Ireland is not a Colony like Canada, but it is an integral and vital part of one country."[1] It is improbable that identical lines of reasoning led the Roman Catholic Cardinal and the Belfast Orangeman and Presbyterian to this identical conclusion; but a position reached by convergent paths from such distant points of departure is defensible presumably on grounds more solid than prejudice or passion.

It is unnecessary here to examine those grounds at length, for the present purpose is not to argue the Ulster case, but to let the reader know what was, as a matter of fact, the Ulster point of view, whether that point of view was well or ill founded.
But, while the opinion that a Dublin Parliament meant separation was shared by many who had little else in common with the Ulster Protestants, the latter stood alone in the intensity of their conviction that "Home Rule meant Rome Rule." It has already been mentioned that it is the "disloyalty" attributed rightly or wrongly to the Roman Catholics as a body that has been, in recent times at all events, the mainspring of Protestant distrust.

But sectarian feeling, everywhere common between rival creeds, is, of course, by no means absent.

Englishmen find it hard to understand what seems to them the bigoted and senseless animosity of the rival faiths in Ireland.

This is due to the astonishing shortness of their memory in regard to their own history, and their very limited outlook on the world outside their own island.