This was accordingly done. Words were introduced which declared the pledge to be binding "throughout this our time of threatened calamity,"

and its purpose to be the defeat of "the present conspiracy." The language was as precise, and was as carefully chosen, as the language of a legal deed; but in an unhappy crisis which arose in 1916, in circ.u.mstances which no one in the world could have foreseen in 1912, there were some in Ulster who were not only tempted to strain the interpretation which the Covenant as a whole could legitimately bear, but who failed to appreciate the significance of the amendments that had been made in its text at the instance of the Presbyterian Church.[32]

When these amendments had been incorporated in the Covenant by the Special Commission, a meeting of the Standing Committee was convened at Craigavon on the 19th of September to adopt it for recommendation to the Council. The Committee, standing in a group outside the door leading from the arcade at Craigavon to the tennis-lawn, listened while Sir Edward Carson read the Covenant aloud from a stone step which now bears an inscription recording the event. Those present showed by their demeanour that they realised the historic character of the transaction in which they were taking part, and the weight of responsibility they were about to a.s.sume. But no voice expressed dissent or hesitation. The Covenant was adopted unanimously and without amendment. Its terms were as follows:

"ULSTER'S SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT

"Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as of the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the Empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal subjects of His Gracious Majesty King George V, humbly relying on the G.o.d whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant throughout this our time of threatened calamity to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority. In sure confidence that G.o.d will defend the right we hereto subscribe our names. And further, we individually declare that we have not already signed this Covenant. G.o.d save the King."

On Monday, the 23rd of September, the Ulster Unionist Council, the body representing the whole loyalist community on an elective and thoroughly democratic basis, held its annual meeting in the Ulster Hall, the chief business being the ratification of the Covenant prior to its being presented for general signature throughout the province on Ulster Day.

Upwards of five hundred delegates attended the meeting, and unanimously approved the terms of the doc.u.ment recommended for their acceptance by their Standing Committee. They then adopted, on the motion of Lord Londonderry, the Resolution which, as already mentioned, had originally formed part of the draft of the Covenant itself. This Resolution, as well as the Covenant, was the subject of extensive comment in the English and Scottish Press. Some opponents of Ulster directed against it the flippant ridicule which appeared to be their only weapon against a movement the gravity of which was admitted by Ministers of the Crown; but, on the whole, the British Press acknowledged the important enunciation of political principle which it contained. It placed on record that:

"Inasmuch as we, the duly elected delegates and members of the Ulster Unionist Council, representing all parts of Ulster, are firmly persuaded that by no law can the right to govern those whom we represent be bartered away without their consent; that although the present Government, the services and sacrifices of our race having been forgotten, may drive us forth from a Const.i.tution which we have ever loyally upheld, they may not deliver us bound into the hands of our enemies; and that it is incompetent for any authority, party, or people to appoint as our rulers a Government dominated by men disloyal to the Empire and to whom our faith and traditions are hateful; and inasmuch as we reverently believe that, as in times past it was given our fathers to save themselves from a like calamity, so now it may be ordered that our deliverance shall be by our own hands, to which end it is needful that we be knit together as one man, each strengthening the other, and none holding back or counting the cost--therefore we, Loyalists of Ulster, ratify and confirm the steps so far taken by the Special Commission this day submitted and explained to us, and we reappoint the Commission to carry on its work on our behalf as in the past.

"We enter into the Solemn Covenant appended hereto, and, knowing the greatness of the issues depending on our faithfulness, we promise each to the others that, to the uttermost of the strength and means given us, and not regarding any selfish or private interest, our substance or our lives, we will make good the said Covenant; and we now bind ourselves in the steadfast determination that, whatever may befall, no such domination shall be thrust upon us, and in the hope that by the blessing of G.o.d our Union with Great Britain, upon which are fixed our affections and trust, may yet be maintained, and that for ourselves and for our children, for this Province and for the whole of Ireland, peace, prosperity, and civil and religious liberty may be secured under the Parliament of the United Kingdom and of the King whose faithful subjects we are and will continue all our days."

