ts in Irish history.

Ulster's opposition to Home Rule is no unreasoning hate. It proceeds not
from the few; it is not the outcome of political prejudice; it is the
hostility of a progressive and advancing people who have made their
portion of their country prosperous and decline to hand it over to the
control of representatives from the most backward and unprogressive
counties.

They are actuated by love of their country. They yield to no one in
their patriotism and their desire for Ireland's welfare. They have
always given their support to movements which have had for their objects
the improvement of Irish conditions and the increase of Irish
well-being. Their sympathies are with Irish social reform--and the
sympathies of many of them with social reform of an advanced character.
Contrast their attitude with that of the Irish Nationalist Party in
respect of reforms which have proceeded from the Imperial Parliament and
movements within Ireland herself.

Take the Irish Land Act of 1903, accepted by both political parties in
Great Britain as affording the real solution of the Irish agrarian
problem. What has been the Irish Nationalist attitude? Praise for it on
platforms in the United States when it was essential to reach the
pockets of subscribers by recounting a record of results gained from
the expenditure of American donations; but in Ireland itself opposition
to its effective working. Read Nationalist speeches and there is always
running through them the fear that the Act by solving the land question
would remove the real motive power which made Home Rule a living issue.
Hence the interference to prevent landlords and tenants coming to an
agreement over sales without outside assistance. So to-day Irish
Nationalists are still endeavouring to keep alive the old bad feeling
between landlord and tenant which they so successfully created in the
seventies and eighties. What better proof of this deliberate attempt to
prevent the success of a great reform is to be found than the frank
utterance of Mr. John Dillon at Swinford.[65] "It has been said," he
declared, "that we have obstructed the smooth working of the Act. I wish
to heaven we had the power to obstruct the smooth working of the Act
more than we did. It has worked too smoothly--far too smoothly to my
mind.... Some men have complained with the past year that the Land Act
was not working fast enough. For my part I look upon it as working a
great deal too fast, and