tal importance that, whatever the difficulties, it must be our policy
to complete with the utmost possible rapidity the system of land
purchase in Ireland.

It will also be our aim to help to the utmost, in the manner suggested
in different articles in this book, in the development of the resources
of Ireland. The Nationalist policy, which is imposed also on the Radical
Party, is in fact more politics and less industry. Our policy is more
industry and less politics.

The strongest objection, however, and, in my opinion, the insurmountable
obstacle to Home Rule, is the injustice of attempting to impose it
against their will upon the Unionists of Ulster. The only intelligible
ground upon which Home Rule can now be defended is the nationality of
Ireland. But Ireland is not a nation; it is two nations. It is two
nations separated from each other by lines of cleavage which cut far
deeper than those which separate Great Britain from Ireland as a whole.
Every argument which can be adduced in favour of separate treatment for
the Irish Nationalist minority as against the majority of the United
Kingdom, applies with far greater force in favour of separate treatment
for the Unionists of Ulster as against the majority of Ireland.

To the majority in Ireland Home Rule may seem to be a blessing, but to
the minority it appears as an intolerable curse. Their hostility to it
is quite as strong as that which was felt by many of the Catholics of
Ireland to Grattan's Parliament. They, too, would say, as the Catholic
Bishop of Waterford said at the time of the Union, that they "would
prefer a Union with the Beys and Mamelukes of Egypt to the iron rod of
the Mamelukes of Ireland."

The minority which holds this view is important in numbers, for it
comprises at the lowest estimate more than a fourth of the population of
Ireland. From every other point of view it is still more important, for
probably the minority pays at least half the taxes and does half the
trade of Ireland. The influence and also the power of the minority is
enormously increased by the way in which its numbers are concentrated in
Belfast and the surrounding counties.

The men who compose this minority ask no special privilege. They demand
only--and they will not demand in vain--that they should not be deprived
against their will of the protection of British law and of the rights of
British citizenship.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE

_By the Rt. Hon. A. Bonar Law, M.