true, there are a few Irish Roman Catholics who are
Unionists, and a few Protestants who are Home Rulers. But they are so
few and so uninfluential on both sides that the exception only serves to
prove the rule. These exceptions, no doubt, have been abundantly
exploited, and the very most has been made of them. But the great
elementary fact remains, that one-fourth of the Irish people, mostly
Protestant, are resolutely, and even passionately, opposed to Home Rule;
and the remarkable thing is that the most militant Irish Unionists for
the past twenty years have not been the members of the Irish Church who
might be suspected of Protestant Ascendency prejudices, but they are the
Presbyterians and Methodists who never belonged to the old Protestant
Ascendency party. It is of Irish Presbyterians that I can speak with the
most ultimate knowledge. Their record in Ireland requires to be made
perfectly clear. In 1829 they were the champions of Catholic
Emancipation. In 1868 they supported Mr. Gladstone in his great Irish
reforms. They have been at all times the advocates of perfect equality
in religion, and of unsectarianism in education. They stand firm and
staunch on these two principles still. But they are the sternest and
strongest opponents of Home Rule, and their reason is because Home Rule
spells for Ireland a new religious ascendency and the destruction of the
unsectarian principle in education.

I ask on these grounds that English and Scottish electors should pause
for a moment, and open their minds to the fact that there is a great
religious problem at the heart of Home Rule. Irish Presbyterians claim
that they know what they are doing, and that they are not the blind
dupes of religious prejudice and political passion. It is for a great
something that they have embarked in this conflict; they are determined
to risk everything in this resistance, and in proportion as the danger
approaches, in like proportion does their hostility to the Home Rule
claim increase.

What, then, is the secret of this determination? It lies in a nutshell.
A Parliament in Dublin would be under the control and domination of the
Church of Rome. Two facts in Irish life render this not only likely and
probable, but inevitable and certain. The first fact is that
three-fourths of the members would be Roman Catholic, and the second
fact is that the Irish people are the most devoted Roman Catholics at
present in Christendom. No one disputes the first