e Rule to Ireland, lies,
first, in the justification it afforded to the preparations for active
resistance to a measure so enacted; and, secondly, in the influence it
had in procuring for Ulster not merely the sympathy but the open support
of the whole Unionist Party in Great Britain. Lord Londonderry, one of
Ulster's most trusted leaders, who afterwards gave the whole weight of
his support to the policy of forcible resistance, admitted in the House
of Lords in 1911, in the debates on the Parliament Bill, that the
verdict of the country, if appealed to, would have to be accepted. The
leader of the Unionist Party, Mr. Bonar Law, made it clear in February
1914, as he had more than once stated before, that the support he and
his party were pledging themselves to give to Ulster in the struggle
then approaching a climax, was entirely due to the fact that the
electorate had never sanctioned the policy of the Government against
which Ulster's resistance was threatened. The chance of success in that
resistance "depended," he said, "upon the sympathy of the British
people, and an election would undoubtedly make a great difference in
that respect"; he denied that Mr. Asquith had a "right to pass any form
of Home Rule without a mandate from the people of this country, which
he has never received"; and he categorically announced that "if you get
the decision of the people we shall obey it." And if, as then appeared
likely, the unconstitutional conduct of the Government should lead to
bloodshed in Ireland, the responsibility, said Mr. Bonar Law, would be
theirs, "because you preferred to face civil war rather than face the
people."[8]

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Morley's _Life of Gladstone_, in, 492.

[4] Ibid., 493.

[5] Ibid., 505.

[6] _Annual Register_, 1910, p. 240.

[7] See _Letters to Isabel_, by Lord Shaw of Dunfermline, p. 130.

[8] _Parliamentary Debates_ (5th Series), vol. I viii, pp. 279-84.

CHAPTER III

ORGANISATION AND LEADERSHIP

From the day when Gladstone first made Home Rule for Ireland the leading
issue in British politics, the Loyalists of Ulster--who, as already
explained, included practically all the Protestant population of the
Province both Conservative and Liberal, besides a small number of
Catholics who had no separatist sympathies--set to work to organise
themselves for effective opposition to the new policy. In the hour of
their dismay over Gladstone's surrender Lord Randolph Churchill,
hurryi