Salvation by violence, never a healthy doctrine to inculcate, was peculiarly dangerous teaching for a section of the Irish who had been told for almost thirty years that they would be justified in offering forcible resistance to any attempt on the part of the imperial parliament to press home rule upon them. When ministers honoured their obligation to the nationalist party by whose votes they had been kept in office since 1910, the Orangemen announced that they would resist by force. Cynics in England may have been amused, seekers after truth outside England must have been shocked to find the Irish "loyalists"[20] threatening armed resistance to an act which could only come into force on the authority of the king of Great Britain and Ireland and of the imperial parliament; if not shocked, even the avowed anarchist must have been surprised to find the experiment in constructive treason blessed and headed by the Right Honourable Sir Edward Carson, K.C., M.P., one time a law-officer of the crown and a man committed by his privy councillor's oath to loyalty towards his soveran. But these were restless and unbalanced times, in which constitutionalism came to be regarded as an outworn shibboleth: the bitter struggle over the 1909 budget, the two general elections within a single year and the more bitter struggle over the parliament bill had familiarized the people of Great Britain with a new violence of language, of boast and of threat. The Ulster covenant and the Ulster volunteers, appealing to the twin boyish love--in such men as Mr. F. E. Smith, K.C., M.P.--of a secret society and of playing at soldiers, afforded a new thrill to jaded spirits who were perhaps disappointed that, though the parliament bill had passed, no blood had flowed under Westminster Bridge. Behind Sir Edward Carson stood a young Englishman in a hurry and a Canadian, no longer young, who had been entrusted with the delicate task of teaching the conservative party a newer and better style of parliamentary opposition than Mr. Balfour had been able to inculcate; the Irish problem united the three indissolubly, and for present violence and later responsibility there is little to choose between them. "I could contribute," said Mr. F. E. Smith on 18.6.12, "very little to the military efficiency of those who were resisting the Regular Forces or the still more formidable invasion from the South, _but_...." "I can imagine," said Mr. Bonar Law, on 27.7.12, "no length of resistance to which Ulster will go which I shall not be ready to support." "We will shortly challenge the Government," said Sir Edward Carson on the same day. "They may tell us if they like that this is treason. We are prepared to take the consequences." "I do not care tuppence whether it is treason or not," proclaimed Sir Edward Carson on 21.9.12.