complete independent sovereignty for Ireland, no surprise was felt in
Ulster. It was there realised that nothing had happened beyond the
throwing off of the mask which had been used as a matter of political
tactics to disguise what had always been the real underlying aim, if not
of the parliamentary leaders, at all events of the great mass of
Nationalist opinion throughout the three southern provinces. The whole
population had not with one consent changed their views in the course of
a night; they had merely rallied to support the first leaders whom they
had found prepared to proclaim the true objective. Curiously enough,
this truth was realised by an English politician who was in other
respects conspicuously deficient in insight regarding Ireland. The
Easter insurrection of 1916 in Dublin was only rendered possible by the
negligence or the incompetence of the Chief Secretary; but, in giving
evidence before the Commission appointed to inquire into it, Mr. Birrell
said: "The spirit of what to-day is called Sinn Feinism is mainly
composed of the old hatred and distrust of the British connection ...
always there as the background of Irish politics and character"; and,
after recalling that Cardinal Newman had observed the same state of
feeling in Dublin more than half a century before, Mr. Birrell added
quite truly that "this dislike, hatred, disloyalty (so unintelligible to
many Englishmen) is hard to define but easy to discern, though incapable
of exact measurement from year to year." This disloyal spirit, which
struck Newman, and which Mr. Birrell found easy to discern, was of
course always familiar to Ulstermen as characteristic of "the South and
West," and was their justification for the badge of "loyalist," their
assumption of which English Liberals, knowing nothing of Ireland, held
to be an unjust slur on the Irish majority.

If this belief in the inherent disloyalty of Nationalist Ireland to the
British Empire did any injustice to individual Nationalist politicians,