rty; but when it comes to legislation which he does
not like, Mr. Bonar Law's language is fully as incendiary. He is not
content with opposing the Irish Home Rule Bill: he gives notice that
when it has become a law the opposition will be continued in a more
serious form. The passage of the bill, he declares, will be the signal
for civil war. Ulster will fight. Parliament may pass the Home Rule
Bill, but when it does so its troubles will have just begun. Where will
it find the troops to coerce the province?

One of the most distinguished Unionist Members of Parliament, addressing
a great meeting at Belfast says, "You are sometimes asked whether you
propose to resist the English army? I reply that even if this Government
had the wickedness (which, on the whole, I believe), it is wholly
lacking in the nerve required to give an order which in my deliberate
judgment would shatter for years the civilization of these islands." If
the Government does not have the nerve to employ its troops, "It will be
for the moon-lighters and the cattle-maimers to conquer Ulster
themselves, and it will be for you to show whether you are worse men, or
your enemies better men, than the forefathers of you both. But I note
with satisfaction that you are preparing yourselves by the practice of
exercises, and by the submission to discipline, for the struggle which
is not unlikely to test your determination. The Nationalists are
determined to rule you. You are determined not to be ruled. A collision
of wills so sharp may well defy the resources of a peaceful solution....
On this we are agreed, that the crisis has called into existence one of
those supreme issues of conscience amid which the ordinary landmarks of
permissible resistance to technical law are submerged."

When one goes to the Church to escape from these sharp antagonisms, he
is confronted with huge placards giving notice of meetings to protest
against "The Robbery of God." The robber in this case is the Government,
which proposes to disendow, as well as disestablish, the Church in
Wales. Noble lords denounce the outrage. Mr. Lloyd George replies by
reminding their lordships that their landed estates were, before the
dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII, Church property. If
they wish to make restitution of the spoil which their ancestors took,
well and good. But let them not talk about the robbery of God, while
their hands are "dripping with the fat of sacrilege."

The retor