Very well.
By that determination he drives you in the ultimate result to rely
upon your own strength, and we must follow all that out to its
logical conclusion.... That involves something more than that we do
not accept Home Rule. We must be prepared, in the event of a Home
Rule Bill passing, with such measures as will carry on for
ourselves the government of those districts of which we have
control. We must be prepared--and time is precious in these
things--the morning Home Rule passes, ourselves to become
responsible for the government of the Protestant Province of
Ulster. We ask your leave at the meeting of the Ulster Unionist
Council, to be held on Monday, there to discuss the matter, and to
set to work, to take care that at no time and at no intervening
interval shall we lack a Government in Ulster, which shall be a
Government either by the Imperial Parliament, or by ourselves."
Here, then, was the first authoritative declaration of a definite policy
to be pursued by Ulster in the circumstances then existing or foreseen,
and it was a policy that was followed with undeviating consistency under
Carson's leadership for the next nine years.
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