Right - finished with you pair.
This is the situation you have been given, by all the evidence you have been provided.
The Unionist, armed themselves with smuggled weapons and declared that, under no circumstances they would accept a United Ireland - they were no more than an armed group of traitorous paramilitaries.
The Government were well aware of this, which is why they altered the agreed conditions (Redmond had made it clear he would accept no other) from "six years" to "permanent partition", in doing so, they colluded with armed paramilitaries who had been assembled and egged-on by Carson, Craig and other fanatical nutters while at the same time destroying the Home Rule movement which would possibly have kept Ireland within the control of the Empire.
High ranking officers in the British Army pledged their support to this bunch of fanatical paramilitaries by saying that they would refuse to order their men to stop them if they mounted an armed revolt on then British Ireland - traitors all, prepared to take part in what amounted to a military coup in the event of part of the British Isles being attacked by self-declared, fanatical nutters (one high-ranking nutter had signed the Covenant in his own blood).
The Conservatives in the Government backed these the nutty Paramilitaries.
Probably, one of the few good things to come out of W.W.1. was that it dissipated a potentially disastrous Civil War in Britain.
When the Republicans eventually forced Britain to give 26 counties full independence, the fanatical nutters who had brought Britain to the brink of Civil War were put in charge of the six counties, and mounted a nearly half-a-century reign of terror and persecution on one third of the population which lasted to the late 1960s when, after an attempt to gain civil rights was brutally put down by the fanatical nutters, aided and abetted by the R.U.C. - this erupted into 'The Troubles' which spilled over onto mainland Britain.
And the Easter uprising was a "contemptible joke" - sure it was!!
To to top all this - Ireland, who had no right to independence (which one of you have denied claiming) had never really existed as a nation anyway (as claimed by the same feller)
Those who the gods wish to destroy must be first made mad - as the saying goes.
G'night George, g'night Gracie
Jim Carroll