BY THE RIGHT HON. SIR EDWARD CARSON, M.P.


The object of the various essays collected in this book is to set out
the case against Home Rule for Ireland, and to re-state Unionist policy
in the light of the recent changes in that country. The authors are not,
however, to be regarded as forming anything in the nature of a corporate
body, and no collective responsibility is to be ascribed to them. Each
writer is responsible for the views set out in his own article, and for
those alone. At the same time, they are all leaders of Unionist thought
and opinion, and their views in the main represent the policy which the
Unionist Government, when returned to power, will have to carry into
effect.

Among the contributors to the book are an ex-Premier, four ex-Chief
Secretaries for Ireland, an ex-Lord Lieutenant, two ex-Law officers, and
a number of men whose special study of the Irish question entitles them
to have their views most carefully considered when the time comes for
restoring to Ireland those economic advantages of which she has been
deprived by political agitation and political conspiracy. At the present
moment the discussion of the Irish question is embittered by the
pressing and urgent danger to civil and religious liberties involved in
the unconditional surrender of the Government to the intrigues of a
disloyal section of the Irish people. It is the object of writers in
this book to raise the discussions on the Home Rule question above the
bitter conflict of Irish parties, and to show that not only is Unionism
a constructive policy and a measure of hope for Ireland, but that in
Unionist policy lies the only alternative to financial ruin and
exterminating civil dissensions.