• ERRONEOUS ASSUMPTIONS UNDERLYING PLANS FOR REFUSING TO ACKNOWLEDGE IRISH PARLIAMENT
• EXAMINATION OF DETAILS OF IRISH REVENUE
• PROPORTION OF TOTAL REVENUE A PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT MIGHT BE ABLE TO SEIZE
• PROBABLE CONSEQUENCES OF ATTEMPTING TO DO SO
• ARMS, EQUIPMENT, AND TRAINING OF ULSTER VOLUNTEER FORCE
• SUGGESTION THAT BRITISH ARMY WILL REFUSE TO FIGHT THEM
• IMPORTANCE OF ULSTER TO THE UNIONIST PARTY.

Erroneous Assumptions

According to the terms of the Home Rule Bill, the collection of taxes is, and is likely to remain for some time, an Imperial service. Moreover, the taxes when collected will in the first instance be paid into the Imperial Exchequer. The Irish Home Rule Government is to receive a fixed sum in any case, and the amount does not depend in any way on the ability of the Imperial Government to collect taxes levied in Ireland. Consequently the Ulster Unionists cannot refuse to pay the taxes of the Irish Parliament, because the Irish Parliament will not be demanding any taxes from them, at any rate not at first, and as the Imperial Executive is responsible for their collection, Irish Unionists if they refuse to pay will be directly confronted with the Imperial authority.

Details of Irish Revenue

Putting these aside for the present, the next head is Estate Duties, £936,000. Not all of this is collected in Ulster. A refusal to pay this tax would affect the legality of the ownership of an estate. Is anyone who has come into an estate going to be so foolish as to refuse the payment which is necessary in order to obtain his title, or pay the tax to an authority which cannot give him a legal receipt for it or a valid title to the property?

Such a person may conceivably find that he may have to pay the tax a second time and a number of penalties or additional charges as well, if the Provisional Government should break down. or spend the money on its own purposes, and be unable to credit it to the Imperial Government at the adjustment of accounts...that is if any are kept, which is unlikely.

The next item is Stamps, which bring in £326,000, not all of which, presumably, is collected in Ulster. These also affect the legality of business transactions, and the same remarks apply to them.

Next comes Income Tax, £1,206,000. This is the most hopeful, or rather the least hopeless item for the organisers of the Provisional Government. Taking this amount in detail, we find that under the head of Lands and Houses £381,000 were collected in the year in question. Assuming that half of this tax is collected from people resident in Ulster, which is probably a greatly exaggerated estimate, this leaves a possible £190,500 for the Provisional Government to collect if those who pay this tax are foolish enough to give it to them.

An amount of £30,000 is derived from the occupation of land; let us give the Provisional Government £15,000 of this, also probably an overestimate; £29,000 are obtained from Government Stocks, etc.

As the Government in question is the Imperial Government, whose taxes Ulster Unionists are refusing to pay, I doubt very much whether it will give Ulster-men the opportunity of refusing to pay this tax, and it may be taken as certain that payment of interest will be withheld as long as the payees are in revolt, and if I were one of them I should also consult my lawyer, if one can be found who is not also a political leader, as to whether here is not also a possibility of the principal being confiscated.

Such things have happened before, though in a less enlightened age. In any case, of this amount the Provisional Government is likely to get little but the ciphers at the end of the figure, and if the Imperial Government likes to be vindictive, by confiscating the capital amount, it might recoup itself for most of its other losses at one fell swoop.

On account of Public Companies, Foreign Dividends and Coupons £430,000 are realised, but as much of this tax is deducted at the source it would be unsafe to count very much on the possibility of refusing payment in this case.

Trades and Profession bring in £216,000. Let the Provisional Government have half of this, which is also probably a very liberal estimate. The official salaries of public officers etc account for £41,000. I doubt if the Provisional Government will lay its hands on much of this.

In any case, as the Government officials will either be withdrawn or taken over by the Provisional Government, this can only be deducted from the salaries it is itself paying to them. If this should take place, the classic instance of the town the inhabitants of which lived by taking in each others washing will fade into insignificance before this illustration of the financial skill of the "hardheaded men of business" the Ulster people are so fortunate in having found as their leaders.

Non-official salaries bring in £71,000. Let the Provisional Government have half of this, which is far too much if all the manhood of the province is engaged in fighting, or even in drilling. The total revenue of the Provisional Government thus amounts to £349,000. The next item of taxation levied in Ireland is the Land Value Duties. The only one of these which Ireland pays is the Mineral Rights Duty, and it brings in the princely sum of £1,000. Let us give the Provisional Government £500. from this tax. That brings its revenue up to £349,500.

