The genius of Ulster (perhaps through some happy combination of primitive stocks) has always been practical and militant. It was the last Irish province to submit to English rule. The Celtic population which survived the clearances and the plantings has exercised upon planters and settlers the ancient charm of the Celtic stock and made them, in spite of themselves, ipsis Hibernis Hiberniores. The O’Neills were the most formidable antagonists whom the invaders encountered in Ireland. They made the last great stand for national independence. When Owen Roe O’Neill died the Irish nation was, in the words of Davis, “sheep without a shepherd when the snow shuts out the sky” and the flight of the Earls was the sign that the resistance of Ireland was over with the resistance of Ulster. In later times and under changed conditions Ulster retained the prerogative of leadership. The Volunteers who forced the Constitution of 1782 were largely Ulstermen; the leaders of the United Irishmen were to be found in Ulster and the compact of their Union was sealed on the mountain that rises above Belfast. John Mitchel, who led the Young Irelanders in action as Davis was their master in thought, was the son of an Ulster Presbyterian minister. Other Irishmen may have excelled in literature and the arts, have voiced more eloquently the aspirations of their country or sung with more pathos of its fall, but the bent of Ulster has been on the whole towards action and movement. The heart and brain of Ireland may beat and think elsewhere, but Ulster is its right arm. Ireland is proud of Ulster. Under an unnatural and vicious system of government they have quarrelled; but if Ulster were reconciled to Ireland Ulster might lead it where it chose.

On the question of the Home Rule Bill Ulster was almost equally divided. The majority of the Ulster Protestants were against it, though a minority, among whom traditions of Protestant Nationalism had survived the sordid bigotries fostered for a century, were strongly in its favour; the majority of the Catholic population were in favour of it. Among the Nationalists there was a minority who professed the creed of Sinn Fein and of Republicanism: late in 1913 a branch of the Young Republican Party in Belfast, composed of Gaelic Leaguers, members of Freedom Clubs and Trades Unionists unfurled its banner of an orange sunburst on a green ground with the motto in white, “Young Republican Party—Dia agus an Pobul,” and there had been branches of Sinn Fein established in Ulster some years earlier; but on the whole the Ulster Nationalists supported the Parliamentary Party. No geographical or ethnological line of political demarcation could be drawn. There was no district in Ulster which was not politically divided: there was no stock in Ulster which had not members in both political camps. Some of the most outspoken and vehement of the Unionist Party bore, and were proud of, purely Irish names; many of the Nationalists were the bearers of names introduced into Ireland with the planters sent by King James. The settled policy of the Act of the Union had done its work with almost complete success. The Protestant had learned to regard the connection with England as essential to the maintenance of his religious and civil freedom: he believed not only that the Roman Catholic Church was officially intolerant, but that all Roman Catholics were, as a matter of fact, intolerant in conduct and in practice, and incapable of being anything else. And Irish Catholics seemed to him to be peculiarly susceptible to the intolerant influences of their ecclesiastical leaders. When the views of the Catholic Hierarchy in Ireland and those of Irish Nationalists coincided he saw in their agreement the triumph of the “priest in politics”: when they differed he was either at a loss to account for an occurrence so far removed from the settled habits of nature or saw in it an obscure but interesting symptom of a fear of Home Rule on the part of the Hierarchy, a fear that Home Rule might jeopardise their own predominance. But not even the supposed hesitations of the Hierarchy could reconcile him to the prospect of a Home Rule under which the electoral majority would be “priest-ridden.” Unkind critics might have urged that people whose whole political outlook was hag-ridden by the phantoms of popes and priests were not in a position to call those “priest-ridden” who at any rate sometimes differed sharply from their clergy in political and civil affairs; but the Ulster Protestant was proof against mere logical quibbles and rhetorical retorts. He had done his thinking about politics with the Act of Union: he had taken his stand: he was careless of taunts, cajolery and threats: let those meddle with him who dared. He spurned the allegation of intolerance, but he was intolerant without knowing it and (to do him justice) for reasons which, had they corresponded with the facts, would have been sound. An Ireland under ecclesiastical despotism, whether Protestant or Catholic, would be no place for a man to live in, and to exchange the Legislative Union with England for a legislative union with Rome would indeed be a disastrous bargain. As a matter of fact, had the Ulster Protestant realized it, there was no fear of any such result. In the Irish Catholic mind there was clearly defined the limit of the sphere in which the Church was supreme. That sphere was much larger than the restricted area within which the Protestant allowed his Church to legislate at its ease: but it was subject to limitations all the same. And it was growing narrower and narrower. Individual ecclesiastics may have roamed at large (and did roam at large) over the whole sphere of human activities: individual priests made monstrous claims upon the submission of their flocks in matters with which they had no kind of concern. The intense devotion to their religion which marks Catholic Irishmen, the respect which they feel for the priesthood which stood by them in dark and evil days, had induced a spirit of patience in submission to claims which could not be substantiated. But with the revival of interest in political thought the position was changing. The battle for political freedom of thought and action which the Fenians had fought had its result. Ecclesiastical claims in civil matters were subject to a close scrutiny. The Gaelic League had more than once asserted with success its claim to be free in its own sphere from any kind of ecclesiastical dictation, and in every instance the people of Ireland has taken its side. The attempt of the Roman Curia to interfere with the subscription to the Parnell testimonial had been an ignominious failure; and the boast of an Irish leader that he would as soon take his politics from Constantinople as from Rome was generally acknowledged to be sound as a statement of theory. But there were still instances enough of impossible claims on the part of the ecclesiastical authorities to afford the Ulster Protestant a good prima facie brief against Home Rule.

