It was the Ministerial affectation of contempt that no one was taking seriously; in fact, to borrow an expression from current slang, the "King Carson" stunt was a "wash-out." _The Nation_ suggested that, instead of being laughed at, the Ulster leader should be prosecuted, or, at any rate, removed from the Privy Council, and other Liberal papers feverishly took up the suggestion, debating whether the indictment should be under the Treason Felony Act of 1848, the Crimes Act of 1887, or the Unlawful Drilling Act of 1819.
One of them, however, which succeeded in keeping its head, did not believe that a prosecution would succeed; and, as to the Privy Council, if Carson's name were removed, what about Londonderry and F.E.

Smith, Walter Long, and Bonar Law?
In fact, "it would be difficult to know where to stop."[55] It would have been.

The Privy Council would have had to be reduced to a committee of Radical politicians; and, if Carson had been prosecuted, room would have had to be found in the dock, not only for the whole Unionist Party, but for the proprietors and editors of most of the leading journals.

The Government stopped short of that supreme folly; but their impotence was the measure of the prevailing sympathy with Ulster.
FOOTNOTES: [50] _Annual Register_, 1913, p.

205.
[51] Ibid., p.