The purpose of the Irish Unionist party in the Commons is purely negative, to defeat Home Rule. It does not represent North-East Ulster, or any other fragment of Ireland, in any sense but that. It is passionately sentimental and absolutely unrepresentative of the practical, virile genius of Ulster industry. The Irish Unionist peers, in addition to voicing the same negative, are for the most part the spokesmen of a small minority of Irishmen in whom the long habit of upholding landlord interests has begun to outlive the need.
I have said little directly about the problem of modern Ulster, not because I underrate its importance, which is very great, but because I have some hope that my arguments up to this point may be perceived to have a strong, though indirect, bearing upon it.[67] The religious question I leave to others, with only these few observations. It is impossible to make out a historical case for the religious intolerance of Roman Catholics in Ireland, or a practical case for the likelihood of a Roman Catholic tyranny in the future. No attempt which can be described as even plausible has ever been made in either direction. The late Mr. Lecky, a Unionist historian, and one of the most eminent thinkers and writers of our time, has nobly vindicated Catholic Ireland, banishing both the theory and the fear into the domain of myth.[68]
He has shown, what, indeed, nobody denies, that, from the measures which provoked the Rebellion of 1641, through the Penal Code, to the middle of the nineteenth century, intolerance, inspired by supposed political necessities, and of a ferocity almost unequalled in history, came from the Protestant colonists. In that brilliant little essay of his Nationalist youth, "Clerical Influences" (1861), he described the sectarian animosity which was raging at that period as "the direct and inevitable consequence of the Union," and wrote as follows: "Much has been said of the terrific force with which it would rage were the Irish Parliament restored. We maintain, on the other hand, that no truth is more clearly stamped upon the page of history, and more distinctly deducible from the constitution of the human mind, than that a national feeling is the only check to sectarian passions." He was himself an anti-Catholic extremist in the sense of holding (with many others) that "the logical consequences of the doctrines of the Church of Rome would be fatal to an independent and patriotic policy in any land." But he insists in the same passage "that nothing is more clear than that in every land where a healthy national feeling exists, Roman Catholic politicians are both independent and patriotic."
He never recanted these opinions (which are confirmed by the subsequent course of events) even after his conversion to Unionism, but derived his opposition to Home Rule from a dread of all democratic tendencies,[69] the only ground on which, if men would be willing to confess the naked truth, it can be opposed. There the matter ought to rest. If the doctrines of the Church of Rome are, in fact, inconsistent with political freedom—I myself pronounce no opinion on that point—it is plain to the most superficial observer that the Church, as a factor in politics, stands to lose rather than to gain by Home Rule. British statesmen have often accepted that view, and have endeavoured to use the Roman Catholic hierarchy against popular movements, just as they enlisted its influence to secure the Union. The Roman Catholic laity have often subsequently rejected what they have considered to be undue political dictation from the seat of authority in Rome.
If I may venture an opinion, I believe that both of these mutually irreconcilable propositions—that Home Rule means Rome Rule, and that Rome is the enemy to Home Rule—are wrong.[70] Such ludicrous contradictions only help to destroy the case against trusting a free Ireland to give religion its legitimate, and no more than legitimate, position in the State. Ireland is intensely religious, and it would be a disaster of the first magnitude if the Roman Catholic masses were to lose faith in their Church. The preservation of that faith depends on the political Liberalism of the Church.
Corresponding tolerance will be demanded of Ulster Protestants. At present passion, not reason, governs the religious side of their opposition to Home Rule. It is futile to criticize Ulster Unionists for making the religious argument the spear-head of their attack on Home Rule. The argument is one which especially appeals to portions of the British electorate, and the rules of political warfare permit free use of it. It was pushed beyond the legitimate point, to actual violence, in the Orange opposition to responsible government in Canada in 1849. And it has more than once inflamed and embittered Australian politics, as it inflames the politics of certain English constituencies. But it is hardly to be conceived that Ulster Unionists really fear Roman Catholic tyranny. The fear is unmanly and unworthy of them. To anyone who has lived in an overwhelmingly Catholic district, and seen the complete tranquillity and safety in which Protestants exercise their religion, it seems painfully abnormal that a great city like Belfast, with a population more than two-thirds Protestant, should become hysterical over Catholic tyranny. It would be physically impossible to enforce any tyrannical law in Ulster or anywhere else, even if such a law were proposed, and many leading Protestants from all parts of Ireland have stated publicly that they have no fear of any such result from Home Rule.[71]
"Loyalty" to the Crown is a false issue. Disloyalty to the Crown is a negligible factor in all parts of Ireland. Loyalty or disloyalty to a certain political system is the real matter at issue. At the present day the really serious objections to Home Rule on the part of the leading Ulster Unionists seem to be economic. They have built up thriving trades under the Union. They have the closest business connections with Great Britain, and a mutual fabric of credit. They cherish sincere and profound apprehensions that their business prosperity will suffer by any change in the form of government. To scoff at these apprehensions is absurd and impolitic in the last degree. But to reason against them is also an almost fruitless labour. Those who feel them vaguely picture an Irish Parliament composed of Home Rulers and Unionists, in the same proportion to population as at present, and divided by the same bitter and demoralizing feuds. But there will be no Home Rulers after Home Rule, that is to say, if the Home Rule conceded is sufficient. I believe that Ulster Unionists do not realize either the beneficent transformation which will follow a change from sentimental to practical politics in Ireland, as it has followed a similar change in every other country in the Empire, or the enormous weight which their own fine qualities and strong economic position will give them in the settlement of Irish questions.
Nor do they realize, I venture to think, that any Irish Government, however composed, will be a patriotic Government pledged and compelled for its own credit and safety to do its best for the interests of Ireland. I have never met an Irishman who was not proud of the northern industries, and it is obvious that the industrial prosperity of the north is vital to the fiscal and general interests of Ireland, just as the far more wealthy mining interests of the Rand are vital to the stability and prosperity of the Transvaal, and were regarded as such and treated as such by the farmer majority of the Transvaal after the grant of Home Rule. Those interests have prospered amazingly since, and in that country, be it remembered, volunteer British corps raised on the Rand had been the toughest of all the British foes which the peasant commandos had to meet in a war ended only four years before.
If the fears of Ulster took any concrete form, it would be easier to combat them; but they are unformulated, nebulous. Meanwhile, it is hard to imagine what measure of oppression could possibly be invented by the most malignant Irish Government which would not recoil like a boomerang upon those in whose supposed interests it was framed. I shall have to deal with this point again in discussing taxation, and need here only remind the reader that Ulster is not a Province, any part of which could possibly be injured by any form of taxation which did not hit other Provinces equally.
It is the belief of Ulster Unionists that their prosperity depends on the maintenance of the Union, but the belief rests on no sound foundation. Rural emigration from Ulster, even from the Protestant parts, has been as great as from the rest of Ireland.[72] It is easy to point to a fall in stocks when the Home Rule issue is uppermost, but such phenomena occur in the case of big changes of government in any country. They merely reflect the fact that certain moneyed interests do, in fact, fear a change of government, and whether those fears are irrational or not, the effect is the same. It is an historical fact, on the other hand, that political freedom in a white country, in the long run invariably promotes industrial expansion and financial confidence. Canada is one remarkable example, Australia is another. The Balkan States are others. Not that I wish to push the colonial example to extremes. Vast undeveloped territories impair the analogy to Ireland; but it is none the less true that when a country with a separate economic life of its own obtains rulers of its own choice, and gains a national pride and responsibility, it goes ahead, not backward.