I

The Longford election had in reality been not merely a symptom, but an event of great importance. It was a notice of dismissal to the Parliamentary party. There was no reason to suppose anything specially unfavourable to us in the local conditions. Neither candidate made a special appeal to the electors; nor was the constituency in any sense a stronghold of Sinn Fein. The fact was that the country as a whole had ceased to believe in the Parliamentary party as an efficient machine for obtaining the national ends. The organization of the United Irish League had lost touch with the young; the main support we had lay in the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which many Nationalists disliked on principle because it was limited to Catholics. What had riot yet disappeared up till July 1916, though it was threatened, was belief in the principle of constitutional action as against revolutionary methods.

Willie Redmond, who never lacked instinct, and whose separation from party politics by conditions of service gave him a vantage-ground of detachment, reached a shrewd view of the position before the Longford vacancy occurred. He pressed upon his brother that we should all retire, saying plainly that we had been too long in possession, and should hand over the task of representing Ireland at Westminster to younger men. His association with the Volunteer Committee, brief though it was, had made him more aware than most of our colleagues how wide was the estrangement between us and the new Ireland; but it also taught him to believe that many of the men whom he had met there would be willing to take up the task on constitutional lines.

This proposal never came before the party. But after Longford had given its decision, it was proposed that we should accept the verdict in general and resign in a body. Those who put forward the suggestion felt that some drastic action was needed to force upon Ireland the responsibility for a clear choice between the two courses, constitutional and unconstitutional. Redmond, as Chairman, advised strongly against this. He said that it would be a lack of courage: that one defeat or two defeats should not turn us from our course. But it is clear to me that he welcomed the Convention as another and a better means of effecting the same end of replacing the existing Parliamentary party by another body of men.

On May 21st Mr. Lloyd George’s speech gave the go-by completely to the detailed proposal for a settlement on the basis of partition to which the Cabinet including Sir Edward Carson had consented. It dealt only with the alternative plan suggested in the conclusion of the published letter. The Government had decided to invite Irishmen to put forward their own proposals for the government of their country, he said. This invitation was directed to a Convention not merely of political parties, although they must all be represented the followers of Redmond, of Mr. O’Brien, the Ulster Unionists, the Southern Unionists, “and he hoped also the Sinn Feiners as well.” But in the main it was to consist of “representatives of the local governing bodies, of the Churches, of the trade unions, of the commercial interests, of educational interests”; it was to be “a real representation of Irish life and activity in all their leading branches.” It was to be pledged in advance to no conclusions except one, and that was only indicated by implication. “If substantial agreement should be reached as to the character and scope of the Constitution for the future government of Ireland within the Empire” (these three words were the limitation), Government would “accept the responsibility for taking all the necessary steps to enable the Imperial Parliament to give legislative effect to the conclusions of the Convention.”

A recommendation was added, amounting to a direction, that the Convention should sit with closed doors and publish nothing of its proceedings till their conclusion.

Nothing was said to define the all-important words “substantial agreement.” But the Prime Minister laid grave emphasis on the importance of a settlement for the purpose of the war. The limitation upon Ulster’s claim was plainly conceived by him to lie in Ulster’s sense of an Imperial necessity. “The Empire cannot afford uncured sores that sap its vigour. The entire strength of Great Britain and the whole-hearted support of Ireland are essential to victory.” He appealed “to Irishmen of all faiths, political and religious, and especially to the patriotic spirit of Ulster, to help by healing.”

Redmond, in following him, assumed that there would be concurrence from all sections of Irishmen. It must be “a free assembly” no proposal must be barred in advance: it must be representative of “every class, creed and interest” and in recapitulating these, he added the Irish peers. In regard to political parties and bodies, as such, he desired a very limited representation. The United Irish League, “the militant official organization of the Irish party,” should be unrepresented, and he advised the same in regard to other purely political organizations and societies. For the Irish party itself he asked a representation only equal in number to that given to Irish Unionists. The Cork Independents must have what they considered a full and adequate number; and for Sinn Fein he asked “a generous representation.”

Then he added:

“So anxious am I that no wreckers, mere wreckers, should go on that body I do not believe any men would go on as wreckers, but any men who would be regarded by their opponents as going on it as wreckers that on the question of personalities, I would be very glad, if there are protagonists on one side or the other who during the last twenty or thirty years or more have been engaged in the struggle and who there have been faults on both sides have done things and said things which have left bitter memories, I should be very glad that such men should be left off. If there were any feeling that I am such a man myself, I would be only too willing and happy to stand down” (he was interrupted by cries of “No, No”) “if by doing so I could promote harmony.”

In this there was a genuine expression of the desire which governed his whole conduct in the Convention, to get away from the old lines with their old traditional antagonisms, and refer the solution not to Irish politicians but to Ireland as a whole. What followed in his speech gave positive development to the self-denying ordinance which he had proposed for the party machines. He asked for a nominated element first, to make sure that men obviously suitable, who none the less might not happen to be elected, should find a place: and secondly, to increase still further the Unionist representation.

He added once more a plea for quick action; dilatoriness had had much to do, he said, with the Government’s late failures in Ireland. But, if prompt steps were taken on the path outlined, he would, in spite of all that had come and gone, face the new venture with good heart. Yet even in his confidence there was the pathetic accent of one who feels need to bid defiance to despair.

“Although I know I lay myself open perhaps to ridicule as too sanguine a prophet, I have some assured hope that the result may be blessed for Ireland as for the Empire. ... The life of a politician, especially of an Irish politician, is one long series of postponements and compromises and disappointments and disillusions.... Many of our cherished ideals, our ideals of complete, speedy and almost immediate triumph of our policy and of our cause, have faded, some of them almost disappeared. And we know that it is a serious consideration for those of us who have spent forty years at this work and now are growing old, if we have to face further postponements. For my part, I feel we must not shrink from compromise. If by this Convention which is now proposed we can secure substantial agreement amongst our people in Ireland, it will be worth all the heartburnings and postponements and disappointments and disillusions of the last thirty or forty years.”

The omens were not favourable to this storm-beaten courage. When he sat down, Sir John Lonsdale rose to reiterate on behalf of the Ulster Unionists that they “could not and would not be driven into a Home Rule Parliament” and that they relied absolutely on the pledges that they should not be coerced. Mr. William O’Brien followed. After years of advocating settlement by conference among Irishmen, he condemned this proposal as coming six or seven years too late, and as defective in its machinery, in that it proposed a large body of men: “A dozen Irishmen of the right stamp” would be the proper Conference; and the proposal of partition should be barred out in advance. If the experiment were tried now and failed, the failure would “kill any reasonable hope in our time of reconstructing the constitutional movement upon honest lines.” Ireland is always fruitful in Cassandras who do not lack power to assist in the fulfilment, of their ill-bodings, and this speech foreshadowed Mr. O’Brien’s intention to abstain. Sir Edward Carson and Mr. Devlin gave the debate a more promising tone: but it was difficult for anybody to be sanguine.

Preparation, discussion, went on in private and in public. It was soon indicated that Sinn Fein would take no part, on the double ground, first, that the Convention was not elective in any democratic sense, for all the representatives of local bodies had been elected before the war, before the rebellion, before the new movement took hold in Ireland; and secondly, that it was committed in advance to a settlement within the Empire. On the other hand, Redmond was flooded with correspondence concerning candidates for membership of the new body. There was also the question of a meeting-place. The Royal College of Surgeons offered its building with its theatre, possessing admirable facilities. But Trinity College offered the Regent House. The conveniences here were in all ways inferior; but Trinity was the nearest place to the old Parliament House; much more than that, it was the most historic institution in Ireland. Its political associations of the past and the present were strangely blended and Redmond liked it none the less for that. He decided to press for acceptance of this offer.

Then across the current of all our thought came the news of the Battle of Messines. Troops had been massing for some time on the sector of line which the Irish Divisions had now held since the previous October; and the day was plainly in sight which had been expected since spring, when they were to try and carry positions in front of which so much blood had been vainly shed. On June 7th, at the clearing of light, all was in readiness: the Ulstermen and ours still in the centre of the attack from Spanbroekmolen to Wytschaete. Just before the moment fixed, men could see clearly: in half a minute all was blotted out. The eighteen huge land-mines in whose shafts our second line had been so often billeted were now at last exploded and the sky was full of powdered earth, with God knows what other fragments. In that darkness the troops went over.

For once staff-work and execution harmonized perfectly; the success was complete, and the sacrifice small. The Irish raced for their positions, and no one could say who was first on the goal. News of the victory quickly reached London great news for Ireland. Australians and New Zealanders had their full share in it, but the shoulder to shoulder advance of the two Irish Divisions caught everyone’s imagination: it was Ireland’s day.

Then came through the message that Willie Redmond had fallen.

Ever since his illness in the previous summer he had been taken away from his work as company commander; at his age fifty-six he was probably the oldest man in any capacity with the Division. A post was found for him on General Hickie’s divisional staff which made him specially responsible for the comforts of the men, in trenches and out of trenches. In the battles on the Somme he entreated hard to be let rejoin his battalion, but General Hickie issued peremptory orders which did not allow him to pass the first dressing-station. Here, indeed, he was under terrible shell fire and saw many of his comrades struck down; but he was not content. For this new battle he insisted that he must be in the actual advance. If he were refused leave, he said he would break all discipline and take it. He was permitted to be with the third attacking wave; but he slipped forward and joined the first, on the right, where the line touched the Ulstermen. So it happened that when he fell, struck by two rifle bullets, the stretcher-bearers who helped him and carried him down to the dressing-station were those of an Ulster regiment. He was brought back to the hospital in the convent at Locre, familiar to all of us by many memories; for the nuns kept a restaurant for officers in the refectory, and he and I had dined there more than once with leading men of the Ulster Division. His wounds were not grave; but he had overtaxed himself, and in a few hours he succumbed to shock. It was the death that he had foreseen, that he had almost desired a death that many might have envied him. He had said more than once since the rebellion that he thought he could best serve Ireland by dying; and in the sequel, so deep was the impression left by his death that it seemed at times as if his thought had been true.

Yet one aspect of it was overlooked by many the loss inflicted on his brother, the Irish leader. It was not merely that Redmond lost the sole near kinsman of his generation; he lost in him the closest of those comrades who had been allied with him in all the stages of his life’s fight. The veterans of the old party had been vanishing rapidly from the scene; name succeeded name quickly on our death-roll. This death left Redmond lonely, and sorely stricken in his affections. But it did more. It deprived him of a counsellor, and perhaps the only counsellor he had who temperamentally shared his own point of view. More especially now in the war, when the leader’s wisdom in giving the lead which he had given began to be gravely questioned even by his own supporters, it was invaluable for him to have backing from one who had taken the war as part of his life’s creed who knew no hesitancies, no reserves in his conviction that the right course had been followed, for the right thing was to do the right. Finally and chiefly, Willie Redmond was the only man who could break through his brother’s constitutional reserve and could force him into discussion. In the months that were to come such a man was badly needed. The loss of him meant to John Redmond a loss of personal efficiency. Sorrow gave a strong grip to depression on a brooding mind which had always a proneness to melancholy, which was now linked with a sick body, and which lived among disappointments and grief and the sense of rancorous dislike in men who once thought it a privilege to cheer him on his passing.

Add to all this that Redmond’s one hope for Ireland now lay in the Convention, and that he collated with good reason on his soldier brother’s influence there as no man could fail to do who had seen the effect which his last speech produced upon the House of Commons.

No doubt, however, part of the service which Willie Redmond rendered to Ireland in dying lay in the sympathy which he conciliated to his leader in whom men saw, rightly, not only his nearest kinsman, but the representative of the principles for which the soldier-politician died. The sympathy was genuine and it was widespread; yet so reserved was John Redmond that few, I think, guessed how deeply the blow had struck home. Still less did they realize how much was meant by the bereavement which followed immediately. Pat O’Brien, who had been through all vicissitudes the faithful and devoted helper of his friend and leader, was suddenly prostrated by a stroke. He came down to the House again; he could not keep away from the place of his duty, where for a quarter of a century he had scarcely missed one division in a hundred, where he had kept watch for Redmond like the most trusty sheep-dog; but death was written over him and it came in a few days. He was the one friend, I believe, whom Redmond would have taken with him to Aughavanagh after Willie Redmond’s death. Now, Aughavanagh, which had been a place of rest, was a place of intense loneliness. Yet to Aughavanagh Redmond had withdrawn himself, like a wounded creature; and from Aughavanagh he came to Dublin for Pat O’Brien’s funeral in Glasnevin. Then, and then only in his lifetime people saw him publicly break down; he had to be led away from the grave.

Meanwhile, he was beset by ceaseless correspondence concerning the numbers and composition of the assembly to which the British Government on his suggestion had decided to entrust so great a charge. But a startling political event indicated only too plainly how much belated that decision had been.

Directly the proposal for a Convention had been disclosed, with its attempt to create a new atmosphere, it was put to the Government that Sinn Fein could not be expected to take part in the Convention while its leaders were in jail or under detention as suspects. This representation came from several quarters, and it was soon publicly pleaded by the Nationalist party; but it was, to my knowledge, immediately put forward by English members of Parliament, the prime mover being a Unionist soldier, Major J.W. Hills, M.P. As usual, the advantage of prompt action was urged; and as visual, the concession was delayed till it had lost its grace and seemed to be extracted. Sinn Fein’s opinion in all these days was hardening against the Convention, which was represented as a mere trick to gain time and to conciliate American good will by an unreal offer.

When the prisoners were released, a new personage immediately came into the public eye. It was certain that one of them would be nominated to contest the vacancy in East Clare left by Willie Redmond’s death; the choice fell on Mr. de Valera; and the world learnt that in these months while the imprisoned Sinn Feiners had been discussing their plans for the future for the right of association as political prisoners had been conceded to them this young man had been recognized by his fellows as the leading spirit. Ireland as a whole knew nothing of him. He was the son of a Southern American and a county Limerick woman; scholarly, a keen Gaelic Leaguer, by profession a teacher of mathematics. In the rebellion he had held Boland’s bakery, a large building covering the approaches to Dublin from Kingstown by rail; he had been the last of the leaders to surrender, and had earned high opinions by his conduct in these operations. This was the Sinn Fein candidate for East Clare a county where “extreme” men had always been numerous.

The view was expressed that he should have been opposed by one who took up the cause where Willie Redmond left it by a soldier who was a strong Nationalist and strongly identified with the Parnellite tradition. It was decided that we should stand a better chance if constitutional Nationalism were represented by a Dublin lawyer with close personal ties to the constituency. How it would have gone had a soldier been put up, no man can say; but it could not have gone worse. Mr. de Valera won by a majority of five thousand. He was a stranger, but he stood for an ideal. The alternative ideal which was John Redmond’s and Willie Redmond’s had never been put before the electors. The election was, rightly, taken as a repudiation of Redmond’s policy; but in it Redmond’s policy had gone undefended.

The newly elected Sinn Fein leader was very prominent in these days, and a good deal of his eloquence was spent in ridicule of the Convention. That body was certainly starting its task under the most unpromising auspices.

II

The first meeting was fixed for July 25. On the evening before, Redmond came up and there was an informal discussion between the Nationalist members of Parliament and the Catholic Bishops. There were four of each group. Five members had been allowed to the party and as many to the Ulstermen. Redmond was not present at the meeting when selection was made, but he recommended a list, consisting in addition to himself of Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin, and Mr. Clancy, K.C. the latter having been always his most trusted adviser in all points of draftsmanship and constitutional law. My name was added in the place which should have been his brother’s, as representing Irish troops.

Mr. Dillon, however, thought it better not to serve, though Redmond pressed him very strongly to do so. He considered he could best help the Convention from outside its ranks. Mr. O’Brien and Mr. Healy had, on different grounds, come to the same conclusion, so that we lacked the assistance of three commanding personalities in Irish life, though we were thereby freed from some dangers of personal friction. A vacant place was thus left in our five, and since the Ulster party had decided to put in only two members of Parliament, filling the other places with local men, it was thought well that we should take a similar representative, Mr. Harbison, who spoke for the county of Tyrone.

Of the four representatives of the hierarchy, Archbishop Harty of Cashel had always been a downright outspoken supporter of the Parliamentary party. He had publicly denounced the rebellion both on civil and on moral grounds. But he had never been prominently concerned with political affairs as such; nor had the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr. MacRory, a man young for his office and not long in it. He had been chosen, no doubt, to guard the special interests of Catholicism in the north-east corner. The others were of a very different stamp; no two in Ireland had a better right to the name of statesmen. Dr. O’Donnell, the Bishop of Raphoe, had been for many years officially one of the treasurers of the United Irish League. Since the foundation of the Congested Districts Board, he had been one of its members, and served on the Dudley Commission which inquired into these regions. His native Donegal could show the traces of his influence in applying remedial measures to what was once its terrible poverty. Dr. Kelly, the Bishop of Ross, came from the extreme south of the same western coast-line; a keen student of finance and economics, he had been a member of the Primrose Committee on Financial Relations, and, before that, of Lord George Hamilton’s Commission on the Poor Law. His repute was great in his own order and outside his own order. In any assembly these two brains would have been distinguished.

The question which was discussed among us chiefly on that evening concerned the choice of a chairman. Government had originally proposed to nominate this all-important officer, but having failed to solve the interminable difficulties, had left it to the assembly. Much trouble was anticipated by the public. On the whole, our conclusion pointed, but not decisively, to the choice which was eventually made. Redmond swept aside peremptorily the suggestion of himself.

Next day we assembled some ninety persons. The main bulk consisted of local representatives thirty-one chairmen of County Councils, one only having declined to serve. Two of these, Mr. O’Dowd and Mr. Fitzgibbon, were members of our party. There were eight representatives of the Urban Councils, over and above the Lord Mayors of Dublin, Belfast and Cork and the Mayor of Derry. Labour had seven representatives, one of whom, Mr. Lundon, representing the Agricultural Labourers’ Union of the South, was an Irish member of Parliament. One was a railway operative from Dublin; one a Catholic Trade-Unionist leader from Derry; the remaining four came from Belfast. Organized labour in Dublin and the Southern towns had endorsed Sinn Fein’s attitude and declined to recognize the Convention.

The Southern Unionist Group was led by Lord Midleton; with him were Lords Mayo and Oranmore, representing the Irish peers. The Irish Unionist Alliance had sent Mr. Stewart, a great land-agent, and Mr. Andrew Jameson (whose name, as someone said, was “a household word written in letters of gold throughout Ireland"). The Chambers of Commerce had their representatives from Dublin, Belfast and Cork.

In the Ulster group, Mr. Barrie, M.P., acted as leader, Lord Londonderry as secretary. Of the rest, Sir George Clark, chairman of Workman and Clark’s great shipbuilding yard, had been known to us in Parliament. A Scot by birth, with a life of thirty years spent in Belfast, during which time he had seen his business grow from two hundred hands to ten thousand, he knew nothing of Ireland but Belfast, and had no trace of Irish feeling. In this he stood alone; but unhappily no man carried more weight in Belfast with the possible exception of one whom few of us outside Ulster knew before we came to that body. Mr. Alexander McDowell was a solicitor by profession, the adviser of policy to all the business men of Belfast. From the first day of our meeting he stood out by sheer weight of brain and personality. He was to some of us the surprise of that assembly, and made us realize how little part we had in Ulster when the existence of such a man could be an unknown factor to us.

Mr. Pollock, President of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, was also new to us, and was destined to play a prominent part in our affairs. With the Catholic prelates sat the two Archbishops of the Church of Ireland Dr. Crozier and Dr. Bernard to both of whom the democratic constitution of their Church had given great experience in management of business and discussion. Dr. MacDermott, Moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, was the official head of his Church for the year only and had not equal knowledge of administration. An orator, with a touch of the enthusiast in his temperament, he was a simple and sympathetic figure; vehement in his political faith, yet responsive to all the human charities and deeply a lover of his country. There was no better representative there of Ulster, of the Ulster difficulty at once so separate from and so akin to the rest of Ireland.

The Government nominees included, as was only natural, the most personally distinguished group. First of them should be named the Provost of Trinity, Dr. Mahaffy, under whose aegis we assembled a great scholar and a great Irishman. He brought with him an element of independent unregimented political thought often freakish in expression, but based on a vast knowledge of men and countries. In a more practical sense, Lord MacDonnell and Lord Dunraven were our chief political theorists, devisers by temperament of constitutional machinery. Lord MacDonnell’s repute as an administrator, Lord Dunraven’s as a leading figure in the Land Conference, gave weight to whatever came from them. Lord Granard, who sat with them, was a Catholic peer who had commanded a battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment in the Tenth Division and had held offices in Mr. Asquith’s Government. He had now the brilliant idea of reopening for the period of the Convention one of the most beautiful eighteenth-century dwellings, Ely House, and making it a centre of hospitality and a meeting-place for friendly outside intercourse. Few more useful assistances were rendered to our purpose, and certainly none more pleasant.

Lord Desart, a distinguished lawyer, acted closely with Lord Midleton. Sir Bertram Windle, President of University College, was another of Government’s choices a man of science who was also very much a man of affairs. Another, far less of a debater, far more of a power, was Mr. William Martin Murphy, Chairman of the Dublin Tramways, a powerful employer of labour who had headed the fight against Larkin in 1913, and had been mainly responsible for the character of the employers’ victory. He was the owner of the most widely circulated Irish paper, the Irish Independent which stood in journalism for what Mr. Healy represented in Parliament an envenomed Nationalist opposition to the Parliamentary party.

Mr. Edward Lysaght, the son of a great manufacturer in South Wales, combined like his father an aptitude for literature and for business; he wrote books, he was concerned in a publishing venture, but he was chiefly interested in his farm in county Clare where he had voted for de Valera. He had been chosen deliberately as a link with Sinn Fein. It stamped an aspect of the Convention that he was the youngest man there for he would not have been noticeably young in the House of Commons. We were a middle-aged assembly. Another link, though not so explicit, with Republican Ireland was Mr. George Russell, “A.E.,” poet, writer on co-operative economics, a mystic, with all a mystic’s shrewdness, an orator with much personal magnetism. Lastly, there was Sir Horace Plunkett, perhaps the only member of the Convention except Redmond whose name would have occurred to every Irishman as indispensably necessary.

Two other personages should be noted. Mr. Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh, Chairman of the Carlow County Council, was by tradition and training a strong Unionist, by inheritance the representative of one of the old Irish princely families. He had been elected to the Vice-Chairmanship of his County Council while still a Unionist; later, he adhered to Lord Dunraven’s proposals of devolution, but finding no rest in a half-way house, came into full support of Redmond and for some time was a member of our party; by temperament deeply conservative, he was in no way separated by that from many of the ablest Nationalists, lay and ecclesiastic. As a speaker he had few equals in the Convention; no man there, indeed, except Redmond, could throw equal passion into the plea of urgency for a settlement, for I think no other man felt it with such earnestness.

Captain Doran, Chairman of the Louth Council, was on his way back to France when the summons to the Convention stopped him. A Methodist, he was divided by religion from his neighbours in County Louth: but that did not stop them from putting this prosperous and capable farmer, working his land on the most modern methods, into the Chair of their County Council. Before the war, when the Larne gun-running took place, he decided that matters looked serious, called his friends together and formed a company of Volunteers, who might be needed to protect themselves or to protect other Nationalists across the adjacent Ulster border. After the war had broken out and the Home Rule Act was passed, and Redmond had launched his appeal, this country farmer, then aged fifty, made his way to Mallow and asked General Parsons to accept him as a recruit. He was accepted, and very shortly given a commission in the Dublin Fusiliers. Out of his local Volunteers he took seventy-five into the Army with him. He was with the Sixteenth Division from its landing in France till after the day of Messines, commanding his company. All this gave him an authority in an assembly where all voices were in support of the war, and more particularly in an appeal to Ulster; and with this advantage went an unusual gift of frank and eloquent speech, linked with a fine idealism.

These were the main personal elements in the group that came together on July 25th Mr. Duke, the Chief Secretary, acting as temporary Chairman and Sir Francis Hopwood (soon to become Lord Southborough) having been brought over as Secretary. Mr. Duke having addressed us with an earnest suavity, we were told to select a Chairman: and on the motion of the Primate, Archbishop Crozier, this embarrassing task was delegated to a committee of ten, rapidly told off. We adjourned for lunch, and on reassembling found that a unanimous recommendation named Sir Horace Plunkett. The Ulstermen had expressed a willingness to accept Redmond. This he refused to discuss; but he was put into the Chair of the selecting committee. There was a recommendation also that Sir Francis Hopwood should be Secretary to the Convention. Both these proposals were welcomed, and we dispersed feeling that we had done a good day’s work.

There was, however, one set-off to it. When the Selection Committee had done its work, its members went off singly, and outside the gate of College a small group of ardent patriots were waiting, who mobbed Redmond on the way to his hotel. They were young, no doubt; but the Republican party claimed specially the youth of Ireland; and these lads expressed with a simple eloquence very much what was said by older and more articulate voices, uttering the same thought in print. It is worth while to illustrate here the attitude taken towards Redmond by much of Nationalist Ireland, for it profoundly influenced Redmond’s attitude and action in the Convention. I take, not casual and partisan journalism, but a passage from a book published by a distinguished Irish writer who had never publicly attached himself to any party. Mr. James Stephens was in Dublin during the insurrection; he wrote a book about his own personal observation of it, which as a record of observation is admirable. But when Mr. Stephens comes to emit opinions, here is what he has to say:

“Why it happened is a question that may be answered more particularly. It happened because the leader of the Irish party misrepresented his people in the English House of Parliament. On the day of the declaration of war between England and Germany he took the Irish case, weighty with eight centuries of history and tradition, and he threw it out of the window. He pledged Ireland to a particular course of action, and he had no authority to give this pledge and he had no guarantee that it would be met. The ramshackle intelligence of his party and his own emotional nature betrayed him and us and England. He swore Ireland to loyalty as if he had Ireland in his pocket and could answer for her. Ireland has never been disloyal to England, not even at this epoch, because she has never been loyal to England, and the profession of her National faith has been unwavering, has been known to every English person alive, and has been clamant to all the world beside.

“Is it that he wanted to be cheered? He could very easily have stated Ireland’s case truthfully, and have proclaimed a benevolent neutrality (if he cared to use the grandiloquent words) on the part of this country. He would have gotten his cheers, he would in a few months have gotten Home Rule in return for Irish soldiers. He would have received politically whatever England could have safely given him. But, alas! these carefulnesses did not chime with his emotional moment. They were not magnificent enough for one who felt that he was talking not to Ireland or to England, but to the whole gaping and eager earth, and so he pledged his country’s credit so deeply that he did not leave her even one National rag to cover herself with.

“After a lie, truth bursts out, and it is no longer the radiant and serene goddess we knew or hoped for it is a disease, it is a moral syphilis, and will ravage until the body in which it can dwell has been purged. Mr. Redmond told the lie, and he is answerable to England for the violence she had to be guilty of, and to Ireland for the desolation to which we have had to submit. Without his lie there had been no Insurrection, without it there had been at this moment, and for a year past, an end to the ‘Irish question.’ Ireland must in ages gone have been guilty of abominable crimes, or she could not at this juncture have been afflicted with a John Redmond.”

Politicians everywhere need to grow tough skins; but Redmond, though he was a veteran in politics, had no special gift that way. It was not pleasant for the Nationalist leader, when an assembly of Irishmen were called together to attempt the framing of a Constitution, to find himself the object, and the sole object, of public insult; it was not pleasant for him to feel that he might at any time be subjected to a renewal of this experience in the streets of Ireland’s capital, where he had been acclaimed as a hero so few years ago. It was not pleasant for him to feel that whenever he took up a book or paper dealing with Ireland he was liable to come upon some outburst such as the one which I have quoted. These things were pin-pricks, yet pin-pricks administered in public; and the mere effort to endure such things without wincing saps a man’s vitality. Behind them lay the definite repudiation of his policy in election after election for Kilkenny City followed the example of Clare and replaced Pat O’Brien by a Sinn Feiner. He was repudiated in the eye of the world, and repudiated with every circumstance of contumely. Plainly in the Convention he could no longer claim to speak for Ireland; that limited gravely his power to serve.

I think, however, that deep in his heart a resentment, all the more rankling because he gave it no voice, prompted him to be on his guard against lending the least colour of justification to any plea that in the Convention he had sought to pledge Ireland without due mandate or had committed anyone but himself. All that was personal in his resources his labour, his experience, his judgment, his eloquence all this he put unreservedly at the Convention’s service: but he abstained, and I think not only out of policy but as the result of silent anger, from making the least use of that authority which he still possessed and which he might easily have augmented. If in the result he took too little upon him, lest anyone should ever say he had taken too much, and if because he left too much to others Ireland was the loser, Ireland must bear not the loss only but the blame.

Many even of those who most agreed with his action had, under the influence and events of these years and of public comments on these events, lost confidence in him. Some weeks after the Convention assembled, a very able priest said to me that he regarded Redmond as “a worn-out man.” The genuineness of his regret was proved by the delight with which he heard what I could tell him. Never in my life did I find so much cause for admiration of Redmond as in the early stages which were in many ways the most important of our meetings. Never at any time did I know him exert so successfully his charm of public manner. At the second day’s meeting, when the new Chairman took up his place and function, there were several small points to be settled, each capable of creating friction; and it has to be admitted that in the technical aspect of his duty Sir Horace Plunkett did not shine: business quickly became involved. Fortunately he was of a temper to welcome help, and it was quickly to hand. Archbishop Crozier showed himself to be accomplished, resourceful, and most tactful on all points of procedure: and Redmond then for the first time did with extraordinary skill what he had to do at many stages later. By a series of questions to the Chair he suggested rather than recommended a way of clearing the involved issue; and all this was done with a precision of phrase which was none the less exact because it was easy, and with a dignity which was none the less impressive because it had no pretence to effect. His mastery both of the form and substance of procedure was conspicuous. One of the ablest among the Southern Unionists said to me in these days: “He is superb: he does not seem able to put a word wrong.”

I think that the secret of his happiness of manner lay simply in this, that within the Convention he was happy. There was a note in it that I never felt in the House of Commons, even when he was at his best. There he always spoke as if almost a foreigner, no matter among how familiar faces. Here he was among his own countrymen, and for the first time in his life in an assembly in no way sectional. For from the first it was plain that, by whatever means, there had been gathered a compendium of normal, ordinary Irish life: farmer, artisan, peer, prelate, landlord, tenant, shopkeeper, manufacturer all were there in pleasantly familiar types. The atmosphere was unlike that of a political gathering; it resembled rather some casual assemblage where all sorts of men had met by accident and conversed without prejudice. Everybody met somebody whom he had known in some quite different relation of life and with whom he had never looked to be associated in any such task as the framing of a Constitution. It was all oddly haphazard, full of interest and surprises; all of us were a little out of our bearings, but much disposed to reconnoitre in the spirit of friendly advance.

After the first day of Sir Horace Plunkett’s chairmanship there was an adjournment of something like a fortnight to give the Chairman and secretariat time for preparation: and in this interval a plan of action was formed. The object in view was to avoid the danger of an immediate break and to give play to the reconciling influences. It was decided to begin by a prolonged process of general discussion, in which men could express their minds freely without the necessity of coming to an operative decision on any of the controversial points, until the value of each could be assessed in relation to the possibility of a general agreement.

The plan adopted was to discuss, without division taken, the schemes which had been submitted by members of the Convention and by others. Members would propose and expound their own projects: for the exposition of the others some member must make himself responsible.

At this “presentation stage” and at all stages, Redmond absolutely declined to put forward a plan in his own name. This was not only from temperamental reasons: there was an official obstacle. He was an individual member of the Convention: but he was Chairman of the Irish party, pledged not to bind it without its consent. He felt, no doubt, that any detailed proposal from him would be taken as binding the party, whom he could not consult without bringing them into the secrets of the Convention.

But this attitude of self-abnegation was pushed very far by him, and perhaps too far. In his early utterances he deprecated all official recognition of sections. Yet from the moment when committees came to be appointed this recognition was claimed; and from the first the Ulster group maintained a compact organization. They had their own chairman, Mr. Barrie, and their secretary; they secured a committee-room for their own purposes; they voted solidly as one man. All this, though we did not know it at first, was dictated by the conditions of their attendance. They were pledged to act simply as delegates, who must submit every question of importance to an Advisory Committee in Belfast behind which again was the Ulster Unionist Council. They had therefore no freedom of action and were of necessity extremely guarded in speech.

The Southern Unionists, including the representatives of the Irish peers, were also organized as a group; but they came to the Convention with much fuller powers. They felt themselves bound to consider, and in certain conditions to consult, those whom they represented; but they were free to originate suggestions, and individually each man expressed his own view. But they too had their meeting-place and their frequent consultations.

The handful of Labour men also met and discussed action, though they were not organized as a group and did not feel pledged to a joint course. Each, according to his own lights, represented the interests of Labour. Still, they met.

The only group which had no common centre of reunion was that of the Nationalists a majority of the whole assembly. This included the representatives of the Irish party and the County and Urban Councillors, all of whom had been returned as its supporters. It included also the four representatives of the hierarchy, every one of whom had been either actually or potentially a part of Nationalist Conventions, and of whom three had been most prominent supporters of the general organization.

But a difficulty existed in the presence of other personages who were in general support of us, but who outside the Convention belonged to a different category. Lord Dunraven was a Home Ruler, but had been no supporter of the Irish party. Lord MacDonnell stood much nearer to us, but was a power in his own right and had never been a party politician. Mr. Lysaght had voted against us in Clare. Mr. Russell had very often attacked the party on aspects of its general action. Above all, there was Mr. W.M. Murphy, who, like Mr. Healy, had been at one time a member of the Irish party, and whose paper had for long been in nominal support of its purposes, but who had throughout recent years done more than all forces together to discredit and weaken its influence.

All of these five men were Government nominees, as were also Lord Granard and Sir Bertram Windle, who in different ways gave Redmond complete and most useful backing. It would have been possible to call together a group consisting of men who had been members of the national organization which would have excluded all these and included the Bishops; but Redmond probably felt it would be ungracious to do this. His chief desire was to avoid all recognition of party and still more of partisan machinery. His conclusion was to do nothing; and it was a conclusion to which he was prone at all times when he did not see his way clear. This temperamental disinclination to take any action which might create difficulties was in these days at its height with him. Since the spring his usually perfect health had been failing; he suffered from the physical inertia which accompanies the growth of a fatal disease; and sorrow upon sorrow, rebuff upon rebuff, had weakened the resilience of his mind. It was not that he lacked courage or confidence in his own judgment; but he was bound as a statesman to make allowance for the estimate which others, his followers, would put upon that judgment when he declared it. Sensitive by nature, he was deeply aware of failure which had resulted from the most disparaging of causes not flat rejection, but belated, half-hearted and blundering adoption, of whatever course he had proposed. He overrated, I am sure, the extent to which his personal position had been depreciated in the minds of those who were there. It was true, as the event was to prove, that he could no longer count on unquestioning support of any policy simply on the ground that he advocated it; but any opinion which he presented would have been commended not only by the cogency of his argument but by an old esteem for his wisdom, and, above and beyond this, by a personal feeling Men would have inclined to his side not for the argument’s sake only, but for his sake.

There was felt, too, precisely at the moment when it mattered most, the defect in his quality as leader. He lacked the personal touch. It was not that he would not, but that he could not, put himself into contact with the individual minds of men. He owed it, I think, to the rank and file to give them more of his guidance than they actually received. He was a genial presence when they met; but of confidential discussion upon details I am sure that nothing passed. Had he called the group together, had he spoken his mind to them collectively, in confidence, things would in all ways have been better. But there was ingrained in him a sort of shyness, a repugnance to force his view on others by argument, an indisposition to controversy, which was his limitation; and all this was at this time accentuated by the hurt sense that there would be always in men’s minds a memory, not of the hundred times when his wisdom had amply justified itself, but of recent occasions when he had advised them and the result was not what he foretold.

To sum up, then, this criticism what he said and did publicly in the Convention could hardly by stretch of imagination have been bettered. But outside its sessions he did not handle his team. On the balance, probably, he thought it better to leave them to their own devices; but his temperament weighed in that decision. As a result, the County Councillors and other local representatives used to hold meetings of their own. They were shrewd and capable men; but in the matters with which we had to deal the most skilled direction was necessary; and there was never a man more capable of giving them guidance out of a lifetime’s experience than was Redmond, nor one from whom they would have more willingly accepted instruction.

Discussion in the Convention itself was not of great value for the education of opinion, because men naturally were reluctant to get up and state precisely their individual difficulties, which in a confidential interchange of views might have been shown to proceed from some defect in comprehension. The chief value in the debates lay in what they revealed rather than what they imparted. One fact was salient. No Nationalist was prepared to recommend acceptance of the Home Rule Act as it stood, though some of its most vehement assailants adopted great parts of its framework. Broadly speaking, Nationalists wanted for Ireland the powers which were possessed by a self-governing Dominion, but were content to leave all control of defence to the Imperial authority and did not press any demand for a local militia. On the other hand, there was strong insistence on the right of an Irish Parliament to have complete power of taxation within its jurisdiction.

It was manifest that the financial clauses of the existing Act would no longer apply. They were framed in view of a situation which found Ireland contributing ten millions in taxation and costing twelve to administer. Now, less than half the taxation paid the cost of all Irish services and the balance went towards the war.

It was also evident that Nationalists were prepared to make concessions to the minority quite inconsistent with the current democratic view of what a Constitution should be. The Bishop of Raphoe, for instance, expressed willingness to have the Irish peers as an Upper House. Lord Midleton, however, for the Southern Unionists, insisted that those whom he spoke for must have a voice in the House of Commons however they got it; and there was general desire to give it them, even by methods which no one could justify for general application.

In short, it became increasingly clear as the debates proceeded that we could come to an arrangement with Unionists if Lord Midleton represented Unionism. But he did not. Ulster was there; and the Ulster men made it plain that their business was to hear suggestions, not to put them forward. Two facts, however, emerged about Ulster’s attitude. The first was that in coming to the Convention the Ulstermen had expected to negotiate on the basis of taking the Home Rule Act as the maximum Nationalist demand. The only compromise which they had contemplated was a mean term between the provisions of that Act and Ulster’s demand for a continuance of the legislative Union so far as Ulster was concerned. The second was that Belfast regarded as ruinous to its interests any possibility of a tariff war with Great Britain, and believed that if Ireland were given the power to fix its own customs duties the dominant farming interest would seek to find revenue by new taxation on imports. Hence, the proposal to give Ireland full fiscal powers could not be acceptable to Ulster. Here lay the main rock in our course.

As the discussion proceeded, one category of proposals was summarily dealt with those which contemplated the setting up of some provincial authority intermediate between the central Parliament, which all postulated, and the existing local bodies in the counties. This policy did not lack advocates. But the County Councillors were solid against it: evidently their private meeting discussed and decided against an expedient which they held would detract from the dignity of the central Parliament and from the dignity of the County Councils. Those who defended it as a plan which might meet Ulster’s difficulty got no backing from Ulster; that group said neither for nor against it. In the rest of the assembly there was a strong feeling against anything that looked like partition or might in public be called partition. Several of us had thought in advance that this was the most likely path to the solution; and looking back, I think it ought to have been much more fully explored. But encouragement was lacking.

Another anticipation proved illusory. We all realized that in the circumstances Ireland could come to a financial arrangement with Great Britain on easier terms than at any time in her history; that to settle at once would be highly profitable; and more particularly, that we could probably secure the completion of land purchase as part of the bargain. It was thought that this argument would appeal to the commercial sense of Ulster. We were met by a resolute reiteration that Ulster considered it Ulster’s duty and Ireland’s duty to take a full share, equally with the rest of the United Kingdom, in all the consequences of the war even if it cost them their last shilling; and Ulster speakers denounced our argument as a bribe. Some Nationalists were inclined to discount these protestations, yet I see no reason to doubt their sincerity. At all events, no one disputed that it was to Ireland’s interest financially that a settlement should be made.

