From the day when Gladstone first made Home Rule for Ireland the leading
issue in British politics, the Loyalists of Ulster--who, as already
explained, included practically all the Protestant population of the
Province both Conservative and Liberal, besides a small number of
Catholics who had no separatist sympathies--set to work to organise
themselves for effective opposition to the new policy. In the hour of
their dismay over Gladstone's surrender Lord Randolph Churchill,
hurrying from London to encourage and inspirit them, told them in the
Ulster Hall on the 22nd of February, 1886, that "the Loyalists in Ulster
should wait and watch--organise and prepare."[9] They followed his
advice. Propaganda among themselves was indeed unnecessary, for no one
required conversion except those who were known to be inconvertible. The
chief work to be done was to send speakers to British constituencies;
and in the decade from 1885 to 1895 Ulster speakers, many of whom were
ministers of the different Protestant Churches, were in request on
English and Scottish platforms.

A number of organisations were formed for this purpose, some of which,
like the Irish Unionist Alliance, represented Unionist opinion
throughout Ireland, and not in Ulster alone. Others were exclusively
concerned with the northern Province, where from the first the
opposition was naturally more concentrated than elsewhere. In the early
days, the Ulster Loyalist and Patriotic Union, organised by Lord
Ranfurly and Mr. W.R. Young, carried on an active and sustained campaign
in Great Britain, and the Unionist Clubs initiated by Lord Templetown
provided a useful organisation in the smaller country towns, which still
exists as an effective force. The Loyal Orange Institution, founded at
the end of the eighteenth century to commemorate, and to keep alive the
principles of, the Whig Revolution of 1688, had fallen into not
unmerited disrepute prior to 1886. Few men of education or standing