Miscellaneous revenue stands at £110,000 for the year in question. As £79,000 of this comes from Fee and Patent Stamps, and Fee Stamps are paid in the course of litigation, and litigation in the law courts of an Ireland governed by a Home Rule Parliament is presumably to cease so far as Ulster is concerned, I suspect that there will not be much revenue derived from this tax.

Of this £110,000, £29,000 is entered under the heading "Expenses of Administration of Local Loans." I am afraid it will be difficult to tap this source of revenue. There are one or two other items of miscellaneous revenue which are small and unimportant.

The Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone services bring in £947,000, £97,500, and £62,000 respectively. These are services, however, where the expenditure usually exceeds the income, and as they will have to enter into competition with motor cyclist dispatch-riders equipped with heliographs and Marconi apparatus for home communications, while, as I shall show later, the etiquette of war requires that those with the enemy's country should be suspended, the loss on their working is bound to be even greater than it is at present.

Crown lands bring in £22,500. As the people of Ulster profess that they are still loyal to the Crown, they can hardly well take possession of its lands, and even though their patience should be tried too far, and they find it necessary to make a change in this respect, the recognised principle is that the lands go with the office, and without the consent of the new ruler, which evidently cannot be given till he is selected, the income from this source cannot be regarded as available for the ordinary purposes of administration.

Apart from Customs and Excise therefore, the total revenue of the Provisional Government will be at the most £349,500. Is this enough to pay for the government of 1,581,696 people of whom nearly half will be unwilling subjects, or rather open rebels against its authority?

The total population of Ireland in 1911 was 4,390,219. The cost of governing Ireland in 1911-12 was £11,533,500. At a moderate estimate, the share of Ulster is not less than 3.5 millions in time of peace. Sir Edward Carson will have to make his machinery very perfect indeed, or ask his followers to put their hands very much deeper in their pockets than they have hitherto done, if he is going to make ends meet in time of war.

Since the above words were written a capital sum of a million pounds as an indemnity fund has been called for and much of it has been promised. True, the generous donors have endeavoured with some success to transfer their liabilities to underwriters in London, but I fear that even heavier demands will have to be made on the loyalty of the men of Ulster on the financial resources of London insurance agencies, if they are going to meet all the liabilities of the Provisional Government they propose to have in office during a time of civil war.

But what about Customs and Excise? Over 8.5 millions are collected under these heads alone, and it is often asserted by Unionists that two-thirds of this amount is paid by the Unionists of Belfast and the North of Ireland. Everybody outside a lunatic asylum or a political platform must know that taxes of this kind, wherever collected, are simply passed on, and ultimately paid by the consumer of the commodity on which they are levied.

The Connemara peasant who smokes Gallaher's tobacco really pays the tax which is collected in Belfast by Customs and Excise officials. All that is proved by the fact, if it be a fact, that two-thirds of the Customs and Excise revenue is collected in Belfast, is that Belfast is the great distributing centre for commodities like tea, sugar, and tobacco, not only for the North of Ireland, but for a large part of the Midlands and West as well, while it is also the seat of large distilleries. At first sight this may seem a fortunate circumstance for the Provisional Government, but perhaps it is not so fortunate as it seems.

What form is the refusal to pay Customs and Excise duties going to take? Will Ulster Unionists drink no tea or whiskey and deny themselves the solace of a pipe or cigarette? That policy might lessen the revenues of the Imperial Treasury, but neither would it put money in the coffers of the Provisional Government; besides it suffers from the distinct disadvantage of being perfectly legal.

If the Provisional Government is to get its Customs and Excise and the Ulster Unionist his dutiable articles of consumption, there is only one way of rendering this possible. The Provisional Government must seize the Customhouses and distilleries at Belfast, Londonderry, Newry and every other place where there is a considerable collection of Customs and Excise revenue.

Now, it unfortunately happens that a great may of these places contain garrisons of British troops, who might possibly be indifferent spectators of what goes on in a municipal building such as the Town Hall, but can hardly be expected to look on while unauthorised persons seized Government buildings and Government property, whether they do so under the aegis of the Union Jack or the Nine Stars of Ulster.

The Provisional Government says it is preparing for all contingencies, and one contingency I hope it will not overlook is that of its amateur Customs and Excise officers finding the performance of their duties obstructed by some hundreds of British soldiers and a few Maxim guns.

