diverse social and political elements in Ulster into a single
compact mass, tempered to the maximum power of resistance. There was
room for no other thought in the minds of men who felt as if living in a
beleaguered citadel, whose flag they were bound in honour to keep flying
to the last. The "loyalist" tradition acquired fresh meaning and
strength, and its historical setting took a more conscious hold on the
public mind of Ulster, as men studied afresh the story of the Relief of
Derry or the horrors of 1641. Visits of encouragement from the leaders
of Unionism across the Channel, men like Lord Salisbury, Mr. Balfour,
Mr. Chamberlain, Lord Randolph Churchill, fortified the resolution of a
populace that came more and more to regard themselves as a bulwark of
the Empire, on whom destiny, while conferring on them the honour of
upholding the flag, had imposed the duty of putting into actual practice
the familiar motto of the Orange Lodges--"No surrender."

From a psychology so bred and nourished sprang a political temper which,
as it hardened with the passing years, appeared to English Home Rulers
to be "stiff-necked," "bigoted," and "intractable." It certainly was a
state of mind very different from those shifting gusts of transient
impression which in England go by the name of public opinion; and, if
these epithets in the mouths of opponents be taken as no more than
synonyms for "uncompromising," they were not undeserved. At a memorable
meeting at the Albert Hall in London on the 22nd of April, 1893, Dr.
Alexander, Bishop of Derry, poet, orator, and divine, declared in an
eloquent passage that was felt to be the exact expression of Ulster
conviction, that the people of Ulster, when exhorted to show confidence
in their southern fellow-countrymen, "could no more be confiding about
its liberty than a pure woman can be confiding about her honour."

Here was the irreconcilable division. The Nationalist talked of
centuries of "oppression," and demanded the dissolution of the Union in
the name of liberty. The Ulsterman, while far from denying the
misgovernment of former times, knew that it was the fruit of false ideas
which had passed away, and that the Ireland in which he lived enjoyed as
much liberty as any land on earth; and he feared the loss of the true
liberty he had gained if put back under a regime of Nationalist and
Utramontane domination. And so for more than thirty years the people of
Ulster for whom Bishop Alexander