Page:The Irish Cause and "The Irish Convention".djvu/7

 I do not at all say that if the Irish people were to treat you as unscrupulously as they have been treated themselves, they would not close with the offer of the Government, such as it is, but they could only do so with the determination to work it in a spirit of sleepless hostility to England and to those Irishmen who might attempt to organize that abominable caricature of an Irish Parliament. Sir, the Irish people are not sufficiently good hypocrites to play a Machiavellian game of that kind, and it is just because we desire peace, and genuine peace, between the two countries that I tell you straight that for the few hundred placemen you might content, you would be making enemies of millions of the best men and women of the Irish race.

I know all your difficulties. Unhappily after the speech we have listened to from the Hon. Baronet they may seem at this stage all but insurmountable. But these difficulties are mainly due to your own feebleness and double-dealing—to the feebleness and double-dealing of the late Home Rule Government and their Irish allies. They could never make up their minds either to conciliate Ulster while there was yet time to do it, nor to enforce their own law under the Parliament Act. We shall hear plenty of complaints now of the speech of the Hon. Baronet, the leader of the Ulster Party, but where is the use of complaining if he and his Ulster men take their stand on the six counties, and take advantage of their knowledge that they never will be compelled to obey the law like other people? Yes, but whose fault is that? The Home Rule Government and, unfortunately, their Irish auxiliaries first offered them four counties, and then advanced their bid to six. They passed a so-called Home Rule Act with the public stipulation that it was never to be put in force with- 7