Allied to the fear of the “priest in politics” was the fear that under Home Rule every position in Ireland worth speaking of would be given to Roman Catholics and that Protestants would be systematically and ruthlessly excluded. This was an apprehension very difficult to deal with because the real grounds of it were seldom openly expressed. These grounds were first, the consciousness that Irish Catholics had been for generations systematically excluded from all posts that were in the gift of Irish Protestants and the consequent probability that reprisals would be called for and taken; second, the innate conviction, born of generations of religious controversy and suspicion, that Catholics were “not to be trusted,” that, whatever they said to the contrary, they were certain to act harshly towards Protestants, and that the accession to power in Ireland of a permanent Catholic majority would mean persecution in matters of religion and corruption in matters of administration. This position was fortified by a set of arguments, crude in themselves, but less crude than the convictions that required to employ them. It was pointed out that Irish Catholics, being deprived for generations of acceptable opportunities of higher education, and of practically all opportunities of administrative experience, could not be expected to have the necessary qualifications for the posts to which they were certain to be appointed: that this was not their fault (it certainly was not) but that, facts being facts, reasonable persons must take account of them and frame their attitude in accordance with them. It may seem strange that all this was called “adherence to the principles of civil and religious liberty,” that persons calling for religious toleration in the abstract should refuse to practise it in any number of given cases: but though there was a certain amount of conscious artifice in the use of words, arising from a dim feeling that the profession of tolerant and liberal sentiments was more likely to arouse outside sympathy than a blunt statement of religious prejudice, there was, after all, the idea that the only way to preserve civil and religious liberty in Ireland for anybody was to curtail its exercise in practice by the Roman Catholic and Nationalist portion of the country. It was easy for Catholics to point to the number of Protestants who had been honoured and trusted leaders of the national movement, to the friendly terms upon which Protestants and Catholics for the most part lived together in the South and West of Ireland, to the Protestants who had been appointed to positions of trust and profit under boards and in institutions managed by Irish Catholics. The answer was that such Protestants either were the only persons who could be trusted to perform the duties of their position or had proved “accommodating” enough to suit, or that their appointment was part of a deep-laid plan to conceal the real feeling of Catholics to Protestants until such time as, the bait being taken, Protestants would confide in their enemies and hand themselves over to their mercies.

It is evident that no line of argument would have dispelled feelings such as these; and there does not seem to be in fact any possibility of dispelling them by mere professions of friendliness, or by any other means than an experience to the contrary which can build up gradually an opposite conviction.

