Ulster's Stand For Union / McNeill, Ronald John, 1861-1934

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Title: Ulster's Stand For Union

Author: Ronald McNeill

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Language: English

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ULSTER'S STAND FOR UNION

by

RONALD McNEILL

With Frontispiece

London
John Murray,
Albemarle Street, W.

1922







DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE UNIONIST PARTY




PREFACE


The term "Ulster," except when the context proves the contrary, is used
in this book not in the geographical, but the political meaning of the
word, which is quite as well understood.

The aim of the book is to present an account of what I have occasionally
in its pages referred to as "the Ulster Movement." The phrase is perhaps
somewhat paradoxical when applied to a political ideal which was the
maintenance of the _status quo_; but, on the other hand, the steps taken
during a period of years to organise an effective opposition to
interference with the established constitution in Ireland did involve a
movement, and it is with these measures, rather than with the policy
behind them, that the book is concerned.

Indeed, except for a brief introductory outline of the historical
background of the Ulster standpoint, I have taken for granted, or only
referred incidentally to the reasons for the unconquerable hostility of
the Ulster Protestants to the idea of allowing the government of
Ireland, and especially of themselves, to pass into the control of a
Parliament in Dublin. Those reasons were many and substantial, based
upon considerations both of a practical and a sentimental nature; but I
have not attempted an exposition of them, having limited myself to a
narrative of the events to which they gave rise.

Having been myself, during the most important part of the period
reviewed, a member of the Standing Committee of the Ulster Unionist
Council, and closely associated with the leaders of the movement, I have
had personal knowledge of practically everything I have had to record. I
have not, however, trusted to unaided memory for any statement of fact.
It is not, of course, a matter where anything that could be called
research was required; but, in addition to the _Parliamentary Reports_,
the _Annual Register_, and similar easily accessible books of reference,
there was a considerable mass of private papers bearing on the subject,
for the use of some of which I am indebted to friends.

I was permitted to consult the Minute-books of the Ulster Unionist
Council and its Standing Committee, and also verbatim reports made for
the Council of unpublished speeches delivered at private meetings of
those bodies. A large collection of miscellaneous documents accumulated
by the late Lord Londonderry was kindly lent to me by the present
Marquis; and I also have to thank Lord Carson of Duncairn for the use of
letters and other papers in his possession. Colonel F.H. Crawford,
C.B.E., was good enough to place at my disposal a very detailed account
written by himself of the voyage of the _Fanny_, and the log kept by
Captain Agnew. My friend Mr. Thomas Moles, M.P., took full shorthand
notes of the proceedings of the Irish Convention and the principal
speeches made in it, and he kindly allowed me to use his transcript. And
I should not like to pass over without acknowledgment the help given me
on several occasions by Miss Omash, of the Union Defence League, in
tracing references.

R. McN.

February 1922.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER


    I. INTRODUCTION: THE ULSTER STANDPOINT

   II. THE ELECTORATE AND HOME RULE

  III. ORGANISATION AND LEADERSHIP

   IV. THE PARLIAMENT ACT: CRAIGAVON

    V. THE CRAIGAVON POLICY AND THE U.F.V.

   VI. MR. CHURCHILL IN BELFAST

  VII. "WHAT ANSWER FROM THE NORTH?"

 VIII. THE EXCLUSION OF ULSTER

   IX. THE EVE OF THE COVENANT

    X. THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT

   XI. PASSING THE BILL

  XII. WAS RESISTANCE JUSTIFIABLE?

 XIII. PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT AND PROPAGANDA

  XIV. LORD LOREBURN'S LETTER

   XV. PREPARATIONS AND PROPOSALS

  XVI. THE CURRAGH INCIDENT

 XVII. ARMING THE U.V.F.

XVIII. A VOYAGE OF ADVENTURE

  XIX. ON THE BRINK OF CIVIL WAR

   XX. ULSTER IN THE WAR

  XXI. NEGOTIATIONS FOR SETTLEMENT

 XXII. THE IRISH CONVENTION

XXIII. NATIONALISTS AND CONSCRIPTION

 XXIV. THE ULSTER PARLIAMENT

APPENDIX


A. NATIONALIST LETTER TO PRESIDENT WILSON

B. UNIONIST LETTER TO PRESIDENT WILSON

INDEX




ULSTER'S STAND FOR UNION




CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION: THE ULSTER STANDPOINT


Like all other movements in human affairs, the opposition of the
Northern Protestants of Ireland to the agitation of their Nationalist
fellow-countrymen for Home Rule can only be properly understood by those
who take some pains to get at the true motives, and to appreciate the
spirit, of those who engaged in it. And as it is nowhere more true than
in Ireland that the events of to-day are the outcome of events that
occurred longer ago than yesterday, and that the motives of to-day have
consequently their roots buried somewhat deeply in the past, it is no
easy task for the outside observer to gain the insight requisite for
understanding fairly the conduct of the persons concerned.

It was Mr. Asquith who very truly said that the Irish question, of which
one of the principal factors is the opposition of Ulster to Home Rule,
"springs from sources that are historic, economic, social, racial, and
religious." It would be a hopeless undertaking to attempt here to probe
to the bottom an origin so complex; but, whether the sympathies of the
reader be for or against the standpoint of the Irish Loyalists, the
actual events which make up what may be called the Ulster Movement would
be wholly unintelligible without some introductory retrospect. Indeed,
to those who set out to judge Irish political conditions without
troubling themselves about anything more ancient than their own memory
can recall, the most fundamental factor of all--the line of cleavage
between Ulster and the rest of the island--- is more than
unintelligible. In the eyes of many it presents itself as an example of
perversity, of "cussedness" on the part of men who insist on magnifying
mere differences of opinion, which would be easily composed by
reasonable people, into obstacles to co-operation which have no reality
behind them.

Writers and speakers on the Nationalist side deride the idea of "two
nations" in Ireland, calling in evidence many obvious identities of
interest, of sentiment, or of temperament between the inhabitants of the
North and of the South. The Ulsterman no more denies these identities
than the Greek, the Bulgar, and the Serb would deny that there are
features common to all dwellers in the Balkan peninsula; but he is more
deeply conscious of the difference than of the likeness between himself
and the man from Munster or Connaught. His reply to those who denounced
the Irish Government Act of 1920 on the ground that it set up a
"partition of Ireland," is that the Act did not "set up," but only
recognised, the partition which history made long ago, and which wrecked
all attempts to solve the problem of Irish Government that neglected to
take it into account. If there be any force in Renan's saying that the
root of nationality is "the will to live together," the Nationalist cry
of "Ireland a Nation" harmonises ill with the actual conditions of
Ireland north and south of the Boyne. This dividing gulf between the two
populations in Ireland is the result of the same causes as the political
dissension that springs from it, as described by Mr. Asquith in words
quoted above. The tendencies of social and racial origin operate for the
most part subconsciously--though not perhaps less powerfully on that
account; those connected with economic considerations, with religious
creeds, and with events in political history enter directly and
consciously into the formation of convictions which in turn become the
motives for actions.

In the mind of the average Ulster Unionist the particular point of
contrast between himself and the Nationalist of which he is more
forcibly conscious than of any other, and in which all other
distinguishing traits are merged, is that he is loyal to the British
Crown and the British Flag, whereas the other man is loyal to neither.
Religious intolerance, so far as the Protestants are concerned, of
which so much is heard, is in actual fact mainly traceable to the same
sentiment. It is unfortunately true that the lines of political and of
religious division coincide; but religious dissensions seldom flare up
except at times of political excitement; and, while it is undeniable
that the temper of the creeds more resembles what prevailed in England
in the seventeenth than in the twentieth century, yet when overt
hostility breaks out it is because the creed is taken--and usually taken
rightly--as _prima facie_ evidence of political opinion--political
opinion meaning "loyalty" or "disloyalty," as the case may be. The label
of "loyalist" is that which the Ulsterman cherishes above all others. It
means something definite to him; its special significance is reinforced
by the consciousness of its wearers that they are a minority; it
sustains the feeling that the division between parties is something
deeper and more fundamental than anything that in England is called
difference of opinion. This feeling accounts for much that sometimes
perplexes even the sympathetic English observer, and moves the hostile
partisan to scornful criticism. The ordinary Protestant farmer or
artisan of Ulster is by nature as far as possible removed from the being
who is derisively nicknamed the "noisy patriot" or the "flag-wagging
jingo." If the National Anthem has become a "party tune" in Ireland, it
is not because the loyalist sings it, but because the dis-loyalist shuns
it; and its avoidance at gatherings both political and social where
Nationalists predominate, naturally makes those who value loyalty the
more punctilious in its use. If there is a profuse display of the Union
Jack, it is because it is in Ulster not merely "bunting" for decorative
purposes as in England, but the symbol of a cherished faith.

There may, perhaps, be some persons, unfamiliar with the Ulster cast of
mind, who find it hard to reconcile this profession of passionate
loyalty with the methods embarked upon in 1912 by the Ulster people. It
is a question upon which there will be something to be said when the
narrative reaches the events of that date. Here it need only be stated
that, in the eyes of Ulstermen at all events, constitutional orthodoxy
is quite a different thing from loyalty, and that true allegiance to
the Sovereign is by them sharply differentiated from passive obedience
to an Act of Parliament.

The sincerity with which this loyalist creed is held by practically the
entire Protestant population of Ulster cannot be questioned by anyone
who knows the people, however much he may criticise it on other grounds.
And equally sincere is the conviction held by the same people that
disloyalty is, and always has been, the essential characteristic of
Nationalism. The conviction is founded on close personal contact
continued through many generations with the adherents of that political
party, and the tradition thus formed draws more support from authentic
history than many Englishmen are willing to believe. Consequently, when
the General Election of 1918 revealed that the whole of Nationalist
Ireland had gone over with foot, horse, and artillery, with bag and
baggage, from the camp of so-called Constitutional Home Rule, to the
Sinn Feiners who made no pretence that their aim was anything short of
complete independent sovereignty for Ireland, no surprise was felt in
Ulster. It was there realised that nothing had happened beyond the
throwing off of the mask which had been used as a matter of political
tactics to disguise what had always been the real underlying aim, if not
of the parliamentary leaders, at all events of the great mass of
Nationalist opinion throughout the three southern provinces. The whole
population had not with one consent changed their views in the course of
a night; they had merely rallied to support the first leaders whom they
had found prepared to proclaim the true objective. Curiously enough,
this truth was realised by an English politician who was in other
respects conspicuously deficient in insight regarding Ireland. The
Easter insurrection of 1916 in Dublin was only rendered possible by the
negligence or the incompetence of the Chief Secretary; but, in giving
evidence before the Commission appointed to inquire into it, Mr. Birrell
said: "The spirit of what to-day is called Sinn Feinism is mainly
composed of the old hatred and distrust of the British connection ...
always there as the background of Irish politics and character"; and,
after recalling that Cardinal Newman had observed the same state of
feeling in Dublin more than half a century before, Mr. Birrell added
quite truly that "this dislike, hatred, disloyalty (so unintelligible to
many Englishmen) is hard to define but easy to discern, though incapable
of exact measurement from year to year." This disloyal spirit, which
struck Newman, and which Mr. Birrell found easy to discern, was of
course always familiar to Ulstermen as characteristic of "the South and
West," and was their justification for the badge of "loyalist," their
assumption of which English Liberals, knowing nothing of Ireland, held
to be an unjust slur on the Irish majority.

If this belief in the inherent disloyalty of Nationalist Ireland to the
British Empire did any injustice to individual Nationalist politicians,
they had nobody but themselves to blame for it. Their pronouncements in
America, as well as at home, were scrutinised in Ulster with a care that
Englishmen seldom took the trouble to give them. Nor must it be
forgotten that, up to the date when Mr. Gladstone made Home Rule a plank
in an English party's programme--which, whatever else it did, could not
alter the facts of the case--the same conviction, held in Ulster so
tenaciously, had prevailed almost universally in Great Britain also; and
had been proclaimed by no one so vehemently as by Mr. Gladstone himself,
whose famous declarations that the Nationalists of that day were
"steeped to the lips in treason," and were "marching through rapine to
the dismemberment of the Empire," were not so quickly forgotten in
Ulster as in England, nor so easily passed over as either meaningless or
untrue as soon as they became inconvenient for a political party to
remember. English supporters of Home Rule, when reminded of such
utterances, dismissed with a shrug the "unedifying pastime of unearthing
buried speeches"; and showed equal determination to see nothing in
speeches delivered by Nationalist leaders in America inconsistent with
the purely constitutional demand for "extended self-government."

