Many Sinn Feiners sincerely deplored the step which the Conference had taken in calling upon the Bishops for an official manifesto. Its wording seemed to rule out of existence the section of Irish Nationalists who belonged to the Protestant faith and to identify a national question with a particular creed. Certainly as a mere question of tactics the manifesto was of doubtful wisdom. It was certain to raise, and it did raise, the cry of the "priest in politics." From the mouths of the Ulster Party the criticism might be disregarded, for they had themselves four years before induced the Protestant churches in Ulster to pass official resolutions against Home Rule. But it was different when the English newspapers began to raise the "No Popery" cry and to write as if Sinn Fein were a purely Catholic party which it had never ceased to protest it was not. But in fact the vexed question of the relation of the Church to the civil power, a question not to be disposed of in a sentence, did not fairly arise from the Bishops' pronouncement. The main gist of it was contained in two propositions neither of which was theological: the proposition that Conscription was an oppressive and inhuman law was (whether right or wrong) an ordinary statement of opinion upon a purely mundane matter: the proposition that such a law might be resisted by any means consonant with the law of God was the statement not of theology, whether Catholic or Protestant, but of ordinary ethics, accidentally theistic. But the concluding sentences of the manifesto threw their light backwards upon the essential statements, and the resistance to Conscription was represented as one more incident in the long struggle between free institutions and the power of the Roman Church. Nationalist Ireland, however, needed no incentive from the Bishops to resist. It was presented with a clear cut issue which could not be evaded, which the Cabinet by its decision had raised in its most acute form. If Ireland submitted quietly to Conscription then it acknowledged that it stood to the British Parliament in exactly the same relation as did Yorkshire or Middlesex: if, on the other hand, Ireland were a nation, even if it were a nation within the British Empire, it had the right to decide for itself on a question involving issues so vital to its future. This was the alternative which Sinn Fein put in vehement and passionate language before the country and the reply of Nationalist Ireland was practically unanimous. Nearly every Nationalist in Ireland took the anti-Conscription pledge "Denying the right of the British Government to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist Conscription by the most effective means at our disposal."