In order to act upon this advice men needed to face a powerful combination of forces and much threatened unpopularity: they had to encounter the hostility of an able and vindictively conducted newspaper; they had to separate themselves politically from the united voice of their own hierarchy; they had to break away from the politician who for many years now had equalled Redmond in his influence in Ireland and surpassed him in popularity.

All of them were representative of constituents, all were living among those whom they represented; not a man of them but knew he would worsen his personal and political position by what he did.

Yet, for that is the true way to state it, they stood to their dead leader's policy.
It needs not to follow out in any detail the steps by which we reached the end of our labours.

In the upshot, the Ulster group of nineteen dissented from everything and joined in a report which renewed the demand for partition.

The Primate and the Provost signed a separate note declaring that a Federal Scheme based on the Swiss or Canadian system offered the only solution which could avoid the alternative choice between the coercion of Ulster and the partition of Ireland.