What about Mr Asquith's nod, it may be asked? This will be discussed in detail later on, but in connection with the present subject it may be pointed out that such action on the part of the Imperial Government would be one of defence not defiance, and, like the military training to which the people of Ulster are submitting themselves at present, so far as the hours of labour in the factories or the pressure of agricultural operations permit, would only be in the nature of a justifiable precaution against eventualities.

It is to be hoped that in these circumstances nothing will happen beyond a formal protest, and the lodging of a claim that the points at issue be referred to the Hague Tribunal, but should anybody be so ill-advised as to try and rush one of these places, the misfortune of a man whose loyalty manifested itself in an attempt to seize His Majesty's Revenue and Revenue Offices will meet with scant sympathy on the other side of the Channel.

Moreover, in case the Imperial Government should wish to keep up an appearance of generosity and the Provisional Government desires to have the Custom Houses, it may well be allowed to have them.

The Customs can be collected almost as easily on the quay or in the landing shed. Should the Provisional Government prove unreasonable, and insist on having possession of everything up to the water's edge -- nothing has been said about its having a fleet, so presumably it can go no further-- it can be allowed to have that, too, on the trifling condition that any port where this is done shall be declared closed. It is unlikely that shipping will disobey the orders of the Imperial Government, and in any case half a dozen gunboats or steam launches will be sufficient to enforce compliance.

The only circumstances in which the Provisional Government is likely to be in a position to collect Customs will be when there are no Customs to collect. It is to be hoped this situation will appeal to Belfast. The vast and profitable distributing trade which it at present enjoys will be diverted to Dublin, Dundalk, Drogheda, and Sligo. The merchants of those places will rejoice; but what will the "hardheaded business men of Belfast" say?

It does not require much of the gift of prophecy to foretell that in a very short time a special meeting of the Chamber of Commerce will be called, and the Provisional Government will be denounced in language almost as vigorous as the same body on a former occasion made use of with reference to the Home Rule Bill.

It will be equally easy to take measures to guard the distilleries, and if any Unionist loses his life in an attempt to rush them, his motives will be liable to be misconstrued. It will be difficult to make any political capital out of such an occurrence for the benefit of the Unionist Party in Great Britain. Even if a few distilleries do remain in the hands of the Provisional Government, their possession is likely to add to its difficulties quite as much as to its revenue.

The fixing of the amount of duty is a matter in which it is quite impossible to please everybody, and between the teetotallers who may probably want to take advantage of the situation to close them down altogether, and those of less strict principles who may possibly think the general confusion a good opportunity for having as much liquor as they want for little or nothing, it will be any thing but easy to hold the balance evenly.

Whatever course is adopted is sure to produce dissatisfaction in some quarter, and the Imperial Government can afford to look on with equanimity while the various sections of the supporters of the Provisional Government attempt to impose their views on this question on all the others.

In most places in Ulster Excise duties will thus be collected as usual, though possibly under military protection, and the Customs revenue which was formerly collected mainly at Belfast and other ports of Ulster will continue to be collected by the Imperial Government at those places, or will be collected at ports outside the influence of the Provisional Government.

The Imperial Government will be put to very little inconvenience. It may not get in all the Income Tax, but it can afford to await the inevitable collapse of the Provisional Government before collecting the balance of £349,000. If the refusal to pay this tax has taken the form of refusing to make the return necessary for assessment, the harvest for the Imperial Government will be indeed rich; the penalty for this offence is £20, and treble the duty chargeable.

On the other hand, the Income Tax payers who have paid their Income Tax to the Provisional Government will have the uncomfortable feeling that they may be called on to pay it a second time, with a considerable additional amount in penalties of various kinds, to the properly constituted authorities.

The merchants of Belfast and Derry will be wondering whether after all any sort of lawful Government, even a Home Rule Government, is not better for business than the Provisional Government. The Imperial Government can allow this state of affairs to continue indefinitely while it enjoys the spectacle of the supporters of its rival cutting off their nose to spite their face, and incidentally benefiting their "hereditary enemies" by diverting most of their business to them.

Amount Accessible to Seizure

Will this be sufficient to bring to its knees the Government of a country which only the other day has been able to vote the Irish landlords a nice little present of £12,000,000 under the head of a bonus on land purchase? Anything the Provisional Government can do will not merely not cause any serious embarrassment to the Ministry, but will not even affect their prestige if they adopt the proper attitude in dealing with it.

All that will be necessary will be to explain that the Liberals are just as devoted as the Unionists to a policy of generosity to Ireland, but have been so impressed by the criticisms of the latter on the Insurance Act that they consider the method of imposing heavy taxation on Ireland, and then returning an even larger amount in subsidies, involves unnecessary cost of establishment, that under the former system the cost of Irish administration has grown till it now considerably exceeds the revenue, and consequently they have decided to meet everybody's objections and effect considerable economies at the same time by discontinuing simultaneously the collection of taxes and the granting of subsidies in such parts of Ireland as prefer the other method.

