Our revenge on "Ulster"
would be rather like that of Savage, the poet, who revenged himself on
a friend by sleeping out the whole of a December night on a bridge. The
whole suggestion is, of course, futile and fantastic. It is a bubble
that has been pricked, and by no one so thoroughly as by Lord Pirrie,
the head of Harland and Wolff, that is to say the leader of the
industrial North.
The clamour of the exploiters of "Ulster" is motived on this point by
two considerations, the one an illusion, the other a reality. The
illusion, or rather the pretence, consists in representing the Unionists
as the sole holders of wealth in Ireland. It would be a sufficient
refutation of this view to quote those other passages in which the same
orators assert with equal eloquence that the Tory policy of land
purchase and resolute government from Westminster has brought enormous
prosperity to the rest of the country. On _per capita_ valuation the
highest northern county ranks only twelfth in Ireland. It is the
reality, however, that supplies the clue. While the masters of Orangeism
do not represent the wealth of Ireland they do certainly represent the
largest, or, at least, the most intense concentration of unearned
incomes.
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