y to Home Rule, far from having slackened, as
enemies had alleged, had increased and solidified with the passing
years; they were men "animated by a unity of purpose, by a fixity of
resolution which nothing can shake and which must prove irresistible,"
to whom he would apply Cromwell's words to his Ironsides: "You are men
who know what you are fighting for, and love what you know." Then, after
an analysis of the practical evils that Home Rule would engender and the
benefits which legislative union secured, he again emphasised the lack
of mandate for the Government policy. His hearers, he said, "knew the
shameful story": how the Radicals had twice failed to obtain the
sanction of the British people for Home Rule, "and now for the third
time they were trying to carry it not only without the sanction, but
against the will, of the British people."

The peroration which followed made an irresistible appeal to a people
always mindful of the glories of the relief of Derry. Mr. Bonar Law
warned them that the Ministerial majority in the House of Commons, "now
cemented by L400 a year," could not be broken up, but would have their
own way. He therefore said to them:

"With all solemnity--you must trust in yourselves. Once again you
hold the pass--the pass for the Empire. You are a besieged city.
The timid have left you; your Lundys have betrayed you; but you
have closed your gates. The Government have erected by their
Parliament Act a boom against you to shut you off from the help of
the British people. You will burst that boom. That help will come,
and when the crisis is over men will say to you in words not unlike
those used by Pitt--you have saved yourselves by your exertions and
you will save the Empire by your example."

The overwhelming ovation with which Sir Edward Carson was received upon
taking the president's chair at the chief platform, in the absence
through illness of the Duke of Abercorn, proved that he had already won
the confidence and the affection of the Ulster people to a degree that
seemed to leave little room for growth, although every subsequent
appearance he made among them in the years that lay ahead seemed to add
intensity to their demonstrations of personal devotion. The most
dramatic moment at Balmoral--if for once the word so hackneyed and
misused by journalists may be given its true signification--the most
dramatic moment was when the Ulster leader and the