W HEN the Postmaster-General of the Irish Free State invited artists
to submit designs for the new postage stamps, he laid down as one of the conditions of the competition that they must be symbolical. The new stamp, recently issued, is not a thing of beauty ; but it is certainly symbolical, and its symbolism has a very practical interest. The design is simple : a Gaelic- Byzantine arch framing an outline map of Ireland. The map ignores existing political divisions, and the super- scription on the arch is not " Saorstat Eireann," but the single but comprehensive word " Eire." This might be taken to symbolize an ideal, the unity of Ireland, which is a thing all Irishmen, whether of the North or South, desire—on their own terms. It is, however, really sym- bolical not so much of an aspiration as of a claim—that the Oireachtas in Dublin is de jure sovereign over the whole island—and of the intention sooner or later to make this claim valid. The Free State leaders have made no disguise of their attitude in this matter. The terms of the Treaty, as they have over and over again publicly stated, represent no more than an accommodation forced upon them by the military situation, and to all seeming they agree with Bismarck's dictum that into all treaties the clause rebus sic stantibus must be read.
Even had they not naturally adopted this attitude it would have been forced upon them by the Republican opposition. They have not forgotten that it was the acceptance by Mr. Redmond of the principle of the " partition of Ireland," during the negotiations that followed the Easter Week thing, which provided Sinn Fein with its most powerful weapon against him and his party. They know well that, if they are to continue to enjoy the support of the Catholic Irish, they must deprive the Republicans of a weapon which might well prove equally fatal directed against themselves. ft is, indeed, the most—perhaps the only really effective weapon in their political armoury. For the Irish masses are neither by nature nor tradition democratic ; they have been accustomed from time immemorial to accept the leader- ship of anyone strong enough to govern ; and it may be doubted whether one in a thousand could state the difference between a Republic and a Monarchy. The Republican ideal, then, so far as it is merely concerned with the form of government, has never made any great appeal to them. It is otherwise with the question at issue between Ulster and the rest of Ireland. " Partition " is a convenient modern catchword, but the spirit behind the cry is as old as Irish history, and older. It is not— in most cases, at least—a passionate desire for national unity ; it is not even a vivid realization of the economic and other ills resulting from disunion (as the boycott of Ulster has shown) ; it is the outgrowth of a very ancient antagonism, the primitive, eager desire to get the best of it at last in an age-old feud.
" The Frenchman," says M. Madelin in his La Revolu. tiara Fran&aise, " does not consider himself free until he rules." What is true of the Gaul is true also of the Gael. All Irish history bears witness to it ; for it was ever the objection to the rule of " the other Irishman " which gave their opportunity to foreign invaders, whether Danes, Normans, Scots, or English. Now the oldest, as well as the most persistent, of these antagonisms is that between Ulster and the rest of Ireland. " The historians," wrote the late Mr. Quiggin, " place the beginnings of the antithesis between North and South at the very com- mencement of the Milesian domination," and the begin- nings of this domination are lost in the mists of legend. The oldest of the Irish epics, the Tan BG Cualnge, is held by Celtic scholars to picture the social and political conditions of Ireland at the very beginning of the Christian era. Its theme is a war of a Southern coalition, " the Great Four-Fifths of Erin," against Ulster ; and the leader of the Southern hosts, Queen Medb of Connacht, is made the mouthpiece of the sentiment of the South : " It is natural," she says, " to hate proud Ulster i " The claim that Ireland has ever been a national unit is, indeed, quite unhistorical. Even the short period under Grattan's Parliament, on which Sinn Fein originally based its Constitutional claim, only enforced the lesson derived from all previous records ; for it ended in the hideous fratricidal strife of 1798. If, then, the principle of self-determination was to be applied to Ireland, it is clear that this immemorial antithesis between North and South, accentuated now by differences of religion and -well-marked differences of race, was bound to be taken into consideration. Ireland had been welded into some sort of unity under the domination of the British Crown ; this domination removed, it split again along its ancient lines of cleavage. The autonomy of Ulster is the logical and natural corollary of the autonomy of Ireland.
It does not follow that the partition of Ireland is a good thing, or that it has been anywhere welcome. It has, to begin with, revived and accentuated the old antithesis, which, before the Home Rule question came into prominence once more, had been gradually dis- appearing. Nor has the revived sense of antagonism in the South been confined to Nationalists and Sinn Feiners. Many of the Southern Unionists had always shared in the prejudice against " proud Ulster," and the arrangement for a separate treatment of the Six Counties divided their ranks at a critical time. The majority, indeed, recog- nized the reasonableness of the Ulster case and adhered to the principles of the Unionist Alliance, but an in- fluential and wealthy minority formed the Anti-Partition League and became prominent in the negotiations which led to the Truce. To them, as to the Nationalists and Sinn Feiners who accepted the Treaty, partition was an evil only to be accepted for fear of worse things, and in general this is true of all the former loyalists of the South. It could hardly be otherwise ; for, quite apart from the feeling that they have been sacrificed, partition has already struck deadly blows at their interests. The setting up of a separate judicial system in the North, for instance, has gravely injured the many lawyers in Dublin whose business was largely with Ulster and who, for one reason or another, cannot transfer themselves to Belfast. Grave, too, is likely to be the effect on Trinity College, which, as time goes on, will probably suffer more and more from the competition of the northern university. On trade the result has already been disastrous ; it is likely to be more disastrous if and when a tariff barrier is built up between North and South. For the industrial North and the agricultural South are really comple- mentary to one another ; and if their political fusion is difficult, if not impossible, their economic union is a prime condition of their life.
