He told the Ulstermen that he had come to them
as the leader of the Unionist Party to give them the assurance that
"that party regard your cause, not as yours alone, nor as ours alone,
but as the cause of the Empire"; the meeting, which he had expected to
be a great gathering but which far exceeded his expectation, proved
that Ulster's hostility to Home Rule, far from having slackened, as
enemies had alleged, had increased and solidified with the passing
years; they were men "animated by a unity of purpose, by a fixity of
resolution which nothing can shake and which must prove irresistible,"
to whom he would apply Cromwell's words to his Ironsides: "You are men
who know what you are fighting for, and love what you know." Then, after
an analysis of the practical evils that Home Rule would engender and the
benefits which legislative union secured, he again emphasised the lack
of mandate for the Government policy. His hearers, he said, "knew the
shameful story": how the Radicals had twice failed to obtain the
sanction of the British people for Home Rule, "and now for the third
time they were trying to carry it not only without the sanction, but
against the will, of the British people.
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