e not without
effect on opinion outside. Earl Grey, an admitted authority on federal
constitutions, urged that if, as the Government were continually
assuring the country, Home Rule was the first step in the federalisation
of the United Kingdom, there was every reason why Ulster should be a
distinct unit in the federal system. The Archbishop dealt more fully
with the Ulster question. Admitting that he had formerly believed "that
this attitude of Ulster was something of a scarecrow made up out of old
and outworn prejudices," he had now to acknowledge that the men of
Ulster were "of all men the least likely to be 'drugged with the wine of
words,' and were men who of all other men mean and do what they say."
Behind all the glowing eloquence of Mr. Asquith and Mr. Redmond, he
discerned "this figure of Ulster, grim, determined, menacing, which no
eloquence can exorcise and no live statesmanship can ignore." If the
result of this legislation should be actual bloodshed, then, on
whomsoever might rest the responsibility for it, it would mean the
shattering of all the hopes of a united and contented Ireland which it
was the aim of the Bill to create. If Ulster made good her threat of
forcible resistance there was, said the Archbishop, one condition, and
one condition only, on which her coercion could be justified, and that
was that the Government "should have received from the people of this
country an authority clear and explicit" to carry it out.

But among the numerous striking passages in the debate which occupied
the Peers for four days, none was more telling than Lord Curzon's
picturesque description of how Ulster was to be treated. "You are
compelling Ulster," he said, "to divorce her present husband, to whom
she is not unfaithful, and you compel her to marry someone else whom she
cordially dislikes, with whom she does not want to live; and you do it
because she happens to be rich, and because her new partner has a large
and ravenous offspring to provide for. You are asking rather too much of
human nature."

That the Home Rule Bill would be rejected on second reading by the Lords
was a foregone conclusion, and it was so rejected by a majority of 257
on the 31st of January, 1913. The Bill then entered into its period of
gestation under the Parliament Act. The session did not come to an end
until the 7th of March, and the new session began three days afterwards.
It is unnecessary to follow the fortunes of the Bill in Parli