The great fraud of Ulster

These pages give a shorter, and, it is hoped, a less legal, setting to facts published for the first time some five years ago under the title, “Stolen Waters.” They chiefly concern those counties of Ulster lately threatened with severance from the rest of Ireland. The story, such as it is, has been re-told and simplified in the hope that acquaintance with it may quicken and heighten the spirit of resistance to the statecraft of Partition.

A stubborn fight for a great stake has been waged in the disputed area for three hundred years, and the struggle to clutch the prize exhibits more starkly than any other single theme the felonious continuity of Anglo-Ulster administration.

Those in control of Irish government calmly look down on the spectacle of a noble public heritage abandoned to a “privy paw.” Wiseacres advise the losers and the wronged to “forget the past.” No people have more need to remember it.

That the past has no bearing on the present, and that “brooding” on it is ill for soul and body, is a conceit of despotism. Other races are taught at their mother’s knee that their welfare has been influenced, hindered, or promoted by the tyranny or the heroism, the crimes or the virtues, of vanished men.

Every presentation of Irish records is rated by the ruling caste as distorted or perverse unless oppression is garbed in justification and rapacity garnished with slanders on its prey. The cant of conquest always seeks to make the invaders paladins of virtue, and their victims brutish monsters. The conquered are even liable to be misled by the writings of their enemies.

To-day in warring Europe the despoilers of prostrate nations doubtless have all the printing presses and all the hired authors going full blast in their favour. Three hundred years hence such output will still not be without its effect. In the dark ages of Ireland Chichester was almost canonised, and his co-rogue, Sir John Davies, left in a state of minor beatification, on their own certificates of self-praise. This sketch attempts, on other evidence, to do justice to their memories and their works.

T. M. HEALY.

Glenaulin,
Chapelizod,
8th September, 1917.

ERRATA.

ADDITIONAL ERRATA.