It had been known for some weeks that it was the intention of the Ulster Loyalists to dedicate the 28th of September as "Ulster Day," by holding special religious services, after which they were to "pledge themselves to a solemn Covenant," the terms of which were not yet published or, indeed, finally settled. This announcement, which appeared in the Press on the 17th of August, was hailed in England as an effective reply to the recent "turgid homily" of Mr. Churchill, but there was really no connection between them in the intentions of Ulstermen, who had been too much occupied with their own affairs to pay much attention to the attack upon them in the Dundee letters. The Ulster Day celebration was to be preceded by a series of demonstrations in many of the chief centres of Ulster, at which the purpose of the Covenant was to be explained to the people by the leader and his colleagues, and a number of English Peers and Members of Parliament arranged to show their sympathy with the policy embodied in the Covenant by taking part in the meetings.

It would not be true to say that the enthusiasm displayed at this great series of meetings in September eclipsed all that had gone before, for it would not be possible for human beings greatly to exceed in that emotion what had been seen at Craigavon and Balmoral; but they exhibited an equally grave sense of responsibility, and they proved that the same exaltation of mind, the same determined spirit, that had been displayed by Loyalists collected in the populous capital of their province, equally animated the country towns and rural districts.

The campaign opened at Enniskillen on the 18th of September, where the leader was escorted by two squadrons of mounted and well-equipped yeomen from the station to Portora Gate, at which point 40,000 members of Unionist Clubs drawn from the surrounding agricultural districts marched past him in military order. During the following nine days demonstrations were held at Lisburn, Derry, Coleraine, Ballymena, Dromore, Portadown, Crumlin, Newtownards, and Ballyroney, culminating with a meeting in the Ulster Hall--loyalist headquarters--on the eve of the signing of the Covenant on Ulster Day. At six of these meetings, including, of course, the last, Sir Edward Carson was the princ.i.p.al speaker, while all the Ulster Unionist Members of Parliament took part in their several const.i.tuencies. Lord Londonderry was naturally prominent among the speakers, and presided as usual, when the Duke of Abercorn was prevented by illness from being present, in the Ulster Hall. Mr. F.E. Smith, who had closely identified himself with the Ulster Movement, delighting with his fresh and vigorous eloquence the meetings at Balmoral and Blenheim, as well as the Orange Lodges whom he had addressed on the 12th of July, crossed the Channel to lend a helping hand, and spoke at five meetings on the tour. Others who took part--in addition to local men like Mr. Thomas Sinclair and Mr. John Young, whose high character always made their appearance on political platforms of value to the cause they supported--were Lord Charles Beresford, Lord Salisbury, Mr. James Campbell, Lord Hugh Cecil, Lord Willoughby de Broke, and Mr. Harold Smith; while the Marquis of Hamilton and Lord Castlereagh, by the part which they took in the programme, showed their desire to carry on the traditions which identified the two leading Ulster families with loyalist principles.

A single resolution, identical in the simplicity of its terms, was carried without a dissenting voice at every one of these meetings: "We hereby reaffirm the resolve of the great Ulster Convention of 1892: 'We will not have Home Rule.'" These words became so familiar that the laconic phrase "We won't have it," was on everybody's lips as the Alpha and Omega of Ulster's att.i.tude, and was sometimes heard with unexpected abruptness in no very precise context. A ticket-collector, when clipping the tickets of the party who were starting from Belfast in a saloon for Enniskillen, made no remark and no sign of recognition till he reached Carson, when he said almost in a whisper and without a glimmer of a smile, as he took a clip out of the leader's ticket: "Tell the station-master at Clones, Sir Edward, that we won't have it." He doubtless knew that the political views of that misguided official were of the wrong colour. A conversation overheard in the crowd at Enniskillen before the speaking began was a curious example of the habit so characteristic of Ulster--and indeed of other parts of Ireland also--of thinking of

"Old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago"

as if they had occurred last week, and were a factor to be taken into account in the conduct of to-day. The demonstration was in the open air, and the sunshine was gleaming on the gra.s.s of a hill close at hand. "It 'ud be a quare thing," said a peasant to his neighbour in the crowd, "if the rebels would come out and hould a meetin' agin us on yon hill."

