demonstrated beyond all possibility of doubt during the preceding month.
The Ulster Unionist Members of the House of Commons, with Carson at
their head, had during June made a tour of some of the principal towns
of Scotland and the North of England, receiving a resounding welcome
wherever they went. The usual custom of political meetings, where one or
two prominent speakers have the platform to themselves, was departed
from; the whole parliamentary contingent kept together throughout the
tour as a deputation from Ulster to the constituencies visited, taking
in turn the duty of supporting Carson, who was everywhere the principal
speaker.

There were wonderful demonstrations at Glasgow and Edinburgh, both in
the streets and the principal halls, proving, as was aptly said by _The
Yorkshire Post_, that "the cry of the new Covenanters is not unheeded by
the descendants of the old"; and thence they went south, drawing great
cheering crowds to welcome them and to present encouraging addresses at
the railway stations at Berwick, Newcastle, Darlington, and York, to
Leeds, where the two largest buildings in the city were packed to
overflowing with Yorkshiremen eager to see and hear the Ulster leader,
and to show their sympathy with the loyalist cause. Similar scenes were
witnessed at Norwich and Bristol, and the tour left no doubt in the
minds of those who followed it, and who studied the comments of the
Press upon it, that not only was the whole Unionist Party in Great
Britain solidly behind the Ulstermen in their resolve to resist being
subjected to a Parliament in Dublin, but that the general drift of
opinion detached from party was increasingly on the same side.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] See _ante_, p. 53.