This plan Sir Edward Grey described as his “personal contribution” to a discussion of possibilities which had been inaugurated by a notable speech from the Prime Minister.  At Ladybank, on October 25th, Mr. Asquith invited “interchange of views and suggestions, free, frank, and without prejudice.”  Nothing, however, could be accepted which did not conform to three governing considerations.  First, there must be established “a subordinate Irish legislature with an executive responsible to it”; secondly, “nothing must be done to erect a permanent and insuperable bar to Irish unity”; and thirdly, though the process of relieving congestion in the Imperial Parliament could not be fully accomplished by the present Bill, Ireland must not be made to wait till a complete scheme of decentralization could be carried out.

The second of these conditions was plainly the most significant.  It was taken to mean that “county option”—­the right for each county to decide whether it would come under a Home Rule Government—­would not create “a permanent and insuperable” obstacle, since each county could be given the opportunity to vote itself in at any time.  Redmond’s next important speech in England showed by its emphasis that he felt a danger.  He denounced “the gigantic game of bluff and black-mail” which was in progress.  The proposed exclusion of Ulster was not a proposition that could be considered.  It would bring about, he thought, the ruin of Ulster’s prosperity.  “For us it would mean the nullification of our hopes and aspirations for the future.”  It would stereotype an old evil in the region where it still existed.  What Ulster really feared, he said, was the loss, not of freedom or prosperity, but of Protestant ascendancy.

This was the truth; Protestant ascendancy, which in his boyhood had existed throughout all Ireland, was in consequence of the Irish party’s work dead in three provinces.  It remained and must remain in Ulster, where Protestants were a majority, but it would be qualified if that region came under the control of a parliament elected by all Ireland.  That was and is the true reason of Ulster’s resistance to national self-government.  What he would concede and what he would reject, Redmond indicated in general words:  “There is no demand, however extravagant and unreasonable it may appear to us, that we are not ready carefully to consider, so long as it is consistent with the principle for which generations of our race have battled, the principle of a settlement based on the national self-government of Ireland.  I shut no door to a settlement by consent, but ... we will not be intimidated or bullied into a betrayal’ of our trust.”