"What matter if they would," was the reply, "wouldn't we let on that we won't have it? an' if that wouldn't do them, isn't there hundreds o'

King James's men at the bottom o' the lough, an' there's plenty o' room yet." It was not spoken in jest, but in grim conviction that the issue of 1689 was the issue of 1912, and that another Newtown Butler might have to be fought.

This series of meetings in preparation for the Covenant brought Carson much more closely in touch with the Loyalists in outlying districts than he had been hitherto, and when it was over their wild devotion to him personally equalled what it was in Belfast itself. The appeal made to the hearts of men as quick as any living to detect and resent humbug or boastfulness, by the simplicity, uncompromising directness, and courage of his character was irresistible. He never spoke better than during this tour of the Province. The Special Correspondent of _The Times_, who sent to his paper vivid descriptive articles on each meeting, said in his account of the meeting at Coleraine that "Sir Edward Carson was vigorous, fresh, and picturesque. His command over the feelings of his Ulster audiences is unquestionable, and never a phrase pa.s.ses his lips which does not tell." And when the proceedings of the meeting were over, the same observer "was at the station to witness the 'send-off' of the leaders, and for ten minutes before the train for Belfast came in the tumult of the cheers, the thanks, and the farewells never faltered for an instant."[33] Two days later another English commentator declared that "The Ulster campaign has been conducted up to the present with a combination of wisdom, ability, and restraint which has delighted all the Unionists of the province, and exasperated their Radical and Nationalist enemies. From its opening at Enniskillen not a speech has been delivered unworthy of a great movement in defence of civil and religious liberty."[34]

It was characteristic of Sir Edward Carson that neither at these meetings nor at any time did he use his unmatched power of persuasion to induce his followers to come forward and sign the Covenant. On the contrary, he rather warned them only to do so after mature reflection and with full comprehension of the responsibility which signature would entail. He told the Unionist Council a few days before the memorable 28th of September: "How often have I thought over this Covenant--how many hours have I spent, before it was published that we would have one, in counting the cost that may result! How many times have I thought of what it may mean to all that we care about up here! Does any man believe that I lightly took this matter in hand without considering with my colleagues all that it may mean either in the distant or the not too distant future? No, it is the gravest matter in all the grave matters in the various offices I have held that I have ever had to consider." And he went on to advise the delegates, "responsible men from every district in Ulster, that it is your duty, when you go back to your various districts, to warn your people who trust you that, in entering into this solemn obligation, they are entering into a matter which, whatever may happen in the future, is the most serious matter that has ever confronted them in the course of their lives."[35]

A political campaign such as that of September 1912 could not be a success, however spontaneous the enthusiasm of the people, however effective the oratory, unless the arrangements were based on good organisation. It was by general consent a triumph of organisation, the credit for which was very largely due to Mr. Richard Dawson Bates, the Secretary of the Ulster Unionist Council. Sir Edward Carson himself very wisely paid little attention to detail; happily there was no need for him to do so, for he had beside him in Captain James Craig and Mr. Bates two men with real genius for organisation, and indefatigable in relieving "the chief" of all unnecessary work and worry. Mr. Bates had all the threads of a complex network of organisation in his hands; he kept in close touch with leading Unionists in every district; he always knew what was going on in out-of-the-way corners, and where to turn for the right man for any particular piece of work. Anyone whose duty it has been to manage even a single political demonstration on a large scale knows what numerous details have to be carefully foreseen and provided for. In Ulster a succession of both outdoor and indoor demonstrations, seldom if ever equalled in this country in magnitude and complexity of arrangement, besides an amazing quant.i.ty of other miscellaneous work inseparable from the conduct of a political movement in which crisis followed crisis with bewildering rapidity, were managed year after year from Mr. Bates's office in the Old Town Hall with a quiet, unostentatious efficiency which only those could appreciate who saw the machine at work and knew the master mechanic behind it. Of this efficiency the September demonstrations in 1912 were a conspicuous ill.u.s.tration.

