It was said of the Bourbons that they had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing and that was their downfall. The Ulster Unionists of the Stormont era learnt nothing and forgot nothing either and now Stormont is the biggest white elephant in the Western world.
Today's Ulster Unionists have had to pick themselves up, as the song says, dust themselves off and start all over again. They see themselves as a community under siege, fighting their corner against the pan-nationalists of what they continue to call "Sinn Fein-IRA", the SDLP and the Irish Government, with a British establishment that often seems indifferent, if not hostile, and a US administration that is under heavy Irish-American influence.
Ulster obduracy saw them through in 1912 but a different strategy may be required today. That, at any rate, is the view of Mr David Trimble, party leader, who outlined the stark choices to the conference delegates.
The Ulster Unionists are like the hapless character in The God- father film who was given an offer he could not refuse. As Mr Trimble pointed out, if they left the Stormont talks, a deal would be agreed or imposed in their absence.
Keep your veto over the existing process, he told them, or else you will be presented with a fait accompli cooked up by the backroom boys in Iveagh House, the NIO, Sinn Fein and the SDLP. Listen to your head and not your heart.
Mr Trimble got a standing ovation even before he spoke, which must have been very welcome to a man who has been under unremitting pressure and condemnation from other unionist parties for the past 11/2 years
He pressed all the required buttons. There would be no renegotiation of the Union. Nationalists would get a hearing on the question of identity but there would be no Trojan horse to trundle unionists into a united Ireland. If the Government wanted to press its territorial claim on Northern Ireland, it could "jolly well take it to an international court of law".
The MPs Martin Smyth and Willie Ross had been making dissident noises in recent months but their speeches to conference were generally Trimble-friendly. The Belfast city councillor, Mr Nelson McCausland, had spoken at a McCartney-Robinson anti-talks rally and he took the opportunity on Saturday to make his unhappiness known again.
Others did the same, most forcibly Mr Ian Crozier, a young delegate who had canvassed in the elections on the basis that Sinn Fein would not get into talks without IRA decommissioning and he charged that the leadership had since made a liar out of him.
But there was general relief afterwards among the leadership and its supporters. Voices had been raised but these had not set the conference alight and there was no wide-scale revolt among the delegates.
But even speakers who were generally favourable to the leadership, such as Mr John Hunter, spelt out the mood of the party as a whole in rejecting cross-Border institutions with executive powers, or CROBIEP as the anti-talks unionist, Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien, calls them.
There was quite a lot of favourable comment about the devolution of powers in Scotland and Wales. Nationalists would not be so enthusiastic unless there was something like CROBIEP on offer as well. There the difference lies.
The overall mood of the conference was one of unapologetic defence of the unionist position. They will stay in these talks but only because there is no alternative. They don't like being in the same room as Sinn Fein and remain deeply suspicious of most other participants.
Despite their massive campaign against the Anglo-Irish Agreement, the Maryfield secretariat is still in place and mainstream unionists are in no mood for another series of futile protests.
The memories of IRA violence remain fresh and many wounds are still unhealed. As yet there is little or no indication that the broad mass of unionists are prepared to acknowledge the hurt their community has inflicted on nationalists.
Unionists are still in defensive mode but there was an attempt to reach out across the divide by the party chairman, Mr Dennis Rogan, who recalled King George V's historic 1921 appeal to all Irish people to stretch out the hand of forbearance and conciliation. He also recalled Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg call for former adversaries to bind up the wounds of the past.
The most interesting and potentially significant moment of the conference occurred almost casually and without stage-management or preparation. During a panel discussion, the issue of whether Mr Gerry Adams should be "challenged" by UUP representatives on television came up. There was strong applause from the floor when one of the panellists, the Rev John Bach, said: "It's absolutely wrong. Of course he should be challenged."
Mr Reg Empey admitted the party leadership "may well be trailing behind opinion in our own community" on this issue. Something may indeed be stirring in the soul of Ulster.