This strategy having succeeded so admirably in 1868 is repeated in 1912.  “Ulster” has not the least intention of raising war or the sinews of war; her interest is in the sinews of peace.  Although she does not hold a winning card in her hand she hopes to scoop the pool by a superb bluff.  By menaces of rebellion she expects to be able to insist that under Home Rule she shall continue encased in an impenetrable armour of privileges, preferences, and safeguards.  She is all the more likely to succeed because of the tenderness of Nationalist Ireland in her regard.  Short of the absolute surrender by the majority of every shred of its rights (which is, of course, what is demanded) there are very few safeguards that we are not prepared to concede to the superstition, the egotism, or even the actual greed of the Orangemen.  But it may as well be understood that we are not to be either duped or bullied.

If the policy of Ulster Unionism is unreal there is no word in any language that can describe the phantasmal nature of the grounds on which it professes to fear national freedom.  Home Rule, declare the orators, will obviously mean Rome Rule.  The Ne Temere decree will de-legitimise every Protestant in the country.  The Dublin Parliament will tax every “Ulster” industry out of existence.  One is told that not only do many people say, but that some people even believe things of this kind.  But then there are people who believe that they are made of Dresden china, and will break if they knock against a chair.  These latter are to be found in lunatic asylums.  It is indeed particularly worth noting that when a man begins to see in the whole movement of the world a conspiracy to oppress and injure him our first step is to inquire not into his grievance but into his sanity.  One finds the same difficulty in discussing Irish politics in terms of the three hallucinations specified that one finds in discussing, say, Rugby football with a Dresden-china fellow-citizen.  It is better not to make the attempt, but to substitute a plain statement of obvious facts.

In the first place, even if any policy of oppression were in our minds, it is not in our power.  The overlordship of the Imperial Parliament remains in any scheme of Home Rule unimpaired, and any man damnified because of his religion can appeal in last resort to the Imperial Army and Navy.  Shankhill Road is mathematically safe.  After all there are in England some forty millions of Protestants who, whatever their religious temperature may be, will certainly decline to see Protestantism penalised.  The Protestants in Ireland have a million and a quarter, and they make noise enough for twice the number.  There are about three and a quarter millions of Irish Catholics.  History concedes to Catholic Ireland the cleanest record in respect of religious tolerance to be found anywhere in Europe.  We never martyred a saint, and amid all the witch-hunting devilries of Scotland and England we burned only one witch, a namesake of my own.  Deny or suppress all this.  Imagine into the eyes of every Catholic neighbour the slumbering but unquenched fires of Smithfield.  But be good enough to respect mathematics.  Do not suggest that the martial qualities induced by the two religions are so dissimilar that two Catholics are capable of imposing Home Rule on twenty-five Protestants.