Parliaments, one sitting in Dublin and one in London, contemplated
in the Home Rule Act, would be impossible and irritating. Whatever
may be said for two bodies each with their spheres of influence
clearly defined, there is nothing to be said for two legislatures
with concurrent powers of legislation and taxation, and with members
from Ireland retained at Westminster to provide some kind of
democratic excuse for the exercise of powers of Irish legislation
and taxation by the Parliament at Westminster. The Irish demand
is that Great Britain shall throw upon our shoulders the full
weight of responsibility for the management of our own affairs, so
that we can only blame ourselves and our political guides and not
Great Britain if we err in our policies.

17. I have stated what I believe to be sound reasons for the
recognition of the justice of the Irish demand by Great Britain
and I now turn to Ulster, and ask it whether the unstable condition
of things in Ireland does not affect it even more than Great Britain.
If it persists in its present attitude, if it remains out of a self-
governing Ireland, it will not thereby exempt itself from political,
social and economic trouble. Ireland will regard the six Ulster
counties as the French have regarded Alsace-Lorraine, whose hopes
of reconquest turned Europe into an armed camp, with the endless
suspicions, secret treaties, military and naval developments, the
expense of maintaining huge armies, and finally the inevitable war.
So sure as Ulster remains out, so surely will it become a focus
for nationalist designs. I say nothing of the injury to the great
wholesale business carried on from its capital city throughout the
rest of Ireland where the inevitable and logical answer of merchants
in the rest of Ireland to requests for orders will be: "You would
die rather than live in the same political house with us. We will