ABSTRACT
Yet there was a real sense in which it had always been a minority, or had experienced minority status, even before the partition of Ireland. Nationalism in the north was certainly part of the wider movement; but it was different in important respects from its southern counterpart. When Catholic nationalism was first mobilised as a mass political movement by Daniel O'Connell between the 1820s and the 1840s, the northern Catholic remained quiescent. When Charles Stewart Parnell organised his formidable home-rule party, Catholic Ulster played little or no part, save as voters. Northern Catholic political quiescence throughout the nineteenth century was attributed by one observer to the fact that Ulster Catholics felt the 'political ascendancy of the Protestants pressing more closely upon them'. This ascendancy meant that the 'Ulster Catholics ... born and bred in practical Helotism, though very Irish and patriotic at heart, and in mind, are very cautious and timid politicians' .1