The religious difficulty was the root difficulty in Ulster with regard to Home Rule. If it had been removed or removable the rest would have been easy; but it was not the only difficulty. There was the fear, widely held by the Belfast merchants and manufacturers, that a Home Rule Parliament would ruin their industries: directly by means of taxation and indirectly by public mismanagement. It was held that an Irish Parliament could not “pay its way” without the imposition of extra taxation, and that no source of profitable taxation was to be found in Ireland save and except the prosperous industries of the North. In the second place, it was believed that, Ireland being largely agricultural, the new Parliament would represent a predominantly agricultural interest and that its legislation might be expected to fail to take into account the industrial interests of the country, mainly represented in the North. Again, an untried Parliament would for a time be almost certainly guilty of mismanagement and incapacity from which the business interests of the North would be sure to suffer.

Lastly, the strong “British” sentiment of Ulster barred the way to any weakening of the tie uniting Ireland to Great Britain. This feeling, amounting at times almost to the consciousness of a secondary nationality, found expression in the theory that Protestant Ulster was a separate “nation.” But though the expression of the theory was often absurd, the feeling which underlay it was genuine. It had not been always there: it was liable to disappear under the stress of stronger feelings: it had been subject to revulsions. When the Irish Church Act was passed, the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, the Cardinalate of Ulster Protestantism, had passed by a majority the following resolution: “That all statements and provisions in the objects, rules and formularies of the Orange institution which impose any obligation on its members to maintain the Legislative Union between Great Britain and Ireland be expunged therefrom.” The resolution was inoperative because a two-thirds majority was required to alter the rules: but that it could be passed is significant of the fact that “British” sentiment is not the ruling sentiment in the stronghold of Ulster Unionism under provocation. Still, though spasmodic and uncertain, the feeling had to be taken into account, and in the hands of skilful manipulators was capable of being worked into a factitious fervour.

While Ulster Unionists were of this mind it was not to be expected that they would acquiesce without protest in the passing of a Home Rule Act: nor was it to be expected that they would think differently because a majority of the electors of Great Britain decided that they should. The only people who could win them were their own countrymen. Sinn Fein saw this clearly and in its own way tried its best to allay Protestant fears and Protestant prejudices. Irish Freedom printed a letter from New York from an old Fenian who said, “The great barrier to Irish success is the fear of the Protestants—unfounded and unreasonable, but undeniably there—that their interests would be in danger in a free Ireland. Remove that fear and the Irish question is solved. It would be of infinitely more service to Ireland to convert ten Ulster Orangemen to Nationality by convincing them that their interests would be safe in a free Ireland than to convince a million Englishmen that the Irish would be loyal to the king.... We had many ex-Orangemen in Fenianism.... All experience shows that it is easier to convert an Orangeman to full nationality than to any form of Home Rule.” But for Irish Catholics to convert Irish Orangemen to anything requires infinite tact, infinite patience, and a long lapse of time: and it cannot be said that either the Sinn Fein or the Republican Party properly estimated the difficulty and complexity of the problem. The attempt to moderate the Ulster resistance by appeals to the principles of democratic government was, if possible, even less successful. It proved vain to urge that under democratic rule the will of the majority must prevail: that every party must expect to be in its turn in a minority and must learn to take the rough with the smooth: that the very principle and object of the Act of Union was that people in Ireland should not have the final say in the Government of Ireland but that the Parliament of the United Kingdom should decide: that both parties in Ireland had acknowledged this principle for generations and that for the Nationalists to act as the Unionists were doing now would have been denounced by the Unionists themselves as an offence against good government. Appeal was made to Ulster in the interests of the Empire to allow Home Rule to have at least a fair trial. It was told that Englishmen were convinced that the government of Ireland was radically vicious, and that the only way to amend it was to entrust the internal affairs of Ireland to a strictly subordinate Parliament: that they felt that to continue in Ireland indefinitely an indefensible system of administration was to embitter the internal relations of the three kingdoms and weaken the Empire at the very centre. It was pointed out that a friendly Ireland would be worth many divisions of the Fleet and Army in the European struggle which could be seen to be approaching and the Ulster Unionists were asked to ‘sacrifice’ to the Empire what Parliament felt they ought no longer to retain.

