Meanwhile, with a weak Irish administration in charge of Mr Birrell as Chief Secretary—­most amiable of litterateurs, but most imbecile of politicians—­the Ulster opposition was allowed to harden into potential violence and civil war.  “Engagements” between the Orangemen and the Hibernians began to form a sort of political amusement in the north of Ireland.  The cries of religious and race hatred were allowed to devour the sweeter gospel of reconciliation and the recognition of a common country and that communion of right and interest between all classes and creeds which was the evangel of Wolfe Tone and other northern Protestant patriots in sublimer days.  Matters were drifting from bad to worse under the fatal weakness and irresolution of the Government.  So little fear had Sir Edward Carson of any penal consequences to himself that he declared, on the 7th September 1913: 

“We will set up a Government [of their own as provided for in the Ulster Covenant].  I am told it will be illegal.  Of course it will.  Drilling is illegal.  The Government dare not interfere.”

And he was right!  It did not interfere.  And the Ulster Volunteers began to provide themselves with arms and ammunition and to organise themselves for actual war conditions.  There were no more feeble jokes about “wooden guns” and “making a free ring”—­as if it were to be only an ordinary pugilistic encounter and of no account.  In 1913 the Ulster Volunteer Force was said to be well armed and probably better drilled than the northern regiments at the outbreak of the American War of Secession.

Official nationalism was, though it knew it not, passing through the gates of disaster.  It was still able to maintain its hold on the old stagers who were grafted on to it for various reasons, and the Board of Erin was still able to count on the fidelity of those who believed in the secret sign and watchword as the avenue to place and preferment.

The Government of Ireland Bill was merrily pursuing its three years’ course through Parliament—­passed by the House of Commons and rejected by the House of Lords after the usual farce and formality of debates which had very little reality in them.  What counted was that Ulster was in arms and determined to resist and that “the Home Rule Government” had proved themselves incapable either of conceding or of resisting.  Other things began to count also in Ireland.  The young manhood of Nationalist Ireland, seeing the liberties of their country menaced by force, decided to organise themselves into a corps of Irish Volunteers to defend these liberties from wanton aggression.  The Transport Workers’ Strike in Dublin, in 1913, under Mr James Larkin, also showed the existence of a powerful body of organised opinion, which cared little for ordinary political methods and which was clearly disaffected to the Party leaders.  Forces were being loosed that had long been held in check by the power of the place-hunting