ery Unionist
Association in the United Kingdom.

A notable defeat of the Government in a by-election at Crewe, news of
which reached the meeting while the audience of some fifteen thousand
people was assembling, was an encouraging sign of the trend of opinion
in the country, and added confidence to the note of defiance that
sounded in the speeches of Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. F.E. Smith, and Sir Edward
Carson.

The Unionist leader repeated, with added emphasis, what he had already
said in the House of Commons, that he could imagine no length of
resistance to which Ulster might go in which he and the overwhelming
majority of the British people would not be ready to give support. He
again said that resistance would be justified only because the people
had not been consulted, and the Government's policy was "part of a
corrupt parliamentary bargain." He refused to acknowledge the right of
the Government "to carry such a Revolution by such means," and as they
appeared to be resolved to do so, Mr. Bonar Law and the party he led
"would use any means to deprive them of the power they had usurped, and
to compel them to face the people they had deceived." Mr. F.E. Smith
expressed the same thought in a more epigrammatic antithesis: "We have
come to a clear issue between the party which says 'We will judge for
the democracy,' and the party which says 'The democracy shall judge
you.'"

The tremendous enthusiasm evoked by Mr. Bonar Law's pledge of support to
Ulster, and by Sir Edward Carson's announcement that they in Ulster
"would shortly challenge the Government to interfere with them if they
dared, and would with equanimity await the result," was a sufficient
proof, if proof were needed, that the intention of the Ulstermen to
offer forcible resistance to Home Rule had the whole-hearted sympathy
and approval of the entire Unionist party in Great Britain, whose
representatives from every corner of the country were assembled at
Blenheim.

Liberals hoped and believed that this promise of support for the
"rebellious" attitude of Ulster would alienate British opinion from the
Unionist party. The supporters of the Government in the Press daily
proclaimed that it was doing so. When Parliament adjourned for the
summer recess, at the beginning of what journalists call "the silly
season," Mr. Churchill published two letters to a constituent in
Scotland which were intended to be a crushing indictment both of Ulster
and of her sympathisers in G