As had been anticipated at Londonderry House, Mr. Asquith and some of his followers did their best to drive a wedge between the Ulstermen and the Southern Unionists, by contending that the former, in supporting the amendment, were deserting their friends. Mr. Balfour declared in answer to this that "nothing could relieve Unionists in the rest of Ireland except the defeat of the measure as a whole"; and a crushing reply was given by Mr. J.H. Campbell and Mr. Walter Guinness, both of whom were Unionists from the South of Ireland. Mr. Guinness frankly acknowledged that "it was the duty of Ulster members to take this opportunity of trying to secure for their constituents freedom from this iniquitous measure. It would be merely a dog-in-the-manger policy for those who lived outside Ulster to grudge relief to their co-religionists merely because they could not share it. Such self-denial on Ulster's part would in no way help them (the Southerners) and it would only injure their compatriots in the North."
Sir Edward Carson, in supporting the amendment, insisted that "Ulster was not asking for anything" except to be left within the Imperial Constitution; she "had not demanded any separate Parliament." He accepted the "basic principle" of the amendment, but would not be content with the four counties which alone it proposed to exclude from the Bill. He only accepted it, however, on two assumptions--first, that the Bill was to become law; and, second, that it was to be, as Mr. Asquith had assured them, part of a federal system for the United Kingdom. If the first steps were being taken to construct a federal system, there was no precedent for coercing Ulster to form part of a federal unit which she refused to join. He had been Solicitor-General when the Act establishing the Commonwealth of Australia was being discussed, and it never would have passed, he declared, "if every single clause had not been agreed to by every single one of the communities concerned." Ministers were always basing their Irish policy on Dominion analogies, but could anyone, Carson asked, imagine the Imperial Government sending troops to compel the Transvaal or New South Wales to come into a federal system against their will?