is
the work of orderly, prosperous, and deeply religious men."[46]

Nor did the paradox end there. If the Ulster Movement was "rebellious,"
its purpose was as paradoxical as its circumstances. It had in it no
subversive element. In this respect it stands (so far as the writer's
knowledge goes) without precedent, a solitary instance in the history of
mankind. The world has witnessed rebellions without number, designed to
bring about many different results--to emancipate a people from
oppression, to upset an obnoxious form of Government, to expel or to
restore a rival dynasty, to transfer allegiance from one Sovereign or
one State to another. But has there ever been a "rebellion" the object
of which was to maintain the _status quo_? Yet that was the sole purpose
of the Ulstermen in all they did from 1911 to 1914. That fact, which
distinguished their movement from every rebellion or revolution in
history, placed them on a far more solid ground of reasonable
justification than the excuse offered by Mr. Churchill for their
bellicose attitude in his father's day. Although he is no doubt right in
saying that "When men are sufficiently in earnest they will back their
words with more than votes," it is a plea that would cover alike the
conduct of Halifax and the other Whigs who resisted the legal authority
of James II, of the Jacobites who fought for his grandson, and of the
contrivers of many another bloody or bloodless Revolution. But there was
nothing revolutionary in the Ulster Movement. It was resistance to the
transfer of a people's allegiance without their consent; to their
forcible expulsion from a Constitution with which they were content and
their forcible inclusion in a Constitution which they detested. This was
the very antithesis of Revolution. English Radical writers and
politicians might argue that no "transfer of allegiance" was
contemplated; but Ulstermen thought they knew better, and the later
development of the Irish question proved how right they were. Even had
they been proved wrong instead of right in their conviction that the
true aim of Irish Nationalism (a term in which Sinn Fein is included)
was essentially separatist, they knew better than Englishmen how little
reality there was in the theory that under the proposed Home Rule their
allegiance would be unaffected and their political _status_ suffer no
degradation. They claimed to occupy a position similar to that of the
North in the American Civi