The Balmoral demonstration had, however, one distinctive feature. At it the Unionist Party of Great Britain met and grasped the hand of Ulster Loyalism. It gave the leader and a large number of his followers an opportunity to judge for themselves the strength and sincerity of Ulster, and at the same time it served to show the Ulstermen the weight of British opinion ready to back them. Mr. Bonar Law was accompanied to Belfast by no less than seventy Members of Parliament, representing English, Scottish, and Welsh constituencies, not a few of whom had already attained, or afterwards rose to, political distinction. Among them were Mr. Walter Long, Lord Hugh Cecil, Sir Robert Finlay, Lord Charles Beresford, Lord Castlereagh, Mr. Amery, Mr. J.D. Baird, Sir Arthur Griffith-Boscawen, Mr. Ian Malcolm, Lord Claud Hamilton, Mr. J.G. Butcher, Mr. Ernest Pollock, Mr. George Cave, Mr. Felix Cassel, Mr. Ormsby-Gore, Mr. Scott Dickson, Mr. W. Peel, Captain Gilmour, Mr. George Lloyd, Mr. J.W. Hills, Mr. George Lane-Fox, Mr. Stuart-Wortley, Mr. J.F.P. Rawlinson, Mr. H.J. Mackinder, and Mr. Herbert Nield. The reception of the Unionist Leader at Larne on Easter Monday was wonderful, even to those who knew what a Larne welcome to loyalist leaders could be, and who recalled the scenes there during the historic visits of Lord Randolph Churchill, Lord Salisbury, and Mr. Balfour. "If this is how you treat your friends," said Mr. Bonar Law simply, in reply to one of the innumerable addresses presented to him, "I am glad I am not an enemy." Before reaching Belfast he had ample opportunity at every stopping-place of his train to note the fervour of the populace. "Are all these people landlords?" he asked (in humorous allusion to the Liberal legend that Ulster Unionism was manufactured by a few aristocratic landowners), as he saw every platform thronged with enthusiastic crowds of men and women, the majority of whom were evidently of the poorer classes. In Belfast the concourse of people was so dense in the streets that the motor-car in which Mr. Bonar Law and Sir Edward Carson sat side by side found it difficult to make its way to the Reform Club, the headquarters of what had once been Ulster Liberalism, where an address was presented in which it was stated that the conduct of the Government "will justify loyal Ulster in resorting to the most extreme measures in resisting Home Rule." In his reply Mr. Bonar Law gave them "on behalf of the Unionist Party this message--though the brunt of the battle will be yours, there will not be wanting help from 'across the Channel.'" At Comber, where a stop was made on the way to Mount Stewart, he asked himself how Radical Scotsmen would like to be treated as the Government were treating Protestant Ulster. "I know Scotland well," he replied to his own question, "and I believe that, rather than submit to such fate, the Scottish people would face a second Bannockburn or a second Flodden."