“The dark eleventh hour
    Draws on, and sees us sold
    To every evil Power
    We fought against of old. 
    Rebellion, rapine, hate,
    Oppression, wrong, and greed
    Are loosed to rule our fate,
    By England’s act and deed.

    “Believe, we dare not boast,
    Believe, we do not fear—­
    We stand to pay the cost
    In all that men hold dear. 
    What answer from the North? 
    One Law, One Land, One Throne. 
    If England drive us forth
    We shall not fall alone!”

The preparations for the Unionist leader’s coming visit to Belfast had excited the keenest interest throughout England and Scotland.  Coinciding as it did with the introduction of the Government’s Bill, it was recognised to be the formal countersigning by the whole Unionist Party of Great Britain of Ulster’s proclamation of her determination to resist her forcible degradation in constitutional status.  The same note of mingled reproach and defiance which sounded in Kipling’s verses was heard in the grave warning addressed by The Times to the country in a leading article on the morning of the meeting: 

“Nobody of common judgment and common knowledge of political movements can honestly doubt the exceptional gravity of the occasion, and least of all can any such doubt be felt by any who know the men of Ulster.  To make light of the deep-rooted convictions which fill the minds of those who will listen to Mr. Bonar Law to-day is a shallow and an idle affectation, or a token of levity and of ignorance.  Enlightened Liberalism may smile at the beliefs and the passions of the Ulster Protestants, but it was those same beliefs and passions, in the forefathers of the men who will gather in Belfast to-day, which saved Ireland for the British Crown, and freed the cause of civil and religious liberty in these islands from its last dangerous foes....  It is useless to argue that they are mistaken.  They have reasons, never answered yet, for believing that they are not mistaken....  Their temper is an ultimate fact which British statesmen and British citizens have to face.  These men cannot be persuaded to submit to Home Rule.  Are Englishmen and Scotchmen prepared to fasten it upon them by military force?  That is the real Ulster question.”

Other great English newspapers wrote in similar strain, and the support thus given was of the greatest possible encouragement to the Ulster people, who were thereby assured that their standpoint was not misunderstood and that the justice of their “loyalist” claims was appreciated across the Channel.