ic leader. This is indeed the
cardinal misfortune, as well as the central secret, of Ulster Unionism.
The pivot on which it turns resides, not in the farms of Down or the
factories of Belfast, but in the Library of the Four Courts. Of the
nineteen representatives who speak for it in Parliament no fewer than
seven are King's Counsel. In the whole list there is not one delegate of
labour, nor one farmer. A party so constituted is bound to produce
prodigies of nonsense such as those associated with Sir Edward Carson.
The leaders of the orchestra openly despise the instruments on which
they play. For followers, reared in the tradition of hysteria depicted
above, no raw-head is thought to be too raw, and no bloody-bones too
bloody. And so we have King's Counsel, learned in the law, devising
Provisional Governments, and Privy Councillors wallowing in imaginative
treason. As for the Bishops, they will talk daggers as luridly as the
rest, but they will not even threaten to use any. And so does the pagan
rage, and the heathen prophesy vain things.

That such a farce-tragedy can find a stage in the twentieth century is
pitiable. But it is not a serious political fact. It has the same
relation to reality that the cap-hunting exploits of Tartarin of
Tarascon had to the Franco-German war. It has been devised merely to
make flesh creep in certain tabernacles of fanaticism in the less
civilised parts of England and Scotland. So far as action goes it will
end in smoke, but not in gunpowder-smoke. There will no doubt be riots
in Belfast and Portadown, for which the ultimate responsibility will
rest on learned counsel of the King. But there have been riots before,
and the cause of Home Rule has survived all the blackguardism and
bloodshed. It is lamentable that ministers of the gospel of Christ and
leaders of public opinion should so inflame and exploit the
superstitions of ignorant men; but not by these methods will justice be
intimidated.

And if "Ulster" does fight after all? In that event we must only
remember how sorry George Stephenson was for the cow. The military
traditions of the Protestant North are not very alarming. The
contribution of the Enniskilleners to the Battle of the Boyne appears to
have consisted in running away with great energy and discretion. Nor did
they, or their associates, in later years shed any great lustre even on
Imperial arms. I have never heard that the Connaught Rangers had many
recruits from the Sha