earlier.

The Unionist leaders were not long left in ignorance of the public
excitement which this news created in the city. A specially summoned
meeting of the Standing Committee, with Londonderry in the chair, was
held on the 16th of January to consider what action, if any, should be
taken; but it was no simple matter they had to decide, especially in the
absence of their leader, Sir Edward Carson, who was kept in England by
great Unionist meetings which he was addressing in Lancashire.

The reasons, on the one hand, for doing nothing were obvious enough. No
one, of course, suggested the possibility of preventing Mr. Churchill
coming to Belfast; but could even the Ulster Hall itself, the Loyalist
sanctuary, be preserved from the threatened desecration? It was the
property of the Corporation, and the Unionist political organisation had
no exclusive title to its use. The meeting could only be frustrated by
force in some form, or by a combination of force and stratagem. The
Standing Committee, all men of solid sense and judgment, several of whom
were Privy Councillors, were very fully alive to the objections to any
resort to force in such a matter. They valued freedom of speech as
highly as any Englishman, and they realised the odium that interference
with it might bring both on themselves and their cause; and the last
thing they desired at the present crisis was to alienate public sympathy
in Great Britain. The force of such considerations was felt strongly by
several members, indeed by all, of the Committee, and not least by Lord
Londonderry himself, whose counsel naturally carried great weight.

But, on the other hand, the danger of a passive attitude was also fully
recognised. It was perfectly well understood that one of the chief
desires of the Liberal Government and its followers at this time was to