d rights.

The most impressive moment at the Balmoral meeting at Easter 1912 was
when the vast assemblage, with uncovered heads, raised their hands and
repeated after Sir Edward Carson words abjuring Home Rule. The incident
suggested to some of the local Unionist leaders that the spirit of
enthusiastic solidarity and determination thus manifested should not be
allowed to evaporate, and the people so animated to disperse to the four
corners of Ulster without any bond of mutual obligation. The idea of an
oath of fidelity to the cause and to each other was mooted, and
appeared to be favoured by many. The leader was consulted. He gave deep,
anxious, and prolonged consideration to the proposal, calculating all
the consequences which, in various possible eventualities, might follow
its adoption. He was not only profoundly conscious of the moral
responsibility which he personally, and his colleagues, would be
undertaking by the contemplated measure; he realised the numerous
practical difficulties there might be in honouring the bond, and he
would have nothing to do with a device which, under the guise of a
solemn covenant, would be nothing more than a verbal manifesto. If the
people were to be invited to sign anything of the sort, it must be a
reality, and he, as leader, must first see his way to make it a reality,
whatever might happen.

For, although Carson never shrank from responsibility, he never assumed
it with levity, or without full consideration of all that it might
involve. Many a time, especially before he had fully tested for himself
the temper of the Ulster people, he expressed to his intimates his
wonder whether the bulk of his followers sufficiently appreciated the
seriousness of the course they had set out upon. Sometimes in private he
seemed to be hypersensitive as to whether in any particular he was
misleading those who trusted him; he was scrupulously anxious that they
should not be carried away by unreflecting enthusiasm, or by personal
devotion to himself. About the only criticism of his leadership that was
ever made directly to himself by one of the rank and file in Ulster was
that it erred on the side of patience and caution; and this criticism
elicited the sharpest reproof he was ever heard to administer to any of
his followers.[29] His expressions of regard, almost amounting to
affection, for the men and women who thronged round him for a touch of
his hand wherever he appeared in the streets might hav