Neither argument nor appeal had the least effect: the argument meant nothing to them and the appeal was supposed to imply that the argument was known to be unsound. They took their stand upon the Act of Union and declared that, it having once been passed, no Parliament had any right whatever to deprive the Unionists of Ulster of “their rights as British citizens.” It was, of course, perfectly clear that, Home Rule or no Home Rule, everybody in the country was as much a British citizen as ever: and the idea that Parliament could not, if it pleased, repeal the Act of Union (which, as a matter of fact, it was very far indeed from proposing to do) was quite absurd. The fact is that all parties were at cross purposes and that a great many politicians were using language which meant one thing to themselves and another thing to everybody else, while a certain number were using language which they were perfectly well aware did not express what they really meant. “Loyalty to the Empire” did not mean the same thing to the Prime Minister and to the Orange orators who held the ear of Ulster; and when the latter professed sentiments of toleration and good will to “their Catholic fellow-countrymen” (as they sometimes did) they must have known that they were using words which they did not mean literally and strictly. At the bottom of everything was the conviction that, Protestantism being a superior kind of religion, any measure which placed Protestants on a footing of permanent equality with Roman Catholics, a position in which Protestants would (to use a common phrase) “pull only their own weight,” was an offence against first principles, a measure to be resisted to the utmost, first by any arguments which came to hand, and in the last resort by other measures. They were “loyal to the Empire” but they expected loyalty from the Empire to them: placed in Ireland in a position of superiority guaranteed by the Union, they had seen the symbols of superiority one by one stripped from their shoulders. A long series of “concessions” to the Catholics (as successive steps in the establishment of religious equality were described) had, it was said, left “the Irish” without any “real grievance.” The Irish were free to vote, to buy and sell, to build their churches, to have their own schools (which the State paid for), to exercise, in short, all civil rights, with the one restriction, that in the Parliament which legislated for their country they were in a permanent minority. This was the one great result, as it had been the one chief attraction, of the Union, and this it was determined at all hazards to retain.

Everybody at the time underestimated the extent and the vigour of this feeling, except those who shared it. Englishmen thought (when they heard of it) that it was all talk and that a “more reasonable view would eventually prevail”: they never understood that they had rivetted upon Ireland a system which prevented its upholders from taking a “reasonable” view of anything and incapacitated them from understanding any point of view except their own. Irish Nationalists pointed to the long series of truculent threats with which Orange Ulster had greeted every measure of Irish reform. They recalled the “gun clubs” which had been the answer to the establishment of the Board of National Education: the threat to “kick the Queen’s crown into the Boyne” if the Irish Church Act should be passed; and they confidently expected to see a similar luxuriance of denunciation wither before the chilling blast of an Act of Parliament. Sinn Fein and the Republican Party (though they did not grasp the fact that what the Orange Party feared was not the suppression of their religion but the loss of its political ascendancy) adopted an attitude useless to reconcile Ulster to Home Rule but admirably calculated, once Home Rule were passed in defiance of Ulster, to work upon its feeling of resentment at the “betrayal” of its interests and exploit its wounded pride in the interests of the independence of Ireland.

But while Sinn Fein was making its proposals, unheeded (and indeed unheard) by those to whom they were addressed, to disarm the opposition of Ulster to the cause of Irish freedom, the Ulster leaders were taking steps to adopt a policy supposed to have been abandoned in Irish politics since the failure of the Fenian rising. The staid merchants, the prosperous professional classes, the sturdy farmers of Ulster, supported by the Belfast Protestant artizans, had begun to drill. Unionist Clubs were formed throughout the province: volunteers were enrolled in defiance of the law, under the pretext of being associations formed for the purpose of taking “physical exercise,” though with a growing feeling of strength and security this pretext was abandoned. Talk of “guns” and “cold steel” replaced arguments based upon economic conditions and the stringency of the “bonds of Empire.” A theory of “loyalty” was developed compatible with a chartered licence to defy the authority of King and Parliament in the affairs of the United Kingdom. As the inevitable day approached when, by the provisions of the Parliament Act, the Royal Assent to Home Rule must be given, the attitude of the Ulster leaders became more and more at variance with all loyal precedents. The Ulster Volunteer Force was organized as an army for service in the field: it was provided with signallers and despatch riders, with ambulance units and army nurses: hospitals were arranged to receive and tend the expected “casualties”: plans were formed to seize strategic points in the province. A Provisional Government was constituted which on the day of the passing of the Act was to assume the government of Ulster and replace the King’s Government until such time as it might be advisable again to restore the dispossessed monarch to his Ulster dominions. The possibility of outside alliances was not left to chance. The Volunteers were heartened by the news that “the greatest Protestant monarch” in Europe had promised his aid: the Emperor of Germany would not stand idly by while Protestantism in Ireland was put by a British Government under the heel of Irish Catholics. Rifles were still lacking, but they were not long in being supplied. They were imported from Hamburg and landed in Larne; and by means of a perfectly co-ordinated and admirable piece of organization distributed over Ulster within twenty-four hours.