Even if the British elector is not entirely convinced by this show of reasoning, he has grown so accustomed to having to pay an exorbitant amount for every fresh policy in regard to.Ireland, that he is very unlikely to discover that anything abnormal has happened. The whole situation seems to have been described between two and three thousand years ago by Aesop, the author of the well-known fables, in the story of the fly and the bull, a translation of which is as follows:- "A fly having settled on the horn of a bull and having sat there a long time, when it was about to leave asked the bull if now he wished him to go away, to which the latter replied: 'I neither knew when you came, nor if you depart shall I be aware of the fact.'"

Assuming, however, that the Provisional Government successfully overcomes all these difficulties, there still remains a rock on which it has a very good chance of splitting. One would have expected that such champions of the rights of objectors would have contented themselves with taking over that part of the country where the people are either sympathetic or indifferent, and would have left alone the remainder of the province where the great bulk of the population is Nationalist.

But not so, the farce has to be kept up that Ulster is Unionist, and the flag of the Provisional Government bears the Nine Stars of Ulster, though a majority of the Ulster Members bf Parliament are actually in favour of Home Rule. What is there to prevent a similar state of things in the Parliament of the Provisional Government if it is elected on the same franchise and for the same constituencies?

Catholics cannot be excluded without an unmerited slight on the Chief Unionist Whip, and those who have been so eloquent in their denunciations of the alleged political influence of the Ancient Order of Hibernians, can hardly confine the franchise to members of Orange Lodges and Unionist Clubs. And in case the nationalist majority in the Ulster Parliament should decree its own extinction, and amalgamation with the Parliament at Dublin, how can those object who are still lost in admiration of an exactly similar measure 113 years ago, even though the majority was not a spontaneous one, but a large proportion of the members composing it had to be bribed or driven into the course they adopted.

Well may the poet say, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," when the possessor of it is a usurper, and there is a danger that the majority of his subjects are in favour of the legitimate ruler.

If, however, the constituencies are gerrymandered, or the non-Unionist inhabitants of Ulster actually disfranchised, there still remain some difficulties for the Provisional Government which may well prove insuperable.

The Provisional Government can be given full scope so long as it makes no attempt to govern, and remains a mere voluntary association collecting subscriptions, which it prefers to call taxes, from those who are foolish enough to pay them.

The trouble will arise when it begins to deal with the half million or so of inhabitants of the province who, though they have signed no Covenant to that effect, may safely be depended on to refuse to pay its taxes or obey its laws. What is it going to do in regard to them? Is it going to ignore them? If so, and it is only its own supporters who have to pay taxes, while other people pay none, the grim determination of Ulster will be exposed to one of the most insidious attacks it has yet had to undergo, and the desertions among its followers are likely to be so considerable as to cause very serious difficulties, both military and financial. Is it going to disregard all its own contentions about the rights of minorities, and attempt to compel obedience on the part of those who will not recognise its authority?

If it attempts to do so, will they not have as good a moral right to resist as Ulster Unionists say they have to resist the decrees and refuse to pay the taxes of an Irish Parliament, since the impositions of the latter would be at least legal, while those of the former would not? If any unwilling subject refuses to pay a tax levied by the Provisional Government, will they put him in gaol? In that case, as there will probably be the taxpaying members of a population of at least 500,000 against whom such measures will have to be taken, the gaol accommodation of Ulster will require to be largely increased. Will they seize his property? If he is a farmer, for instance, will they drive off his cattle? If they do so he will naturally object, and probably express his objections in deeds as well as words. If he makes use of a blackthorn stick for that purpose, how often will those amateur tax collectors allow him to brandish it in dangerous proximity to their heads before they fire?

Presumably all this sort of work will have to be done by the Ulster Volunteers in the absence of any special staff for this purpose. In the eye of the law such con duct is robbery, and where shooting takes place will be murder or attempted murder. Yet it is the only way by which the Provisional Government can make itself a reality and not a mere sham. The forces of the Crown are bound to interfere to protect in the exercise of their legal rights those who object to illegal taxation. If any Ulster Unionist loses his life in an encounter with the forces of the Crown in connection with a matter of this kind, the usual rhetoric about shooting down Ulster-men whose only crime is their loyalty will have to be considerably modified, and a formula will have to be devised which renders it intolerable oppression to interfere with anybody who is doing what seems right in his own eyes or those of his self-constituted rulers, however much the rest of the world may object to such conduct.

