onstitutional issues,
and matters vital to the political and economic structure of the centre
of the British Empire, were passed through the House of Commons by the
ringing of the division bells without a word of discussion, exactly as
they had come from the pen of the official draftsman, and destined under
the exigencies of the Parliament Act procedure to be forced through the
Legislature in the same raw condition in the two following sessions.

This last-mentioned fact suggested a consideration which weighed heavily
on the minds of the Ulster leaders as the year 1912 drew to a close, and
with it the debates on the Bill in Committee. Had the time come when
they ought to put forward in Parliament an alternative policy to the
absolute rejection of the Bill? They had not yet completely abandoned
hope that Ministers, however reluctantly, might still find it impossible
to stave off an appeal to the country; but the opposite hypothesis was
the more probable. If the Bill became law in its present form they would
have to fall back on the policy disclosed at Craigavon and embodied in
the Covenant. But, although it is true that they had supported Mr.
Agar-Robartes's amendment to exclude certain Ulster counties from the
jurisdiction to be set up in Dublin, the Ulster representatives were
reluctant to make proposals of their own which might be misrepresented
as a desire to compromise their hostility to the principle of Home Rule.
Under the Parliament Act procedure, however, they realised that no
material change would be allowed to be made in the Bill after it first
left the House of Commons, although two years would have to elapse
before it could reach the Statute-book; if they were to propound any
alternative to "No Home Rule" it was, therefore, a case of now or never.

Having regard to the extreme gravity of the course to be followed in
Ulster in the event of the measure passing into law, it was decided that
the most honest and straightforward thing to do was to put forward at
the juncture now reached a policy for dealing with Ulster separately
from the rest of Ireland. But in fulfilment of the promise, from which
he never deviated, to take no important step without first consulting
his supporters in Ulster, Carson went over to attend a meeting of the
Standing Committee in Belfast on the 13th of December, where he
explained fully the reasons why this policy was recommended by himself
and all his parliamentary colleagues. It was