Ulster never would consent to bandage her own eyes in similar fashion,
or to plug her ears with wool. The "two voices" of Nationalist leaders,
from Mr. Parnell to Mr. Dillon, were equally audible to her; and, of the
two, she was certain that the true aim of Nationalist policy was
expressed by the one whose tone was disloyal to the British Empire.
Look-out was kept for any change in the direction of moderation, for any
real indication that those who professed to be "constitutional
Nationalists" were any less determined than "the physical force party"
to reach the goal described by Parnell in the famous sentence, "None of
us will be ... satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which
keeps Ireland bound to England."

No such indication was ever discernible. On the contrary, Parnell's
phrase became a refrain to be heard in many later pronouncements of his
successors, and the policy he thus described was again and again
propounded in after-years on innumerable Nationalist platforms, in
speeches constantly quoted to prove, as was the contention of Ulster
from the first, that Home Rule as understood by English Liberals was no
more than an instalment of the real demand of Nationalists, who, if they
once obtained the "comparative freedom" of an Irish legislature--to
quote the words used by Mr. Devlin at a later date--would then, with
that leverage, "operate by whatever means they should think best to
achieve the great and desirable end" of complete independence of Great
Britain.

This was an end that could not by any juggling be reconciled with the
Ulsterman's notion of "loyalty." Moreover, whatever knowledge he
possessed of his country's history--and he knows a good deal more, man
for man, than the Englishman--confirmed his deep distrust of those whom,
following the example of John Bright, he always bluntly described as
"the rebel party." He knew something of the rebellions in Ireland in the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and was under no
illusion as to the design for which arms had been taken up in the past.
He knew that that design had not changed with the passing of
generations, although gentler methods of accomplishing it might
sometimes find favour. Indeed, one Nationalist leader himself took
pains, at a comparatively recent date, to remove any excuse there may
ever have been for doubt on this point. Mr. John Redmond was an orator
who selected his words with care, and his appeals to historical
analogies were not made haphazard. When he declared (in a speech in
1901) that, "in its essence, the national movement to-day is the same as
it was in the days of Hugh O'Neill, of Owen Roe, of Emmet, or of Wolfe
Tone," those names, which would have had but a shadowy significance for
a popular audience in England, carried very definite meaning to the ears
of Irishmen, whether Nationalist or Unionist. Mr. Gladstone, in the
fervour of his conversion to Home Rule, was fond of allusions to the
work of Molyneux and Swift, Flood and Grattan; but these were men whose
Irish patriotism never betrayed them into disloyalty to the British
Crown or hostility to the British connection. They were reformers, not
rebels. But it was not with the political ideals of such men that Mr.
Redmond claimed his own to be identical, nor even with that of
O'Connell, the apostle of repeal of the Union, but with the aims of men
who, animated solely by hatred of England, sought to establish the
complete independence of Ireland by force of arms, and in some cases by
calling in (like Roger Casement in our own day) the aid of England's
foreign enemies.

In the face of appeals like this to the historic imagination of an
impressionable people, it is not surprising that by neither Mr.
Redmond's followers nor by his opponents was much account taken of his
own personal disapproval of extremes both of means and ends. His
opponents in Ulster simply accepted such utterances as confirmation of
what they had known all along from other sources to be the actual facts,
namely, that the Home Rule agitation was "in its essence" a separatist
movement; that its adherents were, as Mr. Redmond himself said on
another occasion, "as much rebels as their fathers were in 1798"; and
that the men of Ulster were, together with some scattered sympathisers
in the other Provinces, the depositaries of the "loyal" tradition.

The latter could boast of a pedigree as long as that of the rebels. If
Mr. Redmond's followers were to trace their political ancestry, as he
told them, to the great Earl of Tyrone who essayed to overthrow England
with the help of the Spaniard and the Pope, the Ulster Protestants could
claim descent from the men of the Plantation, through generation after
generation of loyalists who had kept the British flag flying in Ireland
in times of stress and danger, when Mr. Redmond's historical heroes were
making England's difficulty Ireland's opportunity.

There have been, and are, many individual Nationalists, no doubt,
especially among the more educated and thoughtful, to whom it would be
unjust to impute bad faith when they professed that their political
aspirations for Ireland were really limited to obtaining local control
of local affairs, and who resented being called "Separatists," since
their desire was not for separation from Great Britain but for the
"union of hearts," which they believed would grow out of extended
self-government. But the answer of Irish Unionists, especially in
Ulster, has always been that, whatever such "moderate," or
"constitutional" Nationalists might dream, it would be found in
practice, if the experiment were made, that no halting-place could be
found between legislative union and complete separation. Moreover, the
same view was held by men as far as possible removed from the standpoint
of the Ulster Protestant. Cardinal Manning, for example, although an
intimate personal friend of Gladstone, in a letter to Leo XIII, wrote:
"As for myself, Holy Father, allow me to say that I consider a
Parliament in Dublin and a separation to be equivalent to the same
thing. Ireland is not a Colony like Canada, but it is an integral and
vital part of one country."[1]

It is improbable that identical lines of reasoning led the Roman
Catholic Cardinal and the Belfast Orangeman and Presbyterian to this
identical conclusion; but a position reached by convergent paths from
such distant points of departure is defensible presumably on grounds
more solid than prejudice or passion. It is unnecessary here to examine
those grounds at length, for the present purpose is not to argue the
Ulster case, but to let the reader know what was, as a matter of fact,
the Ulster point of view, whether that point of view was well or ill
founded.

But, while the opinion that a Dublin Parliament meant separation was
shared by many who had little else in common with the Ulster
Protestants, the latter stood alone in the intensity of their conviction
that "Home Rule meant Rome Rule." It has already been mentioned that it
is the "disloyalty" attributed rightly or wrongly to the Roman Catholics
as a body that has been, in recent times at all events, the mainspring
of Protestant distrust. But sectarian feeling, everywhere common between
rival creeds, is, of course, by no means absent. Englishmen find it hard
to understand what seems to them the bigoted and senseless animosity of
the rival faiths in Ireland. This is due to the astonishing shortness of
their memory in regard to their own history, and their very limited
outlook on the world outside their own island. If, without looking
further back in their history, they reflected that the "No Popery"
feeling in England in mid-Victorian days was scarcely less intense than
it is in Ulster to-day; or if they realised the extent to which
Gambetta's "Le clericalisme, voila l'ennemi" continues still to
influence public life in France, they might be less ready to censure the
Irish Protestant's dislike of priestly interference in affairs outside
the domain of faith and morals. It is indeed remarkable that
Nonconformists, especially in Wales, who within living memory have
displayed their own horror of the much milder form of sacerdotalism to
be found in the Anglican Church, have no sympathy apparently with the
Presbyterian and the Methodist in Ulster when the latter kick against
the encompassing pressure of the Roman Catholic priesthood, not in
educational matters alone, but in all the petty activities of every-day
life.

Whenever this aspect of the Home Rule controversy was emphasised
Englishmen asked what sort of persecution Irish Protestants had to fear
from a Parliament in Dublin, and appeared to think all such fear
illusory unless evidence could be adduced that the Holy Office was to be
set up at Maynooth, equipped with faggot and thumb-screw. Of persecution
of that sort there never has been, of course, any apprehension in
modern times. Individual Catholics and Protestants live side by side in
Ireland with fully as much amity as elsewhere, but whereas the Catholic
instinctively, and by upbringing, looks to the parish priest as his
director in all affairs of life, the Protestant dislikes and resists
clerical influence as strongly as does the Nonconformist in England and
Wales--and with much better reason. For the latter has never known
clericalism as it exists in a Roman Catholic country where the Church is
wholly unrestrained by the civil power. He has resented what he regards
as Anglican arrogance in regard to educational management or the use of
burying-grounds, but he has never experienced a much more aggressive
clerical temper exercised in all the incidents of daily life--in the
market, the political meeting, the disposition of property, the
amusements of the people, the polling booth, the farm, and the home.

This involves no condemnation of the Irish priest as an individual or as
a minister of his Church. He is kind-hearted, charitable, and
conscientious; and, except that it does not encourage self-reliance and
enterprise, his influence with his own people is no more open to
criticism than that of any other body of religious ministers. But the
Roman Catholic Church has always made a larger claim than any other on
the obedience of its adherents, and it has always enforced that
obedience whenever it has had the power by methods which, in Protestant
opinion, are extremely objectionable. In theory the claim may be limited
to affairs concerned with faith and morals; but the definition of such
affairs is a very elastic one. Cardinal Logue not many years ago said:
"When political action trenches upon faith or morals or affects
religion, the Vicar of Christ, as the supreme teacher and guardian of
faith and morals, and as the custodian of the immunities of religion,
has, by Divine Right, authority to interfere and to enforce his
decisions." How far this principle is in practice carried beyond the
limits so denned was proved in the famous Meath election petition in
1892, in which the Judge who tried it, himself a devout Catholic,
declared: "The Church became converted for the time being into a vast
political agency, a great moral machine moving with resistless
influence, united action, and a single will. Every priest who was
examined was a canvasser; the canvas was everywhere--on the altar, in
the vestry, on the roads, in the houses." And while an election was in
progress in County Tyrone in 1911 a parish priest announced that any
Catholic who should vote for the Unionist candidate "would be held
responsible at the Day of Judgment." A still more notorious example of
clericalism in secular affairs, within the recollection of Englishmen,
was the veto on the Military Service Act proclaimed from the altars of
the Catholic Churches, which, during the Great War, defeated the
application to Ireland of the compulsory service which England,
Scotland, and Wales accepted as the only alternative to national defeat
and humiliation.

But these were only conspicuous examples of what the Irish Protestant
sees around him every day of his life. The promulgation in 1908 of the
Vatican decree, _Nec Temere_, a papal reassertion of the canonical
invalidity of mixed marriages, followed as it was by notorious cases of
the victimisation of Protestant women by the application of its
principles, did not encourage the Protestants to welcome the prospect of
a Catholic Parliament that would have control of the marriage law; nor
did they any more readily welcome the prospect of national education on
purely ecclesiastical lines. Another Vatican decree that was equally
alarming to Protestants was that entitled _Motu Proprio_, by which any
Catholic layman was _ipso facto_ excommunicated who should have the
temerity to bring a priest into a civil court either as defendant or
witness. Medievalism like this was felt by Ulster Protestants to be
irreconcilable with modern ideas of democratic freedom, and to indicate
a temper that boded ill for any regime which would be subject to its
inspiration. These were matters, it is true,--and there were perhaps
some others of a similar nature--on which it is possible to conceive
more or less satisfactory legislative safeguards being provided; but as
regards the indefinable but innumerable minutiae in which the prevailing
ecclesiastical standpoint creates an atmosphere in which daily life has
to be carried on, no safeguards could be devised, and it was the
realisation of this truth in the light of their own experience that made
the Ulstermen continually close their ears to allurements of that sort.

The Roman Church is quite consistent, and from its own point of view
praiseworthy, in its assertion of its right, and its duty, to control
the lives and thoughts of men; but this assertion has produced a clash
with the non-ecclesiastical mind in almost every country, where
Catholicism is the dominant religious faith. But in Ireland, unlike
Continental countries, there is no Catholic lay opinion--or almost
none--able to make its voice heard against clerical dictation, and
consequently the Protestants felt convinced, with good reason, that any
legislature in Ireland must take its tone from this pervading mental and
moral atmosphere, and that all its proceedings would necessarily be
tainted by it.

Prior to 1885 the political complexion of Ulster was in the main
Liberal. The Presbyterians, who formed the majority of the Protestant
population, collateral descendants of the men who emigrated in the
eighteenth century and formed the backbone of Washington's army, and
direct descendants of those who joined the United Irishmen in 1798, were
of a pronounced Liberal type, and their frequently strong disapproval of
Orangeism made any united political action an improbable occurrence. But
the crisis brought about by Gladstone's declaration in favour of Home
Rule instantly swept all sections of Loyalists into a single camp. There
was practically not a Liberal left who did not become Unionist, and,
although a separate organisation of Liberal Unionists was maintained,
the co-operation with Conservatives was so whole-hearted and complete as
almost to amount to fusion from the outset.

The immediate cessation of class friction was still more remarkable. For
more than a decade the perennial quarrel between landlord and tenant had
been increasing in intensity, and the recent land legislation had
disposed the latter to look upon Gladstone as a deliverer. Their
gratitude was wiped out the moment he hoisted the green flag, while the
labourers enfranchised by the Act of 1884 eagerly enrolled themselves
as the bitterest enemies of his new Irish policy. The unanimity of the
country-side was matched in the towns, and especially in Belfast, where,
with the single exception of a definitely Catholic quarter, employer and
artisan were as whole-heartedly united as were landlord and tenant in
passionate resentment at what they regarded as the betrayal by England's
foremost statesman of England's only friends in Ireland.

