“Whatever Ulster’s rights may be,” he said, “they cannot stand in the way of the whole of the rest of Ireland.  Half a province cannot impose a permanent veto on the nation.  The utmost they can claim is for themselves.  I ask, do they claim separate treatment for themselves?  Do the counties of Down and Antrim and Londonderry, for instance, ask to be excepted from the scope of this Bill?  Do they ask for a parliament of their own, or do they wish to remain here?  We ought to know.”

This was to proceed at once into the region of a bargain.  Mr. Gladstone, with his grip on the existence of a national spirit in Ireland, would have known that concession on such point was a very different matter from some alteration in the financial terms or in the composition of the Parliament.  It admitted, in fact, the contention that Ireland was not a nation but a geographical expression.

As soon as the Bill went into Committee, the result was seen.  The first serious amendment proposed to exclude the four counties, Antrim, Down, Armagh, and Derry, and it was moved from the Liberal benches.  Three Liberal speakers supported it in the early stages of a debate which lasted to the third day—­and on the division the majority, which had been 100 for the Second Reading, fell to 69.  Mr. Churchill did not vote—­nor, although this was not then so apparently significant, did Mr. Lloyd George.

Thus from the very first the point of danger revealed itself.  By the mere threat of a resistance which could only be overcome through the use of troops, Ulster had made the first dint for the insertion of a wedge into the composite Home Rule alliance, and into the Cabinet itself.  All this had been gained without any tactical sacrifice, without even anything like a full disclosure of the force which lay behind this line of attack.

Nor was the full extent of weakness revealed.  In such a case, much depended on the personality of the man who moved the amendment, and Mr. Agar-Robartes was one of the most whimsically incongruous figures in the Government ranks.  Twentieth-century Liberalism wears a somewhat drab and serious aspect, but this ultra-fashionable example of gilded youth would have been in his place among the votaries of Charles James Fox.  The climax of his incongruity was a vehement and rather antiquated Protestantism; he was, for instance, among the few who opposed the alteration of the Coronation oath to a formula less offensive to Catholics.  Nobody doubted that his Cornish constituents would endorse whatever he did, for the House held few more popular human beings, but no one took him very seriously as a politician.  This particular view of his certainly made no breach between him and his inseparable associate, Mr. Neil Primrose, who, as time went on, took as strong a line against Ulster’s claims as Agar-Robartes did for them.—­Sunt lacrimae rerum.  I remember vividly in August 1914 the sudden apparition of this pair, side by side as always, in their familiar place below the gangway, but in quite unfamiliar guise, for khaki was still new to the benches.  The two brilliant lads—­for they were little more—­have gone now, swept into the abyss of war’s wreckage; the controversy which divided them remains, virulent as ever.