ome asperity, that the
Prime Minister had accepted responsibility for taking the initiative in
making proposals to meet objections whose reasonableness he did not
admit. The Opposition, he thought, should have been left to put forward
some plan.

Yet Redmond's attitude, and the attitude of the House, was considerably
affected by an unusual speech which had been delivered by the Ulster
leader.

Sir Edward Carson, as everyone knows, is not an Ulsterman, and the chief
of many advantages which Ulster gained from his advocacy was that
Ulster's case was never stated to Great Britain as Ulstermen themselves
would have stated it. It is not true to say that Ulstermen by habit
think of Ireland as consisting of two nations, for all Ulstermen
traditionally regard themselves as Irish and so have always described
themselves without qualification. But it is true to say that Ulster
Protestants have regarded Irish Catholics as a separate and inferior
caste of Irishmen. The belief has been ingrained into them that as
Protestants they are morally and intellectually superior to those of the
other religion. Their whole political attitude is determined by this
conviction. They refuse to come under a Dublin Parliament because in it
they would be governed by a majority whom they regard as their
inferiors. It is in their deliberate view natural that Roman Catholics
should submit to be controlled by Protestants, unnatural that
Protestants should submit to be controlled by Roman Catholics.

It does not express the truth to say that Sir Edward Carson was adroit
enough to avoid putting this view of the case to the electors of Great
Britain or to the House of Commons. Temperamentally and instinctively,
he did not share it. He was a Southern Irishman who at the opening of
his life held himself, as not one Ulsterman in a thousand does,
perfectly free to make up his mind for or against the maintenance of the
Union. He reached the conclusion not only that Home Rule would be
disastrous for Ireland, for the United Kingdom, and for the British
Empire, but that it would mean for Irishmen the acceptance of an
inferior status in the Empire. As citizens of the United Kingdom, he
held, they were more honourably situated than they could be as citizens
of an Irish State within the Empire. This was an attitude of mind which
Ulster could endorse, although it did not fully represent Ulster's
conviction: but this was the case which Sir Edward Carson always made on