Mr.Lloyd George replied, as John Redmond expected--declaring that the Government were willing to give Home Rule at once to "the parts of Ireland which unmistakably demand it," but would be no party to placing under Nationalist rule people who were "as alien in blood, in religious faith, in traditions, in outlook from the rest of Ireland as the inhabitants of Fife or Aberdeen." No Liberal Minister had ever before so completely adopted the Ulster theory of two nations.

Taxed with the refusal to allow Ulster counties to declare by vote which group they belonged to, he declined to discuss "geographical limitations" at present, but indicated that if Irish members could accept the principle of separate treatment for two peoples, there were "ways and means by which it could be worked out." Suggestion of a Conference of Irishmen was thrown out, or of a Commission to discuss the details of partition.

Redmond, in replying, answered to this that "after experience of the last negotiations he would enter into no more negotiations." He warned the Government that the whole constitutional movement was in danger.

There were in Ireland "serious men, men of ability, men with command of money," who were bent on smashing it.
"After fifty years of labour on constitutional lines we had practically banished the revolutionary party from Ireland.

Now again, after fifty years, it has risen." The rest was a prophecy only too accurate: "If the constitutional movement disappears, the Prime Minister will find himself face to face with a revolutionary movement, and he will find it impossible to preserve any of the forms even of constitutionalism.