ogs." The Ulstermen think not, and they have good reasons for
this opinion. The mere threat of Home Rule in 1886 cost forty lives in
the streets of Belfast alone. Who can say what would be the results of
the bill becoming law? Surely every reliable test points in one
direction. The Gladstonian party, without a shadow of reason, have
affected to doubt the courage and resolution of the Northerners, but
the breed of the men and their long history are a sufficient answer to
these cavillers. True it is that their courage has not been
demonstrated by murder, by shooting from behind a wall, or the
battering out of a policeman's brains, a hundred against one, or the
discharging of snipe-shot into the legs of old women and young
children, after the fashion so popular with the party with whom Mr.
Gladstone and his heterogeneous crew are now acting. But for all that,
the pluck and tenacity of Ulstermen are undeniable. Their cause is
good, and left to themselves they would win hands down.

It is therefore demonstrated by a consensus of the weightiest
authorities and by the results of personal investigation that not only
would civil war between Irish parties be the inevitable result of Home
Rule, but that there would also be war between Ireland and England;
that Irish Unionists are determined to resist to the last, and that
they possess the means of resistance. They are touched on the
subjects they hold most sacred--religion, freedom, property; and
despite the assurances of Mr. Gladstone, who desires to judge the
Nationalist party by their future, the keen Ulstermen prefer to judge
them by their past. And bearing these things in mind, it is not
unreasonable to say that Englishmen who support the present policy of
the Separatist party are at once enemies of Ireland and traitors to
their native land.

And now my task as your Special Commissioner in Ireland is at an end.
Without fear or favour I have described the country as I found it, and
have exposed the character and the motives of the men to whom Mr.
Gladstone would entrust its future government. I was no bigoted
partisan when my task began, but in a period of six months I have
traversed the country from end to end, and at every step my first
impressions have been deepened. It would be a folly--yea, it would be
a crime--to withdraw from Ireland that mitigating influence of British
rule which alone prevents a lovely island becoming the foul and
blood-stained arena of remorseless