Page:The Irish Cause and "The Irish Convention".djvu/13

 by all means place on the Irish people the responsibility for its acceptance or rejection, for under a Referendum the masses of the Irish people would have a voice such as they can never have under your nominated or selected Convention. If, as I am very sure, the response to a Referendum should be an all but universal chorus of acceptance and relief from every substantial element in the country, including the bulk of the great Protestant and Dissenting communities—well, then, let the Government do what the Home Rule Government ought to have done five or six years ago, let them adopt the agreement as their own, and let them publicly announce that they will if necessary go to the country and appeal for the sovereign authority of the electorate if any small section of merely irrational irreconciliables at either extreme should still attempt to block the way. I am speaking of a small and irrational minority. I do not, of course, speak of the Unionist body in bulk, and of course if you were to attempt Partition in any shape you would be dealing not with an irrational minority but with practically the entire Irish race, fifteen or twenty millions of them, and you would find yourself up against that rock of Irish nationality against which all the force of England has spent itself in vain for the past eight hundred years.

What I want the House to mark is that you have never yet tried any of the things I mention. You have never called the Irish people into consultation. You have never called the electorate into consultation. You have never offered any concession to Ulster except one which would call upon us with our own hand to take the very life of our motherland as a nation. You have abdicated the first function of democratic government in favour of the right of 13