The defeat of the Home Rule Bill of 1886 brought relief from the
immediate strain of anxiety. But it was at once realised that the
encouragement and support given to Irish disloyalty for the first time
by one of the great political parties in Great Britain was a step that
could never be recalled. Henceforth the vigilance required to prevent
being taken unawares, and the untiring organisation necessary for making
effective defence against an attack which, although it had signally
failed at the first onslaught, was certain to be renewed, welded all the
previously diverse social and political elements in Ulster into a single
compact mass, tempered to the maximum power of resistance. There was
room for no other thought in the minds of men who felt as if living in a
beleaguered citadel, whose flag they were bound in honour to keep flying
to the last. The "loyalist" tradition acquired fresh meaning and
strength, and its historical setting took a more conscious hold on the
public mind of Ulster, as men studied afresh the story of the Relief of
Derry or the horrors of 1641. Visits of encouragement from the leaders
of Unionism across the Channel, men like Lord Salisbury, Mr. Balfour,
Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Randolph Churchill, fortified the resolution of a
populace that came more and more to regard themselves as a bulwark of
the Empire, on whom destiny, while conferring on them the honour of
upholding the flag, had imposed the duty of putting into actual practice
the familiar motto of the Orange Lodges--"No surrender."

From a psychology so bred and nourished sprang a political temper which,
as it hardened with the passing years, appeared to English Home Rulers
to be "stiff-necked," "bigoted," and "intractable." It certainly was a
state of mind very different from those shifting gusts of transient
impression which in England go by the name of public opinion; and, if
these epithets in the mouths of opponents be taken as no more than
synonyms for "uncompromising," they were not undeserved. At a memorable
meeting at the Albert Hall in London on the 22nd of April, 1893, Dr.
Alexander, Bishop of Derry, poet, orator, and divine, declared in an
eloquent passage that was felt to be the exact expression of Ulster
conviction, that the people of Ulster, when exhorted to show confidence
in their southern fellow-countrymen, "could no more be confiding about
its liberty than a pure woman can be confiding about her honour."

Here was the irreconcilable division. The Nationalist talked of
centuries of "oppression," and demanded the dissolution of the Union in
the name of liberty. The Ulsterman, while far from denying the
misgovernment of former times, knew that it was the fruit of false ideas
which had passed away, and that the Ireland in which he lived enjoyed as
much liberty as any land on earth; and he feared the loss of the true
liberty he had gained if put back under a regime of Nationalist and
Utramontane domination. And so for more than thirty years the people of
Ulster for whom Bishop Alexander spoke made good his words. If in the
end compromise was forced upon them it was not because their standpoint
had changed, and it was only in circumstances which involved no
dishonour, and which preserved them from what they chiefly dreaded,
subjection to a Dublin Parliament inspired by clericalism and disloyalty
to the Empire.

The development which brought about the change from Ulster's resolute
stand for unimpaired union with Great Britain to her reluctant
acceptance of a separate local constitution for the predominantly
Protestant portion of the Province, presents a deeply interesting
illustration of the truth of a pregnant dictum of Maine's on the working
of democratic institutions.

"Democracies," he says, "are quite paralysed by the plea of nationality.
There is no more effective way of attacking them than by admitting the
right of the majority to govern, but denying that the majority so
entitled is the particular majority which claims the right."[2]

This is precisely what occurred in regard to Ulster's relation to Great
Britain and to the rest of Ireland respectively. The will of the
majority must prevail, certainly. But what majority? Unionists
maintained that only the majority in the United Kingdom could decide,
and that it had never in fact decided in favour of repealing the Act of
Union; Lord Rosebery at one time held that a majority in Great Britain
alone, as the "Predominant Partner," must first give its consent; Irish
Nationalists argued that the majority in Ireland, as a distinct unit,
was the only one that should count. Ulster, whilst agreeing with the
general Unionist position, contended ultimately that her own majority
was as well entitled to be heard in regard to her own fate as the
majority in Ireland as a whole. To the Nationalist claim that Ireland
was a nation she replied that it was either two nations or none, and
that if one of the two had a right to "self-determination," the other
had it equally. Thus the axiom of democracy that government is by the
majority was, as Maine said, "paralysed by the plea of nationality,"
since the contending parties appealed to the same principle without
having any common ground as to how it should be applied to the case in
dispute.

If the Union with Great Britain was to be abrogated, which Pitt had only
established when "a full measure of Home Rule" had produced a bloody
insurrection and Irish collusion with England's external enemies, Ulster
could at all events in the last resort take her stand on Abraham
Lincoln's famous proposition which created West Virginia: "A minority of
a large community who make certain claims for self-government cannot, in
logic or in substance, refuse the same claims to a much larger
proportionate minority among themselves."

The Loyalists of Ulster were successful in holding this second line,
when the first was no longer tenable; but they only retired from the
first line--the maintenance of the legislative union--after a long and
obstinate defence which it is the purpose of the following pages to
relate.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Henry Edward Manning_, by Shane Leslie, p. 406.

[2] Sir S.H. Maine, _Popular Government_, p. 28.




CHAPTER II

THE ELECTORATE AND HOME RULE


We profess to be a democratic country in which the "will of the people"
is the ultimate authority in determining questions of policy, and the
Liberal Party has been accustomed to regard itself as the most zealous
guardian of democratic principles. Yet there is this curious paradox in
relation to the problem which more than any other taxed British
statesmanship during the thirty-five years immediately following the
enfranchisement of the rural democracy in 1884, that the solution
propounded by the Liberal Party, and inscribed by that party on the
Statute-book in 1914, was more than once emphatically rejected, and has
never been explicitly accepted by the electorate.

No policy ever submitted to the country was more decisively condemned at
the polls than Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule proposals in the General
Election of 1886. The issue then for the first time submitted to the
people was isolated from all others with a completeness scarcely ever
practicable--a circumstance which rendered the "mandate" to Parliament
to maintain the legislative union exceptionally free from ambiguity. The
party which had brought forward the defeated proposal, although led by a
statesman of unrivalled popularity, authority, and power, was shattered
in the attempt to carry it, and lost the support of numbers of its most
conspicuous adherents, including Chamberlain, Hartington, Goschen, and
John Bright, besides a multitude of its rank and file, who entered into
political partnership with their former opponents in order to withstand
the new departure of their old Chief.

The years that followed were a period of preparation by both sides for
the next battle. The improvement in the state of Ireland, largely the
result of legislation carried by Lord Salisbury's Government, especially
that which promoted land purchase, encouraged the confidence felt by
Unionists that the British voter would remain staunch to the Union. The
downfall of Parnell in 1890, followed by the break-up of his party, and
by his death in the following year, seemed to make the danger of Home
Rule still more remote. The only disquieting factor was the personality
of Mr. Gladstone, which, the older he grew, exercised a more and more
incalculable influence on the public mind. And there can be no doubt
that it was this personal influence that made him, in spite of his
policy, and not because of it, Prime Minister for the fourth time in
1892. In Great Britain the electors in that year pronounced against Home
Rule again by a considerable majority, and it was only by coalition with
the eighty-three Irish Nationalist Members that Gladstone and his party
were able to scrape up a majority of forty in support of his second Home
Rule Bill. Whether there was any ground for Gladstone's belief that but
for the O'Shea divorce he would have had a three-figure majority in 1892
is of little consequence, but the fall of his own majority in Midlothian
from 4,000 to below 700, which caused him "intense chagrin,"[3] does not
lend it support. Lord Morley says Gladstone was blamed by some of his
friends for accepting office "depending on a majority not large enough
to coerce the House of Lords"[4]; but a more valid ground of censure was
that he was willing to break up the constitution of the United Kingdom,
although a majority of British electors had just refused to sanction
such a thing being done. That Gladstone's colleagues realised full well
the true state of public opinion on the subject, if he himself did not,
was shown by their conduct when the Home Rule Bill, after being carried
through the House of Commons by diminutive majorities, was rejected on
second reading by the Peers. Even their great leader's entreaty could
not persuade them to consent to an appeal to the people[5]; and when
they were tripped up over the cordite vote in 1895, after Gladstone had
disappeared from public life, none of them probably were surprised at
the overwhelming vote by which the constituencies endorsed the action of
the House of Lords, and pronounced for the second time in ten years
against granting Home Rule to Ireland.

If anything except the personal ascendancy of Gladstone contributed to
his small coalition majority in 1892 it was no doubt the confidence of
the electors that the House of Lords could be relied upon to prevent the
passage of a Home Rule Bill. It is worth noting that nearly twenty years
later Lord Crewe acknowledged that the Home Rule Bill of 1893 could not
have stood the test of a General Election or of a Referendum.[6]

During the ten years of Unionist Government from 1895 to 1905 the
question of Home Rule slipped into the background. Other issues, such as
those raised by the South African War and Mr. Chamberlain's tariff
policy, engrossed the public mind. English Home Rulers showed a
disposition to hide away, if not to repudiate altogether, the legacy
they had inherited from Gladstone. Lord Rosebery acknowledged the
necessity to convert "the predominant partner," a mission which every
passing year made appear a more hopeless undertaking. At by-elections
Home Rule was scarcely mentioned. In the eyes of average Englishmen the
question was dead and buried, and most people were heartily thankful to
hear no more about it. Mr. T.M. Healy's caustic wit remarked that "Home
Rule was put into cold storage."[7]

Then came the great overthrow of the Unionists in 1906. Home Rule,
except by its absence from Liberal election addresses, contributed
nothing at all to that resounding Liberal victory. The battle of
"terminological inexactitudes" rang with cries of Chinese "slavery,"
Tariff Reform, Church Schools, Labour Dispute Bills, and so forth; but
on Ireland silence reigned on the platforms of the victors. The event
was to give the successors of Mr. Gladstone a House of Commons in
complete subjection to them. For the first time since 1885 they had a
majority independent of the Nationalists, a majority, if ever there was
one, "large enough to coerce the House of Lords," as they would have
done in 1893, according to Lord Morley, if they had had the power. But
to do that would involve the danger of having again to appeal to the
country, which even at this high tide of Liberal triumph they could not
face with Home Rule as an election cry. So, with the tame acquiescence
of Mr. Redmond and his followers, they spent four years of unparalleled
power without laying a finger on Irish Government, a course which was
rendered easy for them by the fact that, on their own admission, they
had found Ireland in a more peaceful, prosperous, and contented
condition than it had enjoyed for several generations. Occasionally,
indeed, as was necessary to prevent a rupture with the Nationalists,
some perfunctory mention of Home Rule as a _desideratum_ of the future
was made on Ministerial platforms--by Mr. Churchill, for example, at
Manchester in May 1909. But by that date even the contest over Tariff
Reform--which had raged without intermission for six years, and by
rending the Unionist Party had grievously damaged it as an effective
instrument of opposition--had become merged in the more immediately
exciting battle of the Budget, provoked by Mr. Lloyd George's financial
proposals for the current year, and by the possibility that they might
be rejected by the House of Lords. This the House of Lords did, on the
30th of November, 1909, and the Prime Minister at once announced that he
would appeal to the country without delay.

Such a turn of events was a wonderful windfall for the Irish
Nationalists, beyond what the most sanguine of them can ever have hoped
for. The rejection of a money Bill by the House of Lords raised a
democratic blizzard, the full force of which was directed against the
constitutional power of veto possessed by the hereditary Chamber in
relation not merely to money Bills, but to general legislation. For a
long time the Liberal Party had been threatening that part of the
Constitution without much effect. Sixteen years had passed since Mr.
Gladstone in his last speech in the House of Commons declared that
issue must be joined with the Peers; but the emphatic endorsement by the
constituencies in 1895 of the Lords' action which he had denounced,
followed by ten years of Unionist Government, damped down the ardour of
attack so effectually that, during the four years in which the Liberals
enjoyed unchallengeable power, from 1906 to 1910, they did nothing to
carry out Gladstone's parting injunction. Had they done so at any time
when Home Rule was a living issue in the country an attack on the Lords
would in all probability have proved disastrous to themselves. For there
was not a particle of evidence that the electors of Great Britain had
changed their minds on this subject, and there were great numbers of
voters in the country--those voters, unattached to party, who constitute
"the swing of the pendulum," and decide the issue at General
Elections--who felt free to vote Liberal in 1906 because they believed
Home Rule was practically dead, and if revived would be again given its
_quietus_, as in 1893, by the House of Lords. But the defeat of the
Budget in November 1909 immediately opened a line of attack wholly
unconnected with Ireland, and over the most favourable ground that could
have been selected for the assault.

