If we understand this, many of the ironies
of history will be intelligible. We will understand why it was that our
countrymen in Ulster and our countrymen in the rest of Ireland, who have
denounced each other so vehemently, should at last appear to have
exchanged characteristics: why in the North, having passionately
protested against physical force movements, no-rent manifestos, and
contempt for Imperial Parliament, they should have come themselves at
last to organize a physical force movement, should threaten to pay no
taxes, and should refuse obedience to an Act of Parliament. We will
understand also why it was their opponents came themselves to address to
Ulster all the arguments and denunciations Ulster had addressed to them.
I do not point this out with intent to annoy, but to illustrate by late
history a law in national as well as human psychology. If this
unpopular psychology I have explained was adopted everywhere as true, we
would never hear expressions of hate. People would realize they were
first revealing and then stabbing their own characters before the world.
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