The Hero of Ulster.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 21, 21 May 1913, Page 4

The Hero of Ulster.

Sir Edward Carson, a Masterful Man of the World Viewed as a Passionate Crusader.

x LOODY insurrection is preached in I-J Ulster against Homo Rule by I \ that greatest of all figures at the ,'*• Irish Bar, Sir Edward Carson. For the moment he eclipses John Redmond himself as the most conspicuous of jiving Irishmen. He is hailed as the hero of Ulster. He has deliberately placed himself outside the pale of the Jaw itself in his passionate crusade for an Ulster separate ami distinct from the rest of Ireland where Home Rule 1* concerned. He has pledged thousands of Orangemen to resist, if necessary, by force of arms, all application of the Home Rule Bill to the province of which he is champion. There will be, he avers loudly, civil war, armed insurrection. The Prime Minister has felt bound to >emind Sir Edward Carson of the statute against treason. The leading lawyer of Ireland is technically at least liable to imprisonment for crime, says a writer in Ein American weekly. Sir Edward Carson retorts with a ringing defiance. He will take refuge in Ulster itself if he must, and defy the forces of the Crown to touch him. Nor is the man who thus defies the law outside the pale of it. He has long been a pillar of the Tory party, long a conspicuous figure in the House of Commons, long the most successful practising banister in England and in Ireland. ' lie leads the Ulstermen,” says the London “World,” “because Ire is the embodiment of the Ulster temperament. ’ It is a fighting temperament, even a naturally violent temperament. Uir Edward Carson has caught its spirit. In a literal sense, this great lawyer i* “out lor blood,” and he has all Ulster behind him. Np head around which an aureole would look more ridiculous is conceivable to that able journalist, A.G.G., who studies the min of 1 Ister at length in |he London “News.” Sir Edward, we jrpad, is the very perfect knight, not of the Round Tabb-. but of the bar mess—f'fearned in the crooked ways of nien, cynical, abounding m animal spirits, loving equally a joke or a row, with something of the gay swagger as well as |he brogue of the squireen of the west.” Kir Edward, we are assured, is a man of tbc tvpe who takes his meat red and his vine without water. “An Ideal would wither in Ids presence.” Even Joseph Surface, the man of sentiment in Sheridan's play, would not have tried a “senti|nent" upon Sir Edward Carson. A poet (before him would be dumb—•■‘‘hypnotised J ike a rabbit before a python.” For tjiere is something-in the mere presence of the man that is -battering and masterful. The retreating forehead, with the bla.-k, well-oiled hair brushed close to the crown, the long-hatelret face, the jicavv lidded eyes, at once dreamy and merciless, the droop of the mouth, the chalkngir.g thrust of the under-lip, the heavx jaw—these combine, it seems, to |>ioelaim the man capable of anything — end then sonic. There is in the noble savagery of Sir Edward Unison, as regards his manner jm 1. -s than his aspect. a suggestion of the Sioux chief who had left his scalps at home. Or one might take him for the port of actor with lungs of brass Who plays the bold, bad baron. He is, to our (authority, the, most formidable blunder-bu-.s to be found in the Temple practising. file allusion is intelligible because Caiiyle has defined a barrister as a loaded bhiu lerbu-s. “If you hire it, you blow Out the other man’s brains. If lie hires it, he blows out yours.” Sir Edvard Carson, therefore, always finds his eases ea-y. “With a weak man on the bench, he simply walks over the course.” It is to much easier for a judge to agree with aim than to differ. In these circumstance*, a startling change comes over Sir Edward Carson. The great advocate betomes graciousness itself. “He is sweet nnd kindly even to the poor plaintiff Who sees all his hopes vanishing before >omc inagio solvent.” Vainly bin counsel Wrestles with this intangible influence. Jle advances bin most powerful Uno of attack. Sir Edward gently drums his fingers vn the table, murmuring, "My pord, I Biui-t, object.” The judge wilts at once—if ho be weak. If tlie judge be of sterner stuff, the note of Sir Edward Uarson can be modi-

