as prospered under the Act of Union--why should it
be ready to enter upon a new 'variety of untried being'? What that state
of being will be like, it naturally gauges from the forces which are
working for Home Rule at present. Looking at these simply from the
industrial standpoint and leaving out of account all the powerful
elements of religious and race prejudice, the man of the North sees two
salient facts which have dominated all the political activity of the
Nationalist campaign. One is a voluble and aggressive disloyalty, not
merely to 'England' and to the present system of government, but to the
Crown which represents the unity of the three kingdoms, and the other is
the introduction of politics into business in the very virulent and
destructive form known as boycotting.

Now, hostility to the Crown, if it means anything, means a struggle for
separation as soon as Home Rule has given to the Irish people the power
to organise and arm. And (still keeping to the sternly practical point
of view) that would, for the time being at least, spell absolute ruin to
the industrial North. The practice of boycotting, again, is the very
antithesis of industry--it creates an atmosphere in which industry and
enterprise simply cannot live. The North has seen this practice condoned
as a desperate remedy for a desperate ill, but it has seen it continued
long after the ill had passed away, used as a weapon by one Nationalist
section against another, and revived when anything like a really
oppressive or arbitrary eviction had become impossible. There seems to
have been in Nationalist circles, since the time of O'Connell, but
little appreciation of the deadly character of this social curse; and
the prospect of a Government which would tolerate it naturally fills the
mind of the Northern commercial man with alarm and aversion.

Again, the democratisation of local government which gave the
Nationalist leaders a unique opportunity of showing the value, has but
served to demonstrate the ineffectiveness, of their political tactics.
North of Ireland opinion was deeply interested in this reform, and
appreciated its far-reaching importance. Elsewhere, I think it will be
safe to say, people generally were indifferent to it until it came, and
the leaders seemed to see in it only a weapon to be used for political
purposes. To the great vista of useful and patriotic work opened out by
the Act of 1898, to the impression that a proper use of that Act