Nor did the Loyalist women of Ulster lag an inch behind the men either in organisation or in zeal for the Unionist cause, and their keenness at every town visited in this September tour was exuberantly displayed.

Women had not yet been enfranchised, of course, and the Ulster women had shown but little interest in the suffragette agitation which was raging at this time in England; but they had organised themselves in defence of the Union very effectively on parallel lines to the men, and if the latter had needed any stimulus to their enthusiasm they would certainly have got it from their mothers, sisters, and wives. The Marchioness of Londonderry threw herself whole-heartedly into the movement. Having always ably seconded her husband's many political and social activities, she made no exception in regard to his devotion to Ulster. Lord Londonderry, she was fond of saying, was an Ulsterman born and bred, and she was an Ulsterwoman "by adoption and grace." Her energy was inexhaustible, and her enthusiasm contagious; she used her influence and her wonderful social gifts unsparingly in the Unionist cause.

A meeting of the Ulster Women's Unionist Council, of which the Dowager Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, widow of the great diplomat, was president, was held on the 17th of September, the day before the demonstration at Enniskillen, when a resolution proposed by Lady Londonderry declaring the determination of Ulster women to stand by their men in the policy to be embodied in the Covenant, was carried with immense enthusiasm and without dissent. No women were so vehement in their support of the Loyalist cause as the factory workers, who were very numerous in Belfast. Indeed, their zeal, and their manner of displaying it, seemed sometimes to ill.u.s.trate a well-known line of Kipling's, considered by some to be anything but complimentary to the female s.e.x. Anyhow, there was no divergence of opinion or sympathy between the two s.e.xes in Ulster on the question of Union or Home Rule; and the women who everywhere attended the meetings in large numbers were no idle sightseers--though they were certainly hero-worshippers of the Ulster leader--but a genuine political force to be taken into account.

It was during the September campaign that the "wooden guns" and "dummy rifles" appeared, which excited so much derision in the English Radical Press, whose editors little dreamed that the day was not far distant when Mr. Asquith's Government would be glad enough to borrow those same dummy rifles for training the new levies of Kitchener's Army to fight the Germans. So far as the Ulstermen were concerned the ridicule of their quasi-military display and equipment never had any sting in it.

They were conscious of the strength given to their cause by the discipline and military organisation of the volunteers, even if the weapons with which they drilled should never be replaced by the real thing; and many of them had an instinctive belief that their leaders would see to it that they were effectively armed all in good time. And so with grim earnestness they recruited the various battalions of volunteers, gave up their evenings to drilling, provided cyclist corps, signalling corps, ambulances and nurses; they were proud to receive their leader with guards of honour at the station, and bodyguards while he drove through their town or district to the meetings where he spoke.

Few of them probably ever so much as heard of the gibes of _The Irish News_, _The Daily News_, or _The Westminster Gazette_ at the "royal progresses" of "King Carson"; but they would have been in no way upset by them if they had, for they were far too much in earnest themselves to pay heed to the cheap sneers of others. At each one of the September meetings there was a military setting to the business of the day. At Enniskillen Carson was conducted by a cavalry escort to the ground where he was to address the people; at Coleraine, Portadown, and other places volunteers lined the route and marched in column to and from the meeting. They were, it is true, but "half-baked" levies, with more zeal than knowledge of military duties. But competent critics--and there were many such amongst the visitors--praised their bearing and physique and the creditable measure of discipline they had already acquired. And it must be remembered that in September 1912 the Ulster Volunteer Force was still in its infancy. In the following two years its improvement in efficiency was very marked; and within three years of the time when its battalions paraded before Sir Edward Carson, with dummy rifles, and marched before him to his meetings in Lisburn, Newtownards, Enniskillen, and Belfast on the eve of the Covenant, those same men had gloriously fought against the flower of the Prussian Army, and many of them had fallen in the battle of the Somme.