No political capital can be made out of an occurrence such as this. The first duty of a government is to maintain law and order. The Government will have the whole force of British public opinion behind it in whatever measures it may find necessary to take in order to secure the non-adherents of the Provisional Government in the exercise of their legal rights, and to protect them against its exactions.

No one expects that the Imperial Government will proceed against the Provisional Government for merely proclaiming itself as such. So far as the Imperial Government is concerned, they may proclaim a Provisional Government once a week in every town and village in Ulster, and they will probably be afforded police protection in doing so if there is any likelihood of disturbance.

But once they begin to attempt to govern, in other words, to perform acts which legally will be robbery and intimidation of those who refuse to acknowledge it or contribute towards it, the Provisional Government will become simply an illegal society, and will be proceeded against like any other.

Consequences of Attempting to Seize Revenue

Granting, however, that the Ulster Unionists succeed in pushing matters to extremes, and that the law is powerless to protect the lives and property of the minority - are the resources of civilisation exhausted?

It is idle to appeal to the success of the defenders of Derry or to the difficulty which the British Army experienced in conquering South Africa. The circumstances are very different in the case of Ulster. I see it is admitted by their own leaders that Ulster Unionists cannot resist the whole might of the British Army. It would have been more to the point if they had considered whether they can resist the whole might of the RIC, which is an army in everything but name.

Training the UVF

And what arrangements have been made that at any point where there is fighting, there will be a sufficient supply of the right kind of cartridges? Assuming that the rifles are perfect, and that no difficulty arises about the use of more than one kind of ammunition, have they got sufficient? Has it ever struck anyone to form an estimate of the amount of cartridges blazed away in even a small engagement, or the difficulty that modern armies have in keeping the firing line supplied with ammunition?

Even if infinite reserves of ammunition have been laid in, the size and weight of black powder cartridges makes it impossible for an Ulster Volunteer to carry more than about half what he might have done if modern rifles had been supplied. Should the ammunition run short after the trouble begins, is the Imperial Government, holding command of the sea, likely to allow it to be freely imported from abroad?

British military rifles of the latest pattern can be supplied by the Army and Navy Stores at £5 each, and of the long Lee-Enfield pattern at £4 l0s each, and doubtless if ordered in large quantities there would have been a substantial discount on those figures, even if Birmingham Unionism had not seen fit to supply weapons at cost price to those fighting for the common cause. Instead of which, those who are never tired of telling the people of Ulster how they must if necessary sacrifice everything for the cause, in order to save a pound or two on each rifle, have cast to the winds all those principles of encouraging home manufacture which as Tariff Reformers they may be supposed to possess, and have doubtless alienated the sympathy of their friends in Birmingham, who might reasonably have expected the order, by dumping secondhand foreign rubbish which nobody who was contemplating real warfare would have accepted as a gift.

Does it never strike any Ulster Volunteer, as he gazes on the venerable weapon which his leaders have served out to him, which in many cases he has to share with about twenty other men, and probably has never fired in his life, that he would do well to pause for a moment, whenever the flood of rhetoric admits of his doing so, and ask himself what is their object.

Nothing but the abysmal ignorance of military matters on the part of the mass of the people of Ulster, arising out of the fact that the Volunteer and Territorial systems have never been extended to Ireland, could blind their eyes to the fact that the Ulster army is only an army for show.

Since the Boer War a sharp distinction has been drawn between ceremonial parades and training in the actual business of fighting, with which the former has practically nothing to do. As the recruit in the regular army has plenty of leisure for learning all branches of his business, and the tendency in time of peace is all in the direction of smartness of appearance, it is the ceremonial part of the military education which is undertaken first, and as it is much the easiest to arrange for, and can be practised with wooden rifles, or even at a pinch with broomsticks, the drill that the Ulster Volunteers have learnt up till now is mainly of this nature.

Does it never strike them as curious that the persons who express themselves highly delighted with their military appearance and efficiency if they can make some sort of attempt at marching east and presenting arms to the Ulster leader, belong to the party that is always complaining about the want of training and the inefficiency of the Territorials?

A Territorial, at any rate, has a modern rifle all to himself, he is taught to fire at various ranges up to 800 or 1,000 yards and is not supposed to be qualified until he can place a shot pretty well where he wants at most of those ranges; he learns to judge distance, to take advantage of cover, and a thousand and one things which cannot be taught in a drill hall or anywhere but in the open country under conditions as similar as possible to actual warfare.

