Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

16 NATIONAL IDENTITY, HOME RULE AND ULSTER
the right of Ulster to resist…since it would be a severance
against their will of a loyal people from their nationhood,
which no Government has the right to do. 43
Irish Unionists rejected the assurances of the Irish Party that home
rule would be the final Nationalist demand, fearing that the
concession of an Irish parliament would be the first step in the
ultimate secession of Ireland from the British Empire, and the
breaking their allegiance with the King which would deprive them
of their status as British subjects. Unionists were concerned about
the nature of a grant of general power, by the Imperial Parliament,
to an Irish parliament which would, they feared, open the
possibility of Dominion-style independence from Westminster.
Ronald McNeill noted that an unwritten constitution, such as
Britain’s, contained a great number of rights and powers which
had ceased to be practically operative, but which had not been
specifically repealed by Act of Parliament: for example, the
inherent power of parliamentary supremacy over the American
colonies continued to reside in the Imperial Parliament, under Lord
North during the American War of Independence, but had little
practical effect. The Solicitor-General had aroused Unionist fears
by stating that the degree of independence to be set up in a
subordinate Irish parliament did not depend upon any specific
instrument or Act of the Imperial Parliament, but grew, over time,
by development and evolution, as had been the case for all the
self-governing Dominion Parliaments. This alarmed Unionists, for
while the Canadian Parliament’s powers were originally derived
from an Act of the Imperial Parliament, they pointed out that the
Imperial Parliament would not dare interfere in the affairs of that
legally subordinate legislature. In Canada it was the central
Canadian Parliament which had the power to overrule the Canadian
provincial parliaments, and this is what Irish Unionists wished to
see with regard to an Irish parliament—a real ability for the
Imperial Parliament to overrule an Irish parliament. Irish Unionists
feared that the proposed Irish Parliament would be equal to the
Imperial Parliament, as they considered the Canadian Parliament to
be, despite the alleged legal supremacy of the Imperial Parliament
over it. 44
Consequently, Sir Edward Carson warned that even if the words
‘subordinate Parliament’ were inserted into the Home Rule Bill, the
Irish Parliament would not consider itself subordinate. 45 To
illustrate this the News-Letter recalled how, in South Africa, the
Natal Government had demonstrated the worthlessness of the
Imperial Parliament’s supremacy when, as the former prepared to