“With the indignation of the loyal Ulstermen at this proposal we are in complete sympathy.  Where there is a question of Home Rule, the Ulster Hall is sacred ground, and to the Ulster mind and, indeed, to the mind of any calm outsider, there is something both impudent and impious in the proposal that this temple of Unionism should be profaned by the son of a man who assisted at its consecration."[18]

The southern Unionists of Ireland thoroughly appreciated the difficulty that had confronted their friends in the North, and approved the way it had been met.  This was natural enough, since, as the Dublin Correspondent of The Times pointed out—­

“They understand Ulster’s position better than it can be understood in England.  They realise that the provocation has been extreme.  There has been a deliberate conspiracy to persuade the English people, first, that Ulster is weakening in its opposition to Home Rule; and, next, that its declared refusal to accept Home Rule in any form is mere bluff.  It became necessary for Ulster to defeat this conspiracy, and the Ulster Council’s Resolution has defeated it."[19]

A few days later a still more valuable token of sympathy and support from across the Channel gave fresh encouragement to Ulster.  On the 26th of January Mr. Bonar Law made his first public speech as leader of the Unionist Party, when he addressed an audience of ten thousand people in the Albert Hall in London.  In the course of a masterly analysis of the dangers inseparable from Home Rule, he once more drew attention to “the dishonesty with which the Government hid Home Rule before the election, and now propose to carry it after the election”; but the passage which gave the greatest satisfaction in Ulster was that in which, speaking for the whole Unionist Party—­which meant at least half, and probably more than half, the British nation—­Mr. Bonar Law, in reference to the recent occurrence in Belfast, said: 

“We hear a great deal about the intolerance of Ulster.  It is easy to be tolerant for other people.  We who represent the Unionist Party in England and Scotland have supported, and we mean to support to the end, the loyal minority.  We support them not because we are intolerant, but because their claims are just.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Churchill’s friends were seeking a building in Belfast where the baffled Minister could hold his meeting on the 8th of February, and in the course of the search the director of the Belfast Opera-house was offered a knighthood as well as a large sum of money for the use of his theatre,[20] a fact that possibly explains the statement made by the London Correspondent of The Freeman’s Journal on the 28th of January, that the Government’s Chief Whip and Patronage Secretary was busying himself with the arrangement.[21] Captain Frederick Guest, M.P., one of the junior whips, arrived in Belfast on the 25th to give assistance on the spot; but no suitable hall with an auspicious genius loci could apparently be found, for eventually a marquee was imported from Scotland and erected on the Celtic football ground, in the Nationalist quarter of the city.