For that party had itself been for a generation in the closest political alliance with Irishmen whose leader had boasted that they were as much rebels as their fathers were in 1798, and whose power in Ireland had been built up by long-sustained and systematic defiance of the law.

Yet the same politicians who had excused, if they had not applauded, the "Plan of Campaign," and the organised boycotting and cattle-driving which had for years characterised the agitation for Home Rule, were unspeakably shocked when Ulster formed a disciplined Volunteer force which never committed an outrage, and prepared to set up a Provisional Government rather than be ruled by an assembly of cattle-drivers in Dublin.
Moreover, many of Mr.Asquith's supporters, and one at least of his most distinguished colleagues in the Cabinet of 1912, had themselves organised resistance to an Education Act which they disliked but had been unable to defeat in Parliament.
Nevertheless, it must, of course, be freely admitted that the question as to what conditions justify resistance to the legal authority in the State--or rebellion, if the more blunt expression be preferred--is an exceedingly difficult one to answer.

It would sound cynical to say, though Carlyle hardly shrinks from maintaining, that success, and success alone, redeems rebellion from wickedness and folly.

Yet it would be difficult to explain on any other principle why posterity has applauded the Parliamentarians of 1643 and the Whigs of 1688, while condemning Monmouth and Charles Edward; or why Mr.Gladstone sympathised with Jefferson Davis when he looked like winning and withdrew that sympathy when he had lost.

But if success is not the test, what is?
Is it the aim of the men who resist?
The aim that appears honourable and heroic to one onlooker appears quite the opposite to another, and so the test resolves itself into a matter of personal partisanship.
That is probably as near as one can get to a solution of the question.
Those who happen to agree with the purpose for which a rebellion takes place think the rebels in the right; those who disagree think them in the wrong.