On the other hand, there were encouraging signs in the country. To the intense satisfaction of Unionists, Mr. C.F.G. Masterman, who had just been promoted to the Cabinet, lost his seat in East London when he sought re-election in February, and a day or two later the Government suffered another defeat in Scotland. On the 27th of February Lord Milner, a fearless supporter of the Ulster cause, wrote to Carson that a British Covenant had been drawn up in support of the Ulster Covenanters, and that the first signatures, in addition to his own, were those of Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, Admiral of the Fleet Sir E. Seymour, the Duke of Portland, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, Lord Desborough, Lord Lovat, Mr. Rudyard Kipling, Sir W. Ramsay, F.R.S., the Dean of Canterbury, Professors Dicey and Goudy, Sir George Hayter Chubb, and Mr. Salvidge, the influential alderman of Liverpool. On the 6th of March Mr. Walter Long, writing from the office of the Union Defence League, of which he was President, was able to inform Carson that there was "a rush to sign the Covenant--we are really almost overpowered." This was supplemented by a women's Covenant, which, like the men's, "had been numerously and influentially signed, about 3 or 4 per cent, of the signatories, it was said, being Liberals."[62] Long believed from this and other evidence that had reached him that "public opinion was now really aroused in the country," and that the steadfast policy of Ulster had the undoubted support of the electorate. Only those who were in the confidence of Mr. Asquith and his colleagues at the beginning of 1914 can know whether the "proposals" they then made were ever seriously put forward as an effort towards appeasement. If they were sincerely meant for such, it implied a degree of ignorance of the chief factor in the problem with which it is difficult to credit able Ministers who had been face to face with that problem for years. They must have supposed that their leading opponents were capable of saying emphatically one thing and meaning quite another. For the Unionist leaders had stated over and over again in the most unmistakable terms, both in the recent debate on the Address, and on innumerable former occasions, that nothing except the "exclusion of Ulster" could furnish a basis for negotiation towards settlement. And yet, when the Prime Minister at last put his cards on the table on the 9th of March, in moving the second reading of the Home Rule Bill--which now entered on its third and last lap under the Parliament Act--it was found that his much-trumpeted proposals were derisory to the last degree. The scheme was that which came to be known as county option with a time limit. Any county in Ulster, including the cities of Belfast and Derry, was to be given the right to vote itself out of the Home Rule jurisdiction, on a requisition signed by a specified proportion of its parliamentary electorate, for a period of six years.