ies are stirring, but they are not glorious beside the traditions
of the Volunteers. The Orange flag is the symbol of conquest,
confiscation, racial and religious ascendancy. It is not noble for
Irishmen to celebrate annually a battle in which Ireland was defeated,
or to taunt their Catholic compatriots with agrarian lawlessness to
which their own forefathers were forced to resort, in order to obtain a
privileged immunity from the same scandalous land laws. Ulstermen
reached spiritual greatness when, like true patriots, they stood for
tolerance, Parliamentary reform, and the unity of Ireland. They fell,
surely, when they consented to style themselves a "garrison" under the
shelter of an absentee Parliament, which, through the enslavement and
degradation of the old Irish Parliament, had driven tens of thousands of
their own race into exile and rebellion.

They cherish the Imperial tradition, but let them love its sublime and
reject its ignoble side. It is sublime where it stands for liberty;
ignoble--and none knew this better than the Ulster-American
rebels--where it stands for government based on the dissensions of the
governed.

The verdict of history is that for men in the position of the Ulster
Unionists, the path of honour and patriotism, and the path of true
self-interest, lies in co-operation with their fellow-citizens for the
attainment of political freedom under the Crown. It is not as if they
had to create a tradition. The tradition lives.

FOOTNOTES:

[42] See pp. 13-17 and 66-71.

[43] Dealt with fully in Chapter XIV.

[44] In 1910-11, L2,408,000 (Treasury Return No. 220, 1911); plus
L225,000 estimated increase owing to removal of Poor Law
disqualification (Answer to Question in House of Commons, February 15,
1911).

[45] See p. 101.

[46] See particularly "Ireland in the New Century," Sir Horace Plunkett;
"Contemporary Ireland," E. Paul-Dubois; "The New Ireland," Sydney
Brooks.

[47] "Report of the Recess Committee," New Edition (Fisher Unwin).

[48] Colonel Saunderson, for example, the leader of the Irish Unionists
in the Commons, refused publicly to be a member of a committee on which
Mr. Redmond sat. Mr. John Redmond himself wrote that he could not take a
very sanguine view of the Conference, but that he was "unwilling to take
the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful
legislation in Ireland."

[49] Area under cultivation in 1875, 5,332,813 acres; in 1894, 4,931,