The final meeting in the Ulster Hall on Friday the 27th of September was an impressive climax to the tour. Many English journalists and other visitors were present, and some of them admitted that, in spite of all they had heard of what an Ulster Hall meeting was like, they were astonished by the soul-stirring fervour they witnessed, and especially by the wonderful spectacle presented at the overflow meeting in the street outside, which was packed as far as the eye could reach in either direction with upturned faces, eager to catch the words addressed to them from a platform erected for the speakers outside an upper window of the building.[36]

Messages of sympathy and approval at this supreme moment were read from Mr. Bonar Law and Lord Lansdowne, Mr. Long, Mr. Balfour, and Mr. Austen Chamberlain. Then, after brief speeches by four local Belfast men, one of whom was a representative of Labour, and while the audience were waiting eagerly for the speech of their leader, there occurred what _The Times_ next day described as "two entirely delightful, and, as far as the crowd was concerned, two entirely unexpected episodes." The first was the presentation to Sir Edward Carson of a faded yellow silk banner by Colonel Wallace, Grand Master of the Belfast Orangemen, who explained that it was the identical banner that had been carried before King William III at the battle of the Boyne, and was now lent by its owner, a lineal descendant of the original standard-bearer, to be carried before Carson to the signing of the Covenant; the second was the presentation to the leader of a silver key, symbolic of Ulster as "the key of the situation," and a silver pen wherewith to sign the Covenant on the morrow, by Captain James Craig. "The two incidents," continued the Correspondent of _The Times_, "were followed by the audience with breathless excitement, and made a remarkably effective prelude to Sir Edward Carson's speech. Premeditated, no doubt, that incident of the banner--yet entirely graceful, entirely fitting to the spirit of the occasion--a plan carried through with the sense of ceremony which Ulstermen seem to have always at their command in moments of emotion."

And if ever there was a "moment of emotion" for the Loyalists of Ulster--those descendants of the Plantation men who had been deliberately sent to Ireland with a commission from the first sovereign of a united Britain to uphold British interests, British honour, and the Reformed Faith across the narrow sea--Loyalists who were conscious that throughout the generations they had honestly striven to be faithful to their mission--if ever in their long and stormy history they experienced a "moment of emotion," it was a.s.suredly on this evening before the signing of their Covenant.

The speeches delivered by their leader and others were merely a vent for that emotion. There was nothing that could be said about their cause that they did not know already; but all felt that the heart of the matter was touched--the whole situation, so far as they were concerned, summed up in a single sentence of Carson's speech: "We will take deliberately a step forward, not in defiance but in defence; and the Covenant which we will most willingly sign to-morrow will be a great step forward, in no spirit of aggression, in no spirit of ascendancy, but with a full knowledge that, if necessary, you and I--you trusting me, and I trusting you--will follow out everything that this Covenant means to the very end, whatever the consequences." Every man and woman who heard these words was filled with an exalted sense of the solemnity of the occasion. The mental atmosphere was not that of a political meeting, but of a religious service--and, in fact, the proceedings had been opened by prayer, as had become the invariable custom on such occasions in Ulster. It was felt to be a time of individual preparation for the _Sacramentum_ of the following day, which Protestant Ulster had set apart as a day of self-dedication to a cause for which they were willing to make any sacrifice.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] _The Scotsman_, November 2nd, 1911.

