dark eleventh hour
Draws on, and sees us sold
To every evil Power
We fought against of old.
Rebellion, rapine, hate,
Oppression, wrong, and greed
Are loosed to rule our fate,
By England's act and deed.

"Believe, we dare not boast,
Believe, we do not fear--
We stand to pay the cost
In all that men hold dear.
What answer from the North?
One Law, One Land, One Throne.
If England drive us forth
We shall not fall alone!"

The preparations for the Unionist leader's coming visit to Belfast had
excited the keenest interest throughout England and Scotland. Coinciding
as it did with the introduction of the Government's Bill, it was
recognised to be the formal countersigning by the whole Unionist Party
of Great Britain of Ulster's proclamation of her determination to resist
her forcible degradation in constitutional status. The same note of
mingled reproach and defiance which sounded in Kipling's verses was
heard in the grave warning addressed by _The Times_ to the country in a
leading article on the morning of the meeting:

"Nobody of common judgment and common knowledge of political
movements can honestly doubt the exceptional gravity of the
occasion, and least of all can any such doubt be felt by any who
know the men of Ulster. To make light of the deep-rooted
convictions which fill the minds of those who will listen to Mr.
Bonar Law to-day is a shallow and an idle affectation, or a token
of levity and of ignorance. Enlightened Liberalism may smile at the
beliefs and the passions of the Ulster Protestants, but it was
those same beliefs and passions, in the forefathers of the men who
will gather in Belfast to-day, which saved Ireland for the British
Crown, and freed the cause of civil and religious liberty in these
islands from its last dangerous foes.... It is useless to argue
that they are mistaken. They have reasons, never answered yet, for
believing that they are not mistaken.... Their temper is an
ultimate fact which British statesmen and British citizens have to
face. These men cannot be persuaded to submit to Home Rule. Are
Englishmen and Scotchmen prepared to fasten it upon them by
military force? That is the real Ulster question."

Other great English newspapers wrote in similar strain, and the support
thus given was of the greatest possible encouragement to th