Mr Asquith is blamed because he did not put the law in operation against Sir Edward Carson, proclaim his illegal organisation of Volunteers and deal with him and his friends as a people seditious and disaffected towards the State, who, by their acts and conduct, had invited and merited the traitors' doom. But Mr Devlin declared not long after in Parliament that the reason why Mr Asquith did not move was because he and his friends would not allow him. Whence this extraordinary tenderness for the man who was thwarting and defying them at every point, it is not possible to say. No doubt the Ministry knew themselves in the wrong in that they had not considered the position of Ulster and had not attempted to legislate for their just fears. It is beyond question that there were conditions upon which the consent of Ulster could have been secured. If, these conditions being offered, this consent was unreasonably withheld, then the Government would have been absolutely justified in throttling Sir Edward Carson's preparations for rebellion before they had gained any ground or effective shape. But the weakness of the Liberal-Irish position was that they would not bring themselves to admit that the All-for-Ireland policy of Conciliation and a settlement by Conference and Consent was right. Meanwhile, with a weak Irish administration in charge of Mr Birrell as Chief Secretary--most amiable of _litterateurs_, but most imbecile of politicians--the Ulster opposition was allowed to harden into potential violence and civil war. "Engagements" between the Orangemen and the Hibernians began to form a sort of political amusement in the north of Ireland. The cries of religious and race hatred were allowed to devour the sweeter gospel of reconciliation and the recognition of a common country and that communion of right and interest between all classes and creeds which was the evangel of Wolfe Tone and other northern Protestant patriots in sublimer days. Matters were drifting from bad to worse under the fatal weakness and irresolution of the Government. So little fear had Sir Edward Carson of any penal consequences to himself that he declared, on the 7th September 1913: "We will set up a Government [of their own as provided for in the Ulster Covenant]. I am told it will be illegal. Of course it will. Drilling is illegal. The Government dare not interfere." And he was right! It did not interfere. And the Ulster Volunteers began to provide themselves with arms and ammunition and to organise themselves for actual war conditions. There were no more feeble jokes about "wooden guns" and "making a free ring"--as if it were to be only an ordinary pugilistic encounter and of no account. In 1913 the Ulster Volunteer Force was said to be well armed and probably better drilled than the northern regiments at the outbreak of the American War of Secession.