tage
might easily prove embarrassing later on. The author of this amendment
was Mr. Agar-Robartes, a Cornish Liberal Member, whose proposal was to
exclude the four counties of Antrim, Derry, Down, and Armagh from the
jurisdiction of the proposed Irish Parliament, a gratifying proof that
Craigavon and Balmoral were bearing fruit.

A conference of Ulster Members and Peers, and some English Members
closely identified with Irish affairs, of whom Mr. Walter Long was one,
met at Londonderry House before the sitting of the House on the 11th of
June to decide what course to take on this proposal.

It was not surprising to find that there were sharp differences of
opinion among those present, for there were obvious objections to
supporting the amendment and equally obvious objections to voting
against it. The opposition of Ulster for more than a quarter of a
century had been directed against Home Rule for any part of Ireland and
in any shape or form. No suggestion had ever been made by any of her
spokesmen that the Protestant North, or any part of it, should be dealt
with separately from the rest of the island, although Carson and others
had pointed out that all the arguments in support of Home Rule were
equally valid for treating Ulster as a unit. There were both economic
and administrative difficulties in such a scheme which were sufficiently
obvious, though by no means insuperable; but what weighed far more
heavily in the minds of the Ulster members was the anticipation that
their acceptance of the proposal would probably be represented by
enemies as a desertion of all the Irish Loyalists outside the four
counties named in the amendment, with whom there was in every part of
Ulster the most powerful sentiment of solidarity. The idea of taking any
action apart from these friends and associates, and of adopting a policy
that might seem to imply the abandonment of their opposition to the main
principle of the Bill, was one that could not be entertained except
under the most compelling necessity.

But, had not that necessity now arisen? The Ulster members had to keep
in view the ultimate policy to which they were already committed. That
policy, as laid down at Craigavon, was to take over, in the event of the
Home Rule Bill being carried, the government "of those districts which
they could control" in trust for the Imperial Parliament, and to resist
by force if necessary the establishment of the Dublin jurisdiction over
those di