AN ULSTERMAN FOR IRELAND
England; nor unalterably attached to the House of Brunswick. In fact, I love my own barn better than I love that House. The time is long past when Jehovah anointed kings. The thing has long since grown a monstrous imposture, and has already in some civilised countries been detected as such and drummed out accordingly. A modern king, my friends, is no more like an ancient anointed shepherd of the people than an archbishop's apron is like the Urim and Thummim. There is no divine right now but in The Sovereign People.
And for the "institutions of the country," I loathe and despise them. We are sickening and dying of these institutions fast; they are consuming us like a plague, degrading us to paupers in mind, body, and estate—yes, making our very souls beggarly and cowardly. They are a failure and a fraud, these institutions. From the topmost crown jewel to the meanest detective's notebook there is no soundness in them. God and man are weary of them. Their last hour is at hand, and I thank God that I live in the days when I shall witness the utter downfall and trample upon the grave of the most portentous, the grandest, meanest, falsest and cruelest tyranny that ever deformed this world.
These, you think, are strong words, but they are not one whit stronger than the feeling that prompts them—that glows this moment deep in the souls of moving and awakening millions of our fellow-countrymen of Ireland—aye, and in your souls, too, Protestants of Ulster, if you would acknowledge it to yourselves. I smile at the formal resolution about "loyalty to Queen
26
