been represented by Mr. T.P.
O'Connor, one of the veteran leaders of the Parnellite period. In each
case the whole of the rest of the city was uncompromisingly
Conservative, and among the members for Liverpool at the time was Mr.
F.E. Smith, unquestionably the most brilliant of the rising generation
of Conservatives, who had already conspicuously identified himself with
the Ulster Movement, and was a close friend as well as a political
adherent of Carson. Among local leaders of opinion in Liverpool Alderman
Salvidge exercised a wide and powerful influence on the Unionist side.

It was in accordance with the fitness of things, therefore, that
Liverpool should have wished to associate itself in no doubtful manner
with the men who had just subscribed to the Covenant on the other side
of the Channel. Having left Belfast amid the wonderful scenes described
in the last chapter, Carson, Londonderry, F.E. Smith, Beresford, and the
rest of the distinguished visitors awoke next morning--if the rollers of
the Irish Sea permitted sleep--in the oily waters of the Mersey, to find
at the landing-stage a crowd that in dimensions and demeanour seemed to
be a duplicate of the one they had left outside the dock gates at
Belfast. Except that the point round which everything had centred in
Belfast, the signing of the Covenant, was of course missing in
Liverpool, the Unionists of Liverpool were not to be outdone by the
Ulstermen themselves in their demonstration of loyalty to the Union.

The packet that carried the group of leaders across the Channel happened
to be, appropriately enough, the R.M.S. _Patriotic_. As she steamed
slowly up the river towards Prince's Landing-stage in the chilly
atmosphere of early morning it was at once evident that more than the
members of the deputation who had arranged to present addresses to
Carson were out to welcome him to Liverpool, and when the workers who
thronged the river bank started singing "O God, our help in ages past,"
the sound was strangely familiar in ears fresh from Ulster.

An address from the Unionist working men of Liverpool and district,
presented by Alderman Salvidge, thanked Carson for his "magnificent
efforts to preserve the integrity of the Empire," and assured him that
they, "Unionist workers of the port which is connected with Belfast in
so many ways, stand by Ulster in this great struggle." Scenes of intense
enthusiasm in the streets culminated in a monster demonstration in Shiel