may snatch from us the power of
determining a political controversy at the ballot-box instead of on the
battle-field. It is folly to raise cases on the constitution; it is
always of the most doubtful prudence to handle the casuistry of
politics. Nothing will tempt me to discuss in these pages what are the
ethical limits to the exercise of constitutionally unlimited
sovereignty, or at what point legal oppression justifies armed
resistance. Two considerations must at this crisis be kept in mind. The
one is that, until oppression is actually committed, the maintenance of
order is the duty of every citizen, and, like most political duties, is
also a matter of the most obvious expediency; the other is that the
compulsion of loyal citizens to forgo the direct protection of the
government whose sovereignty they admit, and to accept the rule of a
government whose moral claim to their allegiance they deny, is a
proceeding of the grossest injustice. Let the people of England also be
solemnly warned that the Gladstonian policy of 1893 repeats the
essential error of the condemned policy of Protestant ascendency.
Gladstonians hold that the democracy of England may ally itself with the
democracy of Ireland, and may treat lightly the rights and the wishes of
a Protestant and Conservative minority. In bygone times the aristocratic
and Protestant government of England allied itself with the Protestant
and aristocratic government of Ireland, and held light the rights and
the wishes of the Catholic majority. Each policy labours under the same
defect. The enforced supremacy of a class, be it a minority or a
majority, is opposed to the equitable principle of the supremacy of the
whole nation. There is no reason to suppose that Catholic ascendency
will be found more tolerable than was Protestant ascendency.

The policy of Unionism should be marked by simplicity.

The Unionist leaders have a clear though a difficult duty to perform.
Their one immediate function is resistance to a dangerous revolution.
Logically and politically, there was a good deal to be said for the
deliberate refusal to discuss, or to vote upon, any of the details of
the Home Rule Bill. There is always a danger lest the attempt to amend a
radically and essentially vicious measure should promote the delusion
that it is amendable. And any success in debate would be dearly
purchased if it led the electors to suppose that the Government of
Ireland Bill, which in fact embodie