insisted, "destroyed utterly the whole foundation on which for the last
two years the treatment extended to Ulster in this Bill has been
justified." From that day it became impossible ever again to contend
that Ulster was merely a recalcitrant minority in a larger unity,
without rights of her own.

The speeches of the Unionist leaders in the House of Commons showed
clearly enough how little faith they had that the Government intended to
do anything that could lead to an agreed settlement. The interval that
passed before the nature of the Government's proposals was made known
increased rather than diminished this distrust. The air was full of
suggestions, the most notable of which was put forward by the veteran
constitutional lawyer, Mr. Frederic Harrison, who proposed that Ulster
should be governed by a separate committee elected by its own
constituencies, with full legislative, administrative, and financial
powers, subject only to the Crown and the Imperial Parliament.[61]
Unionists did not believe that the Liberal Cabinet would be allowed by
their Nationalist masters to offer anything so liberal to Ulster; nor
did that Province desire autonomy for itself. They believed that the
chief desire of the Government was not to appease Ulster, but to put her
in a tactically indefensible position. This fear had been expressed by
Lord Lansdowne as long before as the previous October, when he wrote
privately to Carson in reference to Lord Loreburn's suggested Conference
that he suspected the intention of the Government to be "to offer us
terms which they know we cannot accept, and then throw on us the odium
of having obstructed a settlement." Mr. Walter Long had the same
apprehension in March 1914 as to the purpose of Mr. Asquith's unknown
proposals. Both these leaders herein showed insight and prescience, for
not only Mr. Asquith's Government, but also that which succeeded it, had
resort on many subsequent occasions to the manoeuvre suspected by Lord