[ 24 ] 
with the rest of Ireland in giving Home Rule a fair 
trial. It was doubtless with this hope that he per- 
suaded his followers to accept it. His task was a 
hard one. The acceptance, nominally at least, in- 
volved the scrapping of the solemn covenant which 
pledged the Unionists of Ireland to stand or fall 
together ; it involved the abandonment to their fate 
of the 400,000 Unionists (be the same more or less) 
of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught. Most humili- 
ating of all, it involved the abandonment of their 
Ulster Unionist brethren in the Ulster counties which 
it proposed to bring under the immediate jurisdiction 
of the Irish Parliament. Still, even the irreconcilable 
Unionists at first raised no objection to the scheme 
in confident expectation that on the Nationalists 
would fall the responsibility of wrecking it. 
The logical consequence, a Nationalist refusal, was 
clear. It was “unthinkable” that the Ulster Union- 
ists should be coerced to the acceptance of Home 
Rule. The Nationalists would accept no Home Rule 
from which the Ulster Unionists were excluded. 
Therefore Home Rule was impossible. Q.E.D. 
When Sir Edward Carson’s followers, on the advice 
of their leader, accepted the Lloyd George pro- 
posals, the next move was ‘with Mr. Redmond. 
His task was even harder than Sir Edward Carson’s. 
Like Sir Edward Carson, even more emphatically 
than Sir Edward, he had repudiated the policy of 
exclusion. It was a denial of the ideal for which the 
long battle had been doggedly fought. “Ireland a 
nation! Ireland united and free” It was an osten- 
sible surrender of the policy of Parnell, whose eloquent 
proclamation of a United Ireland Mr. Redmond 
quoted with approval in the House of Commons. 
“We cannot give up a single Irishman. We want 
the energy and patriotism, the talents and the work 
of every Irishman to ensure that this great experi- 
ment shall be successful.”