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Page 26
And if "Ulster" does fight after all? In that event we must only
remember how sorry George Stephenson was for the cow. The military
traditions of the Protestant North are not very alarming. The
contribution of the Enniskilleners to the Battle of the Boyne appears to
have consisted in running away with great energy and discretion. Nor did
they, or their associates, in later years shed any great lustre even on
Imperial arms. I have never heard that the Connaught Rangers had many
recruits from the Shankhill Road, or the Dublin Fusiliers from
Portadown; consequently the present situation disgusts rather than
terrifies us. If rifle-levers ever click in rebellion against a Home
Rule government, duly established by statute under the authority of the
Crown, it will be astonishing to find that every bullet in Ireland is a
member of an Orange Lodge. If "Ulster" repudiates the arbitrament of
reason, and the verdict of a free ballot, she simply puts herself
outside the law. And she may be quite assured that the law, driven back
on its ultimate sanction of force, will very sharply and very amply
vindicate itself.
But it is not courteous to the reader to detain him among such
unrealities as Sir Edward Carson's Civil War. Treason, that is to say
platform treason, is not so much an eccentricity as a habit of
Orangeism. It is a way they have in the Lodges, and their past history
supplies a corrective to their present outburst. Perhaps their most
notable exploit in armed loyalty was their attempt to dethrone, or
rather to defeat in succession to the throne, Queen Victoria. This is a
chapter in their history with regard to which they are far too modest
and reticent.
But the leading case in recent years is of course the attitude of the
Lodges towards the Disestablishment of the Irish Episcopal Church in
1869. The records are singularly rich in what I may perhaps call
Carsonese. Dukes threatened to "fight as men alone can fight who have
the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other." Learned counsel of
the Queen covenanted to "seal their protest with their blood in
martyrdom and battle." Ministers of the gospel were all for kicking the
Crown into the Boyne, keeping their powder dry, shouldering Mini�
rifles, and finally joining the lawyers in the red grave of martyrdom.
An Ulster poet (a satirist one fears) wrote a famous invocation to the
statue of Mr Walker near Derry, beginning:
"Come down out o' that, Mr Walker,
There's work to be done by-and-by,
And this is no time to stand glowerin'
Betwixt the bog-side and the sky."
But Mr Walker did not come down: he remained on his safe pinnacle of
immortality. And of course there was no civil war. That period was wiser
than our own in one respect: nobody of any common sense thought of
spoiling such exquisite blague by taking it seriously. Its motive was
universally understood in Ireland. The orators of the movement never for
a moment dreamed of levying war on Mr Gladstone, but they were
determined to levy blackmail. They saw that they could bluff English
opinion into granting all manner of extravagant compensation for the
extinction of their privileges and their ascendancy, if only the Orange
drum was beaten loudly enough. It was a case of the more cry the more
wool. And in point of fact they succeeded. They obtained financial
arrangements of the most generous character, and, thereafter, the
battle-flags were furled. Within five years of Disestablishment the
Episcopalian Synod was praising it as the happiest event in the life of
that Church. The lawyers, being denied the martyrdom of the battlefield,
stolidly accepted that of promotion to the judicial bench, and a holy
silence descended on the divines.
This strategy having succeeded so admirably in 1868 is repeated in 1912.
"Ulster" has not the least intention of raising war or the sinews of
war; her interest is in the sinews of peace. Although she does not hold
a winning card in her hand she hopes to scoop the pool by a superb
bluff. By menaces of rebellion she expects to be able to insist that
under Home Rule she shall continue encased in an impenetrable armour of
privileges, preferences, and safeguards. She is all the more likely to
succeed because of the tenderness of Nationalist Ireland in her regard.
Short of the absolute surrender by the majority of every shred of its
rights (which is, of course, what is demanded) there are very few
safeguards that we are not prepared to concede to the superstition, the
egotism, or even the actual greed of the Orangemen. But it may as well
be understood that we are not to be either duped or bullied.
If the policy of Ulster Unionism is unreal there is no word in any
language that can describe the phantasmal nature of the grounds on which
it professes to fear national freedom. Home Rule, declare the orators,
will obviously mean Rome Rule. The _Ne Temere_ decree will de-legitimise
every Protestant in the country. The Dublin Parliament will tax every
"Ulster" industry out of existence. One is told that not only do many
people say, but that some people even believe things of this kind. But
then there are people who believe that they are made of Dresden china,
and will break if they knock against a chair. These latter are to be
found in lunatic asylums. It is indeed particularly worth noting that
when a man begins to see in the whole movement of the world a conspiracy
to oppress and injure him our first step is to inquire not into his
grievance but into his sanity. One finds the same difficulty in
discussing Irish politics in terms of the three hallucinations specified
that one finds in discussing, say, Rugby football with a Dresden-china
fellow-citizen. It is better not to make the attempt, but to substitute
a plain statement of obvious facts.
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