the procedure was necessarily rather complicated. The finance of the bill was indeed admittedly and necessarily provisional, complete data being unavailable, in spite of the Government's having had the advice of a committee of financial experts, whose report, however, was not disclosed. For 1912-3 it was estimated that the revenue derived from Ireland was 10,839,000, and the expenditure there 12,354,000, showing a deficit of 1,515,- ooo. In the next ten or fifteen years a further increase in the deficit was contemplated, bringing it up to over 2,000,000. The subsidy now proposed was estimated accordingly.
Even before the introduction of the bill it had been seen that the greatest practical difficulty in the way of Home Rule, ir- respective of controversy over particular details in the scheme > would be the attitude of Unionist Ul- ster. Under Sir Edward Carson's leadership, opposi- tion was already being organized in 1911, on behalf of the N. of Ireland Protestants and Orangemen, which, it was openly avowed, would if necessary go to extreme lengths, even to a re- fusal to recognize a Parliament in Dublin 1 and to the set- ting-up of a separate " provisional government." The anxiety of the Government to counter this movement as far as possi- ble had been shown early in the session by the announcement that Mr. Winston Churchill was going over to Belfast to speak on Feb. 8 in the Ulster Hall, and violent opposition to the proceeding was at once taken in hand there. It was considered on the Unionist side that for the son of Lord Ran- dolph Churchill, who had said that " Ulster would fight and Ulster would be right," to preach Home Rule in a place asso- ciated with the campaign against it, was an outrage; and the leaders of the Ulster Unionist Council took steps to make the delivery of the speech in the Ulster Hall impossible, Even- tually its engagement for the purpose was cancelled, and it seemed for the moment that the prospects of rioting and blood- shed if Mr. Churchill appeared in Belfast at all were so serious that the Government would be obliged to keep him away. Mr. Churchill, however, was not to be daunted. Arrangements were made for the speech to be delivered in a pavilion in a field outside the city, and for troops to be drafted there in large numbers for the maintenance of order. The apparent denial of free speech at all on the Ulster Unionist side was severely commented upon elsewhere, and justified with some misgiv- ings by English sympathizers, but when the leaders had been successful in defeating the plan for holding a Home Rule meet- ing in the Ulster Hall they went no further. Mr. Churchill duly arrived and made his speech, dwelling particularly on the safeguards which the Home Rule bill would contain against anything to which Ulster could object; but the city was in a ferment of dangerous antagonism and he had to be smuggled away afterwards to avoid the hostility of the crowd. Actual rioting was avoided, and peace was kept between Nationalists and Loyalists, at the cost of 2,730 for the expense of the troops engaged, the Ulster leaders having eventually devoted them- selves to keeping their supporters well in hand; but the whole incident was an unpleasant revelation of the rebellious spirit that was being aroused. A little later (April 9) Mr. Bonar Law was present at a great demonstration at Belfast, the special note of which was a solemn pledge of Loyalist resistance.
The Liberal press in England made light of these warnings, but the organization of opposition in Ulster went steadily on. As controlled by the Irish Unionist leaders it was Attitude. 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 inevitably concerned with what might take place in Ulster. Mr. Bonar Law, at Blenheim on July 27 and in the House of Commons on Aug. 5, took his side openly with the Unionists of Ulster. If, he said, the Ulstermen were forced into defiance of a meas- ure passed under the Parliament Act without further appeal
1 The anniversary of "Craigavon Day," Sept. 23 1911, when Sir E. Carson was acclaimed the Ulster leader, and the Declaration of Ulster was published to the above effect, was celebrated in 1912.
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 situa- tion would be intolerable, ministers would be " lynched in London." Many Liberals hoped to find relief by propos- ing to leave Ulster out of the Home Rule bill, at least tem- porarily, altogether; but an independent Liberal amendment to this effect in Committee (July 18), after some ambiguous inquiries from the Government whether Ulster would be satisfied if it were adopted, was rejected by 320 to 252.
Meanwhile, on April 23 an Irish National Convention in Dublin, with Mr. Redmond presiding, accepted the bill, and the doubts as to whether Irish Nationalists might dis- agree over it and it might be snuffed out like the Irish Councils bill in 1907, were dissipated. On July 19 Mr. Asquith addressed an enthusiastic meeting in Dublin, and was received with fervour as the first English Prime Minis- ter who had had a welcome there in Nationalist circles. The first reading of the bill was carried in the House of Com- mons on April 16 by 360 votes to 266, and the second read- ing (April 30) on May 4 by 372 to 271. The Committee stage began on June n, and on July 3 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 representatives 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 mem- bers disliked the provision for the nomination of an Irish Senate, and this question arose in Committee on Clause i, but an amendment to exclude it was rejected (June 19) by 288 to 199.
Effective opposition was in Ulster, not in Parliament. Serious rioting between Protestants and Catholics in the Belfast ship- yards during July showed the tension there; and on Tlle Sept. 14 a free fight between partisans of both Solemn sides, in the course of a football match at Belfast Covenant. at which 10,000 people were present, resulted in injuries to about 100, revolvers and knives being used. Active prepara- tions were on foot for a series of Unionist demonstrations in Ulster, leading up to the signing on Sept. 28 of a Solemn Covenant, pledging resistance to Home Rule. The perplex- ity on the Liberal side in face of Ulster's determination was shown by a speech of Mr. Churchill's at Dundee on Sept. 12, in which he suggested, purely on his own account, that, to secure a federal system of government for the United King- dom, to which Home Rule for Ireland, however, was an essen- tial preliminary, it might be desirable to grant separate legis- latures to large homogeneous areas in England like Lanes., Yorks., the Midlands, and London; he would not shrink from the creadon of 10 or 12 such English bodies, all subordinate to the Imperial Parliament. Mr. Churchill's speculation was effectively criticized by Mr. Balfour at Haddington on Oct. 9, the scheme being described as " the application of decimal fractions to the United Kingdom." What Unionist Ulster demanded was to remain under the Imperial Parliament and not be at the mercy of a parliament in Dublin.
The text of the Solemn Covenant, promulgated by the Ulster Unionist Council, was as follows:
Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V., humbly relying on the God Whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, hereby pledge ourselves in Solemn Covenant throughout this our time of threatened calamity to stand by one another in defending, for ourselves and our children, our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to
