To admit and welcome the unity of Ireland was to give away Ulster's case.

To accept the Nationalist leader's utterance as sincere, still more to assume that Ireland as a whole would endorse it, was to weaken, if not to give away, Ulster's best argument, and from that hour to the end of the war Sir Edward Carson was most loyal to Ulster's interests.
Further, it is conceivable that by some who cheered it the speech may have been misunderstood.

Yet it is not probable that many who heard Redmond believed that in order to serve England he was flinging away Ireland's national claim, to the successful furtherance of which his whole life had been devoted.

The Unionist party as a whole certainly understood that to accept Redmond's offer in the spirit in which it was made meant accepting the principle of Home Rule: and on that afternoon in August they were not unready to accept it.

They felt, for the speech made them feel, that a great thing had happened.