challenged in advance the competence of Parliament to decide, and fell back upon the weapons which Nationalist Ireland had been persuaded to abandon. But though the Ulster Unionists might break the pact, it was generally expected that the court to which they had taken their appeal would see that its competence to decide it was not challenged. The expectation was vain. The English Tory Party bluntly proclaimed that if Ulster decided to repudiate the verdict of Parliament, Ulster would be supported in any measure to that end which it should resolve to take. And in the face of this proclamation the Liberal Party seemed to hesitate: the Irish Party in Parliament could extract nothing from the Government beyond vague assurances that all would finally be well. Nationalist Ireland, surprised, uneasy, suspicious, indignant saw nothing more reassuring than broad smiles of indulgent benevolence upon the faces of Cabinet Ministers. But Ulster Unionists were not the only people in Ireland who disliked Home Rule. It was just as little to the taste of Sinn Fein and the Republicans and the Labour Party as it was to them. If the Ulster Party thought that Home Rule was too great a concession, the others thought that it was practically no concession at all. But being in a minority they were prepared for the present to submit. The Sinn Fein Party and the Republicans were well aware that Home Rule meant a set back to their programme. Little as it conferred in comparison with what they wished to have, it was certain to allay for many years the sting of Irish discontent and to prolong the period during which Ireland would seek its satisfaction in the shadow of its coming fortunes. The Labour Party had already begun to organize its forces with a view to participation in the activities of the expected Parliament, and looked forward with a modest confidence to its immediate future. To all of these the arming of Ulster, which made the Parliamentarians so indignant, was a light in the darkness. They had been for years protesting unheeded against a policy which acknowledged the Act of Union by acknowledging the supremacy of the Parliament which it set up: their words had fallen for the most part upon stopped ears. And now from the party supposed to regard the supremacy of Parliament as on a level with the Ten Commandments came the mutterings of revolt and the rattle of arms. Ulster had decided to defy "the English edict which would keep Irishmen disarmed while the meanest Englishman may arm himself to the teeth"; Ulster had taken up arms "against the usurped authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to make laws to bind them." _Sinn Fein_ promised that Unionist Ulster would in its coming struggle with the English Parliament "receive the sympathy and support of Nationalist Ireland." From the Republican Party the action of the Volunteers received unstinted and enthusiastic commendation. "Ulster has done one thing,"