justness of this appreciation of the Ulster position must be examined later: but, true or false, it is characteristic of the attitude which the whole Sinn Fein Party was afterwards to take. But the Ulstermen coupled with their attitude towards the Liberal Party and its doings a truculent defiance of all Catholic Ireland. The cause of this hostility the Republicans found in the attitude of the Parliamentary Party. While that party was in the height of its success "no attempt was made to understand their [_i.e._ the Ulster Protestants'] attitude or grapple with problems that appealed to them, and the economic grievances of Belfast workers were regarded as their own affair, not as the business of men who professed to represent the Irish people as a whole. The prevailing idea seemed to be that they should be left to stew in their own juice, and if they did not fall in with whatever scheme the Liberals carried through the English Parliament that they should be, in the phrase of a prominent parliamentarian, which has never been forgotten, 'overborne by the strong hand.'... The party of the future must make the conversion of Ulster the first plank in their platform and recognize that a national settlement from which Ulster dissented would not be worth winning." In the Ancient Order of Hibernians, all sections of Sinn Fein as well as the Labour Party saw a menace to any prospect of an accommodation with Ulster. This strictly sectarian society, as sectarian and often as violent in its methods as the Orange Lodges, evoked their determined hostility. "This narrowing down," wrote _Irish Freedom_, "of Nationalism to the members of one creed is the most fatal thing that has taken place in Irish politics since the days of the Pope's Brass Band.... That the driving power of the official Nationalists should be supplied by an organization of which no Protestant, however good a patriot, can be a member, is in direct opposition to the policy and traditions of Irish Nationalism." The Ancient Order was described as "a job-getting and job-cornering organization," as "a silent practical rivetting of sectarianism on the nation." The _Irish Worker_ was equally emphatic. "Were it not for the existence of the Board of Erin, the Orange Society would have long since ceased to exist.... To Brother Devlin and not to Brother Carson is mainly due the progress of the Covenanter movement in Ulster."