The air was full of suggestions, the most notable of which was put forward by the veteran constitutional lawyer, Mr.Frederic Harrison, who proposed that Ulster should be governed by a separate committee elected by its own constituencies, with full legislative, administrative, and financial powers, subject only to the Crown and the Imperial Parliament.[61] Unionists did not believe that the Liberal Cabinet would be allowed by their Nationalist masters to offer anything so liberal to Ulster; nor did that Province desire autonomy for itself.

They believed that the chief desire of the Government was not to appease Ulster, but to put her in a tactically indefensible position.

This fear had been expressed by Lord Lansdowne as long before as the previous October, when he wrote privately to Carson in reference to Lord Loreburn's suggested Conference that he suspected the intention of the Government to be "to offer us terms which they know we cannot accept, and then throw on us the odium of having obstructed a settlement." Mr.Walter Long had the same apprehension in March 1914 as to the purpose of Mr.Asquith's unknown proposals.

Both these leaders herein showed insight and prescience, for not only Mr.Asquith's Government, but also that which succeeded it, had resort on many subsequent occasions to the manoeuvre suspected by Lord Lansdowne.
On the other hand, there were encouraging signs in the country.

To the intense satisfaction of Unionists, Mr.C.F.G.