l War--with this difference, which, so far as
it went, told in their favour, that whereas Lincoln took up arms to
resist secession, they were prepared to do so to resist expulsion, the
purpose in both cases, however, being to preserve union. The practical
view of the question, as it would appear in the eyes of ordinary men,
was well expressed by Lord Curzon in the House of Lords, when he said:

"The people of this country will be very loth to condemn those
whose only disloyalty it will be to have been excessive in their
loyalty to the King. Do not suppose that the people of this country
will call those 'rebels' whose only form of rebellion is to insist
on remaining under the Imperial Parliament."[47]

Of course, men like Sir Edward Carson, Lord Londonderry, Mr. Thomas
Sinclair, and other Ulster leaders were too far-seeing not to realise
that the course they were taking would expose them to the accusation of
having set a bad example which others without the same grounds of
justification might follow in very different circumstances. But this was
a risk they had to shoulder, as have all who are not prepared to
subscribe to the dogma of Passive Obedience without limit. They accepted
it as the less of two evils. But there was something humorous in the
pretence put forward in 1916 and afterwards that the violence to which
the adherents of Sinn Fein had recourse was merely copying Ulster. As if
Irish Nationalism in its extreme form required precedent for
insurrection! Even the leader of "Constitutional Nationalism" himself
had traced his political pedigree to convicted rebels like Tone and
Emmet, and since the date of those heroes there had been at least two
armed risings in Ireland against the British Crown and Government. If
the taunt flung at Ulstermen had been that they had at last thrown
overboard law and order and had stolen the Nationalist policy of active
resistance, there would at least have been superficial plausibility in
it. But when it was suggested or implied that the Ulster example was
actually responsible in any degree whatever for violent outbreaks in the
other provinces, a supercilious smile was the only possible retort from
the lips of representatives of Ulster.

But what caused them some perplexity was the disposition manifested in
certain quarters in England to look upon the two parties in Ireland in
regard to "rebellion" as "six of one and half a dozen of the other." It
has alwa