Besides, in most cases he goes to camp, or at least attends field days in which large numbers of troops take part, so that they learn to co-operate with each other and act in concert. Except in the case of a few members of rifle clubs, nearly all these elements are wanting in the training of the Ulster Volunteers.

How many of them have ever been on a range at all? How many of them with the rifles they have got, but in most instances never fired, could hit the proverbial haystack at 200 yards, much less the head of a policeman or soldier, which is all they will have to aim at in most cases, even if the barrels are not so badly worn as to spoil the accuracy of the shooting, which is usually the case in rifles when they get old?

How many of them have had any field training in combination with any considerable number of other people? Even if their rifles were of the very latest pattern, and cost as many pounds as they have done shillings, and they had trained in the use of them till they could hit a policeman at a thousand yards nine times out of ten, what use would they be without artillery, which could mow them down from a distance of three miles, or even from the further side of a hill where they could not even see it.

Too much stress should not be laid on Mr Asquith's nod, which, when the time comes, may be represented as meaning only that the Provisional Government would not be interfered with so long as it remained a purely voluntary association and did not attempt to govern, especially as some subsequent remarks of Lord Morley's on the subject of maintaining order are as hard to reconcile with the popular interpretation of it, as are the discrepancies in the statements of Mr Bonar Law, Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Curzon in regard to what the Unionists will do about Ulster if they lose again in a general election.

Let the Ulster Volunteers read what their own leaders have said about Mr Asquith's perfidy in postponing the reform of the second chamber, and how he even deceived the King into signing the Parliament Act, and then consider whether, on the strength of a mere nod, which may only have been due to drowsiness, or can be explained away in the manner suggested above or half a dozen others equally good for the purpose of Parliamentary argument, it is safe without artillery, without training, and with rifles about as useful as the muzzle-loaders most of them have always possessed, to take the risk of coming into armed conflict with the RIC, not to speak of the British Army.

Role of British Army

The object of the Ulster leaders is, no doubt, either to frighten the British public, or to win its sympathy, it does not matter which, but if there is one constitutional principle more important than another in British public life it is that the Army shall not be used as an engine of political warfare, and the very suspicion of an attempt on the part of Ulster to bring about a subordination of civil to military authority, will at once alienate the sympathy of every British elector who has any regard for the spirit and traditions of the constitution.

The principle that the military shall be subordinate to the civil power is one of its most essential features. Its origins are to be traced in the struggle for popular rights which ended in the overthrow of the Stuarts. It is manifested at the present day in the fact that the law on which the existence of the Army depends, is a law which must be renewed every year, and which in consequence involves the calling together of annual Parliaments.

Ulster Unionists will meet with little sympathy in Great Britain if they attempt to undermine the allegiance of the Army. But still more important is the question, are they likely to succeed? Granted there are many Ulster Protestants in the ranks of the British Army, and that many of its officers are drawn from the class which is traditionally Unionist in sympathy, there are also many Roman Catholics both as officers and soldiers. Regiments like the Dublin Fusiliers and the Connaught Rangers are almost entirely Catholic.

In fact, I feel sure I am well within the mark when I assert that there are three times as many Irish Catholics as Irish Protestants in the ranks of the British Army. The remainder of the army is recruited largely from the British working classes.

The British working man has no sympathy with the religious fears and political predilections of Ulster Protestants. That accounts very largely for their "apathy" on the question of Home Rule of which the Ulster leader complains.

Even if he shared their fears and opinions to the utmost, it does not follow that the British soldier will refuse to shoot them if ordered to do so, especially as his refusal would render him liable to be shot himself for disobedience.

British soldiers might be expected to share the opinions and sympathies of the class from which the majority of them are drawn. That class is the British working class. Yet it is a well-known fact that on more than one occasion in the history of industrial disputes in Great Britain, British soldiers have been ordered to shoot down British working men, and so strong is the influence of military discipline, they have obeyed the order. It is scarcely likely they will show a different spirit in dealing with Ulster.

The majority of the officers may in civil life be Unionists. The most they are likely to do is to resign their commissions. It would be contrary to all the traditions of the service to attempt to persuade their men to mutiny or to fight on the side of Ulster, and were they to do so, it is unlikely for the reasons I have given that they would meet with any response. (2)

The shortage of officers might seem a difficulty, but there are many who think that the army might with advantage be made more democratic, and I am sure it would be possible to fill all the vacancies thus created by promotions from the non-commissioned ranks without any very great loss of efficiency. If this were done, and if the wholesale resignations of officers broke down the caste system which at present prevails, and opened the highest ranks to the private soldier in the same way as the emigration of the Royalist officers did in the French army at the time of the Revolution, this Ulster war would probably be the most popular in which the British Army has ever been engaged.

