But Mr. Birrell, for example, would tell us that the Nationalist unit in Ireland is three times as large as the Unionist unit, and that therefore the smaller entity should submit, because, as he has cynically observed, "minorities must suffer, for that is the badge of their tribe." But a minority in the United Kingdom is not to be measured by mere numbers; its place in the Constitution is to be estimated by its contribution to public well-being, by its relation to the industries and occupations of its members, by its association with the upbuilding of national character, by its fidelity to law and order, and by its sympathy with the world mission of the British Empire in the interests of civil and religious freedom. Tried by all these tests, Ulster is entitled to retain her full share in every privilege of the whole realm. Tried by the same tests the claim of 3,000,000 Irish Nationalists to break up the constitution of the United Kingdom, of whose population they constitute perhaps one-fifteenth, is surely unthinkable. Other writers in this volume have discussed Home Rule as it affects various vital interests in Ireland as a whole. It remains for me briefly to point out its special relation to the Northern province-- 1. _Home Rule, in the judgment of Ulster, would degrade the status of Ulster citizenship by impairing its relationship to Imperial Parliament._ This would be effected both by lessening or extinguishing the representation of Ulster in that Parliament, and by removing the control of Ulster rights and liberties from Imperial Parliament and entrusting it to a hostile Parliament in Dublin. Ulstermen would thus stand on a dangerously lower plane of civil privilege than their fellow-citizens in Great Britain. To place them in this undeserved inferiority, they hold to be unjust and cruel.