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 parallel to that of the “small nations” oppressed by alien rule, for whose emancipation the Allied democracies are fighting in this war.

The Irish representation in the Imperial Parliament throws a significant sidelight on this prevalent fiction.  Whereas England is only represented by one member for every 75,000 of population, and Scotland by one for every 65,000, Ireland has a member for every 42,000 of her people.  With a population below that of Scotland, Ireland has 31 more members in the House of Commons, and 89 more than she could claim on a basis of representation strictly proportionate to population in the United Kingdom.

Speaking in Dublin on the 1st of July, 1915, the late Mr. John Redmond gave the following description of the present condition of Ireland, which offers a striking contrast to the extravagant declamation that represents that country as downtrodden by a harsh and unsympathetic system of government: 

“To-day,” he said, “the people, broadly speaking, own the soil.  To-day the labourers live in decent habitations.  To-day there is absolute freedom in local government and local taxation of the country.  To-day we have the widest parliamentary and municipal franchise.  The congested districts, the scene of some of the most awful horrors of the old famine days, have been transformed.  The farms have been enlarged, decent dwellings have been provided, and a new spirit of hope and independence is to-day among the