The men of the Six Counties recognize this well enough, and, if they accepted partition, it was unwillingly and only to save themselves from the political disorder and economic ruin which they foresaw would follow any attempt to establish Home Rule. Its inconveniences and its dangers are fully recognized by them, and are sub- mitted to only because they fear still more the incon- veniences and the dangers of falling under the domination of the South. To this they will never consent. Mean- while, their attitude towards the Free State Government has been consistently correct, and even friendly, and they would certainly co-operate with it for all common purposes the moment it was in a position to come to terms.
Unfortunately, the Dublin Government is in no such position. Apart from its general weakness, it is ham- pered by the necessity of competing with the Republican stalwarts for popular favour, and the popular.forces that count are more interested in downing " Carsonia " than in setting up the Free State. The Treaty, it is true, has been accepted, and under its terms the Six Counties have been able to contract out of the new Irish Constitution. But, unluckily, the Treaty also contains a clause, charac- teristically vague, which has given the Free State Govern- ment an opportunity for appealing to popular passion by raising claims which, if conceded, would destroy the power of the North and force it piecemeal under the rule of the Oireachtas. Article XII. of the Treaty provides, inter alia, for the appointment of a Commission which " shall determine in accordance with the wishes of the inhabitants, so far as may be compatible with economic and geographic conditions, the boundaries between Northern Ireland and the rest of Ireland, and for the purposes of the Government of Ireland Act, 1920, and of this instrument, the boundary of Northern Ireland shall be such as may be determined by this Commission."
The only possible excuse for this amazing specimen of treaty-making is that it was drafted by puzzled and weary politicians in the small hours of the morning. Its terms are as loose and as capable of contraction and expansion as a rubber band. By many it was taken to imply no more than what is known as a " rectification of frontier "—the transference of a Catholic village here or a Protestant village there in order to secure peace on the border ; and this the Ulstermen would have been willing enough to accept. Very different is the inter- pretation of the terms of the clause by the Free State Government, as announced urbi et orbi by President Cosgrave in a New Year's Message published in the Times. There is here no question of a mere rectification ; and unfortunately the President is able to quote the language used by Mr. Lloyd George in the House of Commons on December 14th, 1921, in support of a claim which, were it insisted on, would have the most disas- trous consequences. This claim was set forth in great detail in a pamphlet issued by the Free State Govern- ment to members of the Dail a few weeks ago. It was elaborately illustrated with maps giving the results of the various electoral areas (parliamentary constituencies, county and district councils, &c.) in the Six Counties, and claimed for the Free State all those in which a preponderance of Nationalist or Sinn Fein votes had been cast. The misleading nature of this method —quite apart from any suggestion of patriotic imagina- tiveness—may be illustrated by the case of the electoral area of Tyrone-Fermanagh. The whole of the two counties is blackened out of the Northern map on the ground of the Nationalist victory at the recent election. Yet the Protestant minority was not very far short of the Catholic majority and—what is more important— this minority is largely concentrated in South Tyrone along the borders of Monaghan, which is in the Free State, while the Catholic population is for the most part cut off from direct contact with the South. To admit this claim, then, would be to include in the Free State very large number of Protestants who, rightly or wrongly, believe that their lives and fortunes depend on keeping out of it. If this, and the remaining claims of the Free State, were conceded, the area under the Northern Government would be reduced to the counties of Lon- donderry, Antrim and portions of Down and Armagh, that is to say, to a fragment which could not possibly carry on an autonomous political and economic existence. It has, moreover, been pointed out to me that the Catholic preponderance in certain areas of the Six Counties has been largely due to special and possibly temporary causes ; for thousands of Protestant Ulstermen perished in the Great War, and their places were taken in the factories and yards by low-class immigrants from the South. This is a consideration which will not, perhaps, weigh with fanatical advocates of the sacred principle of self-determination. It has, however, great weight in Northern Ireland.
In these circumstances it is not surprising that the Belfast Government has refused to have anything to do with any such attempted solution of the boundary question. It has announced that it refuses to acknow- ledge the terms of a Treaty to which it was no party, and that it takes its stand on the Act of 1920, under which the area of the Six Counties was guaranteed to it. It will negotiate with the Dublin Government as to a rectification of frontier ; with a Commission appointed to reopen the whole question it refuses to have anything to do. Thus once more the policy, characteristic of Mr. Lloyd George, of effecting an apparent accommodation by means of contradictory promises is having its effect. The North, armed and disciplined, is watching the South, which is armed but not disciplined. For the Great Four-Fifths of Ireland, having found a bond of union in a common hate, may once again march against proud Ulster, and there may yet be need of another CUchulinn to guard the pass. AN OBSERVER.
(To be continued.)
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