will gather in Belfast to-day, which saved Ireland for the British
Crown, and freed the cause of civil and religious liberty in these
islands from its last dangerous foes.... It is useless to argue
that they are mistaken. They have reasons, never answered yet, for
believing that they are not mistaken.... Their temper is an
ultimate fact which British statesmen and British citizens have to
face. These men cannot be persuaded to submit to Home Rule. Are
Englishmen and Scotchmen prepared to fasten it upon them by
military force? That is the real Ulster question."

Other great English newspapers wrote in similar strain, and the support
thus given was of the greatest possible encouragement to the Ulster
people, who were thereby assured that their standpoint was not
misunderstood and that the justice of their "loyalist" claims was
appreciated across the Channel.

Among the numberless popular demonstrations which marked the history of
Ulster's stand against Home Rule, four stand out pre-eminent in the
impressiveness of their size and character. Those who attended the
Ulster Convention of 1892 were persuaded that no political meeting could
ever be more inspiring; but many of them lived to acknowledge that it
was far surpassed at Craigavon in 1911. The Craigavon meeting, though in
some respects as important as any of the series, was, from a spectacular
point of view, much less imposing than the assemblage which listened to
Mr. Bonar Law at Balmoral on Easter Tuesday, 1912; and the latter
occasion, though never surpassed in splendour and magnitude by any
single gathering, was in significance but a prelude to the magnificent
climax reached in the following September on the day when the Covenant
was signed throughout Ulster.