A second and more recent sojourn in Ulster deepened the impression given by my first visit. Throughout the province the feeling is still the same – an immovable determination to resist at all hazards the imposts of a Dublin Parliament. They will have no acts or part in it. They will send no members, they will pay no taxes, they will not accord to it one jot or tittle of authority. They will offer armed resistance to any force of police or Sheriff's officers acting under warrants issued by the College Green legislators. Resistance to the Queen's authority they regard as altogether out of the question. But it remains to be seen whether British troops will "shoot them down like dogs." The Ulstermen think not, and they have good reasons for this opinion. The mere threat of Home Rule in 1886 cost forty lives in the streets of Belfast alone. Who can say what would be the results of the bill becoming law? Surely every reliable test points in one direction. The Gladstonian party, without a shadow of reason, have affected to doubt the courage and resolution of the Northerners, but the breed of the men and their long history are a sufficient answer to these cavillers. True it is that their courage has not been demonstrated by murder, by shooting from behind a wall, or the battering out of a policeman's brains, a hundred against one, or the discharging of snipe-shot into the legs of old women and young children, after the fashion so popular with the party with whom Mr. Gladstone and his heterogeneous crew are now acting. But for all that, the pluck and tenacity of Ulstermen are undeniable. Their cause is good, and left to themselves they would win hands down.
It is therefore demonstrated by a consensus of the weightiest authorities and by the results of personal investigation that not only would civil war between Irish parties be the inevitable result of Home Rule, but that there would also be war between Ireland and England; that Irish Unionists are determined to resist to the last, and that they possess the means of resistance. They are touched on the subjects they hold most sacred – religion, freedom, property; and despite the assurances of Mr. Gladstone, who desires to judge the Nationalist party by their future, the keen Ulstermen prefer to judge them by their past. And bearing these things in mind, it is not unreasonable to say that Englishmen who support the present policy of the Separatist party are at once enemies of Ireland and traitors to their native land.
And now my task as your Special Commissioner in Ireland is at an end. Without fear or favour I have described the country as I found it, and have exposed the character and the motives of the men to whom Mr. Gladstone would entrust its future government. I was no bigoted partisan when my task began, but in a period of six months I have traversed the country from end to end, and at every step my first impressions have been deepened. It would be a folly – yea, it would be a crime – to withdraw from Ireland that mitigating influence of British rule which alone prevents a lovely island becoming the foul and blood-stained arena of remorseless sectarian strife.
Birmingham, August 18th.