fled to suit. He must blow the plaintiff to pieces himself. He must overawe the jury himself. "Then who so ruthless as he, who so artless in playing upon the political string, who so subtle in suggesting hidden motives?” The heavy, vibrant voice tills the court, the blows fall with a ruthless crash, all the resources of his dominating personality are brought into play to stampede the men in the box. For Sir Edward has the gaiety of high animal spirits and the rough wit of the streets. “Ar-re ye a tay-totaller?” he roars in his rich brogue, seeing that the man in the witness box is' bottle-nosed. No answer. “Ar-re ye a modlierate dhrinker?” ''That’s my business,” replies the bottle-nosed mortal. “An-ny other business?” The question comes swiftly—the knock-out blow of the sparrer, we read, who plays lightly with a poor antagonist and sends him spinning with

a scornful flick of the Finger. But when at grips with a more formidable foe, the methods of Sir Eduard. Car-on become coarser. No one in the whole domain of contemporary British polities, it seems, has a rougher tongue than Sir Edward Carson’s or uses it more recklessly. "I am not paid five thousands pounds a year for spitting out dirt,” he says, referring to the literary and genial Augustine Birrell, who has “spit out less dirt,” our authority avers, “iu a lifetime than is contained in that one jeer.” To a calm statement of fact, Sir Edward Carson says: “I have taken the opportunity of congratulating Sir John Benn that Ananias is still flourishing.” And he say* elsewhere: “There is nothing but a farce going on at the House of Common*. It is called ‘’Hie Gamblers, or come and get nine pence for four pence.’ Come and see Lloyd George, the magician. He must be inspired, you know, for he preaches in •tabernacles.” Now, all this, agrees our British contemporary, is crude stuff. But it “goes.” The men of Ulster roar their delight at it. You will search the

speeches of Sir Edward Carson in vain for a noble thought or for a flash of genial humour. It is all hard and grinding. “But in that is the true note of Ulster.” Not that this man of Ulster is a native there. He is an adopted child, and but for him Ulster now might be dumb. Yet with all the defects of Sir Edward Carson, defects pointed, out continually by the Liberal London dailies, all agree that he possesses one supreme quality for a leader. He is a first-class fighting man. “He would be magnificent at Donnybrook Fair. and the blackthorn, presented to him by admiring men of Ulster, is the perfect symbol of their spokesman.” He is olways, apparently, for the blackthorn argument. When a certain constitutional measure rent the Tory party in twain he was the most daring of "die hards” and gave his leader of to-day, lord Londonderry, no quarter. "We are told that if we run away to-day,” he said, "we will fight hereafter. I prefer to fight to-day and to-morrow and the day after.” That, says the London "News,” is the man. "His blackthorn is never idle.” Nevertheless —such is the perversity of popularity— lie is the most popular of men — with even the men at whom he roars his loudest. It is an open question whether he is not to-day the most popular figure in the whole House of Commons. It takes kindly to the man who has no reserves, no affectations and who rushes

pell-mell, madly, unthinkingly, into the smoke of battle—often, it is true, to be laughed at. What is the motive that converts this masterful man of the world into the passionate crusader? The question is asked again and again by the Liberal London organ. Why does he shed tears, it inquires, in the presence of his vast audiences? It is not, we are told, for the sake of expediency. It is not patriotism, nor love of the political union In one Parliament for its own dear sake. The motive of Sir Edward Carson, we read, is the ascendancy of his own caste, established and maintained by the Union. For a century ami more the Orangemen have had Ireland undec their beds. With the caslle of the laiid-Lieulenaiit at their back, men of the breed of Sir Edward Carson have had Ireland us if it were a conquered province. They have planted their men in every fat office. They have controlled the administration'. The police ■have been instruments iu their hand.*. The law lias been of their fashioning. The judges have been of their making. The career of Sir Edward Varson has

