realised that it was not in Parliament, but outside, that the only
effective work could be done, in the hope of forcing a dissolution of
Parliament before the Bill could become law. A vigorous campaign was
conducted throughout the country, especially in Lancashire, and
arrangements were made for a monster demonstration in Belfast, which
should serve both as a counter-blast to the Churchill fiasco, and for
enabling English and Scottish Unionists to test for themselves the
temper of the Ulster resistance. In the belief that the Home Rule Bill
would be introduced before Easter, it was decided to hold this meeting
in the Recess, as Mr. Bonar Law had promised to speak, and a number of
English Members of Parliament wished to be present. At the last moment
the Government announced that the Bill would not be presented till the
11th of April, after Parliament reassembled, and its provisions were
therefore still unknown when the demonstration took place on the 9th in
the Show Ground of the Royal Agricultural Society at Balmoral, a suburb
of Belfast.

Feeling ran high as the date of the double event approached, and the
indignant sense of wrong that prevailed in Ulster was finely voiced in a
poem, entitled "Ulster 1912," written by Mr. Kipling for the occasion
which appeared in _The Morning Post_ on the day of the Balmoral
demonstration, of which the first and last stanzas were:

"The dark eleventh hour
Draws on, and sees us sold
To every evil Power
We fought against of old.
Rebellion, rapine, hate,
Oppression, wrong, and greed
Are loosed to rule our fate,