Ulster's Stand For Union Part 20

Among the many distinguished people who a.s.sembled in the Ulster Capital for the occasion, there was one notable absentee. Lord Carson of Duncairn--for this was the t.i.tle that Sir Edward Carson had a.s.sumed on being appointed a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary a few weeks previously--was detained in London by judicial duty in the House of Lords; and possibly reasons of delicacy not difficult to understand restrained him from making arrangements for absence. But the marked ovation given to Lady Carson wherever she was recognised in the streets of Belfast showed that the great leader was not absent from the popular mind at this moment of vindication of his statesmanship.

Such an event as that which brought His Majesty to Belfast was naturally an occasion for bestowing marks of distinction for public service. Sir James Craig wisely made it also an occasion for letting bygones be bygones by recommending Lord Pirrie for a step in the Peerage. Among those who received honours were several whose names have appeared in the preceding chapters of this book. Mr. William Robert Young, for thirty years one of the most indefatigable workers for the Unionist cause in Ulster, and Colonel Wallace, one of the most influential of Carson's local lieutenants, were made Privy Councillors, as was also Colonel Percival-Maxwell, who raised and commanded a battalion of the Ulster Division in the war. Colonel F.H. Crawford and Colonel Spender were awarded the C.B.E. for services to the nation during the war; but Ulstermen did not forget services of another sort to the Ulster cause before the Germans came on the scene.[109] A knighthood was given to Mr.

Dawson Bates, who had exchanged the Secretaryship of the Ulster Unionist Council for the portfolio of a Cabinet Minister.

These honours were bestowed by the King in person at an invest.i.ture held in the Ulster Hall in the afternoon. There must have been many present whose minds went back to some of the most stirring events of Ulster's domestic history which had been transacted in the same building within recent years. Did Sir Hamar Greenwood, the Chief Secretary, as he stood in attendance on the Sovereign in the resplendent uniform of a Privy Councillor, look in curiosity round the walls which he and Mr. Churchill had been prohibited from entering on a memorable occasion when they had to content themselves with an imported tent in a football field instead?

Did Colonel Wallace's thoughts wander back to the scene of wild enthusiasm in that hall on the evening before the Covenant, when he presented the ancient Boyne flag to the Ulster leader? Did those who spontaneously started the National Anthem in the presence of the King without warrant from the prearranged programme, and made the Queen smile at the emphasis with which they "confounded politics" and "frustrated knavish tricks," remember the fervour with which on many a past occasion the same strains testified to Ulster's loyalty in the midst of perplexity and apprehension? If these memories crowded in, they must have added to the sense of relief arising from the conviction that the ceremony they were now witnessing was the realisation of the policy propounded by Carson, when he declared that Ulster must always be ruled either by the Imperial Parliament or by a Government of her own.

But the moment of all others on that memorable day that must have been suggestive of such reflections was when the King formally opened the first Parliament of Northern Ireland in the same building that had witnessed the signing of the Ulster Covenant. Without the earlier event the later could not have been. If 1921 could have been fully foreseen in 1912 it might have appeared to many Covenanters as the disappointment of a cherished ideal. But those who lived to listen to the King's Speech in the City Hall realised that it was the dissipation of foreboding.

However regarded, it was, as King George himself p.r.o.nounced, "a profoundly moving occasion in Irish history."

The Speech from the Throne in which these words occurred made a deep impression all over the world, and nowhere more than in Ulster itself.

No people more ardently shared the touchingly expressed desire of the King that his coming to Ireland might "prove to be the first step towards an end of strife amongst her people, whatever their race or creed." So, too, when His Majesty told the Ulster Parliament that he "felt a.s.sured they would do their utmost to make it an instrument of happiness and good government for all parts of the community which they represented," the Ulster people believed that the King's confidence in them would not prove to have been misplaced.

Happily, no prophetic vision of those things that were shortly to come to pa.s.s broke in to disturb the sense of satisfaction with the haven that had been reached. The future, with its treachery, its alarms, its fresh causes of uncertainty and of conflict, was mercifully hidden from the eyes of the Ulster people when they acclaimed the inauguration of their Parliament by their King. They accepted responsibility for the efficient working of inst.i.tutions thus placed in their keeping by the highest const.i.tutional Authority in the British Empire, although they had never asked for them, and still believed that the system they had been driven to abandon was better than the new; and they opened this fresh chapter in their history in firm faith that what had received so striking a token of the Sovereign's sympathy and approval would never be taken from them except with their own consent.

FOOTNOTES:

[104] See Letter from Mr. Lloyd George to Mr. Bonar Law, published in the Press on November 18th, 1918.

