Nevertheless, it must, of course, be freely admitted that the question as to what conditions justify resistance to the legal authority in the State—­or rebellion, if the more blunt expression be preferred—­is an exceedingly difficult one to answer.  It would sound cynical to say, though Carlyle hardly shrinks from maintaining, that success, and success alone, redeems rebellion from wickedness and folly.  Yet it would be difficult to explain on any other principle why posterity has applauded the Parliamentarians of 1643 and the Whigs of 1688, while condemning Monmouth and Charles Edward; or why Mr. Gladstone sympathised with Jefferson Davis when he looked like winning and withdrew that sympathy when he had lost.  But if success is not the test, what is?  Is it the aim of the men who resist?  The aim that appears honourable and heroic to one onlooker appears quite the opposite to another, and so the test resolves itself into a matter of personal partisanship.

That is probably as near as one can get to a solution of the question.  Those who happen to agree with the purpose for which a rebellion takes place think the rebels in the right; those who disagree think them in the wrong.  As Mr. Winston Churchill succinctly puts it when commenting on the strictures passed on his father for “inciting” Ulster to resist Home Rule, “Constitutional authorities will measure their censures according to their political opinions.”  He reminds us, moreover, that when Lord Randolph was denounced as a “rebel in the skin of a Tory,” the latter “was able to cite the authority of Lord Althorp, Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Morley, and the Prime Minister (Gladstone) himself, in support of the contention that circumstances might justify morally, if not technically, violent resistance and even civil war."[42]

To this distinguished catalogue of authorities an Ulster apologist might have added the name of the Chief Secretary for Ireland in Mr. Asquith’s own Cabinet, who admitted in 1912 that “if the religion of the Protestants were oppressed or their property despoiled they would be right to fight[43];” which meant that Mr. Birrell did not condemn fighting in itself, provided he were allowed to decide when the occasion for it had arisen.  Greater authorities than Mr. Birrell held that the Ulster case for resistance was a good and valid one as it stood.  No English statesman of the last half-century has deservedly enjoyed a higher reputation for political probity, combined with sound common sense, than the eighth Duke of Devonshire.  As long ago as 1893, when this same issue had already been raised in circumstances much less favourable to Ulster than after the passing of the Parliament Act in 1911, the Duke of Devonshire said: