Government would tell Mr. Redmond that they would insist on acceptance
of any amendments made in response to Lord Crewe's invitation--a
question to which no answer was forthcoming. Lord Milner, in the course
of the debate, said the Bill would have to be entirely remodelled, and
he laid stress on the point that if Ulster were coerced to join the rest
of Ireland it would make a united Ireland for ever impossible, and that
the employment of the Army and Navy for the purpose of coercion would
give a shock to the Empire which it would not long survive; to which
Lord Roberts added that such a policy would mean the utter destruction
of the Army, as he had warned the Prime Minister before the incident at
the Curragh.

On the 8th of July the Bill was amended by substituting the permanent
exclusion of the whole province of Ulster--which Mr. Balfour had named
"the clean cut"--for the proposed county option with a time limit; and
several other alterations of minor importance were also made. The Bill
as amended passed the third reading on the 14th, when Lord Lansdowne
predicted that, whatever might be the fate of the measure and of the
Home Rule Bill which it modified, the one thing certain was that the
idea of coercing Ulster was dead.

In Ulster itself, meanwhile, the people were bent on making Lord
Lansdowne's certainty doubly sure. Carson went over for the Boyne
celebration on the 12th of July. The frequency of his visits did nothing
to damp the ardour with which his arrival was always hailed by his
followers. The same wonderful scenes, whether at Larne or at the Belfast
docks, were repeated time after time without appearing to grow stale by
repetition. They gave colour to the Radical jeer at "King Carson," for
no royal personage could have been given a more regal reception than was
accorded to "Sir Edward" (as everybody affectionately called him in
Belfast) half a dozen times within a few months.

This occasion, when he arrived on the 10th by the Liverpool steamer,
accompanied by Mr. Walter Long, was no exception. His route had been
announced in the Press. Countless Union Jacks were displayed in every
village along both shores of the Lough. Every vessel at anchor,
including the gigantic White Star Liner _Britannic_, was dressed; every
fog-horn bellowed a welcome; the multitude of men at work in the great
ship-yards crowded to places commanding a view of the incoming packet,
and waved handkerchiefs and raised cheers for Sir E