Intense, indeed, must be the racial prejudice which can cause Ulstermen to forget the only really glorious memories of their past. Orange memories are stirring, but they are not glorious beside the traditions of the Volunteers. The Orange flag is the symbol of conquest, confiscation, racial and religious ascendancy. It is not noble for Irishmen to celebrate annually a battle in which Ireland was defeated, or to taunt their Catholic compatriots with agrarian lawlessness to which their own forefathers were forced to resort, in order to obtain a privileged immunity from the same scandalous land laws. Ulstermen reached spiritual greatness when, like true patriots, they stood for tolerance, Parliamentary reform, and the unity of Ireland. They fell, surely, when they consented to style themselves a "garrison" under the shelter of an absentee Parliament, which, through the enslavement and degradation of the old Irish Parliament, had driven tens of thousands of their own race into exile and rebellion.
They cherish the Imperial tradition, but let them love its sublime and reject its ignoble side. It is sublime where it stands for liberty; ignoble—and none knew this better than the Ulster-American rebels—where it stands for government based on the dissensions of the governed.
The verdict of history is that for men in the position of the Ulster Unionists, the path of honour and patriotism, and the path of true self-interest, lies in co-operation with their fellow-citizens for the attainment of political freedom under the Crown. It is not as if they had to create a tradition. The tradition lives.
CHAPTER X
THE FRAMEWORK OF HOME RULE
I.
THE ELEMENTS OF THE PROBLEM.
It was not only to support the principle of Home Rule for Ireland that I followed in some detail the growth of the Liberal principle of government as applied to outlying portions of the British Empire. The historical circumstances which moulded the form of each individual Colonial Constitution, the Constitutions themselves, and the modifications they have subsequently undergone, supply a mass of material rich in interest and instruction for the makers of an Irish Constitution. Nor is the analogy academical. Ireland is at this moment under a form of government unique, so far as I know, in the whole world, but resembling more closely than anything else that of a British Crown Colony where the Executive is outside popular control, and the Legislature is only partially within it; with this additional and crowning inconvenience, that the Irish Crown Colony can obstruct the business of the Mother Country. What we have to do is to liberate Great Britain and to give Ireland a rational Constitution—not pedantically adhering to any colonial model, but recognizing that, however closely her past history resembles that of a Colony, Ireland, by her geographical position, has a closer community of interest with Great Britain than that of any Colony.
Three main difficulties have to be contended with: first, that the system to be overthrown is so ancient, and the prejudice against Home Rule so inveterate; second, the Irish are not agreed upon any constructive scheme; third, the confusion in the popular mind between "Federal" and other systems of Home Rule.