The Government tried to ride two horses abreast—­to rule Ireland otherwise than by force, and to maintain itself in power with the help of Orange votes—­two courses, each irreconcilable with the other.  Their position reminds me of Alphonse Daudet’s immortal creation, Tartarin de Tarascon, with a double nature, partly that of Don Quixote and partly of Sancho Panza, at one moment urged on by the glory, and at the next held back by the prospect of the hardships, of lion-hunting in Africa—­“Couvre toi de gloire,” dit Tartarin Quichotte, “Couvre toi de flanelle dit Tartarin Sancho.”

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a government which does not recognise democratic principles to make any headway in the work of amelioration in Ireland.  The moral is that those responsible for the administration of the country have found themselves by the force of circumstances, even against their will, driven to apply popular principles of government in order that they may secure fairness and efficiency, and my contention that this is so is borne out by the two incidents to which I have referred, in which the Conservatives escaped only by the skin of their teeth from committing themselves to a policy which would have won them the hostility of their Orange allies.

The latter have in truth secured their own way to a remarkable extent.  The promise has not been fulfilled which Mr. Chamberlain made after the Unionist victory of 1886, to the effect that Lord Salisbury and the Conservative leaders were prepared to consider and review the “irritating centralising system of administration which is known as Dublin Castle.”  At the time of the ill-fated Round Table Conference, which Sir William Harcourt convened, Mr. Chamberlain committed himself to the expediency of establishing some form of legislative authority in Dublin, and admitted that such a body should be allowed to organise the form of Executive Government on whatever lines it thought fit, and Sir West Ridgeway, as Under Secretary, subsequently carried out the behests of the same Government by outlining a scheme of self-government by means of Provincial Councils with a partly elected board to control finance.  All these facts serve to show the injustice—­in view of acknowledged facts—­of the description by the late Attorney-General for Ireland of the Wyndham proposals as “mean and cruel desertion.”

There is no part of the Irish question in respect of which more has been said which is misleading than what is known as the problem of Ulster.  I have already explained what a misnomer this is.  In the Counties of Donegal, Tyrone, Monaghan, Fermanagh, and Cavan there are more Catholics than Protestants, while in the Counties of Armagh and Down the numbers of the two creeds are almost equally divided.  What is known as the question of Ulster should in truth be known as that of Belfast, for it is only in that city and in the adjacent Counties of Antrim and Down that the religious question is most acute.