To speak of the new school of opinion as a party, moreover, is to overstate the case as to the relative positions of three small groups of Unionist opinion, which have little or nothing in common except a joint denunciation of the present regime.

The views of Mr. Russell with regard to compulsory purchase are not, one suspects, those of Lord Dunraven.  Lord Dunraven’s views as to Devolution, it may be surmised, are too democratic for Sir Horace Plunkett, and are not sufficiently democratic for Mr. Russell.  It is impossible to conceive a plan of reform which would enjoy the support of all these three while the ideas of ameliorative work entertained by the body of Orangemen led by Mr. Sloan, who are disgusted by the attitude traditionally attached to their order, would, there is no doubt, differ from those of any others.  It would be impossible to find a common denominator between the views of these modern converts from the old Unionism which presented an unbending refusal to every demand for reform and held as sacrosanct the existing state of affairs, constitutional and social.

That the numbers of the moderate Unionists of all sections are at present small is not surprising.  The country has too long been governed as a dependency, with the Protestant gentry as the oculus reipublicae, for the “garrison” readily to waive that which they have come to look upon as their inalienable heritage.  That the numbers of Orangemen will grow small by degrees as a result of land purchase is the general belief; but it must not be forgotten that the more violent among them, in their efforts to rake the ashes; and blow up the cinders of dead prejudices and extinguished hate, will have the backing of a powerful Press, the eagerness of the greatest organ of which in this matter in the past led to the worst blow its prestige has ever endured.  Liberal statesmen during the recent general election were constrained to call attention to the manner in which the power of the Press had been exploited by a few persons who had endeavoured to secure a “corner” in those sources of political education, and the obviousness of the policy, it was admitted, did something to defeat its own ends.  Of one thing we may be certain, the Orange drum will be beaten once more, for the old ascendancy spirit will die hard; all the devices of artificial respiration will be called in to prolong its life, and when it does breathe its last one may expect it to do so in the arms of its friends in an attic in Printing House Square.

One can only hope that the “ultras” will pitch their tone too high, and that their efforts to revive the old perverse antipathies will fail, so that Irish Unionists will realise, as some of them are doing already, that patriotism, like charity, begins at home, and that they cannot compound for distrust of their own countrymen by loud-voiced protestations of loyalty to the blessings of British rule.