superstition. This is the immortal work of my master King James the First, of whose wisdom I was privileged to be the humble instrument. 25. Mr Balfour has done admirable work of its kind. No one could have done better within the limits set by himself or by the Cabinet of which his illustrious uncle is the head. I yield to none in respect for your present and former Prime Ministers, but they have done no lasting good to Ireland; for they have done nothing which cannot be undone. As Mr Chamberlain said lately at Glasgow,1 "a merely negative policy of resistance will certainly fail." The energy of Government is spent in writing on the sand, which the tide, now dyked out, will sweep into oblivion when it is once again let loose. The conditions of Ireland have been changed very slightly— only by Lord Ashbourne's Act-and whether in the end for the better is very doubtful indeed. The character of the Irish has not been changed at all. Twenty years of resolute government" will not do that; no, nor fifty years, if you could count upon so much. But you cannot count upon even twenty years in a country like Britain, where party spirit is venomous, and the strength of parties nearly evenly balanced; where government may be brought to a standstill by parliamentary obstruction; and where the wisest policy is liable to reversal in six or seven years at the furthest, by the caprice of a fluctuating section of the most ignorant electors. Five per cent or less of the British electorate, two hundred thousand 66 1 February 12, 1889. weather-cocks, of the sort likely to be greatly impressed by the discovery of Pigott's trickery, and quite unmoved by Mr Hurlbert's crushing exposure of the whole fabric of Parnellite falsehood,-these are the arbiters of England's destiny, and hold in their hands the fate of modern civilisation. Even if the pendulum of popular irresolution does not swing to the other side at the next general election, there is very grave danger that the Union majority will be so reduced as to be practically impotent. No Government will long be resolute under such a precarious tenure of power. Party considerations are prone to lead to neglect of duty, in the hope of escaping trouble, catching stray votes, and checkmating the intrigues of opponents. Continuous resolute government is possible, only if delegated once for all to a body of men whose resolution will be stiffened by their deepest personal feelings and strongest personal interests; men to whom resistance of the traitors is a matter of life and death; men who can laugh to scorn the caprice of the English elector, because they have at their back, not only a nation, but an army of their own. 26. There is only one policy of safety and honour in this time of terrible danger. Suspend the Union. Organise Ulster as the citadel of the empire, and the base of operations for a golden conquest, a new Plantation of Leinster and Munster. "Upon the future of Ireland hangs the future of the British empire," wrote Cardinal Manning to Earl Grey in 1868. More than that: the decisive battle of human progress may be fought in the valley of the historic Boyne. The men of Ulster have to quench the first burst of a fiery eruption of barbarism more ruinous than the irruption of Huns and Vandals which destroyed the civilisation of the ancients. Attila and Genseric, Tamerlane and Gengis Khan, were not such foes of human progress and enlightenment as Henry George and Michael Davitt. If Britain fails in the fight, there is small hope of successful resistance in any other country of Europe. 27. A new Plantation! Every British patriot will say that it is the best thing possible for Ireland, and almost every one will say that it is the last thing possible. "It can never be more than a dream. It has been tried, and failed. The task is superhuman. We cannot get rid of four millions of people. To drive them out would be cruel; to buy them out would be too costly. What Cromwell failed to do, with all his despotic power and ruthless temper, surely cannot be done in this age of supersensitive humanity and administrative impotence." 28. Part of this cry of despair is true, but immaterial; most of it is not true, for want of the special study requisite for understanding the question. No living man has had my special experience of the old Plantation. Few men, if any, I am sure, have made a serious study of the problem under modern conditions. The Hill Difficulty is never so steep or so high as it looks to the doubting heart at a far distance. Each step of the ascent becomes clearer and easier to the single-hearted will, resolute to find a way, or to make it. The imaginary magnitude of this task of curing Ireland's disease has turned many a good man, like Lord Spencer, into a gibbering captive of Giant Despair. If he were to look facts and figures closely in the face, and take up the task bit by bit, the difficulties would disappear one by one. So it is with every good work that ought to be done-hard, and huge, and hopeless as it may seem in the mass. 29. At the outset I must demur to the common sweeping statement that previous attempts have been failures. There is some truth in it, but far less truth than falsehood. I did not fail in Antrim: Belfast is my monument. Hamilton, Hill, and Montgomery did not fail in Down. The great plantation of the six counties was not a failure. It is true that only Armagh and Londonderry can be called Protestant by count of noses, and that Cavan never recovered from the blow of 1641, when nearly every settler was expelled; but in Tyrone, Fermanagh, and East Donegal, the Protestants are certainly strong enough to hold their own in any contest but that of the polls. They are a social force too strong to be uprooted; and in fair fight, where quality could tell against quantity, they would be found to have the preponderance of physical force. They are more than 40 per cent of the population. They own nearly all the land, cultivate at least four-fifths of it (in value), and pay at least ninetenths of the local rates and direct imperial taxes. Boycotting, rent-stealing, and intimidation of juries and witnesses, are no more possible there than in Down and Antrim. And the Protestants could, if they chose, soon turn the scale in brute numbers, by getting rid of their Roman Catholic dependants, and replacing them with Protestants. 30. Cromwell certainly did not fail in Ulster, where he planted the only real colony of his soldiers in the valleys of the Lagan and the Bann. The country between Lisburn and Armagh is the most English in Ireland, and the most sternly Protestant in all Europe. There sprang the Orange Society, and there is still its living centre. Elsewhere Cromwell made no serious systematic attempt to plant large bodies of Protestant farmers and labourers. In Leinster and Munster there was only a transfer of land-ownership, not a transformation of the people, except in the corporate towns. These urban colonies were ruined by the later Commercial Restraints, and must in any case have died out for want of a rural population on which to indent for fresh supplies of Protestant blood. 31. Study of Irish local history and geography makes it evident that the failures of Cromwell and the earlier Undertakers were due, not to the inherent impossibility of the task, but to their setting about it in a wrong way, and to the hostility or mismanagement of later Governments. The work was carried on in a desultory way, and its parts were discontinuous. The rural colonies were too scattered to help each other, and too small to maintain themselves against the pressure of surrounding hostile hordes in times of disturbance, or to resist the absorbing influence of the larger body on the smaller in times of peace. Many of the settlers, if not most, were un |