was the "clean cut" which had been
several times proposed, except that, instead of retaining Ulster in
legislative union with Great Britain, she was to be endowed with local
institutions of her own in every respect similar to, and commensurate
with, those given to the Parliament in Dublin. In addition, a Council of
Ireland was created, composed of an equal number of members from each of
the two legislatures. This Council was given powers in regard to private
bill legislation, and matters of minor importance affecting both parts
of the island which the two Parliaments might mutually agree to commit
to its administration. Power was given to the two Parliaments to
establish by identical Acts at any time a Parliament for all Ireland to
supersede the Council, and to form a single autonomous constitution for
the whole of Ireland.

The Council of Ireland occupied a prominent place in the debates on the
Bill. It was held up as a symbol of the "unity of Ireland," and the
authors of the measure were able to point to it as supplying machinery
by which "partition" could be terminated as soon as Irishmen agreed
among themselves in wishing to have a single national Government. It was
not a feature of the Bill that found favour in Ulster; but, as it could
do no harm and provided an argument against those who denounced
"partition," the Ulster members did not think it worth while to oppose
it.

But when Carson met the Ulster Unionist Council on the 6th of March the
most difficult point he had to deal with was the same that had given so
much trouble in the negotiations of 1916. The Bill defined the area
subject to the "Parliament of Northern Ireland" as the six counties
which the Ulster Council had agreed four years earlier to accept as the
area to be excluded from the Home Rule Act. The question now to be
decided was whether this same area should still be accepted, or an
amendment moved for including in Northern Ireland the other three
counties of the Province of Ulster. The same harrowing experience which
the Council had undergone in 1916 was repeated in an aggravated
form.[106] To separate themselves from fellow loyalists in Monaghan,
Cavan, and Donegal was hateful to every delegate from the other six
counties, and it was heartrending to be compelled to resist another
moving appeal by so valued a friend as Lord Farnham. But the inexorable
index of statistics demonstrated that, although Unionists were in a
majority when geographical