An Ulster poet (a satirist one fears) wrote a famous invocation to the
statue of Mr Walker near Derry, beginning:
"Come down out o' that, Mr Walker,
There's work to be done by-and-by,
And this is no time to stand glowerin'
Betwixt the bog-side and the sky."
But Mr Walker did not come down: he remained on his safe pinnacle of
immortality. And of course there was no civil war. That period was wiser
than our own in one respect: nobody of any common sense thought of
spoiling such exquisite blague by taking it seriously. Its motive was
universally understood in Ireland. The orators of the movement never for
a moment dreamed of levying war on Mr Gladstone, but they were
determined to levy blackmail. They saw that they could bluff English
opinion into granting all manner of extravagant compensation for the
extinction of their privileges and their ascendancy, if only the Orange
drum was beaten loudly enough. It was a case of the more cry the more
wool. And in point of fact they succeeded. They obtained financial
arrangements of the most generous character, and, thereafter, the
battle-flags were furled.
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