It would doubtless be considered rather hard to have to shoot down Ulster-men whose only crime was that they were proclaiming a Provisional Government, but Mr Asquith's commonsense and political astuteness, even more than Mr Asquith's nod, may be relied on to prevent this.

The chances are that they will only be called in, if at all, to protect unwilling taxpayers from the exactions of the Provisional Government, or to prevent any attempt on the part of the latter to seize Government property and buildings, and if force is necessary to secure these objects, then force will be used; and if anybody gets killed or hurt in consequence, the only sympathy he is likely to get is that conveyed in the phrase, "serves him right".

An idea is prevalent that after they have fired a volley or two in order to show that they are not to be trifled with, Ulster Unionists need only wave a Union Jack and strike up "God save the King," and the other side instead of returning their fire will at once fail on their necks and join forces with them. Might I point out to those possessed of this idea that in warfare the enemy is the person who is trying to kill you, however identical your sentiments may be in private life.

The opinion of General Sir William Adair, which he expressed at a Unionist demonstration at Whiteabbey on July 21st of this year, ought to disabuse peoples' minds of any remnants of an idea that British soldiers will not shoot down Ulstermen if ordered to do so, or if they are fired on by them. Sir William Adair said:-

"It was one of the maxims of the Emperor Napoleon that when devising a plan of campaign one should credit the enemy with always doing the right thing. The right thing for the Government to do after it passed the Home Rule Bill was to coerce Ulster into submission, and the right way for them to do it was to employ British troops. As an old soldier it had rather pained him lately to hear and read so many questions as to whether the British soldiers would fire on Ulstermen. Thank God, the British soldier and the British sailor had always done their duty, and he knew they always would. And if they were told that it was their duty to fire on Ulstermen they would fire on Ulstermen.

He did not care what Mr Birrell said, or whether Mr Asquith nodded his head off. It was their duty to oppose the Government, if necessary, by arms, and it was the duty of the Government to oppose them by all the forces that they could command."

Importance to the Unionist Party

The leader par excellence, who can hardly object to being described as the uncrowned king of Ulster, since he receives royal honours wherever he goes, apparently without any protest, has talked a good deal about taking his followers into his confidence, but if so there must be some secret code only understood by the initiated, as all that the ordinary person can make out of his public utterances is that they are going to resist Home Rule by methods, all of which possess a certain family resemblance, but which appear to be legal or illegal according to the day of the week on which the speech is delivered.

During the intermediate stage of the platform campaign there was a slight preponderance in favour of illegality, as in three out of four speeches which he delivered then, the language was strongly reminiscent of Kruger's threat that he would stagger humanity, and mere law was looked down upon from such a lofty pinnacle of contempt as can only be explained by the supposition of a too literal acceptance of the principle that "the king can do no wrong," while on the fourth day the Government actually had the good fortune to obtain a legal opinion from such an eminent authority for nothing, and were informed that they could not arrest him as he had done nothing illegal.

His conduct is becoming apparently more illegal every day, but it is perhaps not too uncharitable to suspect that a person who can successfully create the impression that he is defying every law in the kingdom, and is laying himself open to prosecution for high treason, which is a much more serious crime than murder, and then is found to have been acting quite legally all the time, should fail to give his followers a correct idea of his aims and objects, I will not say through deliberate intention, but through mere force of habit and delight in his own intellectual ingenuity.

Is it not even possible that one who has to spend too much of his time in bewildering and befogging other people, may end by bewildering and befogging himself, and get lost in a maze of words full of sound and fury signifying nothing?

Whatever the plan is, assuming that one exists, it is evident that rifles have something to do with it, since money has been spent on purchasing them, and also evident that they have not very much, since most of those purchased are so old and inferior. (1)

It is not contended that the Ulster Volunteers would have any chance whatever against the British Army unless it turned and fraternised with them, and I have endeavoured to show that even the RIC might be rather awkward to tackle. What then can the object be? It is difficult to advance much further by direct reasoning, but perhaps something may be done by way of analogy.

War has been described as the sport of kings - no personal allusions are intended - and possibly some light may be thrown on the subject by considering the methods of sport.

In countries where there are tigers, one of the most common methods of killing them is to tie a goat or bulfalo at the foot of a tree, in the branches of which the hunter conceals himself. The tiger scents from afar a possible supper, comes along, and pounces on the unfortunate animal. While he is so engaged, the hunter from his place of safety in the tree fires, and if he is at all a good shot, kills the tiger.

