The test, however, which he now put forward was whether or not the proposals satisfied Ulster: and he fixed upon the time-limit of six years as being wholly unacceptable.
Redmond, on the other hand, while declaring that the Government had gone to "the extremest limits of concession," said that the proposals had one merit: they would "elicit beyond doubt or question by a free ballot the real opinion of the people of Ulster." This indicated his conviction that if Home Rule really came the majority in Ulster would prefer to take their chances under it; the proposal of exclusion being merely a tactical manoeuvre to defeat Home Rule by splitting the Nationalists.
Its efficacy for that purpose was immediately demonstrated.

Mr.O'Brien followed Redmond with a virulent denunciation of "the one concession of all others which must be hateful and unthinkable from the point of view of any Nationalist in Ireland." Opposition from Mr.O'Brien and from Mr.
Healy was no new thing.

But by acceptance of these proposals the Nationalist leader made their opposition for the first time really formidable.

Telegrams rained in that March afternoon--above all on Mr.
Devlin, from his supporters in Belfast, who felt themselves betrayed and shut out from a national triumph which they had been the most zealous to promote.

From this time onward the position of Redmond personally and of his party as a whole was perceptibly weakened.