But the leading case in recent years is of course the attitude of the Lodges towards the Disestablishment of the Irish Episcopal Church in 1869. The records are singularly rich in what I may perhaps call Carsonese. Dukes threatened to "fight as men alone can fight who have the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other." Learned counsel of the Queen covenanted to "seal their protest with their blood in martyrdom and battle." Ministers of the gospel were all for kicking the Crown into the Boyne, keeping their powder dry, shouldering Minie rifles, and finally joining the lawyers in the red grave of martyrdom. An Ulster poet (a satirist one fears) wrote a famous invocation to the statue of Mr Walker near Derry, beginning: "Come down out o' that, Mr Walker, There's work to be done by-and-by, And this is no time to stand glowerin' Betwixt the bog-side and the sky." But Mr Walker did not come down: he remained on his safe pinnacle of immortality. And of course there was no civil war. That period was wiser than our own in one respect: nobody of any common sense thought of spoiling such exquisite blague by taking it seriously. Its motive was universally understood in Ireland. The orators of the movement never for a moment dreamed of levying war on Mr Gladstone, but they were determined to levy blackmail. They saw that they could bluff English opinion into granting all manner of extravagant compensation for the extinction of their privileges and their ascendancy, if only the Orange drum was beaten loudly enough. It was a case of the more cry the more wool. And in point of fact they succeeded. They obtained financial arrangements of the most generous character, and, thereafter, the battle-flags were furled. Within five years of Disestablishment the Episcopalian Synod was praising it as the happiest event in the life of that Church. The lawyers, being denied the martyrdom of the battlefield, stolidly accepted that of promotion to the judicial bench, and a holy silence descended on the divines. This strategy having succeeded so admirably in 1868 is repeated in 1912. "Ulster" has not the least intention of raising war or the sinews of war; her interest is in the sinews of peace. Although she does not hold a winning card in her hand she hopes to scoop the pool by a superb bluff. By menaces of rebellion she expects to be able to insist that under Home Rule she shall continue encased in an impenetrable armour of privileges, preferences, and safeguards. She is all the more likely to succeed because of the tenderness of Nationalist Ireland in her regard. Short of the absolute surrender by the majority of every shred of its rights (which is, of course, what is demanded) there are very few safeguards that we are not prepared to concede to the superstition, the egotism, or even the actual greed of the Orangemen. But it may as well be understood that we are not to be either duped or bullied.