Agar-Robartes stuck to his guns and voted against the Bill henceforward; the other Liberals who supported him were ultimately brought into the Government lobby.  What had really mattered was Mr. Churchill’s speech on the Second Reading.  Captain Pirrie, one of Redmond’s few closely attached friends outside the Irish party, bound, I think, far more in affection to the Irish leader than to his own chiefs, complained angrily of the Government’s evasive reticence.  This brought up the Prime Minister, whose speech was brief and direct: 

“This amendment proceeds on an assumption which I believe is radically false, namely, that you can split Ireland into parts.  You can no more split Ireland into parts than you can split England or Scotland into parts.”

When Sir Edward Carson had spoken, the Ulster leader’s speech enabled Redmond to point out that Ulstermen refused to accept this proposal as a means by which Ulster might be reconciled to Home Rule, but were ready to vote for it simply as a wrecking amendment.  General opinion on both sides of the House agreed that the amendment made the Bill impossible; and the majority held that therefore Ulster must give way.  Ulster, on the other hand, held that therefore there must be no Home Rule Bill.  But there was a Liberal element evidently not convinced that Home Rule might not be possible with Ulster excluded.  Mr. Birrell admitted that the plan of segregating a portion had been considered, but had been rejected, on the merits, as unworkable.  Still he professed himself open to conviction.  The argument which Mr. Bonar Law decided to use was a threat.  Government are saying to the people of Ulster, he said, “Convince us that you are in earnest, show us that you will fight, and we will yield to you as we have yielded to everybody else.”  Captain Craig, following, said that the Prime Minister anticipated that Ulster’s objection would after a few years be merely a ripple on the surface.  “If the right honourable gentleman has challenged this part of his Majesty’s dominions to civil war, we accept the challenge.”

This temper soon had ugly expression.  On June 29th an excursion party of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (the Roman Catholic counterpart to the Orange Order) met with another excursion party of Protestants, mainly Sunday-school children, at a place called Castledawson.  Taunts were exchanged and one of the Hibernians tried to snatch a flag from the other procession; so a disturbance began in which some of the children were hurt and many frightened.  This discreditable incident was magnified with all the rancour of partisanship—­as in the state of feeling must have been expected.  But the reprisals were startling.  All Catholics were driven out of the Belfast shipyards; many were injured, and over two thousand men were still deprived of work on July 12th, when the Unionist party held a great meeting at Blenheim.  Mr. Bonar Law, facing for the first time a vast typical gathering of his supporters, said that, on a previous occasion, when speaking as little more than a private member of Parliament, he had counselled action outside constitutional limits.  Now, he emphasized it that he took the same attitude as leader of the Unionist party.