, if not
technically, violent resistance and even civil war."[42]

To this distinguished catalogue of authorities an Ulster apologist might
have added the name of the Chief Secretary for Ireland in Mr. Asquith's
own Cabinet, who admitted in 1912 that "if the religion of the
Protestants were oppressed or their property despoiled they would be
right to fight[43];" which meant that Mr. Birrell did not condemn
fighting in itself, provided he were allowed to decide when the occasion
for it had arisen. Greater authorities than Mr. Birrell held that the
Ulster case for resistance was a good and valid one as it stood. No
English statesman of the last half-century has deservedly enjoyed a
higher reputation for political probity, combined with sound common
sense, than the eighth Duke of Devonshire. As long ago as 1893, when
this same issue had already been raised in circumstances much less
favourable to Ulster than after the passing of the Parliament Act in
1911, the Duke of Devonshire said:

"The people of Ulster believe, rightly or wrongly, that under a
Government responsible to an Imperial Parliament they possess at
present the fullest security which they can possess of their
personal freedom, their liberties, and their right to transact
their own business in their own way. You have no right to offer
them any inferior security to that; and if, after weighing the
character of the Government which it is sought to impose upon them,
they resolve that they are no longer bound to obey a law which does
not give them equal and just protection with their fellow subjects,
who can say--how at all events can the descendants of those who
resisted King James II say, that they have not a right, if they
think fit, to resist, if they think they have the power, the
imposition of a Government put upon them by force?"[44]

All the same, there never was a community on the face of the earth to
whom "rebellion" in any real sense of the word was more hateful than to
the people of Ulster. They traditionally were the champions of "law and
order" in Ireland; they prided themselves above all things on their
"loyalty" to their King and to the British flag. And they never
entertained the idea that the movement which they started at Craigavon
in 1911, and to which they solemnly pledged themselves by their Covenant
in the following year, was in the slightest degree a departure from
their che