James I of England and VI of Scotland once launched a mulberry tree-planting campaign as part of a national plan to create a silk industry to rival China's. When the trees were finally mature, the little serpent of sericulture would - it was royally expected - extrude enough silk to humble China. The king's realm would grow and prosper, and caravelles and argosies would bear British silk to the four corners of the world.
History is full of such melancholy vainglories, of single great projects that will change the face of an economy or a people, but at least James's vision bequeathed to the city of Cambridge the odd mulberry tree or two, one of which was planted by the poet Milton. It stands today in Christ's College; and possibly if you sit within its 400-year-old shade, you might even hear tiny jaws munching above you, the relics of an ancient plan.
Stark question
The mulberry tree was planted at around the same time as King James's other great plantation, that of Ulster. Those of us who gathered in Cambridge last weekend for the British Irish Association conference on whether the peace can be made to hold could be forgiven for wondering which of these two plantations would be the longer lasting. For that is now one of the starker questions we must now ask as the peace process grinds ever more slowly towards an acrimonious and perhaps terrible conclusion.
For while the tree stands firm, the Ulster plantation is falling apart: the overwhelming majority of unionist graduates leave the province never to return. In their exile, they remain unenchanted or undrawn by the people or places that they have left behind. At best they chafe and sneer at the successes of the hostile tribe. In the 30 years of the Troubles, Ulster unionism has been almost systematically deprived of leaders and of example, almost as if the middle classes felt no duty to the broader community from which they came, to their province or the greater kingdom in which they professed such pride.
Through the history of the UDR, and later the Royal Irish Regiment, what we might call the Ulster middle class remained aloof. The regiment which was the military expression of the union depended for its officer class on the lower middle classes: the rugby-playing classes did not get involved. In essence, the war remained one in which the ruling scions of Ulster were not a factor, would make no sacrifice and take no stand.
Instead they benefited from the voodoo economics of dependence, which have now descended into a diseased dysfunctionality. Of Northern Ireland's GDP of £17 billion, £11 billion is state expenditure. This is, of course, not money raised in taxes from within the province, but consists overwhelmingly of capital transfers from the British Exchequer.
Real economy
In such chronic dependency, it is simply impossible to identify how much of a real economy Northern Ireland actually possesses. It might actually have none; that is, if you subtract subventions from Britain, remaining economic activity would plummet below critical mass. Thus in the event of a British withdrawal, there would not be the capital, the work habit or the enterprise to prevent the kind of meltdown that we have seen in parts of Africa and the old Soviet empire.
Long before that point has been reached, loyalism might have long since have lost all reason. We're not allowed to quote individuals attending such conferences, but really, it isn't necessary. Regardless of the direction in which the peace process is moving, loyalists and unionists seem close to despair; their anger bubbles like lava through the fault-lines of Northern Ireland society - Garvaghy Road, Harryville, Ardoyne. A thousand little hair-cracks are spreading across the North like a network of tiny veins, each of which has the potential to rupture, releasing the uncontrolled molten stone of loyalist wrath through some hitherto nameless fissure.
All the indices point in the one direction: towards an inevitable eclipse of the Ulster plantation, and people who feel themselves the victims of such historical movements seldom depart quietly. Samson, his locks long and his sinews restored, was the historical model for the Jews of Masada. The Masada complex, even if it was unknown to them, drove the Apprentice Boys to prefer death than to pass meekly into slavery.
Long-standing antagonism
Slavery might seem a strong word; but what mercy do the loyalists of North Belfast expect if their conquerors are from the tribe of Ardoyne? The vision of these loyalists is not large, their understanding of the world mostly confined to a few streets, a couple of clubs, a supermarket or two; and most of all, the ceaseless proximity of a tribe they detest, and whom they see to be ever ascendant, ever confident, culturally and demographically sure of their ultimate victory. And because they know their potential victors by face and name and personal and long-standing antagonism, and because the history of loyalist atrocities is so dire that they expect no mercy, such a defeat is simply unbearable. Better to bring the whole house down.
Since the British could reconstruct the National Health Service or re-equip their entire armed forces with what they annually spend to so little effect in Northern Ireland, there is a certain implacable logic behind withdrawal - not least that it might prevent the calamity of another London bomb. However, everything we have learnt over the past 30 years should tell us one thing. When its time comes, the mulberry tree of Cambridge will go quietly; but that other Jacobean plantation will certainly not.