And so we have King's Counsel, learned in the law, devising
Provisional Governments, and Privy Councillors wallowing in imaginative
treason. As for the Bishops, they will talk daggers as luridly as the
rest, but they will not even threaten to use any. And so does the pagan
rage, and the heathen prophesy vain things.
That such a farce-tragedy can find a stage in the twentieth century is
pitiable. But it is not a serious political fact. It has the same
relation to reality that the cap-hunting exploits of Tartarin of
Tarascon had to the Franco-German war. It has been devised merely to
make flesh creep in certain tabernacles of fanaticism in the less
civilised parts of England and Scotland. So far as action goes it will
end in smoke, but not in gunpowder-smoke. There will no doubt be riots
in Belfast and Portadown, for which the ultimate responsibility will
rest on learned counsel of the King. But there have been riots before,
and the cause of Home Rule has survived all the blackguardism and
bloodshed. It is lamentable that ministers of the gospel of Christ and
leaders of public opinion should so inflame and exploit the
superstitions of ignorant men; but not by these methods will justice be
intimidated.
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