ENGLISH POLITICAL HISTORY S n 



opposition in Ulster went steadily on. As controlled by the Irish Unionist leaders 

 for a single purpose to meet the situation arising if the Home Rule Bill became law 

 it was formally independent of actual parliamentary tactics, and therefore 

 of the action of the Unionist party under Mr. Bonar Law's guidance; but 

 Unionist opposition in Parliament and in the constituencies was inevi- 

 tably c6nterned with what might take place in Ulster. Mr. Bonar Law, at a Unionist 

 meeting at Blenheim on July 27th, gave emphatic expression to the view he took of its 

 meaning, which he was severely reproved by Mr. Asquith for repeating in the House 

 of Commons on August sth, while Mr. Churchill on August loth again took him to task 

 in a published letter to which Mr. Law made a spirited reply (Aug. i-2th). He and 

 his party were bound to side with the Unionists of Ulster. As Mr. Bonar Law put the 

 case, if the Ulstermen were forced into open defiance of a measure passed under the 

 Parliament Act without further appeal to the electorate, and by the dictation of a 

 Nationalist Vote which had in their view always been disloyal to the Empire, any 

 attempt to coerce Ulster could only mean civil war, and this could not be confined to 

 Ireland; it was incredible that the Government should contemplate the coercion of 

 Ulster by British bayonets, but if they went to that length the situation would be 

 intolerable, ministers would be " lynched in London." Here was indeed the root of 

 the Home Rule difficulty. Many Liberals hoped to find relief by proposing to leave 

 Ulster out of the Home Rule Bill, at least temporarily, altogether; but Mr. Agar Rob- 

 artes's amendment to this effect in Committee (July 18), after some ambiguous enquiries 

 from the Government whether Ulster would be satisfied if it were adopted, was rejected 

 by 320 to 252; the Nationalists could not do without the richest part of Ireland. 



Criticism in Parliament meanwhile had gone on, for the present, along more or less 

 stereotyped lines. On April 23rd an Irish National Convention in Dublin, with Mr. 

 Redmond presiding, accepted the Bill, and the doubts as to whether Irish 

 Nationalists might disagree over it, and it might be snuffed out like the 

 Irish Councils Bill in 1907, were dissipated. On July igth Mr. Asquith 

 addressed an enthusiastic meeting in Dublin, and was received with fervour as the first 

 English Prime Minister who had had a welcome there in Nationalist circles. The 

 first reading of the Bill was carried in the House of Commons on April i6th by 360 votes 

 to 266, and the second reading (April 3oth) was carried on May 4th by 372 to 271. The 

 Committee stage began on June nth, and on July 3rd the first clause had gone through; 

 discussion was then suspended till the autumn. On the Unionist side the objections 

 to any scheme for a separate Irish Parliament and Executive were fortified by criticisms 

 of special features in the new Bill itself the finance, the proposal for Irish representa- 

 tives to remain at Westminster, the separation of Post Offices and Custom-houses, but 

 these subjects had still to be further discussed when Parliament adjourned in August. 

 On the Liberal side a good many members disliked the provision for the nomination of 

 an Irish Senate, and this question arose in Committee on Clause i, but Mr. Dickinson's 

 amendment to exclude it was rejected (June igth) by 288 to 199. 



The real opposition meanwhile went on in Ulster, not in Parliament. Serious rioting 

 between Protestants and Catholics in the Belfast ship-yards during July showed the 

 _ tension there; and on September i4th a free fight between partisans of 

 Covenant. both sides, in the course of a football match at Belfast at which 10,000 

 people were present, resulted in injuries to about 100, revolvers and knives 

 being used. Active preparations were on foot for a series of Unionist demonstrations 

 in Ulster, beginning at Enniskillen on September 1 8th, and leading up to the signing on 

 September 28th of a Solemn Covenant, pledging resistance to Home Rule. The per- 

 plexity on the Liberal side in face of Ulster's determination was shown by a speech of 

 Mr. Churchill's at Dundee on September i2th, in which he suggested, purely on his 

 own account, that, to secure a federal system of government for the United Kingdom, 

 to which Home Rule for Ireland, however, was an essential preliminary, it might be 

 desirable to grant separate legislatures to large homogeneous areas in England like 

 Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands, and London; he would not shrink from the 



