PASSING THE BILL No part of Great Britain displayed a more constant and whole-hearted sympathy with the attitude of Ulster than the city of Liverpool.

There was much in common between Belfast and the great commercial port on the Mersey.

Both were the home of a robust Protestantism, which perhaps was reinforced by the presence in both of a quarter where Irish Nationalists predominated.

Just as West Belfast gave a seat in Parliament to the most forceful of the younger Nationalist generation, Mr.Devlin, the Scotland Division of Liverpool had for a generation been represented by Mr.T.P.
O'Connor, one of the veteran leaders of the Parnellite period.

In each case the whole of the rest of the city was uncompromisingly Conservative, and among the members for Liverpool at the time was Mr.
F.E.Smith, unquestionably the most brilliant of the rising generation of Conservatives, who had already conspicuously identified himself with the Ulster Movement, and was a close friend as well as a political adherent of Carson.