stricts. The policy of resistance was always recognised as being
strictly limited in area; no one ever supposed that Ulster could
forcibly resist Home Rule being set up in the south and west. The
likelihood of failure to bring about a dissolution before the Bill
became law had to be faced, and if no General Election took place there
would be no alternative to resistance. If, then, it were decided to vote
against an amendment offering salvation to the four most loyalist
counties, what would be their position if ultimately driven to take up
arms? Except as to a matter of detail concerning the precise area
proposed to be excluded from the Bill, would they not be told that they
were fighting for what they might have had by legislation, and what they
had deliberately refused to accept? And if they so acted, could they
expect not to forfeit the support of the great and growing volume of
public opinion which now sympathised with Ulster? They could not, of
course, secure themselves against malicious misrepresentation of their
motives, but the Ulster members sincerely believed, and many in the
South shared the opinion, that if it came to the worst they could be of
more use to the Southern Unionists outside a Dublin Parliament than as
members of it, where they would be an impotent minority. Moreover, it
was perfectly understood that Ulster was resolved in any case not to
enter a legislature in College Green, and there would, therefore, be no
more "desertion" of Unionists outside the excluded area if the exclusion
were effected by an amendment to the Bill, than if it were the result of
what Mr. Bonar Law had called "trusting to themselves."

The considerations thus briefly summarised were thoroughly discussed in
all their bearings at the conference at Londonderry House. It was one of
many occasions when Sir Edward Carson's colleagues had an opportunity of
perceiving how his penetrating intellect explored the intricate windings
of a complicated political problem, weighing all the alternatives of
procedure with a clear insight into the appearance that any line of
conduct would present to other and perhaps hostile minds, calculating
like a chess-master move and counter-move far ahead of the present, and,
while adhering undeviatingly to principle, using the judgment of a
consummate strategist to decide upon the action to be taken at any given
moment. He had an astonishing faculty of discarding everything that was
unessential and fasten