[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.”