Page:The Irish Cause and "The Irish Convention".djvu/4

 the previous speakers has said a single word, remain far the most formidable danger of the situation in Ulster. That being so, Mr. Speaker, unless we are again to yield to the easy optimism and child-like trustfulness which have been the ruin of the Home Rule cause, that fact has got to be grappled with, and if you are ever to understand the real forces you are dealing with in Ireland—as to which you are deplorably—I must in frankness say deplorably—ignorant, you must not really expect us to forget the elaborate system of Partition which the Government, or rather their predecessors, attempted last year to force upon the Irish people. Our British rulers actually imagined they were soothing the national pride of one of the most sensitive races upon earth, while they were all the time wounding to the quick the feelings of every Irish Nationalist, and indeed of every other Irishman as well, with a degree of stupidity that was scarcely exceeded by the worst wrongs of the old times. Because in those old days at all events England acted with her eyes open and with the deliberate purpose to insult and oppress.

You persisted in that scheme of Partition notwithstanding the most earnest remonstrances which some of us could address to you. When the late Prime Minister went to Ireland after the Dublin rising—it was a pity he waited for the Dublin rising to go—the position of our own friends, at all events, was made absolutely clear to him, and it was this: Any amount of concession that would unite Ireland, but Partition, permanent or, as you call it, temporary, never! You persisted with your Partition scheme and you failed. The Government and those Irish representatives who thought fit to act with them were driven from the field by a storm of public fury and horror more universal, I think, than anything I 4