In a letter to Thursday's Times Sir Edward Carson very
effectively takes up the Prime Minister's challenge "that no precedent would be found for a responsible leader advocating the right to resist such a law as the Home Rule Bill seeks to enact." On this particular point the late Duke of Devonshire used the following words :- " The people of Ulster believe, rightly or wrongly, that under a Government responsible to an Imperial Parliament they possess at present the fullest security which they can possess of their personal freedom, their liberties, and their right to transact their own business in their own way. You have no right to offer them any inferior security to that ; and if, after weighing the character of the Government which it is sought to impose upon them, they resolve that they are no longer bound to obey a law which does not give them equal and just protection with their fellow-subjects, who can say—how, at all events, can the descendants of those who resisted King James II. say—that they have not a right, if they think fit, to resist, if they think they have the power, the imposition of a Government put upon them by force ?"
Sir Edward Carson very pertinently adds that " if these words were justified when through the action of the House of Lords an appeal to the constituencies was possible, what is to be said when the Government have determined on using the Parliament Act to prevent the electors expressing any opinion ?"
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