The similarity between the methods of the Ulster leaders and the eastern hunter has hitherto escaped attention, owing to the fact that the speeches of the former have to be searched for in isolated newspaper reports, and have not yet been published in a collected form.

I seem, however, to remember an admission somewhere that the Ulster Volunteers would be no match for the whole British Army, and the evident anxiety that the latter should not shoot back would go to support this view. In his speech at Omagh, I find the great leader reported as saying, "So long as the Government allow us to take that course, and don't interfere with us, there is no reason why we should have a collision; but if the Government interfere with us, I shrink from no collision."

In plain English, the Ulster Volunteers are being worked up so that, if the Home Rule becomes law, they are bound to come into conflict with the authorities, and then when in self-defence the police or soldiers have to fire, the leaders, who will occupy a strategic position in the rear similar to that of King James at the battle of the Boyne, will retire to the other side of the Channel and stump the country about the brutality of the Government in shooting down loyal Ulstermen; the wave of indignation so created will presumably sweep the Government from power, the Unionists will return to office, and everybody will live happily ever after, except, of course, those who had to be killed to bring this happy result about, and those who had the misfortune to be dependant on them, unless the indemnity fund is adequate for this and all other purposes. (3)

The traditional relationship on the part of Ulster of utility to the Conservative Party will be maintained, but on this occasion instead of being a card in the Tory pack, she will serve as a goat to the Tory huntsman. (4)

This appears to be the real and only conceivable object of the movement, that is, if it has an object, and all the rest is mere decoration and embellishment. Had the leaders been quite frank with themselves or their followers, a considerable amount of time spent in drilling, and whatever money has been spent in buying discarded rifles, might have been saved.

Rifles are by no means necessary to get the police to fire on a mob; the same result can be produced by means of stones or bricks, as was demonstrated at Cawnpore the other day, where over forty of a Mohammedan crowd engaged in defending their civil and religious liberties, as they were led to believe they were, by pelting the police with bricks, were shot down just as if they had been ordinary rioters.

The description of the incident in the Irish Times, a Unionist paper, which has overlooked the parallelism of the two situations alike in the objects aimed at, the methods employed, and the existence in each case of a strong local feeling in favour of peace, and that it was the influence of self-appointed outside leaders- in the Indian case they are called agitators- that turned the scale in favour of a resort to force, may be of interest as showing the manner in which such conduct is regarded when it takes place outside Ulster.

The extracts are as follows:-

"An official account of the riot at Cawnpore states that the Mohammedans were excited by scurrilous attacks in the newspapers, and taunts of lack of religious zeal. Strenuous efforts were made by circulars to arouse feeling and to secure a big attendance. The crowd was estimated at about twenty thousand. Fiery addresses were delivered, and the police were received with brickbats and mercilessly beaten. The mounted police were forced to retire. The magistrate finally ordered the police to fire."

"Mr. Dodd, Superintendent of Police, was severely injured. Twenty-four were badly hurt, and one was killed by buckshot in the melée. One hundred and thirty-one persons are now in custody."

"Eighteen rioters were killed, and twenty-seven wounded."

"Intense depression prevails in Cawnpore, though the city is now quiet."

"There can be no doubt that yesterday's riots at Cawnpore were caused by Moslem agitators."

"The cry of sacrilege was assiduously spread by the Moslem League, and the news spread. Virtually it can be said that there was no excitement in Cawnpore itself, and the moderate section of the Moslems was arranging a deputation to Sir James Meston, the Lieutenant-Governor, who had undertaken to visit the mosque with them on the 9th inst, and to receive a formal statement their grievance on the same day. Meanwhile local Moslems, taunted by outside agitators with petty religious matters, held a mass meeting yesterday, which had some unfortunate results. It is reported that thirty or forty rioters were killed and wounded, and several policemen were also injured. The occurrence illustrates the danger of agitators playing on the fanaticism of an ignorant crowd."

The rule of the Provisional Government will thus in all probability be characterised by riot and disorder. I reserve for the next chapter a more detailed discussion of the problems with which it will be faced in its dealings both with its own subjects and with the Imperial Government, and the methods it may seek to apply in solving them.

Notes and References Ch 5

2. This was written before the Curragh mutiny, which proved JJ's judgment wrong, and that of Carson right. RJ.

3. This, to my mind, is the key paragraph. RJ.

4. This analogy, and the subsequent Cawnpore allusion, springs from the elder brothers in the Indian Civil Service. RJ.

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 1998