rse. A sensible man would say 'You have your due, and you'll
get no more.' Treat Ireland so, and all will be well. Be firm and the
trouble will amount to nothing. Paddy will soon drop shouting when he
sees it has no effect. The agitators will soon dry up, or waste their
sweetness on the desert air. But so long as there is a prospect of
success, so long as you have a weak-kneed old lunatic in power, so
long as Paddy sees a prospect of obtaining substantial advantages,
such as reduction of rent or rent-free farms, so long the row will be
kept up. If Englishmen could only realize that, the whole movement
would cease. For Gladstonian Englishmen mistakenly think that they can
settle the thing by further concession and get to their own business.
Few of them care for Home Rule on its own merits. They want Ireland
out of the way. They are going the wrong way about it. To give this is
to give everything. And let me tell you something new. Once the bill
becomes law, and the exactions of a Home Rule Government were enforced
by England a great part of Ulster would in pure self-protection, being
no longer bound to England by the ties of loyalty, sympathy, and
mutual dependence--a great part, practically the whole of Ulster,
would box the compass and go in for complete independence, as the best
thing possible under the circumstances. England would then feel
something in her vitals, something serious and something astonishing.
The only rebellion that ever gave England any trouble was worked by
Ulstermen. The most effective agitators have nearly always been
renegade Protestants. Let England think what she is about before she,
at the bidding of a foolish old man, turns her back on her faithful
friends to throw herself into the arms of her sworn enemies."

Another Conservative, for I met none other in Armagh, said:--"Surely
the minority are worth some consideration. There are one million two
hundred thousand loyal Protestants, and certainly many thousand Roman
Catholics, who are against the Bill. As Sir George Trevelyan said, 'We
must never forget that there are two Irelands,' and as John Bright
said, 'There are more loyal men and women in Ireland than the whole
population of men and women in Wales.' Yet Mr. Gladstone is so very
considerate of Wales. Ireland can point to fully one-third of the
entire population, who view with abhorrence the very name of Home
Rule, and are pledged to resist it to the last. These people have been
and are t