Nothing could have been more skilful than the tactics employed by the
Liberal leaders. Concentrating on the constitutional question raised by
the alleged encroachment of the Lords on the exclusive privilege of the
Commons to grant supply, they tried to excite a hurricane of popular
fury by calling on the electorate to decide between "Peers and People."
The rejected Finance Bill was dubbed "The People's Budget." A "Budget
League" was formed to expatiate through the constituencies on the
democratic character of its provisions, and on the personal and class
selfishness of the Peers in throwing it out. As little as possible was
said about Ireland, and probably not one voter in ten thousand who went
to the poll in January 1910 ever gave a thought to the subject, or
dreamed that he was taking part in reversing the popular verdict of 1886
and 1895. Afterwards, when it was complained that an election so
conducted had provided no "mandate" for Home Rule, it was found that in
the course of a long speech delivered by Mr. Asquith at the Albert Hall
on the 10th of December there was a sentence in which the Prime Minister
had declared that "the Irish problem could only be solved by a policy
which, while explicitly safeguarding the supreme authority of the
Imperial Parliament, would set up self-government in Ireland in regard
to Irish affairs." The rest of the speech dealt with Tariff Reform and
with the constitutional question of the House of Lords, on which the
public mind was focused throughout the election.

In the unprecedented deluge of oratory that flooded the country in the
month preceding the elections the Prime Minister's sentence on Ireland
at the Albert Hall passed almost unnoticed in English and Scottish
constituencies, or was quickly lost sight of, like a coin in a
cornstack, under sheaves of rhetoric about the dear loaf and the
intolerable arrogance of hereditary legislators. Here and there a
Unionist candidate did his best to warn a constituency that every
Liberal vote was a vote for Home Rule. He was invariably met with an
impatient retort that he was attempting to raise a bogey to divert
attention from the iniquity of the Lords and the Tariff Reformers. Home
Rule, he was told, was dead and buried.

On the 19th of January, 1910, when the elections were over in the
boroughs, Mr. Asquith claimed that "the great industrial centres had
mainly declared for Free Trade," and the impartial chronicler of the
_Annual Register_ stated that "the Liberals had fought on Free Trade and
the constitutional issue." The twice-repeated decision of the country
against Home Rule for Ireland was therefore in no sense reversed by the
General Election of January 1910.

But from the very beginning of the agitation over the Budget and the
action of the House of Lords in relation to it, in the summer of 1909,
the gravity of the situation so created was fully appreciated by both
political parties in Ireland itself. Only the most languid interest was
there taken in the questions which stirred the constituencies across
the Channel. Neither Nationalist nor Unionist cared anything whatever
for Free Trade; neither of them shed a tear over the rejected Budget.
Indeed, Mr. Lloyd George's new taxes were so unpopular in Ireland that
Mr. Redmond was violently attacked by Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. Healy
for his neglect of obvious Irish interests in supporting the Government.
Mr. Redmond, for his part, made no pretence that his support was given
because he approved of the proposals for which he and his followers gave
their votes in every division. The clauses of the Finance Bill were
trifles in his eyes that did not matter. His gaze was steadily fixed on
the House of Peers, which he saw before him as a huntsman views a fox
with bedraggled brush, reduced to a trot a field or two ahead of the
hounds. That House was, as he described it, "the last obstacle to Home
Rule," and he was determined to do all he could to remove the obstacle.
Lord Rosebery said at Glasgow in September 1909 that he believed
Ministers wanted the House of Lords to reject the Budget. Whether they
did or not, there can be no doubt that Mr. Redmond did, for he knew
that, in that event, the whole strength of the Liberal Party would be
directed to the task of beating down the "last obstacle," and that then
it would be possible to carry Home Rule without the British
constituencies being consulted. It was with this end in view that he
took his party into the lobby in support of a Budget that was detested
in Ireland, and threw the whole weight of his influence in British
constituencies on to the Liberal side in the elections of January 1910.

But, notwithstanding the torrent of class prejudice and democratic
passion that was stirred up by six weeks of Liberal oratory, the result
of the elections was a serious loss of strength to the Government. The
commanding Liberal majority of 1906 over all parties in the House of
Commons disappeared, and Mr. Asquith and his Cabinet were once more
dependent on a coalition of Labour Members and Nationalists. The
Liberals by themselves had a majority of two only over the Unionists,
who had won over one hundred seats, so that the Nationalists were
easily in a position to enforce their leader's threat to make Mr.
Asquith "toe the line."

When the Parliament elected in January 1910 assembled disputes arose
between the Government and the Nationalists as to whether priority was
to be given to passing the Budget rejected in the previous session, or
to the Parliament Bill which was to deprive the House of Lords of its
constitutional power to reject legislation passed by the Commons; and
Mr. Redmond expressed his displeasure that "guarantees" had not yet been
obtained from the King, or, in plain language, that a promise had not
been extorted from the Sovereign that he would be prepared to create a
sufficient number of Peers to secure the acceptance of the Parliament
Bill by the Upper House.

The whole situation was suddenly changed by the death of King Edward in
May 1910. Consideration for the new and inexperienced Sovereign led to
the temporary abandonment of coercion of the Crown, and resort was had
to a Conference of party leaders, with a view to settlement of the
dispute by agreement. But no agreement was arrived at, and the
Conference broke up on the 10th of November. Parliament was again
dissolved in December, "on the assumption," as Lord Crewe stated, "that
the House of Lords would reject the Parliament Bill."

During the agitation of this troubled autumn preceding the General
Election, the question of Home Rule was not quite so successfully
concealed from view as in the previous year. The Liberals, indeed,
maintained the same tactical reserve on the subject, alike in their
writings and their speeches. The Liberal Press of the period may be
searched in vain for any clear indication that the electors were about
to be asked to decide once more this momentous constitutional question.
Such mention of it as was occasionally to be found in ministerial
speeches seemed designed to convey the idea that, while the door leading
to Home Rule was still formally open, there was no immediate prospect of
its being brought into use. The Prime Minister in particular did
everything in his power to direct the attention of the country to the
same issues as in the preceding January, among which Ireland had had no
place. In presenting the Government's case at Hull on the 25th of
November, he reminded the country that in the January elections the veto
of the Peers was "the dominant issue"; in the intervening months the
Government, he said, had brought forward proposals for dealing with the
veto, and had given the Lords an opportunity to make proposals of their
own; a defeat of the Liberals in the coming elections would bring in
"Protection disguised as Tariff Reform"; but he (Mr. Asquith) preferred
to concentrate his criticism on Lord Lansdowne's "crude and complex
scheme" for Second Chamber reform; he made a passing mention of
"self-government for Ireland" as a policy that would have the sympathy
of the Dominions, but added that "the immediate task was to secure fair
play for Liberal legislation and popular government." And in his
election address Mr. Asquith declared that "the appeal to the country
was almost narrowed to a single issue, and on its determination hung the
whole future of democratic Government."

This zeal for "popular," or "democratic" government was, however, not
inconsistent apparently with a determination to avoid at all hazards
consulting the will of the people, before doing what the people had
hitherto always refused to sanction. The suggestion had been made
earlier in the autumn that a Referendum, or "Poll of the People" might
be taken on the question of Home Rule. The very idea filled the Liberals
with dismay. Speaking at Edinburgh on the 2nd of December, Mr. Lloyd
George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made the curiously naive
admission, for a "democratic" politician, that the Referendum would
amount to "a prohibitive tariff against Liberalism." A few days earlier
at Reading (November 29th) his Chief sought to turn the edge of this
disconcerting proposal by asking whether the Unionists, if returned to
power, would allow Tariff Reform to be settled by the same mode of
appeal to the country; and when Mr. Balfour promptly accepted the
challenge by promising that he would do so Mr. Asquith retreated under
cover of the excuse that no bargain had been intended.

While the Liberal leaders were thus doing all they could to hold down
the lid of the Home Rule Jack-in-the-box, the Unionists were warning the
country that as soon as Mr. Asquith secured a majority his thumb would
release the spring. Speakers from Ulster carried the warning into many
constituencies, but it was noticed that they were constantly met with
the same retort as in January--that Home Rule was a "bogey," or a "red
herring" dragged across the trail of Tariff Reform and the Peers' veto;
and it is a significant indication of the straits to which the
Government afterwards felt themselves driven to find justification for
dealing with so fundamental a question as the repeal of the Union
without the explicit approval of the electorate, that they devised the
strange doctrine that speeches by their opponents provided them with a
mandate for a policy about which they had themselves kept silence, even
although those speeches had been disbelieved and derided on the very
ground that it would be impossible for Ministers to bring forward a
policy they had not laid before the country during the election.

The extent to which this ministerial reserve was carried was shown by a
question put to Mr. Asquith in his own constituency in East Fife on the
6th of December. Scottish "hecklers" are intelligent and well informed
on current politics, and no one who knows them can imagine one of them
asking the Prime Minister whether he intended to introduce a Home Rule
Bill if Home Rule had been proclaimed as one of the chief items in the
policy of the Government. Mr. Asquith gave an affirmative reply; but the
elections were by this time half over, and in the following week Mr.
Balfour laid stress on the fact that five hundred contests had been
decided before any Minister had mentioned Home Rule. Even after giving
this memorable answer in East Fife Mr. Asquith, speaking at Bury St.
Edmunds on the 12th of December, declared that "the sole issue at that
moment was the supremacy of the people," and he added, in deprecation of
all the talk about Ireland, that "it was sought to confuse this issue by
catechising Ministers on the details of the next Home Rule Bill."

Even if this had been, as it was not, a true description of the
attempts that had been made to extract a frank declaration from the
Government as to their intentions in regard to this vitally important
matter--far more important to hundreds of thousands of people than any
question of Tariff, or of limiting the functions of the Second Chamber
--it was surely a curious doctrine to be propounded by a statesman
zealous to preserve "popular government "! There had been two Home Rule
Bills in the past, differing one from the other in not a few important
respects; discussion had shown that many even of those who supported the
principle of Home Rule objected strongly to this or that proposal for
embodying it in legislation Language had been used by Mr. Asquith
himself, as well as by some of his principal colleagues, which implied
that any future Home Rule Bill would be part of a general scheme of
"devolution," or federation, or "Home Rule All Round"--a solution of the
question favoured by many who hotly opposed separate treatment for
Ireland Yet here was the responsible Minister, in the middle of a
General Election, complaining that the issue was being "confused" by
presumptuous persons who wanted to know what sort of Home Rule, if any,
he had in contemplation in the event of obtaining a majority sufficient
to keep him in power.

Under such circumstances it would have been a straining of
constitutional principles, and a flagrant violation of the canons of
that "democratic government" of which Mr Asquith had constituted himself
the champion, to pass a Home Rule Bill by means of a majority so
obtained, even if the majority had been one that pointed to a sweeping
turnover of public opinion to the side of the Government The elections
of December 1910, in point of fact, gave no such indication. The
Government gained nothing whatever by the appeal to the country.
Liberals and Unionists came back in almost precisely the same strength
as in the previous Parliament. They balanced each other within a couple
of votes in the new House of Commons, and the Ministry could not have
remained twenty-four hours in office except in coalition with Labour and
the Irish Nationalists.

The Parliament so elected and so constituted was destined not merely to
destroy the effective power of the House of Lords, and to place on the
Statute-book a measure setting up an Irish Parliament in Dublin, but to
be an assembly longer in duration and more memorable in achievement than
any in English history since the Long Parliament. During the eight years
of its reign the Great War was fought and won; the "rebel party" in
Ireland once more, as in the Napoleonic Wars, broke into armed
insurrection in league with the enemies of England; and before it was
dissolved the political parties in Great Britain, heartily supported by
the Loyalists of Ulster, composed the party differences which had raged
with such passion over Home Rule and other domestic issues, and joined
forces in patriotic resistance to the foreign enemy.

But before this transformation took place nearly four years of agitation
and contest had to run their course. In the first session of the
Parliament, by a violent use of the Royal Prerogative, the Parliament
Bill became law, the Peers accepting the measure under duress of the
threat that some four or five hundred peerages would, if necessary, be
created to form a majority to carry it. It was then no longer possible
for the Upper House to force an appeal to the country on Home Rule, as
it had done in 1893. All that was necessary was for a Bill to be carried
in three successive sessions through the House of Commons, to become
law. "The last obstacle to Home Rule," as Mr. Redmond called it, had
been removed. The Liberal Government had taken a hint from the procedure
of the careful burglar, who poisons the dog before breaking into the
house.

The significance of the manner in which the Irish question had been kept
out of view of the electorate by the Government and their supporters was
not lost upon the people of Ulster. In January 1911, within a month of
the elections, a meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council was held at
which a comprehensive resolution dealing with the situation that had
arisen was adopted, and published as a manifesto. One of its clauses
was:

     "The Council has observed with much surprise the singular reticence
     as regards Home Rule maintained by a large number of Radical
     candidates in England and Scotland during the recent elections, and
     especially by the Prime Minister himself, who barely referred to
     the subject till almost the close of his own contest. In view of
     the consequent fact that Home Rule was not at the late appeal to
     the country placed as a clear issue before the electors, it is the
     judgment of the Council that the country has given no mandate for
     Home Rule, and that any attempt in such circumstances to force
     through Parliament a measure enacting it would be for His Majesty's
     Ministers a grave, if not criminal, breach of constitutional duty."