All Ireland, as if stunned by the shock, waited breathlessly to see what would happen. Nothing happened. The Liberal Government, with defiance shouted in its beard, decided that, no actual breach of the “law” having been committed, no prosecutions need take place. The Cabinet was of course in a very difficult position, for it had to reckon not with the Ulster Party only but with the English Tories as well. The latter had seen from the first the uses to which the Ulster Party might be put in the English political struggle. The Conservative party hoped by exploiting “the Ulster question” to bring about the downfall of the Liberal Government: and the further the Ulster Party went, the more thoroughly they frightened moderate people in England by threats of bloodshed, anarchy and civil war, the better: the more truculent the threats of armed resistance the greater the probability that they need never be put into force. It was a dangerous game, but danger added zest to the amusement; and Irish parties, whether Unionist or Nationalist, were to English politicians persons of unaccountable vehemence whose ways were past finding out: in any case once they had served their turn they could quietly be shelved. The Cabinet seems to have considered that this alliance between the Ulster Party and the English Tories at once put the breach of the conventions of politics in Ulster under a kind of sanction and ensured that extreme action would never be taken in Ireland; for it would be absurd to assume that an English party would ever consent to the wild scheme of handing over Ulster interests to the charge of Germany; the rest would be, as it had always been, a matter of arrangement, of the expedients of which the Mother of Parliaments was still fertile. For whatever reason, then, the Cabinet decided to protest against the “unprecedented outrage” and leave the perpetrators to the judgment of posterity. But Nationalist Ireland was not inclined to see in the inaction of the Government merely the inertia of perplexed politicians waiting for an unprecedented problem to point the way to its own solution. They knew by experience that had they imported arms, or proclaimed their intention of doing so, or publicly flouted the meanest of the Irish Executive the Crimes Act would have been put into operation at once and his Majesty’s prisons in Ireland would have been filled. They saw in the failure even to prosecute the Ulster leaders, to proclaim their organization, to deprive them of their arms, merely the traditional tenderness of the British Government to its Irish “friends.” They began to believe that neither English party was really sincere in anything connected with Ireland except in the desire, whether admitted or denied, to maintain the privileges and ascendancy of the Protestant interest. Mr. Redmond was criticised with acrimony and vehemence for failing to do what he could not have done, and forcing the Cabinet to take action. When later the importation of arms into Ireland was prohibited by Order in Council, a proceeding of doubtful legality, this also was interpreted in malam partem: it was aimed not so much at preventing Ulster from getting more arms as at preventing the rest of Ireland from getting any. It was a piquant situation. Ulster, which had been for a century the backbone of the “loyalist” interest in Ireland, whose one publicly proclaimed panacea for all Irish disorders and complaints had been “the firm and impartial administration of the law,” which had called for the suppression of every attempt on the part of Nationalist Ireland even to express its national aspirations, was now openly contemptuous of the law, loud in its expressions of defiance of the Government and charging the Cabinet, suspected of some faint determination to do something to assert itself, with “organizing a pogrom.” On the other hand Nationalist Ireland, the supposed enemy of all law, order and even public decency, was lifting up its hands in horror at the insult to the majesty of British law and calling upon its representatives in Parliament to do something, anything, to ensure respect for it. It called upon the Government to show itself to be in earnest, the Government being in reality as much in earnest as anybody. But, perplexed at the prospect of having to enforce the law in Ireland against the wrong people, the King’s Government continued to eye the Ulster Government, each “willing to wound and yet afraid to strike.” As a matter of fact the Ulster leaders, had they been put to the pinch, could not have made their authority really effective even in their own area: but with admirable and consummate audacity they succeeded in making the fact seem so doubtful that any attempt to suppress them appeared to be involved in serious risk.

