troubling themselves about anything more ancient than their own memory
can recall, the most fundamental factor of all--the line of cleavage
between Ulster and the rest of the island--- is more than
unintelligible. In the eyes of many it presents itself as an example of
perversity, of "cussedness" on the part of men who insist on magnifying
mere differences of opinion, which would be easily composed by
reasonable people, into obstacles to co-operation which have no reality
behind them.

Writers and speakers on the Nationalist side deride the idea of "two
nations" in Ireland, calling in evidence many obvious identities of
interest, of sentiment, or of temperament between the inhabitants of the
North and of the South. The Ulsterman no more denies these identities
than the Greek, the Bulgar, and the Serb would deny that there are
features common to all dwellers in the Balkan peninsula; but he is more
deeply conscious of the difference than of the likeness between himself
and the man from Munster or Connaught. His reply to those who denounced
the Irish Government Act of 1920 on the ground that it set up a
"partition of Ireland," is that the Act did not "set up," but only
recognised, the partition which history made long ago, and which wrecked
all attempts to solve the problem of Irish Government that neglected to
take it into account. If there be any force in Renan's saying that the
root of nationality is "the will to live together," the Nationalist cry
of "Ireland a Nation" harmonises ill with the actual conditions of
Ireland north and south of the Boyne. This dividing gulf between the two
populations in Ireland is the result of the same causes as the political
dissension that springs from it, as described by Mr. Asquith in words
quoted above. The tendencies of social and racial origin operate for the
most part subconsciously--though not perhaps less powerfully on that
account; those connected with economic considerations, with religious