The great importance, in relation to the policy subsequently pursued by
Ulster, of the historical fact here made clear--namely, that the "will
of the people" constitutionally expressed in parliamentary elections has
never declared itself in favour of granting Home Rule to Ireland, lies,
first, in the justification it afforded to the preparations for active
resistance to a measure so enacted; and, secondly, in the influence it
had in procuring for Ulster not merely the sympathy but the open support
of the whole Unionist Party in Great Britain. Lord Londonderry, one of
Ulster's most trusted leaders, who afterwards gave the whole weight of
his support to the policy of forcible resistance, admitted in the House
of Lords in 1911, in the debates on the Parliament Bill, that the
verdict of the country, if appealed to, would have to be accepted. The
leader of the Unionist Party, Mr. Bonar Law, made it clear in February
1914, as he had more than once stated before, that the support he and
his party were pledging themselves to give to Ulster in the struggle
then approaching a climax, was entirely due to the fact that the
electorate had never sanctioned the policy of the Government against
which Ulster's resistance was threatened. The chance of success in that
resistance "depended," he said, "upon the sympathy of the British
people, and an election would undoubtedly make a great difference in
that respect"; he denied that Mr. Asquith had a "right to pass any form
of Home Rule without a mandate from the people of this country, which
he has never received"; and he categorically announced that "if you get
the decision of the people we shall obey it." And if, as then appeared
likely, the unconstitutional conduct of the Government should lead to
bloodshed in Ireland, the responsibility, said Mr. Bonar Law, would be
theirs, "because you preferred to face civil war rather than face the
people."[8]

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, in, 492.

[4] Ibid., 493.

[5] Ibid., 505.

[6] _Annual Register_, 1910, p. 240.

[7] See _Letters to Isabel_, by Lord Shaw of Dunfermline, p. 130.

[8] _Parliamentary Debates_ (5th Series), vol. I viii, pp. 279-84.




CHAPTER III

ORGANISATION AND LEADERSHIP


From the day when Gladstone first made Home Rule for Ireland the leading
issue in British politics, the Loyalists of Ulster--who, as already
explained, included practically all the Protestant population of the
Province both Conservative and Liberal, besides a small number of
Catholics who had no separatist sympathies--set to work to organise
themselves for effective opposition to the new policy. In the hour of
their dismay over Gladstone's surrender Lord Randolph Churchill,
hurrying from London to encourage and inspirit them, told them in the
Ulster Hall on the 22nd of February, 1886, that "the Loyalists in Ulster
should wait and watch--organise and prepare."[9] They followed his
advice. Propaganda among themselves was indeed unnecessary, for no one
required conversion except those who were known to be inconvertible. The
chief work to be done was to send speakers to British constituencies;
and in the decade from 1885 to 1895 Ulster speakers, many of whom were
ministers of the different Protestant Churches, were in request on
English and Scottish platforms.

A number of organisations were formed for this purpose, some of which,
like the Irish Unionist Alliance, represented Unionist opinion
throughout Ireland, and not in Ulster alone. Others were exclusively
concerned with the northern Province, where from the first the
opposition was naturally more concentrated than elsewhere. In the early
days, the Ulster Loyalist and Patriotic Union, organised by Lord
Ranfurly and Mr. W.R. Young, carried on an active and sustained campaign
in Great Britain, and the Unionist Clubs initiated by Lord Templetown
provided a useful organisation in the smaller country towns, which still
exists as an effective force. The Loyal Orange Institution, founded at
the end of the eighteenth century to commemorate, and to keep alive the
principles of, the Whig Revolution of 1688, had fallen into not
unmerited disrepute prior to 1886. Few men of education or standing
belonged to it, and the lodge meetings and anniversary celebrations had
become little better than occasions for conviviality wholly inconsistent
with the irreproachable formularies of the Order. But its system of
local Lodges, affiliated to a Grand Lodge in each county, supplied the
ready-made framework of an effective organisation. Immediately after the
introduction of Gladstone's first Bill in 1886 it received an immense
accession of strength. Large numbers of country gentlemen, clergymen of
all Protestant denominations, business and professional men, farmers,
and the better class of artisans in Belfast and other towns, joined the
local Lodges, the management of which passed into capable hands; the
character of the Society was thereby completely and rapidly transformed,
and, instead of being a somewhat disreputable and obsolete survival, it
became a highly respectable as well as an exceedingly powerful political
organisation, the whole weight of whose influence has been on the side
of the Union.

A rallying cry was given to the Ulster Loyalists in the famous phrase
contained in a letter from Lord Randolph Churchill to a correspondent in
May 1886: "Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right." From this time
forward the idea that resort to physical resistance would be preferable
to submission to a Parliament in Dublin controlled by the "rebel party"
took hold of the popular mind in Ulster, although after the elections of
1886 there was no serious apprehension that the necessity would arise,
until the return to power of Mr. Gladstone at the head of a small
majority in 1892 brought about a fresh crisis.

The work of organisation was then undertaken with greater energy and
thoroughness than before. It was now that Lord Templetown founded the
Unionist Clubs, which spread in an affiliated network through Ulster,
and proved so valuable that, after falling into neglect during the ten
years of Conservative Government, they were revived at the special
request of the Ulster Unionist Council in December 1910. Nothing,
however, did so much to stimulate organisation and concentration of
effort as the great Convention held in Belfast on the 19th of June 1892,
representing on a democratic basis all the constituencies in Ulster.
Numerous preliminary meetings were arranged for the purpose of electing
the delegates; and of these the Special Correspondent of _The Times_
wrote:

     "Nothing has struck me more in the present movement than the
     perfect order and regularity with which the preliminary meetings
     for the election of delegates has been conducted. From city and
     town and village come reports of crowded and enthusiastic
     gatherings, all animated by an equal ardour, all marked by the same
     spirit of quiet determination. There has been no 'tall talk,' no
     over-statement; the speeches have been dignified, sensible, and
     practical. One of the most marked features in the meetings has been
     the appearance of men who have never before taken part in public
     life, who have never till now stood on a public platform. Now for
     the first time they have broken with the tranquil traditions of a
     lifetime, and have come forward to take their share and their
     responsibility in the grave danger which threatens their
     country."[10]

There being no building large enough to hold the delegates, numbering
nearly twelve thousand, every one of whom was a registered voter
appointed by the polling districts to attend the Convention, a pavilion,
the largest ever used for a political meeting in the kingdom, was
specially constructed close to the Botanical Gardens in Belfast. It
covered 33,000 square feet, and, owing to the enthusiasm of the workmen
employed on the building, it was erected (at a cost of over L3,000)
within three weeks. It provided seating accommodation for 13,000 people,
but the number who actually gained admittance to the Convention was
nearly 21,000, while outside an assemblage, estimated by the
correspondent of _The Times_ at 300,000, was also addressed by the
principal speakers.

The commencement of the proceedings with prayer, conducted by the
Primate of all Ireland and the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church, set
a precedent which was extensively followed in later years throughout
Ulster, marking the spirit of seriousness which struck numerous
observers as characteristic of the Ulster Movement. The speakers were
men representative of all the varied interests of the Province---
religious, agricultural, commercial, and industrial--and among them were
two men, Mr. Thomas Sinclair and Mr. Thomas Andrews, who had been
life-long Liberals, but who from this time forward were distinguished
and trusted leaders of Unionist opinion in Ulster. It was Mr. Andrews
who touched a chord that vibrated through the vast audience, making them
leap to their feet, cheering for several minutes. "As a last resource,"
he cried, "we will be prepared to defend ourselves." But the climax of
this memorable assembly was reached when the chairman, the Duke of
Abercorn, with upraised arm, and calling on the audience solemnly to
repeat the words one by one after him, gave out what became for the
future the motto and watchword of Ulster loyalty: "We will not have Home
Rule." It was felt that this simple negation constituted a solemn vow
taken by the delegates, both for themselves and for those they
represented--an act of self-dedication to which every loyal man and
woman in Ulster was committed, and from which there could be no turning
back.

The principal Resolution, adopted unanimously by the Convention,
formulated the grounds on which the people of the Province based their
hostility to the separatist policy of Home Rule; and as frequent
reference was made to it in after-years as an authoritative definition
of Ulster policy, it may be worth while to recall its terms:

     "That this Convention, consisting of 11,879 delegates representing
     the Unionists of every creed, class, and party throughout Ulster,
     appointed at public meetings held in every electoral division of
     the Province, hereby solemnly resolves and declares: 'That we
     express the devoted loyalty of Ulster Unionists to the Crown and
     Constitution of the United Kingdom; that we avow our fixed resolve
     to retain unchanged our present position as an integral portion of
     the United Kingdom, and protest in the most unequivocal manner
     against the passage of any measure that would rob us of our
     inheritance in the Imperial Parliament, under the protection of
     which our capital has been invested and our homes and rights
     safeguarded; that we record our determination to have nothing to do
     with a Parliament certain to be controlled by men responsible for
     the crime and outrages of the Land League, the dishonesty of the
     Plan of Campaign, and the cruelties of boycotting, many of whom
     have shown themselves the ready instruments of clerical domination;
     that we declare to the people of Great Britain our conviction that
     the attempt to set up such a Parliament in Ireland will inevitably
     result in disorder, violence, and bloodshed, such as have not been
     experienced in this century, and announce our resolve to take no
     part in the election or proceedings of such a Parliament, the
     authority of which, should it ever be constituted, we shall be
     forced to repudiate; that we protest against this great question,
     which involves our lives, property, and civil rights, being treated
     as a mere side-issue in the impending electoral struggle; that we
     appeal to those of our fellow countrymen who have hitherto been in
     favour of a separate Parliament to abandon a demand which
     hopelessly divides Irishmen, and to unite with us under the
     Imperial Legislature in developing the resources and furthering the
     best interests of our common country.'"

There can be no doubt that the Ulster Convention of 1892, and the
numerous less imposing demonstrations which followed on both sides of
the Channel and took their tone from it, of which the most notable was
the great meeting at the Albert Hall in London on the 22nd of April,
1893, had much effect in impressing and instructing public opinion, and
thus preparing the way for the smashing defeat of the Liberal Home Rule
Party in the General Election of 1895. After that event vigilance again
relaxed during the ten years of Unionist predominance which followed.
But the organisation was kept intact, and its democratic method of
appointing delegates in every polling district provided a permanent
electoral machinery for the Unionist Party in the constituencies, as
well as the framework for the Ulster Unionist Council, which was brought
into existence in 1905, largely through the efforts of Mr. William
Moore, M.P. for North Armagh. This Council, with its executive Standing
Committee, was thenceforward the acknowledged authority for determining
all questions of Unionist policy in Ulster.

Its first meeting was held on the 3rd of March, 1905, under the
presidency of Colonel James McCalmont, M.P. for East Antrim. The first
ten members of the Standing Committee were nominated by Colonel
Saunderson, M.P., as chairman of the Ulster Parliamentary Party. They
were, in addition to the chairman himself, the Duke of Abercorn, the
Marquis of Londonderry, the Earl of Erne, the Earl of Ranfurly, Colonel
James McCalmont, M.P., the Hon. R.T. O'Neill, M.P., Mr. G. Wolff, M.P.,
Mr. J.B. Lonsdale, M.P., and Mr. William Moore, K.C., M.P. These
nominations were confirmed by a ballot of the members of the Council,
and twenty other members were elected forthwith to form the Standing
Committee. This first Executive Committee of the organisation which for
the next fifteen years directed the policy of Ulster Unionism included
several names that were from this time forward among the most prominent
in the movement. There were the two eminent Liberals, Mr. Thomas
Sinclair and Mr. Thomas Andrews, and Mr. John Young, all three of whom
were members of the Irish Privy Council; Colonel R.H. Wallace, C.B., Mr.
W.H.H. Lyons, and Sir James Stronge, leaders of the Orangemen; Colonel
Sharman-Crawford, Mr. E.M. Archdale, Mr. W.J. Allen, Mr. R.H. Reade, and
Sir William Ewart. Among several "Unionist candidates for Ulster
constituencies" who were at the same meeting co-opted to the Council, we
find the names of Captain James Craig and Mr. Denis Henry, K.C. The Duke
of Abercorn accepted the position of President of the Council, and Mr.
E.M. Archdale was elected chairman of the Standing Committee. Mr. T.H.
Gibson was appointed secretary. In October 1906 the latter resigned his
post owing to failing health, and, on the motion of Mr. William Moore,
M.P., Mr. Richard Dawson Bates, a solicitor practising in Belfast, was
"temporarily" appointed to fill the vacancy. This temporary appointment
was never formally made permanent, but no question in regard to the
secretaryship was ever raised, for Mr. Bates performed the duties year
after year to the complete satisfaction of everyone connected with the
organisation, and in a manner that earned the gratitude of all Ulster
Unionists. The funds at the disposal of the Council in 1906 only enabled
a salary of L100 a year to be paid to the secretary--a salary that was
purely nominal in the case of a professional gentleman of Mr. Bates's
standing; but the spirit in which he took up his duties was seen two
years later, when it was found that out of this salary he had himself
been paying for clerical assistance; and then, of course, this matter
was properly adjusted, which the improved financial position of the
Council happily rendered possible.

