The Unionist Party was now solidly and assertively on the side of Ulster in its opposition to Home Rule. They held a demonstration at Blenheim on 27th July 1912, when some three thousand delegates from political associations, invited by the Duke of Marlborough, were present. Mr Bonar Law described the Liberal Ministry as a revolutionary committee which had seized by fraud on despotic power, and declared that the Unionist Party would use whatever means seemed likely to be most effective. He made the declaration that Ireland was two nations, a theory which, strangely enough, Mr Lloyd George, as Coalition Premier, advocated eight years later. He went on to say that the Ulster people would submit to no ascendancy and "he could imagine no lengths of resistance to which they might go in which he would not be ready to support them" and in which they would not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the British people. In Parliament a few weeks later Mr Asquith described Mr Bonar Law's speech as a declaration of war against Constitutional Government, but the Ulstermen went on calmly making their preparations for levying war and Sir Edward Carson and his friends coolly delivered speeches which reeked of sedition and treason against the State. Sir Edward Carson declared (27th July 1912): "We will shortly challenge the Government. They shall us if they like it is treason. We are prepared to take the consequences." And again he said (1st October 1912): "The Attorney-General says that my doctrines and the course I am taking lead to anarchy. Does he not think I know that?" And that fine exemplar of constitutional law, Mr F.E. Smith (now Lord Chancellor of England) said: "Supposing the Government gave such an order the consequences can only be described in the words of Mr Bonar Law when he said: 'If they did so it would not be a matter of argument but the population of London would lynch you on the lamp-posts.'" Ulster scarcely needed these incitements to encourage it in its definite purpose of armed resistance to Home Rule. It began to organise and discipline its army of Volunteers under able military leaders who subsequently demonstrated their capacity in no uncertain fashion, under the tests of actual warfare on many fields of battle. With the knowledge we now possess it seems scarcely believable that Mr Redmond and his friends should have professed to treat what was happening in Ulster as "a gigantic game of bluff." They joked pleasantly over the drilling of the Ulster Volunteers with "wooden guns," and they only asked that the Government should "Let the police and soldiers stand aside and make a ring and you will hear no more of the wooden gunmen." Ribaldry and gibes of this sort in the face of open and avowed treason was but a poor substitute for that firm statesmanship which should have grappled with the Ulster difficulty in either of two ways--to come to terms with it or, in the alternative, beat all unruly opposition to the ground.