gal organisation of
Volunteers and deal with him and his friends as a people seditious and
disaffected towards the State, who, by their acts and conduct, had
invited and merited the traitors' doom. But Mr Devlin declared not
long after in Parliament that the reason why Mr Asquith did not move
was because he and his friends would not allow him. Whence this
extraordinary tenderness for the man who was thwarting and defying
them at every point, it is not possible to say. No doubt the Ministry
knew themselves in the wrong in that they had not considered the
position of Ulster and had not attempted to legislate for their just
fears. It is beyond question that there were conditions upon which the
consent of Ulster could have been secured. If, these conditions being
offered, this consent was unreasonably withheld, then the Government
would have been absolutely justified in throttling Sir Edward Carson's
preparations for rebellion before they had gained any ground or
effective shape. But the weakness of the Liberal-Irish position was
that they would not bring themselves to admit that the All-for-Ireland
policy of Conciliation and a settlement by Conference and Consent was
right.

Meanwhile, with a weak Irish administration in charge of Mr Birrell as
Chief Secretary--most amiable of _litterateurs_, but most
imbecile of politicians--the Ulster opposition was allowed to harden
into potential violence and civil war. "Engagements" between the
Orangemen and the Hibernians began to form a sort of political
amusement in the north of Ireland. The cries of religious and race
hatred were allowed to devour the sweeter gospel of reconciliation and
the recognition of a common country and that communion of right and
interest between all classes and creeds which was the evangel of Wolfe
Tone and other northern Protestant patriots in sublimer days. Matters
were drifting from bad to worse under the fatal weakness and
irresolution of the Government. So little fear had Sir Edward Carson
of any penal consequences to himself that he declared, on the 7th
September 1913:

"We will set up a Government [of their own as provided for in the
Ulster Covenant]. I am told it will be illegal. Of course it will.
Drilling is illegal. The Government dare not interfere."

And he was right! It did not interfere. And the Ulster Volunteers
began to provide themselves with arms and ammunition and to organise
themselves for actual war conditions. There were no more