Among the Nationalists the only section which was able to use the situation to advantage was the Republican Party. To them it seemed incredible that any Irishman should be willing to fight either for or against such a measure as Home Rule, which gave Ireland a subordinate and impoverished parliament and retained the Imperial connection practically unimpaired. But whatever the merits of the measure in itself it had in their eyes one wholly admirable result. It had for the first time since the days of the Fenians roused a section of Irishmen to arm against the British Government: and it had opened the eyes of all Irish Unionists, armed or unarmed in opposition to it, to the fact that the interests of their party, courted and promoted in Ireland for a century in English interests, were as nothing to an English Government when the exigencies of party warfare required that they should be sacrificed. Their view was put forcibly and humorously by P. H. Pearse in an article contributed to Irish Freedom in 1913. “It is now,” he wrote, “the creed of Irish nationalism (or at least of that Irish nationalism which is vocal on platforms and in the Press) that the possession of arms and the knowledge of the use of arms is a fit subject for satire. To have a rifle is as ridiculous as to have a pimple at the end of your nose, or a bailiff waiting for you round the corner. To be able to use a rifle is an accomplishment as futile as to be able to stand on your head or to be able to wag your ears. This is not the creed of any nationalism that exists or has ever existed in any community, civilized or uncivilized, that has ever inhabited the globe. It has never been the creed of Irish nationalism until this our day. Mitchel and the great confessors of Irish nationalism would have laughed it to scorn. Mitchel indeed did laugh to scorn a similar but much less foolish doctrine of O’Connell’s; and the generation that came after O’Connell rejected his doctrine and accepted Mitchel’s. The present generation of Irish Nationalists is not only unfamiliar with arms but despises all who are familiar with arms. Irish Nationalists share with certain millionaires the distinction of being the only people who believe in Universal Peace—here and now.... It is foolish of an Orangeman to believe that his personal liberty is threatened by Home Rule: but, granting that he believes that, it is not only in the highest degree common sense, but it is his clear duty to arm in defence of his threatened liberty. Personally, I think the Orangeman with a rifle a much less ridiculous figure than the Nationalist without a rifle; and the Orangeman who can fire a gun will certainly count for more in the end than the Nationalist who can do nothing cleverer than make a pun.... I am not defending the Orangeman; I am only showing that his condemnation does not lie in the mouth of an unarmed Nationalist.... Negotiations might be opened with the Orangeman on these lines: You are creating a Provisional Government of Ulster—make it a Provisional Government of Ireland and we will recognize and obey it. O’Connell said long ago that he would rather be ruled by the old Protestant Ascendancy Irish Parliament than by the Union Parliament; ‘and O’Connell was right,’ said Mitchel. He certainly was.... Any six Irishmen would be a better Government of Ireland than the English Cabinet has been.... Better exploit Ireland for the benefit of Belfast than exploit her for the benefit of Westminster. A rapprochement between Orangemen and Nationalists would be difficult. The chief obstacles are the Orangeman’s lack of humour and the Nationalist’s lack of guns: each would be at a disadvantage in a conference. But a sense of humour can be cultivated, and guns can be purchased. One great source of misunderstanding has now disappeared: it has become clear within the last few years that the Orangeman is no more loyal to England than we are. He wants the Union because he imagines that it secures his prosperity: but he is ready to fire on the Union flag the moment it threatens his prosperity. The position is perfectly plain and understandable. Foolish notions of loyalty to England being eliminated, it is a matter for businesslike negotiation. A Nationalist mission to North-east Ulster would possibly effect some good. The case might be put thus: Hitherto England has governed Ireland through the Orange Lodges: she now proposes to govern Ireland through the A.O.H. You object: so do we. Why not unite and get rid of the English? They are the real difficulty; their presence here the real incongruity.” When Pearse wrote this he seemed like a voice crying in the wilderness: but the echoes answered sooner than anyone expected. Pearse afterwards confessed that this and other articles contributed by him at this time to Irish Freedom were written “with the deliberate intention by argument, invective, and satire, of goading those who shared my political views to commit themselves definitely to an armed movement.” The armed movement which resulted was that of the Irish Volunteers.