AN ULSTERMAN FOR IRELAND
associations, our tenant-right societies, our clubs, cliques, and committees, amidst confusions enough and the saddest jostling and jumbling, are all inevitably tending, however unconsciously, to one and the same illustrious goal—not a local legislature—not a return to "our ancient Constitution"—not a golden link or a patch-work Parliament or a College Green Chapel-of-ease to St. Stephen's—but an Irish Republic, one and indivisible.
And how are we to meet that day 1 In arms, my countrymen, in arms. Thus, and not otherwise, have ever nations of men sprung to liberty and power. But why do I reason thus with you—with you, the Irish of Ulster, who never have denied the noble creed and sacraments of manhood? You have not been schooled for forty years in the fatal cant of moral force; you have not been utterly debauched and emasculated by the claptrap platitudes of public meetings and the empty glare of "imposing demonstrations." You have not yet learned the litany of slaves and the whine of beaten hounds and the way to die a coward's death. No; let once the great idea of your country's destiny seize on you, my kinsmen, and the way will be plain before you as a pike-staff twelve feet long.
Yet there is one lesson you must learn—fraternal respect for your countrymen of the South, and that sympathy with them and faith in them without which there can be no vital nationality in Ireland. You little know the history and sore trials and humiliations of this ancient Irish race; ground and trampled first for long ages into the very earth, and then
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