leader should be prosecuted, or, at any rate, removed from the Privy
Council, and other Liberal papers feverishly took up the suggestion,
debating whether the indictment should be under the Treason Felony Act
of 1848, the Crimes Act of 1887, or the Unlawful Drilling Act of 1819.
One of them, however, which succeeded in keeping its head, did not
believe that a prosecution would succeed; and, as to the Privy Council,
if Carson's name were removed, what about Londonderry and F.E. Smith,
Walter Long, and Bonar Law? In fact, "it would be difficult to know
where to stop."[55] It would have been. The Privy Council would have had
to be reduced to a committee of Radical politicians; and, if Carson had
been prosecuted, room would have had to be found in the dock, not only
for the whole Unionist Party, but for the proprietors and editors of
most of the leading journals. The Government stopped short of that
supreme folly; but their impotence was the measure of the prevailing
sympathy with Ulster.

FOOTNOTES:

[50] _Annual Register_, 1913, p. 205.

[51] Ibid., p. 209.

[52] Ibid., p. 220.

[53] _Annual Register_, 1913, p. 225.

[54] _Annual Register_, 1913, p. 225.

[55] _Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury_, September 22nd, 1913.