Page:The Irish Cause and "The Irish Convention".djvu/8

 an Amending Act, which would repeal it in its most vital particular. They passed it further subject to the solemn assurance of the Home Rule Prime Minister that the notion of Ulster being ever compelled to obey that Statute was unthinkable—Sir, to my mind, a monstrously unconstitutional doctrine. It would be the death of the first principle of all democratic government. But that was then common ground all round in every Party in this House except in our own small camp, and the foullest [sic] insults were hurled at us in this House for daring to make even the most modest protest. Sir, how can you be surprised if the Ulster men have now taken you at your own solemn word? You never proffered a single concession to the Ulstermen while they were still unarmed, and while even in this House they were still amenable enough to reason and to conciliation. Neither did you attempt to dispute their right to arm in order to bid defiance to your Parliament Act with arms in their hands. If we clear our minds of cant we all know that nothing happened in Dublin in the rising of Easter week that would not have happened in Belfast on a much larger scale if you had attempted to enforce the law there. It is all your own doing, and, unfortunately, the doing of five-sixths of Ireland's own representatives as well, and it is this miserable collapse of Parliamentarianism which is responsible for the Dublin rising—which is responsible for the Roscommon election and the Longford election, and which is responsible for the contempt and hatred of Parliamentary methods which has unquestionably taken possession of far the largest portion of the uncorrupted youth of Ireland.

Sir, I turn with relief to the Prime Minister's alternative plan which is now the only hope. No man in this House could like to think that the last 8