In all the speeches delivered and the resolutions adopted during this memorable Liverpool visit the same note was sounded, of full approval of the Covenanters and of determination to support them whatever might befall.
The events of the last three months, and especially the signing of the Covenant, had concentrated on Ulster the attention of the whole United Kingdom, not to speak of America and the British oversea Dominions.

This was not of unmixed advantage to the cause for which Ulster was making so determined a stand.

There was a tendency more and more to regard the opposition to Irish Home Rule as an Ulster question, and nothing else.
The Unionist protagonists of the earlier, the Gladstonian, period of the struggle, men like Salisbury, Randolph Churchill, Devonshire, Chamberlain, and Goschen, had treated it mainly as an Imperial question, which it certainly was.

In their eyes the Irish Loyalists, of whom the Ulstermen were the most important merely because they happened to be geographically concentrated, were valuable allies in a contest vital to the safety and prosperity of the British Empire; but, although the particular interests of these Loyalists were recognised as possessing a powerful claim on British sympathy and support, this was a consideration quite secondary in comparison with the larger aspects of Imperial policy raised by the demand for Home Rule.

It was an unfortunate result of the prominence into which Ulster was forced after the introduction of Mr.
Asquith's measure that these larger aspects gradually dropped away, and the defence of the Union came to be identified almost completely in England and Scotland with support of the Ulster Loyalists.