logic or in substance, refuse the same claims to a much larger
proportionate minority among themselves."

The Loyalists of Ulster were successful in holding this second line,
when the first was no longer tenable; but they only retired from the
first line--the maintenance of the legislative union--after a long and
obstinate defence which it is the purpose of the following pages to
relate.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _Henry Edward Manning_, by Shane Leslie, p. 406.

[2] Sir S.H. Maine, _Popular Government_, p. 28.




CHAPTER II

THE ELECTORATE AND HOME RULE


We profess to be a democratic country in which the "will of the people"
is the ultimate authority in determining questions of policy, and the
Liberal Party has been accustomed to regard itself as the most zealous
guardian of democratic principles. Yet there is this curious paradox in
relation to the problem which more than any other taxed British
statesmanship during the thirty-five years immediately following the
enfranchisement of the rural democracy in 1884, that the solution