with the object of safeguarding the faith of the children of minorities, on the principle of united secular and separate religious instruction.  That system worked so satisfactorily through many decades that Lord O’Hagan, the eminent first Roman Catholic Lord Chancellor of Ireland, declared that under it, up till his time, no case whatever of proselytism to any Church had occurred.  But gradually a sectarian system of education under the Roman Catholic Church was developed through the teaching order of Christian Brothers, whose schools are now to be found all over Ireland, and which in many places now supplant the non-sectarian schools of the National Board.  The strongest efforts were made to bring these sectarian schools into the system of the National Board, and thus entitle them to a share of the State annual endowment.  There is no greater peril to the religious faith of Protestant minorities in the border counties of Ulster and elsewhere in Ireland than the sectarianising of primary schools by Roman Catholics.  A few years ago a Protestant member of a public service was transferred upon promotion from Belfast to a Roman Catholic district, in which his boys had no available school but that of the Christian Brothers, and his girls none but that of the local convent.  I shall never forget the expression of that man’s face or the pathos in his voice while he pressed me to help him to obtain a transfer to a Protestant district, as otherwise he feared his children would be lost to the faith of their fathers.  Given a Parliament in Dublin, the management of education would be so conducted as gradually to extinguish Protestant minorities in the border counties of Ulster and in the other provinces of Ireland.  It is here that a chief danger to Protestantism lies.

4. Home Rule will seriously injure Ulster’s material prosperity—­industrial, commercial, agricultural. The root of the evil will lie in the want of credit of an Irish Exchequer in the money markets of the world.  The best financial authorities agree that if Ireland should be left to her own resources, there would be, on the present basis of taxation, and after providing for a fair Irish contribution towards Imperial defence, an annual deficit in the Irish Exchequer of L3,000,000 to L4,000,000.  An Irish Government in such circumstances—­consols themselves being now some L23 under par—­could not borrow money at any reasonable rate of interest.  Ever; if the British taxpayer were compelled to provide for the deficiency, either by an annual grant or by payment of a divorce penalty of L15,000,000 to L20,000,000, or by both, a prudent investor would fear that the annual dole might at any moment be withdrawn should, for instance, John Bull become irritated by the action of a Dublin Parliament, say, in declaring enlisting in His Majesty’s forces a criminal act; or that the capital gift would soon be frittered away in the interests of agitators and their friends.  He would simply refuse to invest in Irish stock.