It was not surprising to find that there were sharp differences of opinion among those present, for there were obvious objections to supporting the amendment and equally obvious objections to voting against it. The opposition of Ulster for more than a quarter of a century had been directed against Home Rule for any part of Ireland and in any shape or form. No suggestion had ever been made by any of her spokesmen that the Protestant North, or any part of it, should be dealt with separately from the rest of the island, although Carson and others had pointed out that all the arguments in support of Home Rule were equally valid for treating Ulster as a unit. There were both economic and administrative difficulties in such a scheme which were sufficiently obvious, though by no means insuperable; but what weighed far more heavily in the minds of the Ulster members was the anticipation that their acceptance of the proposal would probably be represented by enemies as a desertion of all the Irish Loyalists outside the four counties named in the amendment, with whom there was in every part of Ulster the most powerful sentiment of solidarity. The idea of taking any action apart from these friends and associates, and of adopting a policy that might seem to imply the abandonment of their opposition to the main principle of the Bill, was one that could not be entertained except under the most compelling necessity. But, had not that necessity now arisen? The Ulster members had to keep in view the ultimate policy to which they were already committed. That policy, as laid down at Craigavon, was to take over, in the event of the Home Rule Bill being carried, the government "of those districts which they could control" in trust for the Imperial Parliament, and to resist by force if necessary the establishment of the Dublin jurisdiction over those districts. The policy of resistance was always recognised as being strictly limited in area; no one ever supposed that Ulster could forcibly resist Home Rule being set up in the south and west. The likelihood of failure to bring about a dissolution before the Bill became law had to be faced, and if no General Election took place there would be no alternative to resistance. If, then, it were decided to vote against an amendment offering salvation to the four most loyalist counties, what would be their position if ultimately driven to take up arms? Except as to a matter of detail concerning the precise area proposed to be excluded from the Bill, would they not be told that they were fighting for what they might have had by legislation, and what they had deliberately refused to accept? And if they so acted, could they expect not to forfeit the support of the great and growing volume of public opinion which now sympathised with Ulster? They could not, of course, secure themselves against malicious misrepresentation of their motives, but the Ulster members sincerely believed, and many in the