Page:The Irish Cause and "The Irish Convention".djvu/19

 blame for such a decision or for the failure to arrive at any better one to the Irish people would be little short of an outrage upon Ireland, and would be a gross imposition on the credulity of friendly nations abroad.

2. The proposed Convention would both be too large to make a prompt and carefully-considered agreement practicable, and too small for a National Assembly purporting to represent all the great interests concerned. The fact that the scheme excludes from any direct representation whatever the 400,000 Ulster Nationalists whom any Partition proposal hitherto contemplated would cut off from their country; the agricultural and urban labourers, comprising one-third of the Irish population; the great farming interest in the area of the Rural District Councils, and the Universities and other teaching professions—must surely make it unnecessary to emphasise the latter point.

3. While the politicians' organizations are in appearance restricted to a delegation of five apiece, the pretence is, to the knowledge of everybody in Ireland, a misleading one. The twin organizations of the Irish Parliamentary Party—the most powerful of the two being of a secret and rigidly sectarian character—would command a majority of the Convention as disciplined as if directly delegated by these organizations, and, in the event of "a deal" with the Ulster Unionist body of at least twenty-five delegates, would represent an overwhelming vote for some scheme of Partition, such as the two Nationalist organizations referred to strove hard last year to force upon the Nationalists of Ireland, and have never since categorically pledged themselves to renounce. Their leaders have, on the contrary, on more than one recent occasion expressed their 19