perceived at the
time the draft Bill was before the Cabinet that it was not the Ministers
who proposed separate treatment for Ulster who had "taken leave of their
senses," but those, including himself, who had resisted that proposal,
his wisdom would have been more timely; but it was better late than
never, and his unexpected intervention had a decided influence on
opinion in the country.

The comment of _The Times_ was very much to the point:

"On the eve of a great political crisis, it may be of national
disaster, a distinguished Liberal statesman makes public confession
of his belief that, as a permanent solution, the Irish policy of
the Government is indefensible."

This letter of the ex-Lord Chancellor gave rise to prolonged discussion
in the Press and on the platform. At Durham, on the 13th of September,
Carson declared that he would welcome a Conference if the question was
how to provide a genuine expansion of self-government, but that, if
Ulster was to be not only expelled from the Union but placed under a
Parliament in Dublin, then "they were going to make Home Rule impossible
by steady and persistent opposition." The Government seemed unable to
agree whether a conciliatory or a defiant attitude was their wiser
policy, though it is true that the latter recommended itself mostly to
the least prominent of its members, such as Mr. J.M. Robertson,
Secretary of the Board of Trade, who in a speech at Newcastle on the
25th of September announced scornfully that Ministers were not going to
turn "King Carson" into "Saint Carson" by prosecuting him, and that "the
Government would know how to deal with him."[50] But more important
Ministers were beginning to perceive the unwisdom of this sort of
bluster. Lord Morley, in the House of Lords, denied that he had ever
underrated the Ulster difficulty, and said that for twenty-five years he
had never thought that Ulster was guilty of bluff. Mr. Churchill, at
Dundee, on the 9th of October, no longer talked as he had the previous
year about "not taking Sir Edward Carson too seriously," though he still
appeared to be ignorant of the fact that there was in Ulster anybody
except Orangemen. "The Orange Leaders," he said, "used violent language,
but Liberals should try to understand their position. Their claim for
special consideration, if put forward with sincerity, could not be
ignored by a Government depending on the existing House."[51]

The Prime Minister