Not merely every party, but every household
and, in last resort, every individual will end as a Provisional
Government. Separatism of this type is a very ecstasy of nonsense, and
none of my readers will think so cheaply of his own intelligence as to
stay to discuss it. It is in other terms that we must handle the problem
of "Ulster."
The existence in certain nooks and corners of Ireland of a democratic
vote hostile to Home Rule is, let us confess, a conundrum. But it is a
conundrum of psychology rather than of politics. It may seem rude to say
so, but Orangeism consists mainly of a settled hallucination and an
annual brainstorm. No one who has not been present at a Twelfth of July
procession can realise how completely all its manifestations belong to
the life of hysteria and not to that of reason. M. Paul-Dubois, whom we
may summon out of a cloud of witnesses, writes of them as "demagogic
orgies with a mixed inspiration of Freemasonry and the Salvation Army."
The Twelfth of July is, or rather was, for its fine furies are now much
abated, a savage carnival comparable only to the corroborees of certain
primitive tribes.
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