We have dealt in a note to a letter from
a correspondent with the problem of Ulster, but may point out here our regret that Mr. Bonar Law did not boldly meet the hints dropped by the Government speakers as to their willingness to exempt North-East Ulster and " pin them " to the addition of a now claim to the Bill framed in that sense. We note with astonishment that the Times, like our correspondent, seems to think that if the Unionist leader had done so he would have fallen into a trap laid for him by the Home Rulers. Surely this involves a radical misconception of the position. What Mr. Bonar Law might, and we hold should, have said was something of this kind: "The Government are bound on their own showing to exempt Ulster in order not only to pre• vent civil war, but also to prevent a violation of their own cardinal principle—the need of bowing to the will of the local majority. At the same time neither British nor Irish Unionists are going to give up their general hostility to the Bill on a
hundred other good grounds because the Government have made an evil measure a little less evil. The Government cannot ride off by declaring that they will not exempt North- East Ulster except at the price of the Unionists giving up their opposition to Home Rule."
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