English Radical writers and politicians might argue that no "transfer of allegiance" was contemplated; but Ulstermen thought they knew better, and the later development of the Irish question proved how right they were.

Even had they been proved wrong instead of right in their conviction that the true aim of Irish Nationalism (a term in which Sinn Fein is included) was essentially separatist, they knew better than Englishmen how little reality there was in the theory that under the proposed Home Rule their allegiance would be unaffected and their political _status_ suffer no degradation.

They claimed to occupy a position similar to that of the North in the American Civil War--with this difference, which, so far as it went, told in their favour, that whereas Lincoln took up arms to resist secession, they were prepared to do so to resist expulsion, the purpose in both cases, however, being to preserve union.

The practical view of the question, as it would appear in the eyes of ordinary men, was well expressed by Lord Curzon in the House of Lords, when he said: "The people of this country will be very loth to condemn those whose only disloyalty it will be to have been excessive in their loyalty to the King.

Do not suppose that the people of this country will call those 'rebels' whose only form of rebellion is to insist on remaining under the Imperial Parliament."[47] Of course, men like Sir Edward Carson, Lord Londonderry, Mr.Thomas Sinclair, and other Ulster leaders were too far-seeing not to realise that the course they were taking would expose them to the accusation of having set a bad example which others without the same grounds of justification might follow in very different circumstances.