[29] See Sir B. Carson's speech in _Belfast Newsletter_, September 24th, 1912.

[30] See _ante_, p. 53.

[31] See p. 106.

[32] See p. 248.

[33] _The Times_, September 23rd, 1912.

[34] _The Daily Telegraph_, September 25th, 1912.

[35] _Belfast Newsletter_, September 24th, 1912.

[36] The article which appeared on the following Sunday in _The Observer_, showed how profoundly a distinguished London editor and writer had been moved by what he saw in Belfast.

CHAPTER X

THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT

Ulster Day, Sat.u.r.day the 28th of September, 1912, was kept as a day of religious observance by the Northern Loyalists. So far as the Protestants of all denominations were concerned, Ulster was a province at prayer on that memorable Sat.u.r.day morning. In Belfast, not only the services which had more or less of an official character--those held in the Cathedral, in the Ulster Hall, in the a.s.sembly Hall--but those held in nearly all the places of worship in the city, were crowded with reverent worshippers. It was the same throughout the country towns and rural districts--there was hardly a village or hamlet where the parish church and the Presbyterian and Methodist meeting-houses were not attended by congregations of unwonted numbers and fervour. Not that there was any of the religious excitement such as accompanies revivalist meetings; it was simply that a population, naturally religious-minded, turned instinctively to divine worship as the fitting expression of common emotion at a moment of critical gravity in their history. "One noteworthy feature," commented upon by one of the English newspaper correspondents in a despatch telegraphed during the day, "is the silence of the great shipyards. In these vast industrial establishments on both sides of the river, 25,000 men were at work yesterday performing their task at the highest possible pressure, for the order-books of both firms are full of orders. Now there is not the sound of a hammer; all is as silent as the grave. The splendid craftsmen who build the largest ships in the world have donned their Sunday clothes, and, with Unionist b.u.t.tons on the lapels of their coats, or Orange sashes on their shoulders, are about to engage on what to them is an even more important task." He also noticed that although the streets were crowded there was no excitement, for "the average Ulsterman performs his religious and political duties with calm sobriety. He has no time to-day for mirth or merriment, for every minute is devoted to proving that he is still the same man--devoted to the Empire, to the King, and Const.i.tution."[37]

There is at all times in Ulster far less sectarian enmity between the Episcopal and other Reformed Churches than in England; on Ulster Day the complete harmony and co-operation between them was a marked feature of the observances. At the Cathedral in Belfast the preacher was the Bishop of Down,[38] while a Presbyterian minister representing the Moderator of the General a.s.sembly, and the President of the Methodist College took part in the conduct of the service. At the Ulster Hall the same unity was evidenced by a similar co-operation between clergy of the three denominations, and also at the a.s.sembly Hall (a Presbyterian place of worship), where Dr. Montgomery, the Moderator, was a.s.sisted by a clergyman of the Church of Ireland representing the Bishop.

The service in the Ulster Hall was attended by Sir Edward Carson, the Lord Mayor of Belfast (Mr. McMordie, M.P.), most of the distinguished visitors from England, and by those Ulster members whose const.i.tuencies were in or near the city; those representing country seats went thither to attend local services and to sign the Covenant with their own const.i.tuents.

One small but significant detail in the day's proceedings was much noticed as a striking indication of the instinctive realisation by the crowd of the exceptional character of the occasion. Bedford Street, where the Ulster Hall is, was densely packed with spectators, but when the leader arrived, instead of the hurricane of cheers that invariably greeted his appearance in the streets, there was nothing but a general uncovering of heads and respectful silence. It is true that the people abundantly compensated themselves for this moment of self-restraint later on, until in the evening one wondered how human throats could survive so many hours of continuous strain; but the contrast only made the more remarkable that almost startling silence before the religious service began.

