e 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.

The Balmoral demonstration had, however, one distinctive feature. At it
the Unionist Party of Great Britain met and grasped the hand of Ulster
Loyalism. It gave the leader and a large number of his followers an
opportunity to judge for themselves the strength and sincerity of
Ulster, and at the same time it served to show the Ulstermen the weight
of British opinion ready to back them. Mr. Bonar Law was accompanied to
Belfast by no less than seventy Members of Parliament, representing
English, Scottish, and Welsh constituencies, not a few of whom had
already attained, or afterwards rose to, political distinction. Among
them were Mr. Walter Long, Lord Hugh Cecil, Sir Robert Finlay, Lord
Charles Beresford, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Amery, Mr. J.D. Baird, Sir
Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, Mr. Ian Malcolm, Lord Claud Hamilton, Mr. J.G.
Butcher, Mr. Ernest Pollock, Mr. George Cave, Mr. Felix Cassel, Mr.
Ormsby-Gore, Mr. Scott Dickson, Mr. W. Peel, Captain Gilmour, Mr. George
Lloyd, Mr. J.W. Hills, Mr. George Lane-Fox, Mr. Stuart-Wortley, Mr.
J.F.P. Rawlinson, Mr. H.J. Mackinder, and Mr. Herbert Nield.

The reception of the Unionist Leader at Larne on Easter Monday was
wonderful, even to those who knew what a Larne welcome to loyalist
leaders could be, and who recalled the scenes there during the historic
visits of Lord Randolph Churchill, Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Balfour. "If
this is how you treat your frie