osals to their own people, and on the 10th of June Mr. Redmond made
a speech in Dublin from which it appeared that he was submitting a very
different proposal to that explained by Carson in Belfast. For Mr.
Redmond told his Dublin audience that, while the Home Rule Act was to
come into operation at once, the exclusion of the six counties was to be
only for the period of the war and twelve months afterwards. That would,
of course, have been even less favourable to Ulster than the terms
offered by Mr. Asquith and rejected by Carson in March 1914. Exclusion
for the period of the war meant nothing; it would have been useless to
Ulster; it was no concession whatever; and Carson would have refused, as
he did in 1914, even to submit it to the Unionist Council in Belfast.
Mr. Lloyd George, who must have known this, had told him quite clearly
that there was to be a "definite clean cut," with no suggestion of a
time limit. There was, however, an idea that after the war an Imperial
Conference would be held, at which the whole constitutional relations of
the component nations of the British Empire would be reviewed, and that
the permanent status of Ireland would then come under reconsideration
with the rest. In this sense the arrangement now proposed was spoken of
as "provisional"; but both Mr. Lloyd George and the Prime Minister made
it perfectly plain that the proposed exclusion of the six Ulster
counties from Home Rule could never be reversed except by a fresh Act of
Parliament.

But when the question was raised by Mr. Redmond in the House of Commons
on the 24th of July, in a speech of marked moderation, he explained that
he had understood the exclusion, like all the rest of the scheme, to be
strictly "provisional," with the consequence that it would come to an
end automatically at the end of the specified period unless prolonged by
new legislation; and he refused to respond to an earnest appeal by Mr.
Asquith not to let slip this opportunity of obtaining, with the consent
of the Unionist Party, immediate Home Rule for the greater part of
Ireland, more especially as Mr. Redmond himself had disclaimed any
desire to bring Ulster within the Home Rule jurisdiction without her own
consent.

The negotiations for settlement thus fell to the ground, and the bitter
sacrifice which Ulster had brought herself to offer, in response to the
Government's urgent appeal, bore no fruit, unless it was to afford one
more proof of her loyalty to En