Ulster's Stand For Union. Ronald McNeill
acceptance of the Ulster leadership would cut him off from all promotion, whether political or legal.[11]
Moreover, although for the moment it was the leadership of a parliamentary group to which he was formally invited, it was obvious that much more was really involved; the people in Ulster itself needed guidance in the crisis that was visibly approaching. Ever since Lord Randolph Churchill, with the concurrence of Lord Salisbury, first inspired them in 1886 with the spirit of resistance in the last resort to being placed under a Dublin Parliament, and assured them of British sympathy and support if driven to that extremity, the determination of Ulster in this respect was known to all who had any familiarity with the temper of her people. Any man who undertook to lead them at such a juncture as had been reached in 1910 must make that determination the starting-point of his policy. It was a task that would require not only statesmanship, but political courage of a high order. Lord Randolph Churchill, in his famous Ulster Hall speech, had said that "no portentous change such as the repeal of the Union, no change so gigantic, could be accomplished by the mere passing of a law; the history of the United States will teach us a different lesson." Ulster always took her stand on the American precedent, though the exemplar was Lincoln rather than Washington. But although the scale of operations was, of course, infinitely smaller, the Ulster leader would, if it came to the worst, be confronted by certain difficulties from which Abraham Lincoln was free. He might have to follow the example of the latter in forcibly resisting secession, but his legal position would be very different. He might be called upon to resist technically legal authority, whereas Lincoln had it at his back. To guide and control a headstrong people, smarting under a sense of betrayal, when entering on a movement pregnant with these issues, and at the same time to stand up against a powerful Government on the floor of the House of Commons, was an enterprise upon which any far-seeing man might well hesitate to embark.
Pondering over the invitation conveyed to him in his Chambers in the Temple, Carson may, therefore, well have asked himself what inducement there was for him to accept it. He was not an Ulsterman. As a Southerner he was not familiar with the psychology of the northern Irish; the sectarian narrowness popularly attributed to them outside their province was wholly alien to his character; he was as far removed by nature from a fire-eater as it was possible for man to be; he was not fond of unnecessary exertion; he preferred the law to politics, and disliked addressing political assemblies. In Parliament he represented, not a popular constituency, but the University of Dublin. But, on the other hand, he was to the innermost core of his nature an Irish Loyalist. His youthful political sympathies had, indeed, been with the Liberal Party, but he instantly severed his connection with it when Gladstone joined hands with Parnell. He had made his name at the Irish Bar as Crown Prosecutor in the troubled period of Mr. Balfour's Chief Secretaryship, and this experience had bred in him a hearty detestation of the whining sentimentality, the tawdry and exaggerated rhetoric, and the manufactured discontent that found vent in Nationalist politics. A sincere lover of Ireland, he had too much sound sense to credit the notion that either the freedom or the prosperity of the country would be increased by loosening the tie with Great Britain. Although he as yet knew little of Ulster, he admired her resolute stand for the Union, her passionate loyalty to the Crown; he watched with disgust the way in which her defences were being sapped by the Liberal Party in England; and the thought that such a people were perhaps on the eve of being driven into subjection to the men whose character he had had so much opportunity to gauge in the days of the Land League filled him with indignation.
If, therefore, he could be of service in helping to avert so great a wrong Sir Edward Carson came to the conclusion that it would be shirking a call of duty were he to decline the leadership that had been offered him. Realising to the full all that it meant for himself—inevitable sacrifice of income, of ease, of chances of promotion, a burden of responsibility, a probability of danger—he gave his consent; and the day he gave it—the 21st of February, 1910—should be marked for all time as a red-letter day in the Ulster calendar.
FOOTNOTES:
Lord Randolph Churchill, by the Right Hon. W.S. Churchill, vol. ii, p. 62.
The Times, June 16th, 1892.
He expressed this conviction to the author in 1911.
CHAPTER IV
THE PARLIAMENT ACT: CRAIGAVON
A good many months were to elapse before the Unionist rank and file in Ulster were brought into close personal touch with the new leader of the Irish Unionist Parliamentary Party. The work to be done in 1910 lay chiefly in London, where the constitutional struggle arising out of the rejection of the "People's Budget" was raging. But shortly before the General Election of December a demonstration was held in the Ulster Hall in Belfast, in the hope of opening the eyes of the English and Scottish electors to the danger of Home Rule. Mr. Walter Long was the principal speaker, and Sir Edward Carson, in supporting the resolution, ended his speech by quoting Lord Randolph Churchill's famous jingling phrase, "Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right."
On the 31st of January, 1911, when the elections were over, he went over from London to preside at an important meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council. The Annual Report of the Standing Committee, in welcoming his succession to Mr. Long in the leadership, spoke of his requiring no introduction to Ulstermen; and it is true that he had occasionally spoken at meetings in Belfast, and that his recent speech in the Ulster Hall had made an excellent impression. But he was not yet a really familiar figure even in Belfast, while outside the city he was practically unknown, except of course by repute. That a man of his sagacity would quickly make his weight felt was never in doubt; but few at that time can have anticipated the extent to which a stranger—with an accent proclaiming an origin south of the Boyne—was in a short time to captivate the hearts, and become literally the idolised leader, of the Ulster democracy.
For the latter are a people who certainly do not wear their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at. In the eyes of the more volatile southern Celts they seem a "dour" people. They are naturally reserved, laconic of speech, without "gush," far from lavish in compliment, slow to commit themselves or to give their confidence without good and proved reason.
Opportunity for the populace to get into closer touch with the leader did not, however, come till the autumn. He was unable to attend the Orange celebration on the 12th of July, when the anniversary, which preceded by less than a month the "removal of the last obstacle to Home Rule" by the passing of the Parliament Act, was kept with more than the usual fervour, and the speeches proved that the gravity of the situation was fully appreciated. The Marquis of Londonderry, addressing an immense concourse of Belfast Lodges, stated that it was the first time an Ex-Viceroy had been present at an Orange gathering, but that he had deliberately created the precedent owing to his sense of the danger threatening the Loyalist cause.
It was the first of innumerable similar actions by which Lord Londonderry identified himself whole-heartedly with the popular movement, throwing aside all the conventional restraints of rank and wealth, and thereby endearing himself to every man and woman in Protestant Ulster. There was no more familiar figure in the streets of Belfast. Barefooted street urchins, catching sight of him on the steps of the Ulster Club, would gather round and, with free-and-easy familiarity, shout "Three cheers for Londonderry." He knew everybody and was everybody's friend. There was no aristocratic hauteur or aloofness about his genial personality. He was in the habit of entertaining the whole Unionist Council, some five hundred strong, at luncheon