In Parliament a few weeks later Mr Asquith described Mr Bonar Law’s speech as a declaration of war against Constitutional Government, but the Ulstermen went on calmly making their preparations for levying war and Sir Edward Carson and his friends coolly delivered speeches which reeked of sedition and treason against the State.  Sir Edward Carson declared (27th July 1912):  “We will shortly challenge the Government.  They shall us if they like it is treason.  We are prepared to take the consequences.”  And again he said (1st October 1912):  “The Attorney-General says that my doctrines and the course I am taking lead to anarchy.  Does he not think I know that?” And that fine exemplar of constitutional law, Mr F.E.  Smith (now Lord Chancellor of England) said:  “Supposing the Government gave such an order the consequences can only be described in the words of Mr Bonar Law when he said:  ’If they did so it would not be a matter of argument but the population of London would lynch you on the lamp-posts.’” Ulster scarcely needed these incitements to encourage it in its definite purpose of armed resistance to Home Rule.  It began to organise and discipline its army of Volunteers under able military leaders who subsequently demonstrated their capacity in no uncertain fashion, under the tests of actual warfare on many fields of battle.  With the knowledge we now possess it seems scarcely believable that Mr Redmond and his friends should have professed to treat what was happening in Ulster as “a gigantic game of bluff.”  They joked pleasantly over the drilling of the Ulster Volunteers with “wooden guns,” and they only asked that the Government should “Let the police and soldiers stand aside and make a ring and you will hear no more of the wooden gunmen.”  Ribaldry and gibes of this sort in the face of open and avowed treason was but a poor substitute for that firm statesmanship which should have grappled with the Ulster difficulty in either of two ways—­to come to terms with it or, in the alternative, beat all unruly opposition to the ground.

Mr Asquith is blamed because he did not put the law in operation against Sir Edward Carson, proclaim his illegal organisation of Volunteers and deal with him and his friends as a people seditious and disaffected towards the State, who, by their acts and conduct, had invited and merited the traitors’ doom.  But Mr Devlin declared not long after in Parliament that the reason why Mr Asquith did not move was because he and his friends would not allow him.  Whence this extraordinary tenderness for the man who was thwarting and defying them at every point, it is not possible to say.  No doubt the Ministry knew themselves in the wrong in that they had not considered the position of Ulster and had not attempted to legislate for their just fears.  It is beyond question that there were conditions upon which the consent of Ulster could have been secured.  If, these conditions being offered, this consent was unreasonably withheld, then the Government would have been absolutely justified in throttling Sir Edward Carson’s preparations for rebellion before they had gained any ground or effective shape.  But the weakness of the Liberal-Irish position was that they would not bring themselves to admit that the All-for-Ireland policy of Conciliation and a settlement by Conference and Consent was right.