The Government, for their part, made no response to the demand of Bonar Law and Carson that they should declare their intentions for dealing with resistance in Ulster.  It was clearly more than ever necessary for the Ulstermen to “trust in themselves.”  The debates on the Bill occupied Parliament till the end of the year, and beyond it, and great blocks of clauses were carried under the guillotine closure without a word of discussion, although they were packed with constitutional points, many of which were of the highest moment.  Over in Ulster, at the same time, those preparations were industriously carried forward which Captain Craig told the House of Commons would be necessary to cure the scepticism of the Chief Secretary.

In England and Scotland, also, Unionists did their utmost to make public opinion realise the gravity of the crisis towards which the country was drifting under the Wait-and-See Ministry.  Never before, probably, had so many great political meetings been held in any year as were held in every part of the country in 1912.  With the exception of those that took place in Ireland, the most striking was a monster gathering at Blenheim on the 27th of July, which was attended by delegates from every Unionist Association in the United Kingdom.

A notable defeat of the Government in a by-election at Crewe, news of which reached the meeting while the audience of some fifteen thousand people was assembling, was an encouraging sign of the trend of opinion in the country, and added confidence to the note of defiance that sounded in the speeches of Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. F.E.  Smith, and Sir Edward Carson.

The Unionist leader repeated, with added emphasis, what he had already said in the House of Commons, that he could imagine no length of resistance to which Ulster might go in which he and the overwhelming majority of the British people would not be ready to give support.  He again said that resistance would be justified only because the people had not been consulted, and the Government’s policy was “part of a corrupt parliamentary bargain.”  He refused to acknowledge the right of the Government “to carry such a Revolution by such means,” and as they appeared to be resolved to do so, Mr. Bonar Law and the party he led “would use any means to deprive them of the power they had usurped, and to compel them to face the people they had deceived.”  Mr. F.E.  Smith expressed the same thought in a more epigrammatic antithesis:  “We have come to a clear issue between the party which says ’We will judge for the democracy,’ and the party which says ’The democracy shall judge you.’”

The tremendous enthusiasm evoked by Mr. Bonar Law’s pledge of support to Ulster, and by Sir Edward Carson’s announcement that they in Ulster “would shortly challenge the Government to interfere with them if they dared, and would with equanimity await the result,” was a sufficient proof, if proof were needed, that the intention of the Ulstermen to offer forcible resistance to Home Rule had the whole-hearted sympathy and approval of the entire Unionist party in Great Britain, whose representatives from every corner of the country were assembled at Blenheim.