Among the numberless popular demonstrations which marked the history of Ulster’s stand against Home Rule, four stand out pre-eminent in the impressiveness of their size and character.  Those who attended the Ulster Convention of 1892 were persuaded that no political meeting could ever be more inspiring; but many of them lived to acknowledge that it was far surpassed at Craigavon in 1911.  The Craigavon meeting, though in some respects as important as any of the series, was, from a spectacular point of view, much less imposing than the assemblage which listened to Mr. Bonar Law at Balmoral on Easter Tuesday, 1912; and the latter occasion, though never surpassed in splendour and magnitude by any single gathering, was in significance but a prelude to the magnificent climax reached in the following September on the day when the Covenant was signed throughout Ulster.

The Balmoral demonstration had, however, one distinctive feature.  At it the Unionist Party of Great Britain met and grasped the hand of Ulster Loyalism.  It gave the leader and a large number of his followers an opportunity to judge for themselves the strength and sincerity of Ulster, and at the same time it served to show the Ulstermen the weight of British opinion ready to back them.  Mr. Bonar Law was accompanied to Belfast by no less than seventy Members of Parliament, representing English, Scottish, and Welsh constituencies, not a few of whom had already attained, or afterwards rose to, political distinction.  Among them were Mr. Walter Long, Lord Hugh Cecil, Sir Robert Finlay, Lord Charles Beresford, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Amery, Mr. J.D.  Baird, Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, Mr. Ian Malcolm, Lord Claud Hamilton, Mr. J.G.  Butcher, Mr. Ernest Pollock, Mr. George Cave, Mr. Felix Cassel, Mr. Ormsby-Gore, Mr. Scott Dickson, Mr. W. Peel, Captain Gilmour, Mr. George Lloyd, Mr. J.W.  Hills, Mr. George Lane-Fox, Mr. Stuart-Wortley, Mr. J.F.P.  Rawlinson, Mr. H.J.  Mackinder, and Mr. Herbert Nield.

The reception of the Unionist Leader at Larne on Easter Monday was wonderful, even to those who knew what a Larne welcome to loyalist leaders could be, and who recalled the scenes there during the historic visits of Lord Randolph Churchill, Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Balfour.  “If this is how you treat your friends,” said Mr. Bonar Law simply, in reply to one of the innumerable addresses presented to him, “I am glad I am not an enemy.”  Before reaching Belfast he had ample opportunity at every stopping-place of his train to note the fervour of the populace.  “Are all these people landlords?” he asked (in humorous allusion to the Liberal legend that Ulster Unionism was manufactured by a few aristocratic landowners), as he saw every platform thronged with enthusiastic crowds of men and women, the majority of whom were evidently of the poorer classes.  In Belfast the concourse of people was so dense in the streets that the motor-car in which Mr. Bonar Law and Sir Edward Carson sat side