O’Donovan snorted.
“There’s no such thing as Irish Nationalism left,” he said. “The country is hypnotized. We’ve accepted a Bill which deprives us of the most elementary rights of freemen. We’ve licked the boots of English Liberals. We’ve said ‘thank you’ for any gnawed bones they like to fling to us. We’ve—”
It struck me that O’Donovan was becoming rhetorical. I interrupted him.
“Idealism in politics,” I said, “is one of the most futile things there is. What the Nationalist Party—”
“Don’t call them that,” said O’Donovan. “I tell you they’re not Nationalists.”
“I’ll call them anything you like,” I said, “but until you invent some other name for them I can’t well talk about them without calling them Nationalists.”
“They—” said O’Donovan.
“Very well,” I said. “They. So long as you know who I mean, the pronoun will satisfy me. They had to consider not what men like you wanted, but what the Liberal Party could be induced to give. I don’t say they made the best bargain possible, but—”
“Anyhow,” said McNeice, “we’re not going to be governed by those fellows. That’s the essential point.”
I think it is. The Unionist is not really passionately attached to the Union. He has no insuperable antipathy to Home Rule. Indeed, I think most Unionists would welcome any change in our existing system of government if it were not that they have the most profound and deeply rooted objection to the men whom McNeice describes as “those fellows,” and O’Donovan indicates briefly as “they.”