The declared purpose of the Ulster Unionist Council was to form a union
of all local Unionist Associations in Ulster; to keep the latter in
constant touch with their parliamentary representatives; and "to be the
medium of expressing Ulster Unionist opinion as current events may from
time to time require." It consisted at first of not more than 200
members, of whom 100 represented local Associations, and 50 represented
the Orange Lodges, the remaining 50 being made up of Ulster members of
both Houses of Parliament and of certain "distinguished residents in or
natives of Ulster" to be co-opted by the Council. As time went on the
Council was considerably enlarged, and its representative character
improved. In 1911 the elected membership was raised to 370, and included
representatives of local Associations, Orange Lodges, Unionist Clubs,
and the Derry Apprentice Boys. In 1918 representatives of the Women's
Associations were added, and the total elected membership was increased
to 432. The delegates elected by the various constituent bodies were in
the fullest sense representative men; they were drawn from all classes
of the population; and, by the regularity with which they attended
meetings of the Council whenever business of any importance was to be
transacted, they made it the most effective political organisation in
the United Kingdom.

A campaign of public meetings in England and Scotland conducted jointly
by the Ulster Unionist Council and the Irish Unionist Alliance in 1908
led to a scheme of co-operation between the two bodies, the one
representing Unionists in the North and the other those in the southern
Provinces, which worked smoothly and effectively. A joint Committee of
the Unionist Associations of Ireland was therefore formed in the same
year, the organisations represented on it being the two already named
and the Ulster Loyalist Anti-Repeal Union. The latter, which in earlier
years had done excellent spade-work under the fostering zeal of Lord
Ranfurly and Mr. William Robert Young, was before 1911 amalgamated with
the Unionist Council, so that all rivalry and overlapping was
thenceforward eliminated from the organisation of Unionism in Ulster.
The Council in the North and the Irish Unionist Alliance in Dublin
worked in complete harmony both with each other and with the Union
Defence League in London, whose operations were carried on under the
direction of its founder, Mr. Walter Long.

The women of Ulster were scarcely less active than the men in the matter
of organisation. Although, of course, as yet unenfranchised, they took
as a rule a keener interest in political matters--meaning thereby the
one absorbing question of the Union--than their sex in other parts of
the United Kingdom. When critical times for the Union arrived there was,
therefore, no apathy to be overcome by the Protestant women in Ulster.
Early in 1911 the "Ulster Women's Unionist Council" was formed under the
presidency of the Duchess of Abercorn, and very quickly became a most
effective organisation side by side with that of the men. The leading
spirit was the Marchioness of Londonderry, but that it was no
aristocratic affair of titled ladies may be inferred from the fact that
within twelve months of its formation between forty and fifty thousand
members were enrolled. A branch in Mr. Devlin's constituency of West
Belfast, which over four thousand women joined in its first month of
existence, of whom over 80 per cent, were mill-workers and shop-girls in
the district, held a very effective demonstration on the 11th of
January, 1912, at which Mr. Thomas Sinclair, the most universally
respected of Belfast's business men, made one of his many telling
speeches which familiarised the people with the commercial and financial
aspects of Home Rule, as it would be felt in Ulster. The central Women's
Council followed this up with a more imposing gathering in the Ulster
Hall on the 18th, which adopted with intense enthusiasm the declaration:
"We will stand by our husbands, our brothers, and our sons, in whatever
steps they may be forced to take in defending our liberties against the
tyranny of Home Rule."

Thus before the end of 1911 men and women alike were firmly organised in
Ulster for the support of their loyalist principles. But the most
effective organisation is impotent without leadership. Among the
declared "objects" of the Ulster Unionist Council was that of acting "as
a connecting link between Ulster Unionists and their parliamentary
representatives." In the House of Commons the Ulster Unionist Members,
although they recognised Colonel Edward Saunderson, M.P., as their
leader until his death in 1906, did not during his lifetime, or for some
years afterwards, constitute a separate party or group. When Colonel
Saunderson died the Right Hon. Walter Long, who had held the office of
Chief Secretary in the last year of the Unionist Administration, and who
had been elected for South Dublin in 1906, became leader of the Irish
Unionists--with whom those representing Ulster constituencies were
included. But in the elections of January 1910 Mr. Long was returned for
a London seat, and it therefore became necessary for Irish Unionists to
select another leader.

By this time the Home Rule question had, as the people of Ulster
perceived, become once more a matter of vital urgency, although, as
explained in the preceding chapter, the electors of Great Britain were
too engrossed by other matters to give it a thought, and the Liberal
Ministers were doing everything in their power to keep it in the
background. The Ulster Members of the House of Commons realised,
therefore, the grave importance of finding a leader of the calibre
necessary for dealing on equal terms with such orators and
Parliamentarians as Mr. Asquith and Mr. John Redmond. They did not
deceive themselves into thinking that such a leader was to be found
among their own number. They could produce several capable speakers, and
men of judgment and good sense; but something more was needed for the
critical times they saw ahead. After careful consideration, they took a
step which in the event proved to be of momentous importance, and of
extreme good fortune, for the enterprise that the immediate future had
in store for them. Mr. J.B. Lonsdale, Member for Mid Armagh, Hon.
Secretary of the Irish Unionist Parliamentary Party, was deputed to
request Sir Edward Carson, K.C., to accept the leadership of the Irish
Unionist party in the House of Commons.

Several days elapsed before they received an answer; but when it came it
was, happily for Ulster, an acceptance. It is easy to understand Sir
Edward Carson's hesitation before consenting to assume the leadership.
After carrying all before him in the Irish Courts, where he had been Law
Officer of the Crown, he had migrated to London, where he had been
Solicitor-General during the last six years of the Unionist
Administration, and by 1910 had attained a position of supremacy at the
English Bar, with the certain prospect of the highest legal advancement,
and with an extremely lucrative practice, which his family circumstances
made it no light matter for him to sacrifice, but which he knew it would
be impossible for him to retain in conjunction with the political duties
he was now urged to undertake. Although only in his fifty-seventh year,
he was never one of those who feel younger than their age; nor did he
minimise in his own mind the disability caused by his too frequent
physical ailments, which inclined him to shrink from embarking upon
fresh work the extent and nature of which could not be exactly foreseen.
As to ambition, there are few men who ever were less moved by it, but he
could not leave altogether out of consideration his firm
conviction--which ultimately proved to have been ill-founded--that
acceptance of the Ulster leadership would cut him off from all
promotion, whether political or legal.[11]

Moreover, although for the moment it was the leadership of a
parliamentary group to which he was formally invited, it was obvious
that much more was really involved; the people in Ulster itself needed
guidance in the crisis that was visibly approaching. Ever since Lord
Randolph Churchill, with the concurrence of Lord Salisbury, first
inspired them in 1886 with the spirit of resistance in the last resort
to being placed under a Dublin Parliament, and assured them of British
sympathy and support if driven to that extremity, the determination of
Ulster in this respect was known to all who had any familiarity with the
temper of her people. Any man who undertook to lead them at such a
juncture as had been reached in 1910 must make that determination the
starting-point of his policy. It was a task that would require not only
statesmanship, but political courage of a high order. Lord Randolph
Churchill, in his famous Ulster Hall speech, had said that "no
portentous change such as the repeal of the Union, no change so
gigantic, could be accomplished by the mere passing of a law; the
history of the United States will teach us a different lesson." Ulster
always took her stand on the American precedent, though the exemplar was
Lincoln rather than Washington. But although the scale of operations
was, of course, infinitely smaller, the Ulster leader would, if it came
to the worst, be confronted by certain difficulties from which Abraham
Lincoln was free. He might have to follow the example of the latter in
forcibly resisting secession, but his legal position would be very
different. He might be called upon to resist technically legal
authority, whereas Lincoln had it at his back. To guide and control a
headstrong people, smarting under a sense of betrayal, when entering on
a movement pregnant with these issues, and at the same time to stand up
against a powerful Government on the floor of the House of Commons, was
an enterprise upon which any far-seeing man might well hesitate to
embark.

Pondering over the invitation conveyed to him in his Chambers in the
Temple, Carson may, therefore, well have asked himself what inducement
there was for him to accept it. He was not an Ulsterman. As a Southerner
he was not familiar with the psychology of the northern Irish; the
sectarian narrowness popularly attributed to them outside their province
was wholly alien to his character; he was as far removed by nature from
a fire-eater as it was possible for man to be; he was not fond of
unnecessary exertion; he preferred the law to politics, and disliked
addressing political assemblies. In Parliament he represented, not a
popular constituency, but the University of Dublin. But, on the other
hand, he was to the innermost core of his nature an Irish Loyalist. His
youthful political sympathies had, indeed, been with the Liberal Party,
but he instantly severed his connection with it when Gladstone joined
hands with Parnell. He had made his name at the Irish Bar as Crown
Prosecutor in the troubled period of Mr. Balfour's Chief Secretaryship,
and this experience had bred in him a hearty detestation of the whining
sentimentality, the tawdry and exaggerated rhetoric, and the
manufactured discontent that found vent in Nationalist politics. A
sincere lover of Ireland, he had too much sound sense to credit the
notion that either the freedom or the prosperity of the country would be
increased by loosening the tie with Great Britain. Although he as yet
knew little of Ulster, he admired her resolute stand for the Union, her
passionate loyalty to the Crown; he watched with disgust the way in
which her defences were being sapped by the Liberal Party in England;
and the thought that such a people were perhaps on the eve of being
driven into subjection to the men whose character he had had so much
opportunity to gauge in the days of the Land League filled him with
indignation.

If, therefore, he could be of service in helping to avert so great a
wrong Sir Edward Carson came to the conclusion that it would be shirking
a call of duty were he to decline the leadership that had been offered
him. Realising to the full all that it meant for himself--inevitable
sacrifice of income, of ease, of chances of promotion, a burden of
responsibility, a probability of danger--he gave his consent; and the
day he gave it--the 21st of February, 1910--should be marked for all
time as a red-letter day in the Ulster calendar.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] _Lord Randolph Churchill_, by the Right Hon. W.S. Churchill, vol.
ii, p. 62.

[10] _The Times_, June 16th, 1892.

[11] He expressed this conviction to the author in 1911.




CHAPTER IV

THE PARLIAMENT ACT: CRAIGAVON


A good many months were to elapse before the Unionist rank and file in
Ulster were brought into close personal touch with the new leader of the
Irish Unionist Parliamentary Party. The work to be done in 1910 lay
chiefly in London, where the constitutional struggle arising out of the
rejection of the "People's Budget" was raging. But shortly before the
General Election of December a demonstration was held in the Ulster Hall
in Belfast, in the hope of opening the eyes of the English and Scottish
electors to the danger of Home Rule. Mr. Walter Long was the principal
speaker, and Sir Edward Carson, in supporting the resolution, ended his
speech by quoting Lord Randolph Churchill's famous jingling phrase,
"Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right."

On the 31st of January, 1911, when the elections were over, he went over
from London to preside at an important meeting of the Ulster Unionist
Council. The Annual Report of the Standing Committee, in welcoming his
succession to Mr. Long in the leadership, spoke of his requiring no
introduction to Ulstermen; and it is true that he had occasionally
spoken at meetings in Belfast, and that his recent speech in the Ulster
Hall had made an excellent impression. But he was not yet a really
familiar figure even in Belfast, while outside the city he was
practically unknown, except of course by repute. That a man of his
sagacity would quickly make his weight felt was never in doubt; but few
at that time can have anticipated the extent to which a stranger--with
an accent proclaiming an origin south of the Boyne--was in a short time
to captivate the hearts, and become literally the idolised leader, of
the Ulster democracy.

For the latter are a people who certainly do not wear their hearts on
their sleeves for daws to peck at. In the eyes of the more volatile
southern Celts they seem a "dour" people. They are naturally reserved,
laconic of speech, without "gush," far from lavish in compliment, slow
to commit themselves or to give their confidence without good and proved
reason.

