The Ulster people had, therefore, much to encourage them at a time when
they were preparing the most significant forward step in the movement,
and the most solemn pronouncement of their unfaltering resolution never
to submit to the Dublin Parliament--the signing of the Ulster Covenant.
Their policy of resistance, first propounded at Craigavon, reiterated at
Balmoral, endorsed by British sympathisers at Blenheim, and specifically
defended in Parliament both by Unionist leaders like Mr. Bonar Law and
Mr. Long and by prominent members of the Unionist rank and file like
Lord Hugh Cecil, had won the approval and support of great popular
constituencies in Lancashire and in Scotland, and had alienated no
section of Unionist opinion or of the Unionist Press. It was in no
merely satirical spirit that Carson wrote in August that he was grateful
to Mr. Churchill "for having twice within a few weeks done something to
focus public opinion on the stern realities of the situation in
Ulster."[27] For that was the actual result of the "turgid homily." It
proved of real service to the Ulster cause by bringing to light the
complete solidarity of Unionist opinion in its support. That meant, in
the light of the electoral returns, that certainly more than half the
nation sympathised with the measures that were being taken in Ulster,
and that Ulster could well afford to smile at the mockery which English
Home Rulers deemed a sufficient weapon to demolish the "wooden guns" and
the "military play-acting of King Carson's Army."

FOOTNOTES:

[27] See _The Times_, August 19th, 1912.



CHAPTER IX