nd
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.

"We shall use any means--whatever means seem to us to be most likely to
be effective--any means to deprive them" (the Government) "of the power
they have usurped and to compel them to face the people whom they have
deceived. The Home Rule Bill in spite of us may go through the House of
Commons. There are things stronger than parliamentary majorities. I can
imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster will go in which I shall
not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by
the overwhelming majority of the British people."

Sir Edward Carson said on behalf of Ulster: "It will be our duty shortly
to take such steps--and, indeed, they are already being taken--as will
perfect our arrangements for making Home Rule absolutely impossible. We
will shortly challenge the Government to interfere with us if they dare.
We will do this regardless of consequences, of all personal loss and
inconvenience. They may tell us, if they like, that this i