Very well.
By that determination he drives you in the ultimate result to rely upon your own strength, and we must follow all that out to its logical conclusion....

That involves something more than that we do not accept Home Rule.

We must be prepared, in the event of a Home Rule Bill passing, with such measures as will carry on for ourselves the government of those districts of which we have control.

We must be prepared--and time is precious in these things--the morning Home Rule passes, ourselves to become responsible for the government of the Protestant Province of Ulster.

We ask your leave at the meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council, to be held on Monday, there to discuss the matter, and to set to work, to take care that at no time and at no intervening interval shall we lack a Government in Ulster, which shall be a Government either by the Imperial Parliament, or by ourselves." Here, then, was the first authoritative declaration of a definite policy to be pursued by Ulster in the circumstances then existing or foreseen, and it was a policy that was followed with undeviating consistency under Carson's leadership for the next nine years.