f the Union, no change so
gigantic, could be accomplished by the mere passing of a law; the
history of the United States will teach us a different lesson." Ulster
always took her stand on the American precedent, though the exemplar was
Lincoln rather than Washington. But although the scale of operations
was, of course, infinitely smaller, the Ulster leader would, if it came
to the worst, be confronted by certain difficulties from which Abraham
Lincoln was free. He might have to follow the example of the latter in
forcibly resisting secession, but his legal position would be very
different. He might be called upon to resist technically legal
authority, whereas Lincoln had it at his back. To guide and control a
headstrong people, smarting under a sense of betrayal, when entering on
a movement pregnant with these issues, and at the same time to stand up
against a powerful Government on the floor of the House of Commons, was
an enterprise upon which any far-seeing man might well hesitate to
embark.

Pondering over the invitation conveyed to him in his Chambers in the
Temple, Carson may, therefore, well have asked himself what inducement
there was for him to accept it. He was not an Ulsterman. As a Southerner
he was not familiar with the psychology of the northern Irish; the
sectarian narrowness popularly attributed to them outside their province
was wholly alien to his character; he was as far removed by nature from
a fire-eater as it was possible for man to be; he was not fond of
unnecessary exertion; he preferred the law to politics, and disliked
addressing political assemblies. In Parliament he represented, not a
popular constituency, but the University of Dublin. But, on the other
hand, he was to the innermost core of his nature an Irish Loyalist. His
youthful political sympathies had, indeed, been with the Liberal Party,
but he instantly severed his connection with it when Gladstone joined
hands with Parnell. He had made his name at the Irish Bar as Crown
Prosecutor in the troubled period of Mr. Balfour's Chief Secretaryship,
and this experience had bred in him a hearty detestation of the whining
sentimentality, the tawdry and exaggerated rhetoric, and the
manufactured discontent that found vent in Nationalist politics. A
sincere lover of Ireland, he had too much sound sense to credit the
notion that either the freedom or the prosperity of the country would be
increased by loosening the tie with Great Britain. Although