For our opposition to Home Rule we are condemned by the Irish Nationalists as the enemies of our country. We believe ourselves to be its best friends. We believe Home Rule to be the greatest obstacle to Irish progress and prosperity. Irish Nationalists have made Home Rule their only idol and denounce every one who will not worship at its shrine. Every reform, unless they thought that it tended to advance Home Rule or magnify their powers, has received their hostility, sometimes open and avowed, at other times secret and working through devious ways.
No one who reads the history of Ulster can doubt that its inhabitants have not as much love of Ireland and as much wish to see her prosperous as the Nationalists. They indeed attribute all Irish shortcomings to the Union. Ulstermen, bearing in mind their own progress since the Union, not unnaturally decline to accept so absurd an argument. The Union has been no obstacle to their development: why should it have been the barrier to the rest of Ireland? Ulstermen believe that the Union with Great Britain has assisted the development of their commerce and industry. They are proud of the progress of Belfast and of her position in the industrial and shipping world. Without great natural advantages it has been built up by energy, application, clearheadedness and hard work. The opposition to Home Rule is the revolt of a business and industrial community against the domination of men who have shown no aptitude for either. The United Irish League, the official organization of the Home Rule Party, is, as a Treasurer once confessed, remarkably lacking in the support of business men, merchants, manufacturers, leaders of industry, bankers, and men who compose a successful and progressive community.[64] In the management of their party funds, their impending bankruptcy but a few years ago, the mad scheme of New Tipperary, and the fiasco of the Parnell Migration Company there is the same monotonous story of failure. Can surprise be felt that Ulstermen refuse to place the control of national affairs in the hands of those who have shown little capacity in the direction of their own personal concerns. What responsible statesman would suggest that the City of London, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle, or any advancing industrial and commercial centre in Great Britain should be ruled and governed and taxed, without the hope of effective intervention, by a party led by Mr. Keir Hardie and Mr. Lansbury? Yet Home Rule means much like that for Ulstermen, and the impossibility of the scheme is emphasized in the example of Ireland by religious differences which have their roots in Irish history.
Ulster's opposition to Home Rule is no unreasoning hate. It proceeds not from the few; it is not the outcome of political prejudice; it is the hostility of a progressive and advancing people who have made their portion of their country prosperous and decline to hand it over to the control of representatives from the most backward and unprogressive counties.
They are actuated by love of their country. They yield to no one in their patriotism and their desire for Ireland's welfare. They have always given their support to movements which have had for their objects the improvement of Irish conditions and the increase of Irish well-being. Their sympathies are with Irish social reform—and the sympathies of many of them with social reform of an advanced character. Contrast their attitude with that of the Irish Nationalist Party in respect of reforms which have proceeded from the Imperial Parliament and movements within Ireland herself.
Take the Irish Land Act of 1903, accepted by both political parties in Great Britain as affording the real solution of the Irish agrarian problem. What has been the Irish Nationalist attitude? Praise for it on platforms in the United States when it was essential to reach the pockets of subscribers by recounting a record of results gained from the expenditure of American donations; but in Ireland itself opposition to its effective working. Read Nationalist speeches and there is always running through them the fear that the Act by solving the land question would remove the real motive power which made Home Rule a living issue. Hence the interference to prevent landlords and tenants coming to an agreement over sales without outside assistance. So to-day Irish Nationalists are still endeavouring to keep alive the old bad feeling between landlord and tenant which they so successfully created in the seventies and eighties. What better proof of this deliberate attempt to prevent the success of a great reform is to be found than the frank utterance of Mr. John Dillon at Swinford.[65] "It has been said," he declared, "that we have obstructed the smooth working of the Act. I wish to heaven we had the power to obstruct the smooth working of the Act more than we did. It has worked too smoothly—far too smoothly to my mind.... Some men have complained with the past year that the Land Act was not working fast enough. For my part I look upon it as working a great deal too fast, and at a pace which has been ruinous to the people." What have the Ulster people done which can compare with this opposition to a measure that has admittedly effected a beneficial revolution in Irish agrarian life? Yet Mr. John Dillon is acclaimed as a true Irish patriot and we are denounced as the enemies of our country!
What greater blow to the continuance of land purchase than the Birrell Act of 1909. Granted that some revision of the law was necessary in respect of finance; yet, the Act of 1909 went far beyond finance. Any one with a knowledge of land purchase law knows that the measure of 1909 contained innumerable provisions of a technical character calculated to make the free sale between landlord and tenant difficult, and in respect of a large portion of Ireland impossible. No wonder it was welcomed by the Irish Nationalist Party, since it did so much to restore them to their self-elected position of counsellors and arbiters in the affairs of the tenants. And Ulster Unionists for declining to accede to this re-establishment of the old supremacy of the agitators are regarded as the opponents of liberty and freedom!
The same sad story of Nationalist opposition to Irish progress meets the student of the co-operative movement at every period of its existence. No one who knows Sir Horace Plunkett will believe for a moment that he was actuated by other than the sole desire to do something for Ireland's benefit. From the leaders of the Nationalist Party he has had no assistance, although they claim to be the only workers for Irish progress, and the co-operative movement was intended to complete the agrarian revolution. In more recent times the hostility of the Nationalist leaders has become bolder as they found a ready instrument in Mr. T. W. Russell in his official capacity as Vice-President of the Department of Agriculture.
The co-operative movement is flourishing in spite of the opposition of the Nationalist leaders. From Ulster it has received considerable support for the reason that Ulstermen believed it to be for the benefit of Irish agriculture. Their support, unlike Nationalist hostility, has not arisen from political motives. They do not believe that Sir Horace Plunkett has given a moment's thought to politics in their relation to the co-operative movement, and they have appreciated his movement either as co-operators or as supporters and members of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society. Contrast the Ulster welcome with the Nationalist opposition, and ask why we should be denounced as bad Irishmen and the Nationalists receive praise as true lovers of Ireland.
The co-operative movement has brought into existence another movement which has for its object the prosperity of Irish industries. The Industrial Development movement which seeks to bring before the people of Ireland and the Irish public bodies the excellence of Irish manufactures is as yet in its infancy. It has no political character, yet I should hesitate to say that official Irish Nationalism gives it hearty support. In Belfast, however, it has made great strides. It gains its support in Ulster not for any political reason, but simply and solely because the North of Ireland thinks that the industrial movement is to Ireland's advantage.
Where in these instances is our "bigotry" or our hostility to Irish progress? Does not the balance of credit when the comparison is made with the Nationalists come on the side of Ulster? The Nationalists show their unreasoning opposition by proclaiming that they would rather see Ireland in rags and poverty than abate their demand for Home Rule. Ulster Unionists desire to see Ireland prosperous and contented. For that reason they welcome all reforms and movements from whatever quarter which have this excellent end in view. They intend to offer the strongest and most unrelenting opposition to Home Rule not as political partisans for party gain, but as Irishmen determined to resist so reactionary a measure which they firmly believe will prove of the greatest evil to their unhappy country.