Party had even a little statesmanship among them they would for the past
ten years have marched up and down the North explaining and mollifying
and courting the Black Northerner. But, like good Irishmen, they could
not tear themselves away from England, and they paraded that country
where parade was not so urgent, and they made orations there until the
mere accent of an Irishman must make Englishmen wail for very boredom.

Some of that parade might have gladdened the eyes of the Belfast
citizens; a few of those orations might have assisted the men of Derry
to comprehend that, for the good of our common land, Home Rule and the
unity of a nation was necessary if only to rid the country of these
blatherers.

Let the Party explain why, among their political duties, they neglected
the duty of placating Ulster in their proper persons. Why, in short,
they boycotted Ulster and permitted political and religious and racial
antagonism to grow inside of Ireland unchecked by any word from them
upon that ground. Were they afraid "nuts" would be thrown at them?
Whatever they dreaded, they gave Ulster the widest of wide berths, and
wherever else they were visible and audible, they were silent and unseen
in that part of Ireland.

The Ulster grievance is ostensibly religious; but safeguards on this
count are so easily created and applied that this issue might almost be
left out of account. The real difficulty is economic, and it is a
tangled one. But unless profit and loss are immediately discernible the
soul of man is not easily stirred by an accountant's tale, and therefore
the religious banner has been waved for our kinsfolk of Ulster, and
under the sacred emblem they are fighting for what some people call
mammon, but which may be in truth just plain bread and butter.