress at what we see in the House of Commons (I was at that time of that body). An extraordinarily clever Front Bench; I take off my hat to the Government Bench as to the smartest set of politicians I have ever encountered. They were engaged, as I pointed out, in selling some kindly, not over-intelligent Irishmen a "Humbert safe." The clever gentlemen have got their price in full; now the safe is about to open, and there emerges the spectre which always so alarmed Parnell— namely, the partition of Ireland. What a position is now disclosed ! The only power that Catholic Ireland possessed to secure Home Rule was in that over-representation which a solemn treaty, the Act of Union, guaranteed her. In six
months that security to destroy England's liberty and England's property by strictly constitutional methods ; to log-roll with Welshmen for our undoing—that security will be bankrupt. And though the Humbert safe is empty, and though a clever little Welshman has sold a property which is not his to sell, but which is a Trust Estate represented by Sir Edward Carson, Ireland in trying to crack the safe has blunted and broken every tool the Union gave her. What, then, are you going to do to keep my support—the support, let us suppose, of a million English voters—after we have given you the next election P Do not wait till you have crossed that bridge to tell us. That means confusion of tongues, divided counsels, further political fissiparism. We want to know now !
"No coercion for Ulster ! " Well, that is a good vote- catcher, of course ; but really, if you come to think of it, are you not as the grocer who sands his sugar, seeing that there is no thought of coercing a community that can put a hundred thousand men into the field ? We do not thank you overmuch for that. But will the Tories promise the Irishmen who have been "faked" some redress P I do not mean faked by the Budget taxes, though that calls loudly for redress, but defrauded through a bogus Home Rule Bill. What we want from the Tories is a guarantee of such a Second Chamber as will protect, not Ulster's liberty and property, but our own. Are we to do what Sir Edward Carson is doing, namely, muster honest men—and the majority is honest—on our village greens P Or will the Tories give us such a Senate body that if a Welshman legislating in Wales wishes to plunder Sir Watkin Wynn, or Larkin in Dublin or Devlin in Belfast wants to Pinch Dublin or Derry, such statesmen as these will just break their teeth on our Senate. The only protection against the excesses of democracy, Lord Acton somewhere wrote, is Federalism. I do not overmuch like the Federal system, and I am aware that at least its application to these Isles is anathema to the editor of the Spectator, but I and perhaps you, Sir, prefer it to robbery under arms.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[We would give, and we trust the Unionist Party will soon feel justified in saying officially that they will give, something better than a Senate, and that is the Referendum. We would place in the hands of the people themselves the right of veto. We are certain they will not misuse it. Some day we may be able to federalize up ; we shall never federalize down.—En. Spectator.]
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