The "sense of ceremony" which _The Times_ Correspondent on another occasion had declared to be characteristic of Ulstermen "in moments of emotion," was certainly displayed conspicuously on Ulster Day. Ceremony at large public functions is naturally cast in a military mould--marching men, bands of music, display of flags, guards of honour, and so forth--and although on this occasion there was, it is true, more than mere decorative significance in the military frame to the picture, it was an admirably designed and effective spectacle. It is but a few hundred yards from the Ulster Hall to the City Hall, where the signing of the Covenant was to take place. When the religious service ended, about noon, Sir Edward Carson and his colleagues proceeded from one hall to the other on foot. The Boyne standard, which had been presented to the leader the previous evening, was borne before him to the City Hall.

He was escorted by a guard consisting of a hundred men from the Orange Lodges of Belfast and a like number representing the Unionist clubs of the city. These clubs had also provided a force of 2,500 men, whose duty, admirably performed throughout the day, was to protect the gardens and statuary surrounding the City Hall from injury by the crowd, and to keep a clear way to the Hall for the endless stream of men entering to sign the Covenant.

The City Hall in Belfast is a building of which Ulster is justly proud.

It is, indeed, one of the few modern public buildings in the British Islands in which the most exacting critic of architecture finds nothing to condemn. Standing in the central site of the city with ample garden s.p.a.ce in front, its n.o.ble proportions and beautiful facade and dome fill the view from the broad thoroughfare of Donegal Place. The main entrance hall, leading to a fine marble stairway, is circular in shape, surrounded by a marble colonnade carrying the dome, to which the hall is open through the full height of the building. It was in this central s.p.a.ce beneath the dome that a round table covered with the Union Jack was placed for the signing of the Covenant by the Ulster leaders and the most prominent of their supporters.

To those Englishmen who have never been able to grasp the Ulster point of view, and who have, therefore, persisted in regarding the Ulster Movement as a phase of party politics in the ordinary sense, it must appear strange and even improper that the City Hall, the official quarters of the Corporation, should have been put to the use for which it was lent on Ulster Day, 1912. The vast majority of the citizens, whose property it was, thought it could be used for no better purpose than to witness their signatures to a deed securing to them their birthright in the British Empire.

At the entrance to the City Hall Sir Edward Carson was received by the Lord Mayor and members of the Corporation wearing their robes of office, and by the Harbour Commissioners, the Water Board, and the Poor Law Guardians, by whom he was accompanied into the hall. The text of Ulster's Solemn League and Covenant had been printed on sheets with places for ten signatures on each; the first sheet lay on the table for Edward Carson to sign.

No man but a dullard without a spark of imagination could have witnessed the scene presented at that moment without experiencing a thrill which he would have found it difficult to describe. The sunshine, sending a beam through the stained gla.s.s of the great window on the stairway, threw warm tints of colour on the marbles of the columns and the tesselated floor of the hall, sparkled on the Lord Mayor's chain, lent a rich glow to the scarlet gowns of the City Fathers, and lit up the red and the blue and the white of the Imperial flag which draped the table and which was the symbol of so much that they revered to those who stood looking on. They were grouped in a semicircle behind the leader as he stepped forward to sign his name--men of substance, leaders in the commercial life of a great industrial city, elderly men many of them, lovers of peace and order; men of mark who had served the Crown, like Londonderry and Campbell and Beresford; Doctors of Divinity, guides and teachers of religion, like the Bishop and the Moderator of the General a.s.sembly; Privy Councillors; members of the Imperial Parliament; barristers and solicitors, shopkeepers and merchants,--there they all stood, silent witnesses of what all felt to be one of the deeds that make history, a.s.sembled to set their hands, each in his turn, to an Instrument which, for good or evil, would influence the destiny of their race; while behind them through the open door could be seen a vast forest of human heads, endless as far as eye could reach, every one of whom was in eager accord with the work in hand, and whose blended voices, while they waited to perform their own part in the great transaction, were carried to the ears of those in the hall like the inarticulate noise of moving waters.