been built up gloriously upon this foundation almost from the hour of his birth nearly sixty years ago in Dublin. Trinity College confirmed him as an Orange* man in spirit. He “took silk,” as they say over there, at the Irish Bar with the Orange atmosphere in his nostrils. He throve at -the English Bar upon the strength of the ascendancy of his casta in Ireland. He was a creature of the same ascendancy when he became Solici-tor-General for Ireland. During the. twenty years he has sat in the Commons as a member for Dublin University, hd has acted like an Orangeman of thd Oranges, thinking their thoughts and fighting their cause. Without him, avers our contemporary, the cause of Ulster would seem contemptible. With him ifi is almost formidable. “11 is figure emerges from the battle with a certain sinister distinction and loneliness. He is fighting for a bail cause that is in full flight;; but he is fighting a>* men fight who count! nothing of the cost.” He will not yield* No one who does not understand the temperament of Sir Edward, therefore, can understand the Irish crisis in its present form. Yet few Englishmen understand him. He is dismissed, we are told, under one of two categories. In one h«j is simply an Ohl Bailey lawyer with a. brief. In the other he is a patriot ready; to die in the. last ditch for his country* He is neither. His sincerity is that of the fanatic. But his passion is not—to' the Liberal dailies at any rate—the pas J sion of the. patriot, for he has no country. He has only a. caste. He fights not for Ireland, not even for Ulster, but foi‘ a. kind of Manchu dynasty. Not that hd should be deemed mercenary. He is the nristocrat to the finger-tips, hurling de* fiance at the oncoming mob. He is the Bourbon in every drop of his blood. He showed that temper when he swept through Ireland as prosecutor for the Crown, imprisoning a score or more ot Irish Home Rulers for daring to addresq their constituent*. Despite all this it is not true, we are invited to believe; that he adopted the cause of Ulster pfi a matter of expediency. Ulster is the breath of his nostril*, the fire in his| blood. It makes Jiim shed tears—real tears—on the platform. It makes hint talk treason, set up a provisional government and utter wild threats about marching from Belfast to Cork. It makes! him put himself deliberately out of the running for the highest offices in the State to which he might have aspired. It is not expediency which works thi£ miracle of God, laments the British dally; but the ultimate passion in his soul roused and transfiguring him. But let us take leave of the man in the kindlier glow diffused over his personality by, that most sympathetic of all his inter* preters, the London “World”:—"He comes to the Table a severe anti somewhat prim figure. He makes plajfj with his glasses in professional fashion; He lectures. His arguments are mar* shalled as though for a mathematical demonstration. The class is by no means tranquil, but he takes no notice of its! noise. He is there to demonstrate cer* tain trutlis, and demonstrate them will. As you listen to him bis forceful personality gradually asserts itself, anil when he sits down he leaves two clear ideas in your mind. first is that; there Is no Irish question—a question is a thing with two sides to it. Sir Edward Carson shows that there is only one side to Irish affairs. His premises appear irrefutable; the eon-elusions follow syltogistieally. It ail seems so obvious, so inevitable, that you wonder whether it was really worth saying. The scconil impression he leaves is that if there ba an Irish question it is a purely intellectual question, io be argued without passion after the style of a. Platonic dialogue. It is all a matter of the adjust* merit of theory to ascertainable, decidedly eoimplex, facts, and. calls ior nothing but a clear head and much sound sease—-the very faculties which make good barrister.

“So, too, with his method. The Ulsterman hates the appeal to sentiment. Al| this talk of nationality is so much humbug to him. In his heart of hearts lia knows that it contradicts facts. But how can lie prove it? How can he rebut the) charge that when he speaks of Rule he is himself a prey to one of very prejudrees whieli he is denouncing! How can he put his case strongly wiilioufi miggesting that it is over-coloured? There is no golden rule, by which these results «-an be achieved. But there is a tern* perament which achieves them, and thflfc 1 einperametrt finds perfect -expression nr Sir E<!ward Carson.”

Through this lempernment. Sir EilwaTd Carson looks at Ireland and the Homo Rule question only to find them scarleo instead of green.