THE ULSTER MYTH

New Zealand Tablet, 24 April 1919, Page 17

THE ULSTER MYTH

(By J. F. Cassidy, in America.)

In their recent election addresses some English statesmen resurrected the Ulster problem, which had almost disappeared from sight during the past four years. Mr. David Lloyd George and Mr. Winston Churchill have very definitely told the world that they stand .as rigidly for the maintenance of Orange Ulster’s will as for British naval supremacy. They feign friendship for democracy and self-determination in thus championing the cause of the northern province and seek to convince the world that they do so from the spirit of liberalism and sheer philanthropy. As in their navalist programme, so in this, they have sought to mask their imperialistic designs beneath a fallacious plea for justice for the Orangemen, that can find no justification in any despotism menacing- the rights of the men of the North. But the arguments of these two gentlemen are in no sense novel ; they have come constantly in lire same guise from the representatives of imperialism in England for the past hundred years. Now the world should know, in the interests of true justice and self-determination, that the claims of imperialist England on behalf of Ulster are radically false and misleading. The Ulster question has been manufactured in England for England and by England and not for the sake of the much-tortured Irish province. Ulster has indeed been highly favored by England politically and economically, and basking in the sun of her privileges is, Leinster excepted, the most prosperous section of the. island. She has been allowed a free hand in the moulding of her industrial future, whilst crushing statutes have destroyed the commercial enterprise of the rest of the country. But it must be remembered that the object of England’s benevolence is not primarily the prosperity of Ulster. Wealth and affluence have been given to her that she might learn to love the giver of those good things and consign to a very secondary position the interests of the rest of her homeland. And, England’s bait has wrought wonders of perversity in the heart of Orange Ulster. It has made Ulster a veritable thorn in the side of- Irish national aspiration and development. Orangemen blinded by prosperity have forgotten their gallant forefathers who used the convincing argument of gun and sabre in the days of Grattan and Flood to wring from the Saxon commercial emancipation for Irishmen of every creed and class. They have wandered from the ways of their noble ancestors who drank the health of the Irish and French Republics in the last wild years of the eighteenth century. They have become wrapt up in self, commercialised, provincial, too narrow in their views to be even imperialists for imperialism’s sake and too material to feel the finer emotions of

patriotism. They have fallen down and adored the god of commercial prosperity and bartered their soul for a mess of pottage. . . ri Another fallacy bolstering up the Ulster myth is the teaching that the Irish Presbyterian must expect persecution from the Catholics under an Irish Parlia- 5 ment. How, in the face of the . Irish reputation for tolerance in matters of religion, such a doctrine can win any credence seems difficult to understand. Any- : one possessing a true knowledge of Irish character knows that nature did not give it the iron that makes ■ the persecutor. A tyro’s knowledge of Irish history should convince any unprejudiced person that the Catholic Gael who has been so grievously persecuted has been supremely tolerant towards his non-Catholic fellow-countrymen. Even to-day, when Catholics possess more power than ever they possessed, in every part of the country where they predominate a man’s religion is no bar to office, if in other respects he be qualified for such. There are at the present moment hundreds of small towns that have Protestants in .public offices with the full approval of populations that are overwhelmingly Catholic. Orange trade with the Nationalist population is very considerable, and Belfast, despite its annual celebrations on the Twelfth of July, carries on a thriving business with the South. In the political world the same liberal attitude on the part of Catholics has existed in the past and still endures. There was never a Protestant who manifested sincerity in the national cause whom Ireland did not receive with open arms. Amongst the truest, most revered, and most beloved of her patriotic sons are the heroic Emmet, great-souled Mitchel, and princely Parnell. In the face of these facts Ulster has no right whatsoever to protest against the uniform application of the principle of self-determination to all Ireland. Her non-conforming population could have no just grounds for demanding separation from the rest of the country except those of tyranny in the past or a menacing despotism in the’ future. Her people are only a very small section of the nation. Ulster, not being a people in the national sense of the word, but an integral and natural part of a people, has no right to determine in her own way her future existence apart from the common body of the nation in which she is incorporated. Since that people of which she is a section has offered and is willing at any future date to offer sufficient guarantees under an Irish constitution for the safety of her religious and civil liberty, her protests must be regarded as unreasonable. It is more irrational on her part to seek separation from the rest of Ireland than it would be for Virginia to demand a political future outside the group of commonwealths that constitute the United States. , 3 Besides, to isolate Ulster from Ireland would bo doing a grave injustice to the majority of the nation.

It would create, an incurable , and deadly wound in the soul of Gaelic nationhood. The Irish people cannot and will not tolerate permanent divorce from a province, the ideals and traditions of which have from time immemorial been.part and parcel of its national life. Every Ulster county teems with historic relics that commemorate some of the most renowned of Irish saints, scholars, and heroes. From a princely race of the north came Columbkille, one of the greatest and most beloved of the sanctified ones of the Gael. From Ulster came the Four Masters, amongst the most celebrated of Ireland’s scholars and annalists. She was the region dear to the heart of Cuchulainn, the greatest

hero of .the Gaelic romantic laics. In days better known to history she nurtured the great Hugh O’Neill of Tyrone, who hold the armies of Elizabeth at bay for many a glorious day. To surrender a portion of Gaeldqm so essential to the preservation of her national individuality would be for Ireland almost suicidal. The Irish people can never consent to the sacrifice of so sacred a part of its common heritage on the altar of Orange egoism and" materialism.

—L. Rossbotham, photo. INTERIOR VIEW OF ST. PATRICK’S BASILICA, SOUTH DUNEDIN. The completion, interiorly, of St. Patrick's Basilica, South Dunedin, was a work carried out during the lengthy episcopacy of the late Bishop Vcrdou. This fine edifice, together with the*' one depicted on the opposite page, well deserves a place among the evidences of religious advancement in the diocese recently featured in the pages of the Tablet. ■ ... .