It is the belief of Ulster Unionists that their prosperity depends on the maintenance of the Union, but the belief rests on no sound foundation.  Rural emigration from Ulster, even from the Protestant parts, has been as great as from the rest of Ireland.[72] It is easy to point to a fall in stocks when the Home Rule issue is uppermost, but such phenomena occur in the case of big changes of government in any country.  They merely reflect the fact that certain moneyed interests do, in fact, fear a change of government, and whether those fears are irrational or not, the effect is the same.  It is an historical fact, on the other hand, that political freedom in a white country, in the long run invariably promotes industrial expansion and financial confidence.  Canada is one remarkable example, Australia is another.  The Balkan States are others.  Not that I wish to push the colonial example to extremes.  Vast undeveloped territories impair the analogy to Ireland; but it is none the less true that when a country with a separate economic life of its own obtains rulers of its own choice, and gains a national pride and responsibility, it goes ahead, not backward.

Intense, indeed, must be the racial prejudice which can cause Ulstermen to forget the only really glorious memories of their past.  Orange memories are stirring, but they are not glorious beside the traditions of the Volunteers.  The Orange flag is the symbol of conquest, confiscation, racial and religious ascendancy.  It is not noble for Irishmen to celebrate annually a battle in which Ireland was defeated, or to taunt their Catholic compatriots with agrarian lawlessness to which their own forefathers were forced to resort, in order to obtain a privileged immunity from the same scandalous land laws.  Ulstermen reached spiritual greatness when, like true patriots, they stood for tolerance, Parliamentary reform, and the unity of Ireland.  They fell, surely, when they consented to style themselves a “garrison” under the shelter of an absentee Parliament, which, through the enslavement and degradation of the old Irish Parliament, had driven tens of thousands of their own race into exile and rebellion.

They cherish the Imperial tradition, but let them love its sublime and reject its ignoble side.  It is sublime where it stands for liberty; ignoble—­and none knew this better than the Ulster-American rebels—­where it stands for government based on the dissensions of the governed.

The verdict of history is that for men in the position of the Ulster Unionists, the path of honour and patriotism, and the path of true self-interest, lies in co-operation with their fellow-citizens for the attainment of political freedom under the Crown.  It is not as if they had to create a tradition.  The tradition lives.

FOOTNOTES: 

[42] See pp. 13-17 and 66-71.

[43] Dealt with fully in Chapter XIV.