Now, they came forward with an offer to help in attaining our desire--quite frankly, against their own declared conviction that the Union was the best plan, but with an equally frank recognition that the majority was the majority and was honest in its intent.

The personality of the men reinforced the effect of this: Lord Oranmore, for instance, whom most of them had only known by anti-Home Rule speeches in the House of Lords, revealed himself as the friendliest of Irishmen, with the Irish love for a witty phrase.
This temperamental attitude was of help to Lord Midleton when on December 18th he expounded the position of himself and his friends in a very powerful argument, the more persuasive because the good will in his audience softened his habitual touch of contentiousness.

It had seemed to them, he said, that both in the Nationalist and Northern Unionist camp there was a tendency to consider dispositions out of doors and to conciliate certain antagonisms without considering whether they excited others.

He and his friends had determined to fix their minds solely on the Convention itself, and to pursue the purpose for which they were summoned of endeavouring after agreement within that body.

They were Unionists; but they had asked themselves what could be removed from the present system without disturbing the essence of Union; and in that effort they would go to the extremest limit in their power, without thought of conciliating opinions outside, and without any attempt to bargain.
On one point only he indicated that their scheme was tentative.