Mr. Balfour also referred to the anxiety expressed by Sir
William E wart, that the Ulstermen should not be goaded. into acts of violence, and added his entreaties to those of the Ulster leaders that no spark should be allowed to fall on the mass of combustible material which the proposals of the Government had now concentrated in the North of Ireland. He thought the most effective message he could send to Ulster- men to induce them to restrain their indignant feelings was the assurance that England had not deserted them, and would not desert them, and that the prospect of the passing of the disastrous measure which Mr. Gladstone had proposed, was, in his belief, very remote indeed. We believe that this is so. But we must add oar conviction that to allow even Parlia- ment to vote away its constituencies to a quite separate Parliament to which they are incapable of feeling any tincture of loyalty, ought not to be possible without the express assent of the population concerned.
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