But he realized, as his countrymen did not, that such a claim could never hope for cash settlement, that its value was as an argument for the concession of freedom upon generous terms.

How could he urge that the terms proposed were ungenerous, when Great Britain offered to pay the cost of all Irish services--amounting to a million and a half more than Irish revenue--and to provide over and above this a yearly grant of half a million, dropping gradually, it is true, but still remaining at a subsidy of two hundred thousand a year so long as the finance arrangements of the Bill lasted?
Nevertheless, these arrangements were bad ones, and this was where the Bill was most vulnerable on its merits; for self-government without the control of taxation and expenditure is at best an unhopeful experiment.
But in the public mind at large only one difficulty bulked big, and that was Ulster.

Men on both sides began to be uneasy about the consequences of what was happening, and this temper reflected itself in the House.

On New Year's Day 1913, at the beginning of the Report stage, Sir Edward Carson moved the exclusion of the province of Ulster.

His speech was in a new tone of studied conciliation.