[105] Precisely twenty-four months later this outrage was committed by Mr. Lloyd George himself, with the concurrence of Mr. Austen Chamberlain.

[106] _Ante_, p. 248.

[107] See _ante_, p. 51.

[108] _The Morning Post_, June 23rd, 1921.

[109] See _ante_, Chapter XVIII.

APPENDIX A

NATIONALIST LETTER TO PRESIDENT WILSON

To THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

SIR,

When, a century and a half ago, the American Colonies dared to a.s.sert the ancient principle that the subject should not be taxed without the consent of his representatives, England strove to crush them. To-day England threatens to crush the people of Ireland if they do not accept a tax, not in money but in blood, against the protest of their representatives.

During the American Revolution the champions of your liberties appealed to the Irish Parliament against British aggression, and asked for a sympathetic judgment on their action. What the verdict was, history records.

To-day it is our turn to appeal to the people of America. We seek no more fitting prelude to that appeal than the terms in which your forefathers greeted ours:

"We are desirous of possessing the good opinion of the virtuous and humane. We are peculiarly desirous of furnishing you with the true state of our motives and objects, the better to enable you to judge of our conduct with accuracy, and determine the merits of the controversy with impartiality and precision."

If the Irish race had been conscriptable by England in the war against the United Colonies is it certain that your Republic would to-day flourish in the enjoyment of its n.o.ble Const.i.tution?

Since then the Irish Parliament has been destroyed, by methods described by the greatest of British statesmen as those of "black-guardism and baseness." Ireland, deprived of its protection and overborne by more than six to one in the British Lower House, and by more than a hundred to one in the Upper House, is summoned by England to submit to a hitherto-unheard-of decree against her liberties.

In the fourth year of a war ostensibly begun for the defence of small nations, a law conscribing the manhood of Ireland has been pa.s.sed, in defiance of the wishes of our people. The British Parliament, which enacted it, had long outrun its course, being in the eighth year of an existence const.i.tutionally limited to five. To warrant the coercive statute, no recourse was had to the electorate of Britain, much less to that of Ireland. Yet the measure was forced through within a week, despite the votes of Irish representatives, and under a system of closure never applied to the debates which established conscription for Great Britain on a milder basis.

To repel the calumnies invented to becloud our action, we venture to address the successors of the belligerents who once appealed to Ireland.

The feelings which inspire America deeply concern our race; so, in the forefront of our remonstrance, we feel bound to set forth that this Conscription Act involves for Irishmen questions far larger than any affecting mere internal politics. They raise a sovereign principle between a nation that has never abandoned her independent rights, and an adjacent nation that has persistently sought to strangle them.

Were Ireland to surrender that principle, she must submit to a usurped power, condone the fraudulent prostration of her Parliament in 1800, and abandon all claim to distinct nationality. Deep-seated and far-reaching are the problems remorselessly aroused by the unthinking and violent courses taken at Westminster.

Thus the sudden and unlooked-for departure of British politicians from their past military procedure towards this island provokes acutely the fundamental issue of Self-determination. That issue will decide whether our whole economic, social, and political life must lie at the uncontrolled disposition of another race whose t.i.tle to legislate for us rests on force and fraud alone.

Ireland is a nation more ancient than England, and is one of the oldest in Christendom. Its geographical boundaries are clearly defined. It cherishes its own traditions, history, language, music, and culture. It throbs with a national consciousness sharpened not only by religious persecution, but by the violation of its territorial, juristic, and legislative rights. The authority of which its invaders boasted rests solely on an alleged Papal Bull. The symbols of attempted conquest are roofless castles, ruined abbeys, and confiscated cathedrals.

The t.i.tle of King of Ireland was first conferred on the English monarch by a statute of the Parliament held in Ireland in 1542, when only four of our counties lay under English sway. That t.i.tle originated in no English enactment. Neither did the Irish Parliament so originate. Every military aid granted by that Parliament to English kings was purely voluntary. Even when the Penal Code denied representation to the majority of the Irish population, military service was never enforced against them.

For generations England claimed control over both legislative and judicial functions in Ireland, but in 1783 these pretensions were altogether renounced, and the sovereignty of the Irish Legislature was solemnly recognised. A memorable British statute declared it--

"Established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable."

For this, the spirit evoked by the successful revolt of the United States of America is to be thanked, and Ireland won no mean return for the sympathy invited by your Congress. Yet scarcely had George III signified his Royal a.s.sent to that "sc.r.a.p of paper," when his Ministers began to debauch the Irish Parliament. No Catholic had, for over a century, been allowed to sit within its walls; and only a handful of the population enjoyed the franchise. In 1800, by shameless bribery, a majority of corrupt Colonists was procured to embrace the London subjugation and vote away the existence of their Legislature for pensions, pelf, and t.i.tles.

