especially by the Prime Minister himself, who barely referred to
the subject till almost the close of his own contest. In view of
the consequent fact that Home Rule was not at the late appeal to
the country placed as a clear issue before the electors, it is the
judgment of the Council that the country has given no mandate for
Home Rule, and that any attempt in such circumstances to force
through Parliament a measure enacting it would be for His Majesty's
Ministers a grave, if not criminal, breach of constitutional duty."

The great importance, in relation to the policy subsequently pursued by
Ulster, of the historical fact here made clear--namely, that the "will
of the people" constitutionally expressed in parliamentary elections has
never declared itself in favour of granting Home Rule to Ireland, lies,
first, in the justification it afforded to the preparations for active
resistance to a measure so enacted; and, secondly, in the influence it
had in procuring for Ulster not merely the sympathy but the open support
of the whole Unionist Party in Great Britain. Lord Londonderry, one of
Ulster's most trusted leaders, who afterwards gave the whole weight of
his support to the policy of forcible resistance, admitted in the House
of Lords in 1911, in the debates on the Parliament Bill, that the
verdict of the country, if appealed to, would have to be accepted. The
leader of the Unionist Party, Mr. Bonar Law, made it clear in February
1914, as he had more than once stated before, that the support he and
his party were pledging themselves to give to Ulster in the struggle
then approaching a climax, was entirely due to the fact that the
electorate had never sanctioned the policy of the Government against
which Ulster's resistance was threatened. The chance of success in that
resistance "depended," he said, "upon the sympathy of the British
people, and an election would undoubtedly make a great difference in
that respect"; he denied that Mr. Asquith had a "right to pass any form