On one occasion, when something particularly outrageous had appeared with reference to him in some Radical paper, he delighted a public meeting by solemnly reading the passage, and when the angry cries of "Shame, shame" had subsided, saying with a smile: "This sort of thing is only the manure that fertilises my reputation with you who know me." And that was true.

If Home Rulers, whether in Ireland or in Great Britain, ever seriously thought of conciliating Ulster, as Mr.Redmond professed to desire, they never made a greater mistake than in saying and writing insulting things about Carson.

It only endeared him more and more to his followers, and it intensified the bitterness of their feeling against the Nationalists and all their works.

An almost equally short-sighted error on the part of hostile critics was the idea that the attitude of Ulster as exhibited at Craigavon and Balmoral should be represented as mere bluster and bluff, to which the only proper reply was contempt.

There never was anything further removed from the truth, as anyone ought to have known who had the smallest acquaintance with Irish history or with the character of the race that had supplied the backbone of Washington's army; but, if there had been at any time an element of bluff in their attitude, their contemptuous critics took the surest means of converting it into grim earnestness of purpose.