bitters will not mix with Irish whisky." The debate, which lasted three
days, was the most important that took place in committee on the Bill,
for in the course of it the whole Ulster question was exhaustively
discussed. Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Churchill had thrown out hints in the
second reading debate that the Government might do something to meet the
Ulster case. The Prime Minister was now pressed to say what these hints
meant. Had the Government any policy in regard to Ulster? Had they
considered how they could deal with the threatened resistance? Mr. Bonar
Law told the Government that they must know that, if they employed
troops to coerce the Ulster Loyalists, Ministers who gave the order
"would run a greater risk of being lynched in London than the Loyalists
of Ulster would run of being shot in Belfast." Every argument in favour
of Home Rule was, he said, equally cogent against subjecting Ulster to
Home Rule contrary to her own desire. If the South of Ireland objected
to being governed from Westminster, the North of Ireland quite as
strongly objected to being ruled from Dublin. If England, as was
alleged, was incapable of governing Ireland according to Irish ideas,
the Nationalists were fully as incapable of governing the northern
counties according to Ulster ideas. If Ireland, with only one-fifteenth
of the population of the United Kingdom, had a right to choose its own
form of government, by what equity could the same right be denied to
Ulster, with one-fourth of the population of Ireland?

As had been anticipated at Londonderry House, Mr. Asquith and some of
his followers did their best to drive a wedge between the Ulstermen and
the Southern Unionists, by contending that the former, in supporting the
amendment, were deserting their friends. Mr. Balfour declared in answer
to this that "nothing could relieve Unionists in the rest of Ireland
except the defeat of the measure as a whole"; and a crushing reply was
given by Mr. J.H. Campbell and Mr. Walter Guinness, both of whom were