with the Government during the next three weeks. "Friendly
consideration" passed into acceptance on March 9th, when Mr. Asquith,
introducing the Home Rule Bill for its passage in the third consecutive
session (as required by the Parliament Act), outlined the proposed
modifications in it. They involved partition. But the exclusion was to
be optional by areas and limited in time.

The proposal to take a vote by counties had, it will be remembered, been
originally suggested by Mr. Bonar Law, and in following the Prime
Minister he could not well repudiate it. The test, however, which he now
put forward was whether or not the proposals satisfied Ulster: and he
fixed upon the time-limit of six years as being wholly unacceptable.
Redmond, on the other hand, while declaring that the Government had gone
to "the extremest limits of concession," said that the proposals had one
merit: they would "elicit beyond doubt or question by a free ballot the
real opinion of the people of Ulster." This indicated his conviction
that if Home Rule really came the majority in Ulster would prefer to
take their chances under it; the proposal of exclusion being merely a
tactical manoeuvre to defeat Home Rule by splitting the Nationalists.

Its efficacy for that purpose was immediately demonstrated. Mr. O'Brien
followed Redmond with a virulent denunciation of "the one concession of
all others which must be hateful and unthinkable from the point of view
of any Nationalist in Ireland." Opposition from Mr. O'Brien and from Mr.
Healy was no new thing. But by acceptance of these proposals the
Nationalist leader made their opposition for the first time really
formidable. Telegrams rained in that March afternoon--above all on Mr.
Devlin, from his supporters in Belfast, who felt themselves betrayed and
shut out from a national triumph which they had been the most zealous to
promote. From this time onward the position of Redmond personally and of