“Where on the Earth was the like of it done
    In the gaze of the sun? 
    She had pleaded and prayed to be counted still
    As one of our household through good and ill,
      And with scorn they replied;
    Jeered at her loyalty, trod on her pride,
      Spurned her, repulsed her,
      Great-hearted Ulster;
    Flung her aside.”

Appreciating to the full the sympathy and support which their cause received from leading men of letters in England, it was not the fault of the Ulstermen themselves that the larger Imperial aspects of the question thus dropped into the background.  They continually strove to make Englishmen realise that far more was involved than loyal support of England’s only friends in Ireland; they quoted such pronouncements as Admiral Mahan’s that “it is impossible for a military man, or a statesman with appreciation of military conditions, to look at a map and not perceive that if the ambition of the Irish Separatists were realised, it would be even more threatening to the national life of Britain than the secession of the South was to that of the American Republic....  An independent Parliament could not safely be trusted even to avowed friends”; and they showed over and over again, quoting chapter and verse from Nationalist utterances, and appealing to acknowledged facts in recent and contemporary history, that it was not to “avowed friends,” but to avowed enemies, that Mr. Asquith was prepared to concede an independent Parliament.

But those were the days before the rude awakening from the dream that the world was to repose for ever in the soft wrappings of universal peace.  Questions of national defence bored Englishmen.  The judgment of the greatest strategical authority of the age weighed less than one of Lord Haldane’s verbose platitudes, and the urgent warnings of Lord Roberts less than the impudent snub administered to him by an Under-Secretary.  Speakers on public platforms found that sympathy with Ulster carried a more potent appeal to their audience than any other they could make on the Irish question, and they naturally therefore concentrated attention upon it.  Liberals, excited alternately to fury and to ridicule by the proceedings in Belfast, heaped denunciation on Carson and the Covenant, thereby impelling their opponents to vehement defence of both; and the result of all this was that before the end of 1912 the sun of Imperial policy which had drawn the homage of earlier defenders of the Union was almost totally eclipsed by the moon of Ulster.

When Parliament reassembled for the autumn session in October the Prime Minister immediately moved a “guillotine” resolution for allotting time for the remaining stages of the Home Rule Bill, and, in resisting this motion, Mr. Bonar Law made one of the most convincing of his many convincing speeches against the whole policy of the Bill.  It stands for all time as the complete demonstration of a proposition