t--the signing of the Ulster Covenant.
Their policy of resistance, first propounded at Craigavon, reiterated at
Balmoral, endorsed by British sympathisers at Blenheim, and specifically
defended in Parliament both by Unionist leaders like Mr. Bonar Law and
Mr. Long and by prominent members of the Unionist rank and file like
Lord Hugh Cecil, had won the approval and support of great popular
constituencies in Lancashire and in Scotland, and had alienated no
section of Unionist opinion or of the Unionist Press. It was in no
merely satirical spirit that Carson wrote in August that he was grateful
to Mr. Churchill "for having twice within a few weeks done something to
focus public opinion on the stern realities of the situation in
Ulster."[27] For that was the actual result of the "turgid homily." It
proved of real service to the Ulster cause by bringing to light the
complete solidarity of Unionist opinion in its support. That meant, in
the light of the electoral returns, that certainly more than half the
nation sympathised with the measures that were being taken in Ulster,
and that Ulster could well afford to smile at the mockery which English
Home Rulers deemed a sufficient weapon to demolish the "wooden guns" and
the "military play-acting of King Carson's Army."

FOOTNOTES:

[27] See _The Times_, August 19th, 1912.

CHAPTER IX

THE EVE OF THE COVENANT

There was one Liberal statesman, formerly the favourite lieutenant of
Gladstone and the closest political ally of Asquith, who was under no
illusion as to the character of the men with whom Asquith was now
provoking a conflict. Speaking in Edinburgh on the 1st of November,
1911, that is, shortly after the Craigavon meeting, Lord Rosebery told
his Scottish audience that "he loved Highlanders and he loved
Lowlanders, but when he came to the branch of their race which had been
grafted on to the Ulster stem he took off his hat with reverence and
awe. They were without exception the toughest, the most dominant, the
most irresistible race that existed in the universe."[28]

The kinship of this tough people with the Lowlanders of Scotland, in
character as in blood, was never more signally demonstrated than when
they decided, in one of the most intense crises of their history, to
emulate the example of their Scottish forefathers in binding themselves
together by a solemn League and Covenant to resist what they deemed to
be a tyrannical encroachment on their liberties an