We who are Unionists believe first and foremost that the Act of Union
is required--in the words made familiar to us by the Book of Common
Prayer--"for the safety, honour and welfare, of our Sovereign and his
dominions." We are not concerned with the supposed taint which marred
the passing of that Act; we are unmoved by the fact that its terms have
undergone considerable modification. We do not believe in the plenary
inspiration of any Act of Parliament. It is not possible for the living
needs of two prosperous countries to be bound indefinitely by the "dead
hand" of an ancient statute, but we maintain that geographical and
economic reasons make a legislative Union between Great Britain and
Ireland necessary for the interests of both. We see, as Irish Ministers
saw in 1800, that there can be no permanent resting place between
complete Union and total separation. We know that Irish Nationalists
have not only proclaimed separatist principles, but that they have
received separatist money, on the understanding that they would not
oppose a movement to destroy whatever restrictions and safeguards the
Imperial Parliament might impose upon an Irish Government.

The first law of nature with nations and governments, as with
individuals, is self-preservation. It was the vital interests of
national defence that caused Pitt to undertake the difficult and
thankless task of creating the legislative union. If that union was
necessary for the salvation of England and the foundation of the British
Empire, it is assuredly no less necessary for the continued security of
the one and the maintenance and prestige of the other.

Mr. J.R. Fisher, in his historical retrospect, shows us how bitter
experience convinced successive generations of English statesmen of the
dangers that lay in an independent Ireland. One of the very earliest