certainly offer a fierce resistance to the police. It seemed,
therefore, that the Government's only safe and prudent course was
to prevent Mr. Churchill from trying to speak in that Hall."[16]

The Government, in fact, had been completely out-manoeuvred. They had
given the Ulster Unionist Council an opportunity to show its own
constituents and the outside world that, where the occasion demanded
action, it could act with decision; and they had failed utterly to drive
a wedge between Ulster and the Unionist Party in England and in the
South of Ireland, as they hoped to do by goading Belfast into
illegality. On the other hand, they had aroused some misgiving in the
ranks of their own supporters. A political observer in London reported
that the incident had--

"Caused a feeling of considerable apprehension in Radical circles.
The pretence that Ulster does not mean to fight is now almost
abandoned even by the most fanatical Home Rulers."[17]

Unionist journals in Great Britain, almost without exception, applauded
the conduct of the Council, and proved by their comments that they
understood its motive, and sympathised with the feelings of Ulster. _The
Saturday Review_ expressed the general view when it wrote:

"With the indignation of the loyal Ulstermen at this proposal we
are in complete sympathy. Where there is a question of Home Rule,
the Ulster Hall is sacred ground, and to the Ulster mind and,
indeed, to the mind of any calm outsider, there is something both
impudent and impious in the proposal that this temple of Unionism
should be profaned by the son of a man who assisted at its
consecration."[18]