of the leading manufacturing centres in Great
Britain; it contains the foremost establishments in Europe, in respect
of such undertakings as linen manufacturing, ship-building, rope-making,
etc. It is the fourth port in the United Kingdom in respect of revenue
from Customs, its contributions thereto being L2,207,000 in 1910, as
compared with L1,065,000 from the rest of Ireland. Ulster's loyalty to
the British King and Constitution is unsurpassed anywhere in His
Majesty's dominions.

The North of Ireland has contributed to Imperial service some of its
greatest ornaments. England owes to Ulster Governors-General like Lord
Dufferin and Lord Lawrence; soldiers like John Nicholson and Sir George
White; administrators like Sir Henry Lawrence and Sir Robert Montgomery;
great judges like Lord Cairns and Lord Macnaghten. At the recent Delhi
Durbar the King decorated three Ulster men, one of them being Sir John
Jordan, British Ambassador at Pekin. Ulster produced Sir Robert Hart,
the incomparable Chinese administrator, who might also have been our
Ambassador to China had he accepted the position.

The Ulster plantation is the only one which has fulfilled the purpose
for which Irish plantations were made. The famous colonisation on both
sides of the Shannon by Cromwell entirely failed of its design, the
great proportion of its families having, through inter-marriage, become
absorbed in the surrounding population.

Ulster Unionists, therefore, having conspicuously succeeded in
maintaining the trust committed to their forefathers, and constituting
as they do a community intensely loyal to the British connection,
believe that they present a case for the unimpaired maintenance of that
connection which is impregnable on the grounds of racial sentiment,
inherent justice, social well-being, and the continued security of the
United Kingdom and of the Empire. They cannot believe that their British
fellow-citizens will, at this crisis, turn a deaf ear to this claim.
Three or four decades after the Ulster plantation, when, in the midst of
the horrors of 1641, the Scotch colony in Ulster was threatened with
extermination, it appealed for help to its motherland. It did not appeal
in vain. A collection for its benefit was made in the Scottish churches,
supplies of food and several regiments of Scottish soldiers were sent to
its aid, and its position was saved. We are confident that the
descendants of these generous helpers will be no less tr