It was, therefore, decided that no proposal for extending the area should be made by the Ulster members.  Carson made it clear in the debates on the Bill that Ulster had not moved from her old position of desiring nothing except the Union; that he was still convinced there was “no alternative to the Union unless separation”; but that, while he would take no responsibility for a Bill which Ulster did not want, he and his colleagues would not actively oppose its progress to the Statute-book.

It did not, however, receive the Royal Assent until two days before Christmas, and during all these months the condition of Ireland was one of increasing anarchy.  The Act provided that, if the people of Southern Ireland refused to work the new Constitution, the administration should be carried on by a system similar to Crown Colony government.  Carson gave an assurance that in Ulster they would do their best to make the Act a success, and immediate steps were taken in Belfast to make good this undertaking.

To the people of Ulster the Act of 1920, though it involved the sacrifice of much that they had ardently hoped to preserve, came as a relief to their worst fears.  It was represented as a final settlement, and finality was what they chiefly desired, if they could get it without being forced to submit to a Dublin Parliament.  The disloyal conduct of Nationalist Ireland during the war, and the treason and terrorism organised by Sinn Fein after the war, had widened the already broad gulf between North and South.  The determination never to submit to an all-Ireland Parliament was more firmly fixed than ever.  The Act of 1920, which repealed Mr. Asquith’s Act of 1914, gave Ulster what she had prepared to fight for, if necessary, before the war.  It was the fulfilment of the Craigavon resolution—­to take over the government “of those districts which they could control."[107] The Parliament of Northern Ireland established by the Act was in fact the legalisation of the Ulster Provisional Government of 1913.  It placed Ulster in a position of equality with the South, both politically and economically.  The two Legislatures in Ireland possessed the same powers, and were subject to an equal reservation of authority to the Imperial Parliament.

But with the passing of the Act the long and consummate leadership of Sir Edward Carson came to an end.  If he had not succeeded in bringing the Ulster people into a Promised Land, he had at least conducted an orderly retreat to a position of safety.  The almost miraculous skill with which he had directed all the operations of a protracted and harassing campaign, avoiding traps and pitfalls at every step, foreseeing and providing against countless crises, frustrating with unfailing adroitness the manoeuvres both of implacable enemies and treacherous “friends,” was fully appreciated by his grateful followers, who had for years past regarded him with an intensity of personal devotion seldom given even to the greatest of political