[18] 
“We whose names are underwritten, men of Ulster, loyal 
subjects .of His Majesty King George the Fifth, humbly 
relying on God Whom our forefathers in days of stress and 
trial trusted, hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant 
throughout this, our time of threatened calamity, to stand 
fast, one to the other in defending ourselves and our chil- 
dren’s equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in 
using all the 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 Parlia- 
ment being forced upon us, we further solemnly and 
mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority. 
Iu sure confidence that God will defend our rights we 
hereto subscribe our names.” 
It will be observed that the Covenant pledged its 
signatories to stand by each other in mutual resist- 
ance to Home Rule. Such a mutual pledge, it is 
plain, could be dissolved only by general consent. It 
is wholly inconsistent with the policy of exclusion. 
When the six counties consented to Home Rule for 
their brother Unionists elsewhere, they were bound 
in honour to accept it for themselves. 
In October, 1912, the policy of exclusion was ex- 
pressly repudiated in Parliament by the leader of 
the Irish Unionist Party : 
«] ask no separate treatment for Ulster,” Sir 
Edward Carson emphatically declared, “ that is not 
our policy and never has been our policy.” 
The mere hint of exclusion provoked the following 
protest in a letter to The Times from Mr. J. Allan, 
Hon. Secretary of the Ulster Unionist Council — 
«T have had frequent opportunities of knowing the feel- 
ings and opinions of the Belfast people and all Unionists in 
Ulster, and 1 bave never yet heard one man suggest the 
settlement of this question by exclusion of the four North- 
Eastern counties from its operation. . . . The unanimous 
opinion of Unionist Ulster is dead against any such settle- 
nent.”