The series of anti-Home Rule demonstrations in Ulster began at
Enniskillen on Wednesday, when Sir Edward Carson addressed an open-air meeting of 30,000 persons. The Government said they must be content to live under a Constitution which had never been submitted to them or to the electors of the United Kingdom. If this unprovoked and wicked attack on their civil and religious liberty were allowed to go on and the Bill became law, it was not only their right but their duty to resist it. A resolution affirming the resolve of the Ulster Convention of 1892, " We will not have Home Rule," was submitted to the meeting and passed by acclama- tion. Similar meetings of protest were held at Lisburn on Thursday and Deny City on Friday, and seven more will be held at other loyalist centres, culminating in the final meeting at Belfast. The text of the Covenant, which all Ulstermen will be invited to sign on the 28th, has now been published. No oath is to be taken, but the signatories will pledge them- selves to stand by one another in defending for themselves and their children their cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means that may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up Home Rule in Ireland. In the event of such Parliament being forced upon them, they further solemnly pledge themselves to refuse to recognize its authority. A similar pledge will be signed by women loyalists of Ulster on the same day.
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