from the terms of the Nationalist manifesto
addressed to you, every paragraph of which is coloured by allusion to
bygone history and threadbare political disputes.

It is not our intention to traverse the same ground. There is in the
manifesto almost no assertion with regard to past events which is not
either a distortion or a misinterpretation of historical fact. But we
consider that this is not the moment for discussing the faults and
follies of the past, still less for rehearsing ancient grievances,
whether well or ill founded, in language of extravagant rhetoric. At a
time when the very existence of civilisation hangs in the balance, all
smaller issues, whatever their merits or however they may affect our
internal political problems, should in our judgment have remained in
abeyance, while the parties interested in their solution should have
joined in whole-hearted co-operation against the common enemy.

There is, however, one matter to which reference must be made, in order
to make clear the position of the Irish minority whom we represent. The
Nationalist Party have based their claim to American sympathy on the
historic appeal addressed to Irishmen by the British colonists who
fought for independence in America a hundred and fifty years ago. By no
Irishmen was that appeal received with a more lively sympathy than by
the Protestants of Ulster, the ancestors of those for whom we speak
to-day--a fact that was not surprising in view of the circumstance that
more than one-sixth part of the entire colonial population in America at
the time of the Declaration of Independence consisted of emigrants from
Ulster.

The Ulstermen of to-day, forming as they do the chief industrial
community in Ireland, are as devoted adherents to the cause of
democratic freedom as were their forefathers in the eighteenth century.
But the experience of a century of social and economic progress under
the legislative Union with Great Britain has convinced them that under
no other system of government could more complete liberty be enjoyed by
the Irish people. This, however, is not the occasion for a reasoned
defence of "Unionist" policy. Our sole purpose in referring to the
matter is to show, whatever be the merits of the dispute, that a very
substantial volume of Irish opinion is warmly attached to the existing
Constitution of the United Kingdom, and regards as wholly unwarranted
the theory that our political status affords any sort of paralle