Lord Londonderry and Mr.
Sinclair show that the Northern province still maintains her historic
opposition to Irish Separatism and Irish intrigue. She stands firmly by
the same economic principles which have enabled her, in spite of
persecution and natural disadvantages, to build up so great a
prosperity. She knows well that the only chance for the rest of Ireland
to attain to the standard of education, enlightenment and independence
which she has reached, is to free itself from the sinister domination
under which it lies, and to assert its right to political and religious
liberty. Ulster sees in Irish Nationalism a dark conspiracy, buttressed
upon crime and incitement to outrage, maintained by ignorance and
pandering to superstition. Even at this moment the Nationalist leagues
have succeeded in superseding the law of the land by the law of the
league. We need only point to the remarks which the Lord Chief Justice
of Ireland and Mr. Justice Kenny have been compelled to make to the
Grand Juries quite recently, to show what Nationalist rule means to the
helpless peasants in a great part of the country.

But the differences which still sever the two great parties in Ireland
are not only economic but religious. The general slackening of
theological dispute which followed the weary years of religious warfare
after the Reformation, has never brought peace to Ireland. In England
the very completeness of the defeat of Roman Catholicism has rendered
the people oblivious to the dangers of its aggression. The Irish
Unionists are not monsters of inhuman frame; they are men of like
passions with Englishmen. Though they hold their religious views with
vigour and determination, there is nothing that they would like more
than to be able to forget their points of difference from those who are
their fellow Christians. It is perhaps necessary to point out once again
that the Roman Catholic Church is a political, as well as a religious,
institution, and to remind Englishmen that it is by the first law of its
being an intolerant and aggressive organisation. All Protestants in
Ireland feel deep respect for much of the work which is carried on by
the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. They gladly acknowledge the
influence of its priesthood in maintaining and upholding the traditional
morality and purity of the Irish race. They venerate the memories of
those brave Irish priests who defied persecution in order to bring
succour to their flocks in