DAVE MA:NS8LL and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant throughout this our time of threatened calamity to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. And in the event of such a Parliament being forced upon us we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority. In sure confidence that God will defend the right we hereto subscribe our names. And further, we individually declare that we have not already signed this Covenant. Go save the King". The effect of these displays and manoeuvres was to convince the Liberal government that immediate Home Rule for the whole of Ireland would lead to bloodshed in Ireland, and popular alienation from their party in Britain, so they began to suggestion that Ulster or part of it might be partitioned from the rest of Ireland, at least temporarily. At this point the Irish politicians on both sides were divided .. Carson's strategy was that Home Rule would prove economically impossible with the exclusion of Ulster, so that to attain this exclusion would scupper the whole idea of Home Rule and maintain the union of all Ireland with Britain, which was his aim. The U.U.e. caucus, which was led by Sir James Craig, the millionaire son of a whiskey manufacturer, and R.D. Bates, were busy working out the economic and political feasibility of an Ulster separated from the rest of Ireland and maintaining economic and political union with Britain. The parliamentary nationalists were divided between a scheme under which Ulster would be temporarily excluded from Home Rule for six years and total rejection of any exclusions. The debate was rendered academic by the convenient outbreak of the First World War. The Home Rule Act was suspended until the end of the war, and the politicians were dispatched home to raise support for the British war effort. There was however a body of nationalists in the South of Ireland who saw the war as lreland's opportunity to break free from Britain. In response to the setting up of the Ulster Volunteer Force, sorne members of the Gaelic language association, the Gaelic League founded the Irish Volunteers, named after the 1780 force which had compelled the British government of the day to repeal the Catholic penal laws. The most prominent Gaelic Leaguers involved in its foundation were 48
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTExMDY2NQ==