You are not even accurate in your history when you speak of Ulster's
traditions and the blood our forefathers spilt. Over a century ago
Ulster was the strong and fast place of rebellion, and it was in Ulster
that the Volunteers stood beside their cannon and wrung the gift of
political freedom for the Irish Parliament. You are blundering in your
blame. You speak of Irish greed in I know not what connection, unless
you speak of the war waged over the land; and yet you ought to know that
both parties in England have by Act after Act confessed the absolute
justice and rightness of that agitation, Unionist no less than Liberal,
and both boast of their share in answering the Irish appeal. They are
both proud today of what they did. They made inquiry into wrong and
redressed it. But you, it seems, can only feel sore and angry that
intolerable conditions imposed by your laws were not borne in patience
and silence. For what party do you speak? What political ideal inspires
you? When an Irishman has a grievance you smite him. How differently
would you have written of Runnymede and the valiant men who rebelled
when oppressed. You would have made heroes out of them. Have you no soul
left, after admiring the rebels in your own history, to sympathize with
other rebels suffering deeper wrongs? Can you not see deeper into the
motives for rebellion than the hireling reporter who is sent to make
up a case for the paper of a party? The best men in Ulster, the best
Unionists in Ireland will not be grateful to you for libeling their
countrymen in your verse. For, let the truth be known, the mass of Irish
Unionists are much more in love with Ireland than with England. They
think Irish Nationalists are mistaken, and they fight with them and
use hard words, and all the time they believe Irishmen of any party are
better in the sight of God than Englishmen. They think Ireland is the
best country in the world to live in, and they hate to hear Irish people
spoken of as murderers and greedy scoundrels. Murderers! Why, there is
more murder done in any four English shires in a year than in the whole
of the four provinces of Ireland! Greedy! The nation never accepted a
bribe, or took it as an equivalent or payment for an ideal, and what
bribe would not have been offered to Ireland if it had been willing to
forswear its traditions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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