TOLERATION IN THE FIGHT FOR IRELAND
From Irish Ideas by William O'Brien, 1893
Page 123
TOLERATION IN THE FIGHT FOR IRELAND
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petted on baronial platforms in the days of landlord power, that they need be much impressed with the fear of persecution from the Catholics, who effected Presbyterian as well as Catholic Emancipation, and by whose struggles Presbyterian homesteads have become secure against tyrant blows.
The argument as to race breaks still more ridiculously down. The Irish, who never persecuted a man yet for his religion, are expected to begin with half-a-million of Presbyterian countrymen, who almost within cannon-shot of Antrim shores have millions of Scottish kinsmen and co-religionists beyond the Mull of Cantyre who are all but as eager Home Rulers as those of Cork or Tipperary. The argument that the Ulster Presbyterians can never be whole-souled Irish Nationalists because their ancestors came from Scotland three hundred years ago is not a whit less absurd than would be the argument that the Highlanders must be irreconcilable Irish rebels because their ancestors came out of Ireland a not very much longer time before. But speculation one way or the other is, in truth, ousted by fact, hard, recent, and undeniable. For before our grandfathers' hair was grey, Protestant patriotism and Presbyterian patriotism were as much the commonplaces of everyday life in Ulster as an anti-Home Rule article in the Belfast Newsletter is to-day. If Ulster Presbyterian was not penetrated to the core with the passion of Irish freedom, Presbyterian blood must have been shed on the battlefields and the scaffolds of Ulster under an extraordinary delusion, and a grandfather of a certain eminent Unionist judge of our acquaintance must have been hanged
some very singular mistake. There died less than a dozen years ago near Cave Hill an old man who remembered to have seen the streets of Belfast waving with Presbyterian … continue reading »
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