Sir Edward Carson was the hero of the meeting, but
the presence of Mr. Balfour, an ex-Prime Minister, lent the protest its greatest weight. The speeches were, with hardly an exception, worthy of the occasion. Mr. Balfour drew a valuable and clear distinction between the coercion of crime and outrage exercised by Unionist Governments in Ireland and the coercion directed against the rights and privileges of the Ulstermen by the Liberals. Lord Milner declared that no settlement of the Irish question was possible—and they all wanted to settle it—until it was admitted once and for all that the use of British soldiers and sailors to beat down the political opposition of Ulster was intolerable. The only law which Ulster would resist was a law which no Government had a right to make—a law putting its own loyal subjects under an alien and detested domination. Mr. Austen Chamberlain dwelt on the menace of civil war, from which we could not be wholly free so long as the Government remained in office; and Mr. Mitchell-Thomson made an excellent point when he said they had recently found at least one advantage in possessing two Houses of Parliament, for they made it difficult, if not impossible, for a Government which was determined to conceal the truth to tell the same story in both Chambers.
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