The Dominion. THURSDAY, AUGUSDAY 15, 1912. ULSTER AND THE GOVERNMENT.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1519, 15 August 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. THURSDAY, AUGUSDAY 15, 1912. ULSTER AND THE GOVERNMENT.

In the duel between Mn. Churchill and Mr. Boxar Law over tho relation * of Ulster to tha Home Rule Bill the Minister appears to have como off second best. Both are fighters, and both were in good fighting vein, but Mn. Bonau Law has this advantage, that he and Ulster are in earnest, nnd.Mr. Churchill and the Government are not, prepared to risk the ultimate consequences of forcing Ulster to submit to a Dublin Parliament. In his letter Mr. Chcrciiill is careful, of course, to suggest that Mit.'Boxar Law is unlikely to carry out his throats and that there is at all events a remedy if ho does, but the vigour with which hr; assails the Leader of tho Opposition is obviously less duo to concern for tho general maintenance of a law-abiding spirit than to a desire to check what is doubtless a growing feeling amongst English Liberals that Ulster means to mako good its declaration that it will not submit to_ Home .Rule what' ever happens. With much 6f-what Mr. Churchill say's in denunciation of law-breaking most people must agree, nor Can one deny that tho "counsels of violence and mutiny", which are being given to Ulster may have an evil effect upon '■'many_ millions of very poor suffering toilers in the slums at Home, who on harkening to them might be lured to their own aud tho public disaster." But the more strongly Mr. Churchill presses this argument, tho more gravely is emphasised tho guilt of thosu who are primarily responsible for tho alarming spread of the. spirit of lawlessness in Great Britain. And those are the present Government and the Liberal party, which encouraged' the campaign of passive resistance aeainst the Education Act, and which, by refusing to protect employers and non-union workers during a dock strike and by actually prohibiting the employment- of free encouraged the dockers to believe in. violence as the shortest cut to success. Perhaps it is to Mr. J Lloyd-Geokge more than to any other man that the new lawlessness owes its rapid development: the seed was sown at Limehouse and Newcastle. It is the Chancellor who sowed tin , , seed and prepared the soil for the ■'doctrines by which every lawless or disruptive movement in any part of the Empire could bo justified," ;\h it was Ropseau who clanted the seed of which

the red harvest was the French devolution. Mil. Utirunitu, destroys, however, such merit «:i resided in his case by tlirea toning a counter-rebel-lion. If Home Uuli) were frustrated, he said, Jin. Boxai: Law within twelve months would possibly, as Pnmu Miriisror, "be sendiiiß 'Irish to servitude or tho gallows; and be holding three provinces 'A Ireland in'the grip of the Coercion Act.' , This is really a strong ni-guiTwn* for the exclusion of Ulster ivnirt the Home Rule Bill, since only jj* tnat exclusion can the safe course »!c steered between the Scylla of a rebellious Ulster and the Charybdis of crime and a revival of Fcnianism in the Nationalist provinces. But Mr. Bonau Lav,' could point out that Mn. OiiiT.cniu, in the passage emoted, was really inciting tho Nationalists to crime and treason in :i certain eventuality, The reply at the Loader of the Opposition divides into two parts:—A denial of any moral status to the Government in the struggle, and a defence of the speeches of the Unionists on the Ulster question. It is undeniable that the Government would not have been able to pass the Parliament Bill without a preamble of undertaking to proceed with Second Chambtir reform. The Gcivern-. ment has repudiated a debt of honour in neglecting its obligation to give effect to the preamble. The Bill was introduced as a necessary preliminary to "social reform" and not to Home Rule, but it has long been quite evident that all the thunder against tho Dukes' as the lions in tho path of Lloyd-Georgeism was stage thunder, the real object of tho Government being to preserve its life by obeying Mn. Eedmoxd's orders. As to Ulster, Mn. Boxar Law bluntly _ admitted that the Unionists anticipated civil war. He proceeded to say that if tho Government had been allowed "to move blindly towards a precipice without a clear warning of the dangers conIronting it," there would bo a real danger of civil war. Had the Unionists, that is to say, been silent concerning the, feelings of Ulster towards the Bill, and tlio Government left in ignorance of those feelings, the passage of the Bill would be quickly followed by an Ulster rebellion which tho Government would be unablo to refrain from repressing with troops and artillery. By warning the Government of'thc attitude Ulster will take up, the Unionists arc opening tho Government's eyes ■to the facts of the situation and thereby placing the Government in the position of having to decide, with open eyes and deliberately, whether the Bill is worth civil war. For that is what the Government has to decide. Whether Ulster will bo right in resisting the law is a matter of opinion—we cannot bcliovo that they will be right—and is of less importance than the indubitable fact that they certainly will resist. The Unionists who, like Mr. Boxar Law, have been warning the Government that this is the situation, aro deserving rather of praise than blame for assisting the Government to understand to tho full what it is proposing to do. There can be no doubt in anybody's mind that if tho Government comes to believe that Ulster is, in earnest, the Bill will either be dropped, or modified by exempting Ulster from its operation. For if no other consideration weighed with the Government, this one would, viz., that if tho Government, fully warned, pressed on with tlio coercion of Ulster, and resorted, to extreme measures to enforce tho law. the Liberal party would be destroyed. Mn. Boxak Law is confident that tho Government will not after all attempt to force Ulster out of the Union, and ho is probably right.