The Bill to give effect to these proposals (which became the Government of Ireland Act, 1920) was formally introduced on the 25th of February, 1920, and Carson then went over to Belfast to consult with the Unionist Council as to the action to be taken by the Ulster members.

The measure was a long and complicated one of seventy clauses and six schedules.  Its effect, stated briefly, was to set up two Parliaments in Ireland, one for the six Protestant counties of Ulster and the other for the rest of Ireland.  In principle it was the “clean cut” which had been several times proposed, except that, instead of retaining Ulster in legislative union with Great Britain, she was to be endowed with local institutions of her own in every respect similar to, and commensurate with, those given to the Parliament in Dublin.  In addition, a Council of Ireland was created, composed of an equal number of members from each of the two legislatures.  This Council was given powers in regard to private bill legislation, and matters of minor importance affecting both parts of the island which the two Parliaments might mutually agree to commit to its administration.  Power was given to the two Parliaments to establish by identical Acts at any time a Parliament for all Ireland to supersede the Council, and to form a single autonomous constitution for the whole of Ireland.

The Council of Ireland occupied a prominent place in the debates on the Bill.  It was held up as a symbol of the “unity of Ireland,” and the authors of the measure were able to point to it as supplying machinery by which “partition” could be terminated as soon as Irishmen agreed among themselves in wishing to have a single national Government.  It was not a feature of the Bill that found favour in Ulster; but, as it could do no harm and provided an argument against those who denounced “partition,” the Ulster members did not think it worth while to oppose it.

But when Carson met the Ulster Unionist Council on the 6th of March the most difficult point he had to deal with was the same that had given so much trouble in the negotiations of 1916.  The Bill defined the area subject to the “Parliament of Northern Ireland” as the six counties which the Ulster Council had agreed four years earlier to accept as the area to be excluded from the Home Rule Act.  The question now to be decided was whether this same area should still be accepted, or an amendment moved for including in Northern Ireland the other three counties of the Province of Ulster.  The same harrowing experience which the Council had undergone in 1916 was repeated in an aggravated form.[106] To separate themselves from fellow loyalists in Monaghan, Cavan, and Donegal was hateful to every delegate from the other six counties, and it was heartrending to be compelled to resist another moving appeal by so valued a friend as Lord Farnham.  But the inexorable index of statistics demonstrated that, although Unionists were in a majority when geographical Ulster was considered as a unit, yet the distribution of population made it certain that a separate Parliament for the whole Province would have a precarious existence, while its administration of purely Nationalist districts would mean unending conflict.