Opportunity for the populace to get into closer touch with the leader
did not, however, come till the autumn. He was unable to attend the
Orange celebration on the 12th of July, when the anniversary, which
preceded by less than a month the "removal of the last obstacle to Home
Rule" by the passing of the Parliament Act, was kept with more than the
usual fervour, and the speeches proved that the gravity of the situation
was fully appreciated. The Marquis of Londonderry, addressing an immense
concourse of Belfast Lodges, stated that it was the first time an
Ex-Viceroy had been present at an Orange gathering, but that he had
deliberately created the precedent owing to his sense of the danger
threatening the Loyalist cause.

It was the first of innumerable similar actions by which Lord
Londonderry identified himself whole-heartedly with the popular
movement, throwing aside all the conventional restraints of rank and
wealth, and thereby endearing himself to every man and woman in
Protestant Ulster. There was no more familiar figure in the streets of
Belfast. Barefooted street urchins, catching sight of him on the steps
of the Ulster Club, would gather round and, with free-and-easy
familiarity, shout "Three cheers for Londonderry." He knew everybody and
was everybody's friend. There was no aristocratic hauteur or aloofness
about his genial personality. He was in the habit of entertaining the
whole Unionist Council, some five hundred strong, at luncheon or dinner
as the occasion required, when important meetings of the delegates took
place. Distinguished political visitors from England could always be
invited over without thought for their entertainment, since a welcome at
Mount Stewart was never wanting. His financial support of the political
movement was equally open-handed.

But, helpful as were his hospitality and his subscriptions, it was the
countenance and support of a man who had held high Cabinet office, and
especially the great position of Viceroy of Ireland, that made Lord
Londonderry's full participation an asset of incalculable value to the
cause he espoused. Moreover, while he was always ready to cross the
Channel, even if for a few hours only, when wanted for any conference or
public meeting, never pleading his innumerable social and political
engagements in London or the North of England as an excuse for absence,
his natural modesty of character made it easy for him to act under the
leadership of another. Indeed, he underrated his own abilities; but
there are probably not many men of his prominence and antecedents who,
if similarly placed, would have been able to give, without a trace of
_amour-propre,_ to a leader who had in former years been his own
official subordinate, the consistently loyal backing that Lord
Londonderry gave to Sir Edward Carson.

But, although there never was the slightest friction between the two
men, a difference of opinion between them on an important point showed
itself within a few months of Carson's acceptance of the leadership. In
July 1911 the excitement over the Parliament Bill reached its climax.
When the Government announced that the King had given his assent to the
creation of whatever number of peerages might be required for carrying
the measure through the Upper House, the party known as "Die Hards" were
for rejecting it and taking the consequences; while against this policy
were ranged Lord Lansdowne, Lord Curzon, and other Unionist leaders, who
advocated the acceptance of the Bill under protest. On the 20th of July
Carson told Lansdowne that in his judgment "the disgrace and ignominy of
surrender on the question far outweighed any temporary advantage" to be
gained by the two years' delay of Home Rule which the Parliament Bill
would secure.[12] Lord Londonderry, on the other hand, supported the
view taken by Lord Lansdowne, and he voted with the majority who carried
the Bill on the 10th of August. This step temporarily clouded his
popularity in Ulster, but not many weeks passed before he completely
regained the confidence and affection of the people, and the difference
of opinion never in the smallest degree interrupted the harmony of his
relations with Sir Edward Carson.

The true position of affairs in relation to Home Rule had not yet been
grasped by the British public. As explained in a former chapter, it had
not been in any real sense an issue in the two General Elections of the
previous year, and throughout the spring and summer of 1911 popular
interest in England and Scotland was still wholly occupied with the
fight between "Peers and People" and the impending blow to the power of
the Second Chamber; and the coronation festivities also helped to divert
attention from the political consequences to which the authors of the
Parliament Bill intended it to lead.

The first real awakening was brought about by an immense demonstration
held at Craigavon, on the outskirts of Belfast, on the 23rd of
September. The main purpose of this historic gathering was to bring the
populace of Ulster face to face with their new leader, and to give him
an opportunity of making a definite pronouncement of a policy for
Ulster, in view of the entirely novel situation resulting from the
passing of the Parliament Act.

For that Act made it possible for the first time for the Liberal Home
Rule Party to repeal the Act of Union without an appeal to the country.
It enacted that any Bill which in three successive sessions was passed
without substantial alteration through the House of Commons might be
presented for the Royal Assent without the consent of the Lords; and an
amendment to exclude a Home Rule Bill from its operation had been
successfully resisted by the Government. It also reduced the maximum
legal duration of a Parliament from seven to five years; but the
existing Parliament was still in its first session, and there was
therefore ample time, under the provisions of the new Constitution, to
pass a Home Rule Bill before the next General Election, as the coalition
of parties in favour of Home Rule constituted a substantial majority in
the House of Commons.

The question, therefore, which the Ulster people had now to decide was
no longer simply how they could bring about the rejection of a Home Rule
Bill by propaganda in the British constituencies, as they had hitherto
done with unfailing success, although that object was still kept in
view, but what course they should adopt if a Home Rule Act should be
placed on the Statute-book without those constituencies being consulted.
Was the day at last approaching when Lord Randolph Churchill's
exhortation must be obeyed? Or were they to be compelled, because the
Cabinet had coerced the Sovereign and tricked the people by straining
the royal prerogative in a manner described by Mr. Balfour as "a gross
violation of constitutional liberty," to submit with resignation to the
government of their country by the "rebel party "--the party controlled
by clerical influence, and boasting of the identity of its aims with
those of Wolfe Tone and Robert Emmet? This was the real problem in the
minds of those who flocked to Craigavon on Saturday, the 23rd of
September, 1911, to hear what proposals Sir Edward Carson had to lay
before his followers.

Craigavon was the residence of Captain James Craig, Member of Parliament
for East Down. It is a spacious country house standing on a hill above
the road leading from Belfast to Holywood, with a fine view of Belfast
Lough and the distant Antrim coast beyond the estuary. The lawn in front
of the house, sloping steeply to the shore road, forms a sort of natural
amphitheatre offering ideal conditions for out-of-door oratory to an
unlimited audience. At the meeting on the 23rd of September the platform
was erected near the crest of the hill, enabling the vast audience to
spread out fan-wise over the lower levels, where even the most distant
had the speakers clearly in view, even if many of them, owing to the
size of the gathering, were unable to hear the spoken word.

It was on this occasion that Captain Craig, by the care with which every
minute detail of the arrangements was thought out and provided for,
first gave evidence of his remarkable gift for organisation that was to
prove so invaluable to the Ulster cause in the next few years. The
greater part of the audience arrived in procession, which, starting
from the centre of the city of Belfast, took over two hours to pass a
given point, at the quick march in fours. All the Belfast Orange Lodges,
and representative detachments from the County Grand Lodges, together
with Lord Templetown's Unionist Clubs, and other organisations,
including the Women's Association, took part in the procession. But
immense numbers of people attended the meeting independently; it was
calculated that not less than a hundred thousand were present during the
delivery of Sir Edward Carson's speech, and although there must have
been very many of them who could hear nothing, the complete silence
maintained by all was a remarkable proof--or so it appeared to men
experienced in out-door political demonstrations--of the earnestness of
spirit that prevailed. To some it may appear still more remarkable that,
with such a concourse of people within a couple of miles of Belfast, not
a single policeman was present, and that none was required; no
disturbance of any sort occurred during the day, nor was a single case
of drunkenness observed.

It had been intended that the Duke of Abercorn, whose inspiring
exhortation as chairman of the Ulster Convention in 1892 had never been
forgotten, should preside over the meeting; but, as he was prevented by
a family bereavement from being present, his place was taken by the Earl
of Erne, Grand Master of the Orange Order. The scene, when he rose to
open the proceedings, was indescribable in its impressiveness. Some
members of the Eighty Club happened to be in Ireland at the time, for
the purpose of "seeing for themselves" in the familiar fashion of such
political tourists; but they did not think it worth while to witness
what Ulster was doing at Craigavon. If they had, they could have made a
report to their political leaders which, had it been truthful, might
have averted some irreparable blunders; for they could hardly have
looked upon that sea of eager faces, or have observed the enthusiasm
that possessed such a host of earnest and resolute men, without revising
the opinion, which they had accepted from Mr. Redmond, that there was
"no Ulster question."

The meeting took the form of according a welcome to Sir Edward Carson
as the new leader of Irish Loyalism, and of Ulster in particular. But
before he rose to speak a significant note had already been sounded.
Lord Erne struck it when he quoted words which were to become very
familiar in Ulster--the letter from Gustavus Hamilton, Governor of
Enniskillen in 1689, to "divers of the nobility and gentry in the
north-east part of Ulster," in which he declared: "We stand upon our
guard, and do resolve by the blessing of God to meet our danger rather
than to await it." And the veteran Liberal, Mr. Thomas Andrews, in
moving the resolution of welcome to the leader, expressed the universal
sentiment of the multitude when he exclaimed, "We will never, never bow
the knee to the disloyal factions led by Mr. John Redmond. We will never
submit to be governed by rebels who acknowledge no law but the laws of
the Land League and illegal societies."

A great number of Addresses from representative organisations were then
presented to Sir Edward Carson, in many of which the determination to
resist the jurisdiction of a Dublin Parliament was plainly declared. But
such declarations, although they undoubtedly expressed the mind of the
people, were after all in quite general terms. For a quarter of a
century innumerable variations on the theme "Ulster will fight, and
Ulster will be right," had been fiddled on Ulster platforms, so that
there was some excuse for the belief of those who were wholly ignorant
of North Irish character that these utterances were no more than the
commonplaces of Ulster rhetoric. The time had only now come, however,
when their reality could be put to the test. Carson's speech at
Craigavon crystallised them into practical politics.

Sir Edward Carson's public speaking has always been entirely free from
rhetorical artifice. He seldom made use of metaphor or imagery, or
elaborate periods, or variety of gesture. His language was extremely
simple and straightforward; but his mobile expression--so variable that
his enemies saw in it a suggestion of Mephistopheles, and his friends a
resemblance to Dante--his measured diction, and his skilful use of a
deep-toned voice, gave a remarkable impressiveness to all he said--even,
indeed, to utterances which, if spoken by another, would sometimes have
sounded commonplace or obvious. Sarcasm he could use with effect, and a
telling point was often made by an epigrammatic phrase which delighted
his hearers. And, more than all else, his meaning was never in doubt. In
lucidity of statement he excelled many much greater orators, and was
surpassed by none; and these qualities, added to his unmistakable
sincerity and candour, made him one of the most persuasive of speakers
on the platform, as he was also, of course, in the Law Courts.

The moment he began to speak at Craigavon the immense multitude who had
come to welcome him felt instinctively the grip of his power. The
contrast to all the previous scene--the cheering, the enthusiasm, the
marching, the singing, the waving of handkerchiefs and flags--was deeply
impressive, when, after a hushed pause of some length, he called
attention without preface to the realities of the situation in a few
simple sentences of slow and almost solemn utterance:

     "I know full well what the Resolution you have just passed means; I
     know what all these Addresses mean; I know the responsibility you
     are putting upon me to-day. In your presence I cheerfully accept
     it, grave as it is, and I now enter into a compact with you, and
     every one of you, and with the help of God you and I joined
     together--giving you the best I can, and you giving me all your
     strength behind me--we will yet defeat the most nefarious
     conspiracy that has ever been hatched against a free people. But I
     know full well that this Resolution has a still wider meaning. It
     shows me that you realise the gravity of the situation that is
     before us, and it shows me that you are here to express your
     determination to see this fight out to a finish."

He went on to expose the hollowness of the allegation, then current in
Liberal circles, that Ulster's repugnance to Home Rule was less
uncompromising than it formerly had been. On the contrary, he believed
that "there never was a moment at which men were more resolved than at
the present, with all the force and strength that God has given them,
to maintain the British connection and their rights as citizens of the
United Kingdom." Apart from principle or sentiment, that was an
attitude, he maintained, dictated by practical good sense. He showed how
Ireland had been "advancing in prosperity in an unparalleled measure,"
for which he could quote the authority of Mr. Redmond himself, although
the Nationalist leader had omitted to notice that this advance had taken
place under the legislative Union, and, as Carson contended, in
consequence of it. He laid special emphasis on the point, never
forgotten, that the danger in which they stood was due to the
hoodwinking of the British constituencies by Mr. Asquith's Ministry.

     "Make no mistake; we are going to fight with men who are prepared
     to play with loaded dice. They are prepared to destroy their own
     Constitution, so that they may pass Home Rule, and they are
     prepared to destroy the very elements of constitutional government
     by withdrawing the question from the electorate, who on two
     previous occasions refused to be a party to it."

