The suggestion that we shall overtax “Ulster” is even more captivating.  But how are we to do it?  Of course we might schedule the sites given up to Protestant church buildings as undeveloped land.  Or we might issue income-tax forms with an assessment printed on one side, and the decrees of the Council of Trent on the other.  Or we might insist on every orator desirous of uttering that ennobling sentiment, “To Hell with the Pope!” taking out a licence, and charge him a small fee.  Positive treason, such as the proclamation of Provisional Governments, would of course pay a higher rate.  All these would be most interesting experiments, and would add a picturesque touch to the conventionality of modern administration.  But if we were to overtax sugar or coffee, corn or butter, flax or wool, beer or spirits, land or houses, I fear that we should be beating ourselves rather severely with our own sticks.  Our revenge on “Ulster” would be rather like that of Savage, the poet, who revenged himself on a friend by sleeping out the whole of a December night on a bridge.  The whole suggestion is, of course, futile and fantastic.  It is a bubble that has been pricked, and by no one so thoroughly as by Lord Pirrie, the head of Harland and Wolff, that is to say the leader of the industrial North.

The clamour of the exploiters of “Ulster” is motived on this point by two considerations, the one an illusion, the other a reality.  The illusion, or rather the pretence, consists in representing the Unionists as the sole holders of wealth in Ireland.  It would be a sufficient refutation of this view to quote those other passages in which the same orators assert with equal eloquence that the Tory policy of land purchase and resolute government from Westminster has brought enormous prosperity to the rest of the country.  On per capita valuation the highest northern county ranks only twelfth in Ireland.  It is the reality, however, that supplies the clue.  While the masters of Orangeism do not represent the wealth of Ireland they do certainly represent the largest, or, at least, the most intense concentration of unearned incomes.  What they fear is not unjust but democratic taxation.  They cling to the Union as a bulwark against the reform movement which in every modern state is resuming for society a small part of certain vast fortunes which in their essence have been socially created.  But even on the plane of their own selfishness they are following a foolish line of action.  The Union did not save them from the Land Tax Budget, nor, as regards the future, is salvation of the English Tories.  Should they ever return to power they will repeat their action respecting the Death Duties.  Having in Opposition denounced the land taxes with indecent bitterness they will, when back in office, confirm and extend them.  “Ulster” had far better cast in her lot with Ireland.  She will find an Irish Assembly not only strikingly but, one might almost add, sinfully conservative in matters of taxation.  As to the conflict between the agrarian and the manufacturing interests, that also exists in every nation on the earth.  But neither has any greater temptation to plan the destruction of the other than a merchant has to murder his best customer.