The authors of the Act of Union, however, sought to soften its shackles by limiting the future jurisdiction of the British Parliament. Imposed on "a reluctant and protesting nation," it was tempered by articles guaranteeing Ireland against the coa.r.s.er and more obvious forms of injustice. To guard against undue taxation, "exemptions and abatements"

were stipulated for; but the "predominant partner" has long since dishonoured that part of the contract, and the weaker side has no power to enforce it. No military burdens were provided for, although Britain framed the terms of the treaty to her own liking. That an obligation to yield enforced service was thereby undertaken has never hitherto been a.s.serted. We therefore cannot neglect to support this protest by citing a main proviso of the Treaty of Union. Before the destruction of the Irish Parliament no standing army or navy was raised, nor was any contribution made, except by way of gift, to the British Army or Navy.

No Irish law for the levying of drafts existed; and such a proposal was deemed unconst.i.tutional. Hence the 8th Article of the Treaty provides that--

"All laws in force at the time of the Union shall remain as now by law established, subject only to such alterations and regulations from time to time as circ.u.mstances may appear to the Parliament of the United Kingdom to require."

Where there was no law establishing military service for Ireland, what "alteration or regulation" respecting such a law can legally bind? Can an enactment such as Conscription, affecting the legal and moral rights of an entire people, be described as an "alteration" or "regulation"

springing from a pre-existing law? Is the Treaty to be construed as Britain pleases, and always to the prejudice of the weaker side?

British military statecraft has. .h.i.therto rigidly held by a separate tradition for Ireland. The Territorial military system, created in 1907 for Great Britain, was not set up in Ireland. The Irish Militia was then actually disbanded, and the War Office insisted that no Territorial force to replace it should be embodied. Stranger still, the Volunteer Acts (Naval or Military) from 1804 to 1900 (some twenty in all) were never extended to Ireland. In 1880, when a Conservative House of Commons agreed to tolerate volunteering, the measure was thrown out by the House of Lords on the plea that Irishmen must not be allowed to learn the use of arms.

For, despite the Bill of Rights, the privilege of free citizens to bear arms in self-defence has been refused to us. The Const.i.tution of America affirms that right as appertaining to the common people, but the men of Ireland are forbidden to bear arms in their own defence. Where, then, lies the basis of the claim that they can be forced to take them up for the defence of others?

It will suffice to present such considerations in outline without disinterring the details of the past misgovernment of our country. Mr.

Gladstone avowed that these were marked by "every horror and every shame that could disgrace the relations between a strong country and a weak one." After an orgy of Martial Law the Scottish General, Abercromby, Commander-in-Chief in Ireland, wrote: "Every crime, every cruelty that could be committed by Cossacks or Calmucks has been transacted here....

The abuses of all kinds I found can scarcely be believed or enumerated."

Lord Holland recalls that many people "were sold at so much a head to the Prussians."

We shall, therefore, pa.s.s by the story of the destruction of our manufactures, of artificial famines, of the fomentation of uprisings, of a hundred Coercion Acts, culminating in the perpetual "Act of Repression" obtained by forgery, which graced Queen Victoria's Jubilee Year in 1887. In our island the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the repression of free speech, gibbetings, shootings, and bayonetings, are commonplace events. The effects of forced emigration and famine American generosity has softened; and we do not seek a verdict on the general merits of a system which enjoys the commendation of no foreigner except Albert, Prince Consort, who declared that the Irish "were no more worthy of sympathy than the Poles."

It is known to you how our population shrank to its present fallen state. Grants of money for emigration, "especially of families," were provided even by the Land Act of 1881. Previous Poor Law Acts had stimulated this "remedy." So late as 1891 a "Congested District" Board was empowered to "aid emigration," although millions of Irishmen had in the nineteenth century been evicted from their homes or driven abroad.

Seventy years ago our population stood at 8,000,000, and, in the normal ratio of increase, it should to-day amount to 16,000,000. Instead, it has dwindled to 4,500,000; and it is from this residuum that our manhood between the ages of eighteen and fifty-one is to be delivered up in such measure as the strategists of the English War Cabinet may demand.

To-day, as in the days of George Washington, nearly half the American forces have been furnished from the descendants of our banished race. If England could not, during your Revolution, regard that enrolment with satisfaction, might she not set something now to Ireland's credit from the racial composition of your Army or Navy? No other small nation has been so bereft by law of her children, but in vain for Ireland has the bread of exile been thrown upon the waters.

Yet, while Self-determination is refused, we are required by law to bleed to "make the world safe for democracy "--in every country except our own. Surely this cannot be the meaning of America's message to mankind glowing from the pen of her ill.u.s.trious President?