He ridiculed the "paper safeguards" which Liberal Ministers tried to
persuade them would amply protect Ulster Protestants under a Dublin
Parliament, giving a vivid picture of the plight they would be in under
a Nationalist administration, which, he declared, meant "a tyranny to
which we never can and never will submit"; and then, in a pregnant
passage, he summarised the Ulster case:

     "Our demand is a very simple one. We ask for no privileges, but we
     are determined that no one shall have privileges over us. We ask
     for no special rights, but we claim the same rights from the same
     Government as every other part of the United Kingdom. We ask for
     nothing more; we will take nothing less. It is our inalienable
     right as citizens of the British Empire, and Heaven help the men
     who try to take it from us."

It was all no doubt a mere restatement--though an admirably lucid and
forcible restatement--of doctrine with which his hearers had long been
familiar. The great question still awaited an answer--how was effect to
be given to this resolve, now that there was no longer hope of
salvation through the sympathy and support of public opinion in Great
Britain? This was what the eager listeners at Craigavon hoped in hushed
expectancy to hear from their new leader. He did not disappoint them:

     "Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, says that we are not to be
     allowed to put our case before the British electorate. Very well.
     By that determination he drives you in the ultimate result to rely
     upon your own strength, and we must follow all that out to its
     logical conclusion.... That involves something more than that we do
     not accept Home Rule. We must be prepared, in the event of a Home
     Rule Bill passing, with such measures as will carry on for
     ourselves the government of those districts of which we have
     control. We must be prepared--and time is precious in these
     things--the morning Home Rule passes, ourselves to become
     responsible for the government of the Protestant Province of
     Ulster. We ask your leave at the meeting of the Ulster Unionist
     Council, to be held on Monday, there to discuss the matter, and to
     set to work, to take care that at no time and at no intervening
     interval shall we lack a Government in Ulster, which shall be a
     Government either by the Imperial Parliament, or by ourselves."

Here, then, was the first authoritative declaration of a definite policy
to be pursued by Ulster in the circumstances then existing or foreseen,
and it was a policy that was followed with undeviating consistency under
Carson's leadership for the next nine years. To be left under the
government of the Imperial Parliament was the alternative to be
preferred, and was asserted to be an inalienable right; but, if all
their efforts to that end should be defeated, then "a government by
ourselves" was the only change that could be tolerated. Rather than
submit to the jurisdiction of a Nationalist legislature and
administration, they would themselves set up a Government "_in those
districts of which they had control_." It was because, when the first of
these alternatives had to be sorrowfully abandoned, the second was
offered in the Government of Ireland Act of 1920 that Ulster did not
actively oppose the passing of that statute.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] _Annual Register_, 1911, p. 175.




CHAPTER V

THE CRAIGAVON POLICY AND THE U.F.V.


No time was lost in giving practical shape to the policy outlined at
Craigavon, and in taking steps to give effect to it. On the 25th of
September a meeting of four hundred delegates representing the Ulster
Unionist Council, the County Grand Orange Lodges, and the Unionist
Clubs, was held in Belfast, and, after lengthy discussion in private,
when the only differences of opinion were as to the most effective
methods of proceeding, two resolutions were unanimously adopted and
published. It is noteworthy that, at this early stage in the movement,
out of nearly four hundred popularly elected delegates, numbers of whom
were men holding responsible positions or engaged in commercial
business, not one raised an objection to the policy itself, although its
grave possibilities were thoroughly appreciated by all present. Both
Lord Londonderry, who presided, and Sir Edward Carson left no room for
doubt in that respect; the developments they might be called upon to
face were thoroughly searched and explained, and the fullest opportunity
to draw back was offered to any present who might shrink from going on.

The first Resolution registered a "call upon our leaders to take any
steps they may consider necessary to resist the establishment of Home
Rule in Ireland, solemnly pledging ourselves that under no conditions
shall we acknowledge any such Government"; and it gave an assurance that
those whom the delegates represented would give the leaders "their
unwavering support in any danger they may be called upon to face." The
second decided that "the time has now come when we consider it our
imperative duty to make arrangements for the provisional government of
Ulster," and for that purpose it went on to appoint a Commission of
five leading local men, namely, Captain James Craig, M.P., Colonel
Sharman Crawford, M.P., the Right Hon. Thomas Sinclair, Colonel R.H.
Wallace, C.B., and Mr. Edward Sclater, Secretary of the Unionist Clubs,
whose duties were _(a)_ "to keep Sir Edward Carson in constant and close
touch with the feeling of Unionist Ulster," and _(b)_ "to take immediate
steps, in consultation with Sir Edward Carson, to frame and submit a
Constitution for a Provisional Government of Ulster, having due regard
to the interests of the Loyalists in other parts of Ireland: the powers
and duration of such Provisional Government to come into operation on
the day of the passage of any Home Rule Bill, to remain in force until
Ulster shall again resume unimpaired her citizenship in the United
Kingdom."

At the luncheon given by Lord Londonderry after this business
conference, Carson took occasion to refer to a particularly contemptible
slander to which currency had been given some days previously by Sir
John Benn, one of the Eighty Club strolling seekers after truth. It was
perhaps hardly worth while to notice a statement so silly as that the
Ulster leader had been ready a few weeks previously to betray Ulster in
order to save the House of Lords, but Carson did not yet realise the
degree to which he had already won the confidence of his followers;
moreover, the incident proved useful as an opportunity of emphasising
the uninterrupted mutual confidence between Lord Londonderry and
himself, in spite of their divergence of opinion over the Parliament
Bill. It also gave those present a glimpse of their leader's power of
shrivelling meanness with a few caustic drops of scorn.

The proceedings at Craigavon and at the Conference naturally created a
sensation on both sides of the Channel. They brought the question of
Ireland once more, for the first time since 1895, into the forefront of
British politics. The House of Commons might spend the autumn ploughing
its way through the intricacies of the National Insurance Bill, but
everyone knew that the last and bitterest battle against Home Rule was
now approaching. And, now that the Parliament Act was safely on the
Statute-book, Ministers had no further interest in concealment. During
the elections, from which alone they could procure authority for
legislation of so fundamental a character, Mr. Asquith, as we have seen,
regarded any inquiry as to his intentions as "confusing the issue." But
now that he had the constituencies in his pocket for five years and
nothing further was to be feared from that quarter, his cards were
placed on the table.

On the 3rd of October Mr. Winston Churchill told his followers at Dundee
that the Government would introduce a Home Rule Bill next session "and
press it forward with all their strength," and he added the
characteristic injunction that "they must not take Sir Edward Carson too
seriously." But that advice did not prevent Mr. Herbert Samuel, another
member of the Cabinet, from putting in an appearance in Belfast four
days later, where he threw himself into a ludicrously unequal combat
with Carson, exerting himself to calm the fears of business men as to
the effect of Home Rule on their prosperity; while, in the same week,
Carson himself, at a great Unionist demonstration in Dublin, described
the growth of Irish prosperity in the last twenty years as "almost a
fairy tale," which would be cut short by Home Rule. On the 19th of the
same month Mr. Birrell, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, in a speech at
Ilfracombe, gave some scraps of meagre information in regard to the
provisions that would be included in the coming Home Rule Bill; and on
the 21st Mr. Redmond announced that the drafting of the Bill was almost
completed, and that the measure would be "satisfactory to Nationalists
both in principle and detail."[13]

So the autumn of 1911 wore through--Ministers doling out snippets of
information; members of Parliament and the Press urging them to give
more. The people of Ulster, on the other hand, were not worrying over
details. They did not require to be told that the principle would be
"satisfactory to Nationalists," for they knew that the Government had to
"toe the line"; nor were they in doubt that what was satisfactory to
Nationalists must be unsatisfactory to themselves. What they were
thinking about was not what the Bill would or would not contain, but the
preparations they were making to resist its operation.

A day or two after Craigavon the leader spoke at a great meeting in
Portrush, after receiving, at every important station he passed _en
route_ from Belfast, enthusiastic addresses expressing confidence in
himself and approval of the Craigavon declaration; and in this speech he
considerably amplified what he had said at Craigavon. After explaining
how the whole outlook had been changed by the Parliament Act, which cut
them off from appeal to the sympathies of Englishmen, he pointed out to
his hearers the only course now open to them, namely, that resolved upon
at Craigavon.

     "Some people," he continued, "say that I am preaching disorder. No,
     in the course I am advising I am preaching order, because I believe
     that, unless we are in a position ourselves to take over the
     government of those places we are able to control, the people of
     Ulster, if let loose without that organisation, and without that
     organised determination, might in a foolish moment find themselves
     in a condition of antagonism and grips with their foes which I
     believe even the present Government would lament. And therefore I
     say that the course we recommend--and it has been solemnly adopted
     by your four hundred representatives, after mature discussion in
     which every man understood what it was he was voting about--is the
     only course that I know of that is possible under the circumstances
     of this Province which is consistent with the maintenance of law
     and order and the prevention of bloodshed."

Superficially, these words may appear boldly paradoxical; but in fact
they were prophetic, for the closest observers of the events of the next
three years, familiar with Irish character and conditions, were in no
doubt whatever that it was the disciplined organisation of the Ulster
Unionists alone that prevented the outbreak of serious disorders in the
North. There was, on the contrary, a diminution even of ordinary crime,
accompanied by a marked improvement in the general demeanour, and
especially in the sobriety, of the people.

The speaker then touched upon a question which naturally arose out of
the Craigavon policy of resistance to Home Rule. He had been asked, he
said, whether Ulster proposed to fight against the forces of the Crown.
He had already contrasted their own methods with those of the
Nationalists, saying that Ulstermen would never descend to action "from
behind hedges or by maiming cattle, or by boycotting of individuals"; he
now added that they were "not going to fight the Army and the Navy ...
God forbid that any loyal Irishman should ever shoot or think of
shooting the British soldier or sailor. But, believe me, any Government
will ponder long before it dares to shoot a loyal Ulster Protestant,
devoted to his country and loyal to his King."

In newspaper reports of public meetings, sayings of pith and moment are
often attributed to "A Voice" from the audience. On this occasion, when
Sir Edward Carson referred to the Army and the Navy, "A Voice" cried
"They are on our side." It was the truth, as subsequent events were to
show. It would indeed have been strange had it been otherwise. Men
wearing His Majesty's uniform, who had been quartered at one time in
Belfast or Carrickfergus and at another in Cork or Limerick, could be
under no illusion as to where that uniform was held in respect and where
it was scorned. The certainty that the reality of their own loyalty was
understood by the men who served the King was a sustaining thought to
Ulstermen through these years of trial.

This Portrush speech cleared the air. It made known the _modus
operandi_, as Craigavon had made known the policy. Henceforward Ulster
Unionists had a definite idea of what was before them, and they had
already unbounded confidence both in the sagacity and in the courage of
the man who had become their leader.

The Craigavon meeting led, almost by accident as it were, to a
development the importance of which was hardly foreseen at the time.
Among the processionists who passed through Captain Craig's grounds
there was a contingent of Orangemen from County Tyrone who attracted
general attention by their smart appearance and the orderly precision of
their marching. On inquiry it was learnt that these men had of their own
accord been learning military drill. The spirit of emulation naturally
suggested to others to follow the example of the Tyrone Lodges. It was
soon followed, not by Orangemen alone, but by members of the Unionist
Clubs, very many of whom belonged to no Orange Lodge. Within a few
months drilling--of an elementary kind, it is true--had become popular
in many parts of the country. Colonel R.H. Wallace, C.B., who had served
with distinction in the South African War, where he commanded the 5th
Royal Irish Rifles, was a prominent member of the Orange Institution, in
which he was in 1911 Grand Master of the Belfast Lodges, and Grand
Secretary of the Provincial Grand Orange Lodge of Ulster; and, being a
man of marked ability and widespread popularity, his influence was
powerful and extensive. He was a devoted adherent of Carson, and there
was no keener spirit among the Ulster Loyalist leaders. Colonel Wallace
was among the first to perceive the importance of this military drilling
that was taking place throughout Ulster, and through his leading
position in the Orange Institution his encouragement did much to extend
the practice.

Having been a lawyer by profession before South Africa called him to
serve his country in arms, Wallace was careful to ascertain how the law
stood with regard to the drilling that was going on. He consulted Mr.
James Campbell (afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland), who advised that
any two Justices of the Peace had power to authorise drill and other
military exercises within the area of their jurisdiction on certain
conditions. The terms of the application made by Colonel Wallace himself
to two Belfast magistrates show what the conditions were, and, under the
circumstances of the time, are not without a flavour of humour. The
request stated that Wallace and another officer of the Belfast Grand
Lodge were--

"Authorised on behalf of the members thereof to apply for lawful
authority to them to hold meetings of the members of the said Lodge and
the Lodges under its jurisdiction for the purpose of training and
drilling themselves and of being trained and drilled to the use of arms,
and for the purpose of pr