THE ULSTER DICTATOR.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 144361, 27 March 1914, Page 5

THE ULSTER DICTATOR.

SIR EDWARD CARSON. Tho editor of tho London Daily Nows, Mr. A. G. Gardiner, a strong Homo Rule Liberal, writes interestingly of Sir Edward Carson:— “Whether Sir Edward Carson is a good or a had hero I leave for the moment. But that there is tho quality of heroism about him is undeniable. Without him tho cause of Lister would bo contemptible; with him it is almost formidable. His figure emerges from the battle with a certain sinister distinction and Jonellnc.ss. Ho is fighting for a bad cause that is in full flight, but he is fighting as men fight who count nothing of tho cost. The dawn is up in Ireland, but he will not yield to it. Ho prefers to go down with tho darkness. . . .

“Rut his passion is not tho passion of patriotism, for he has no country. He has only a caste. Ho docs not fight for Ireland; ho dues not even fight lor Ulster; he fights for a Manchn dynasty. But to doubt Ids earnestness is to make a fundamental miscalculation. It is true that his record led even Mr. J. AI. Robertson io doubt, whether Unionism was not adopted by him as a policy of expediency. “Tho charge emerged out of the famous ‘turncoat’ incident. There is no-

thing,’ said Sir Edward, with his customary coarseness, apropos of Mr. Churchill's visit to Belfast, ‘that tho men of tho North of Ireland hate more than a. turncoat, whoever it he, 7’. W. Russell or Winston Churchill.’ ‘What about Sir Edward Carson himself?’ asked Air. Hamer Greenwood, in The Times next day. ‘He wa* once a Liberal, and a member of the National Liberal Club.’ It was a palpable hit. but when Sir Edward retorted, ‘On the day that Urn first Home Rule Bill was introduced I telegraphed to the National Liberal Club to take my name off the roll of members,’ it seemed that tho victory was his. Air. Greenwood, however, had the curiosity to go lo the records of the National Liberal Club, with disastrous results for Sir Edward, for tho records showed that he was elected a member two months after tho Home Rule Bill was introduced, and that ho did not resign until fifteen months later, on October 21. 1887.” (When Arthur Balfour was put in charge of mutinous Ireland Carson was his Grown Prosecutor.) “But though Air. Carson profited, like many a hungry lawyer, by his loyalty to ‘the Castle,’ though he swept through the country as the Crown Prosecutor, and imprisoned a score or more of Irish members for daring lo address their constituents, though he was promptly rewarded for his services by being appointed Solicitor-General of Ireland—in spite of all this, it is not. I think, true that he adopted the cause of Ulster ns a matter of expediency. It is the breath of his nostrils, tho iiro in his blood. It makes him shed tears —real tears —on tho platform. It makes him talk treason, set up a provincial government to defy the Crown, and utter wild threats about marching from Belfast to Cork. It makes him put himself deliberately out of thp running for tho highest office in the Slate to which lie might have aspired. “There is something in the more presence of the man that is shattering and masterful. The retreating forehead. with the black well-oiled hair brushed close to tho crown, tho long hatchet, face, tho heavy-lidded eyes, at once dreamy and merciless, the droop of the mouth, the challenging thrust of the undorlip, tho heavy jaw—all proclaim the man ‘capable de tout et pirc.’ He might pass for a Sioux chief, who had left his scalps at home, or for an actor who plays the bold, bad Baron, or for a member of another and still more strenuous profession.”