The Unionist leaders were not long left in ignorance of the public excitement which this news created in the city. A specially summoned meeting of the Standing Committee, with Londonderry in the chair, was held on the 16th of January to consider what action, if any, should be taken; but it was no simple matter they had to decide, especially in the absence of their leader, Sir Edward Carson, who was kept in England by great Unionist meetings which he was addressing in Lancashire. The reasons, on the one hand, for doing nothing were obvious enough. No one, of course, suggested the possibility of preventing Mr. Churchill coming to Belfast; but could even the Ulster Hall itself, the Loyalist sanctuary, be preserved from the threatened desecration? It was the property of the Corporation, and the Unionist political organisation had no exclusive title to its use. The meeting could only be frustrated by force in some form, or by a combination of force and stratagem. The Standing Committee, all men of solid sense and judgment, several of whom were Privy Councillors, were very fully alive to the objections to any resort to force in such a matter. They valued freedom of speech as highly as any Englishman, and they realised the odium that interference with it might bring both on themselves and their cause; and the last thing they desired at the present crisis was to alienate public sympathy in Great Britain. The force of such considerations was felt strongly by several members, indeed by all, of the Committee, and not least by Lord Londonderry himself, whose counsel naturally carried great weight. But, on the other hand, the danger of a passive attitude was also fully recognised. It was perfectly well understood that one of the chief desires of the Liberal Government and its followers at this time was to make the world believe that Ulster's opposition to Home Rule had declined in strength in recent years; that there really was a considerable body of Protestant opinion in agreement with Lord Pirrie, and prepared to support Home Rule on "Liberal," if not on avowedly "Nationalist" principles, and that the policy for which Carson, Londonderry, and the Unionist Council stood was a gigantic piece of bluff which only required to be exposed to disappear in general derision.