But in the public mind at large only one difficulty bulked big, and that was Ulster.  Men on both sides began to be uneasy about the consequences of what was happening, and this temper reflected itself in the House.  On New Year’s Day 1913, at the beginning of the Report stage, Sir Edward Carson moved the exclusion of the province of Ulster.  His speech was in a new tone of studied conciliation.  But, as the Prime Minister immediately made clear, there was no offer that if this concession were made opposition would cease.  It was merely recommended as the sole alternative to civil war.  Redmond, in following, let fall an obiter dictum on the position of the Irish controversy: 

“No one who observes the current of popular opinion in this country can doubt for one instant that if this opposition from the north-east corner of Ulster did not exist, Home Rule would go through to-morrow as an agreed Bill.”

For this reason, he said, he would go almost any length within certain well-defined limits to meet that section of his fellow-countrymen.  His conditions were, first, that the proposal must be a genuine one, not put forward as a piece of tactics to wreck the Bill, but frankly as part of a general settlement of the Home Rule question; secondly, that it must be of reasonable character; and thirdly, not inconsistent with the fundamental principle of national self-government.  Ulster’s present proposal, if accepted, carried with it no promise of a settlement; it was unreasonable as proposing to strike out of Ireland five counties with Nationalist majorities.  But finally, on a broader ground, it destroyed the national right of Ireland.

“Ireland for us is one entity.  It is one land.  Tyrone and Tyrconnell are as much a part of Ireland as Munster or Connaught.  Some of the most glorious chapters connected with our national struggle have been associated with Ulster—­aye, and with the Protestants of Ulster—­and I declare here to-day, as a Catholic Irishman, notwithstanding all the bitterness of the past, that I am as proud of Derry as of Limerick.  Our ideal in this movement is a self-governing Ireland in the future, when all her sons of all races and creeds within her shores will bring their tribute, great or small, to the great total of national enterprise, national statesmanship, and national happiness.  Men may deride that ideal; they may say that it is a futile and unreliable ideal, but they cannot call it an ignoble one.  It is an ideal that we, at any rate, will cling to, and because we cling to it, and because it is there, embedded in our hearts and natures, it is an absolute bar to such a proposal as this amendment makes, a proposal which would create for all times a sharp, eternal dividing line between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants, and a measure which would for all time mean the partition and disintegration of our nation.  To that we as Irish Nationalists can never submit.”