Sir Edward Carson, as everyone knows, is not an Ulsterman, and the chief of many advantages which Ulster gained from his advocacy was that Ulster’s case was never stated to Great Britain as Ulstermen themselves would have stated it.  It is not true to say that Ulstermen by habit think of Ireland as consisting of two nations, for all Ulstermen traditionally regard themselves as Irish and so have always described themselves without qualification.  But it is true to say that Ulster Protestants have regarded Irish Catholics as a separate and inferior caste of Irishmen.  The belief has been ingrained into them that as Protestants they are morally and intellectually superior to those of the other religion.  Their whole political attitude is determined by this conviction.  They refuse to come under a Dublin Parliament because in it they would be governed by a majority whom they regard as their inferiors.  It is in their deliberate view natural that Roman Catholics should submit to be controlled by Protestants, unnatural that Protestants should submit to be controlled by Roman Catholics.

It does not express the truth to say that Sir Edward Carson was adroit enough to avoid putting this view of the case to the electors of Great Britain or to the House of Commons.  Temperamentally and instinctively, he did not share it.  He was a Southern Irishman who at the opening of his life held himself, as not one Ulsterman in a thousand does, perfectly free to make up his mind for or against the maintenance of the Union.  He reached the conclusion not only that Home Rule would be disastrous for Ireland, for the United Kingdom, and for the British Empire, but that it would mean for Irishmen the acceptance of an inferior status in the Empire.  As citizens of the United Kingdom, he held, they were more honourably situated than they could be as citizens of an Irish State within the Empire.  This was an attitude of mind which Ulster could endorse, although it did not fully represent Ulster’s conviction:  but this was the case which Sir Edward Carson always made on behalf of Ulster, and he made it as an Irishman whose personal interests and connections lay in the South of Ireland, not in the North.  His argument was the more persuasive because it was based on a view of Ireland’s true interest—­not of Ulster’s only; and it was the harder on that account for Redmond to repel peremptorily.  More than this, between him and Redmond there was an old personal tie.  The Irish Bar is a true centre of intercourse between men of varying political and religious beliefs, and as junior barristers Edward Carson and John Redmond went the Munster circuit together.

All this lay behind the appeal which on February 11, 1914, was implied rather than expressed in the novel phrase and still more unaccustomed tone of a consummate orator.