and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant throughout this our time of threatened calamity to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland.  And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority.  In sure confidence that God will defend the right we hereto subscribe our names.  And further, we individually declare that we have not already signed this Covenant.  God save the King.”

On Monday, the 23rd of September, the Ulster Unionist Council, the body representing the whole loyalist community on an elective and thoroughly democratic basis, held its annual meeting in the Ulster Hall, the chief business being the ratification of the Covenant prior to its being presented for general signature throughout the province on Ulster Day.  Upwards of five hundred delegates attended the meeting, and unanimously approved the terms of the document recommended for their acceptance by their Standing Committee.  They then adopted, on the motion of Lord Londonderry, the Resolution which, as already mentioned, had originally formed part of the draft of the Covenant itself.  This Resolution, as well as the Covenant, was the subject of extensive comment in the English and Scottish Press.  Some opponents of Ulster directed against it the flippant ridicule which appeared to be their only weapon against a movement the gravity of which was admitted by Ministers of the Crown; but, on the whole, the British Press acknowledged the important enunciation of political principle which it contained.  It placed on record that: 

“Inasmuch as we, the duly elected delegates and members of the Ulster Unionist Council, representing all parts of Ulster, are firmly persuaded that by no law can the right to govern those whom we represent be bartered away without their consent; that although the present Government, the services and sacrifices of our race having been forgotten, may drive us forth from a Constitution which we have ever loyally upheld, they may not deliver us bound into the hands of our enemies; and that it is incompetent for any authority, party, or people to appoint as our rulers a Government dominated by men disloyal to the Empire and to whom our faith and traditions are hateful; and inasmuch as we reverently believe that, as in times past it was given our fathers to save themselves from a like calamity, so now it may be ordered that our deliverance shall be by our own hands, to which end it is needful that we be knit together as one man, each strengthening the other, and none holding back or counting the cost—­therefore we, Loyalists of Ulster, ratify and confirm the steps so far taken by the Special Commission this day