It is quite unnecessary to summarize here in any detail the course of these general discussions in full Convention, which began on August 21st. One thing, however, resulted from them on which too much emphasis cannot be laid. In the process of “exploring each other’s minds,” as the phrase went, we came to know and to like one another. Later in the year, a friend of mine, high placed in the Ulster Division, but not an Ulsterman by upbringing or sympathy, came home from France. He told me that the main impression on the minds of Ulster delegates had been made by the Nationalist County Councillors. They had expected noisy demagogues; they had found solid, substantial business men, many of them with large and prosperous concerns, all of them rather too silent than too vocal, and all of them most good-humoured in their tolerance of dissent. What Willie Redmond had foretold in his last speech was coming true: Irishmen brought into contact with one another in the Convention, as other Irishmen had been brought into contact in the trenches, and no longer kept apart by those unhappy severances which run through ordinary Irish life, came under the influence of that fundamental fellowship, deeper than all divergence of politics or creed, which draws our people into a sense of a common bond.

The desire to bring delegates together in friendly social intercourse had shown itself in many quarters. The Viceregal Lodge pressed invitations on us, and Redmond, though in the circumstances he himself would go to no entertainment anywhere, expressed his wish that Nationalists should alter their traditional attitude and accept what was offered in so friendly a spirit. But the first place where we met as a body with informal ease was at the Mansion House as guests of the Lord Mayor a popular figure in our assembly.

Next day the Lord Mayor of Belfast rose at the adjournment to express all our thanks, and to insist that there should be a session in Belfast, where he could return the compliment. Immediately, there came another proposal for a similar visit to the South of Ireland. We went to Belfast at the beginning of September, and the attitude of the Ulster members, which had till then been somewhat guarded and aloof, changed into that of the traditional Irish hospitality. They showed us their great linen mills and other huge manufactories; they showed us the shipyards, in which the frames of monster ships lay cradled in gigantic gantries, works of architecture as wonderful in their vast symmetry as any cathedral, and having the beauty which goes with any perfect design combining lightness and strength. Perhaps the most impressive sight of all was the disbandment of workmen from the yards. Endless lines of empty tramcars drawn up on the quay awaited the turn-out of some ten thousand artisans, who streamed past where we stood assembled; and as the crowds swept along, all these eyes, curious, but not unfriendly, scrutinized us, and one word was in all their mouths as they came up “Which is Redmond? Where’s John Redmond?”

A fortnight later Cork completed what Belfast had begun; and, perhaps because Cork is less strenuous, the whole atmosphere there was even friendlier. It had almost the quality of a holiday excursion, for we assisted at the ancient ceremony by which the Lord Mayor of Cork asserts his jurisdiction over the harbour waters proceeding outside the protecting headlands and flinging from him a ceremonial dart outwards to the sea. This day, however, we accomplished the ceremony well within the limits; we passed the narrow gateway in the chain of mines, but outside that, submarines were a very real menace, and the Admiralty cut short our steamer’s voyage. We were none the less festive on board.

It was not all mere holiday in Cork. One speech in particular at this meeting impressed the whole Convention. A Southern delegate illustrated from his personal knowledge how cumbrous and uneconomic were the dealings of a government at Westminster with the meat supply from Ireland; and a mass of complicated and important trade detail was skilfully linked to the larger issue of war interest and Imperial interest; there was genuine eloquence as well as commercial shrewdness in this discourse. A short speech, too, from one of the Ulster County Councillors indicated by its tone, what was in my opinion the general sentiment, that as a result of these preliminary discussions almost everybody in the assembly expected and desired an effective agreement.

At least for the purposes of this book, and perhaps many purposes, the trend of our debates can be best summarized by reproducing Redmond’s main contribution to them. He intervened on the first day when Mr. Murphy’s scheme was proposed, on August 21st, but only with a few welcoming words, and to emphasize his view that we were all there to accept whatever commanded most support. But at Belfast on September 5th he spoke fully; and I do not think his speech would have been materially different had he delivered it three weeks later in Cork. What I print here is based on the unusually full notes made by him, so full that they admit of being treated like a press telegram, and read clearly when small and obvious words are added. The manuscript is scored with underlining, single, double and treble, to guide the voice in reading from it; it has interest as illustrating the technical devices which a great orator employed for a special occasion; and for this speech he spared no effort. I thought, then as always, that he was less impressive and less effective in so fully prepared an oration than when he was putting his thought into the form which immediately came to him. But as a document it represents beyond doubt his considered opinion and his most deliberate advice.

Dealing briefly at first with the contention that the system of the Union had been a success and should not be touched, he outlined the familiar arguments. But, as he said, the existence of the Convention was the final answer. The head of a Coalition Ministry had declared, without dissent from any of his Unionist colleagues, that Dublin Castle had hopelessly broken down. The Prime Minister of another Coalition, mainly Unionist in its composition, had set up this assembly, charging it to find another and better system of government.

Beneficent legislation had been quoted. Yes, but how was it attained?

“In any constitutionally governed country, once public opinion is converted to some great reform, it naturally passes, surely and easily, though perhaps slowly, into law. In Ireland, after Irish public opinion has made up its mind, the reformer has to convert the public opinion of another country which is profoundly ignorant or apathetic, and unhappily it is uncontrovertible that scarcely a single piece of beneficent legislation on land, or anything else, has been passed since the Union except by long, violent, semi-revolutionary agitation.

“Are we to go on for ever upon this path? Are we to go back into the region of perpetual and violent agitation in order to get the reforms we need? Are we never to be allowed to have peace in our country?”

He passed then to the complaint that Ulster’s special case had not been sufficiently considered.

“The man who would hope to settle this great problem without special consideration of the special case of Ulster would indeed be a fool. Only for the special case of Ulster we should not be here at all. Our chief business is to endeavour to satisfy that special case.

“For myself, I am one of those Nationalists to whom Mr. Barrie referred, who believe that the co-operation of Ulstermen is necessary for a prosperous and free Ireland, and there are no lengths consistent with common sense and reason to which I would not go to satisfy their fears and doubts and objections.

“The special case of Ulster as put before us was this: ’We are contented under the Union, we have prospered under the Union. Therefore from our particular standpoint we have no reason to ask for a change.’ But they declare themselves not only Ulstermen but Irishmen. They admit that the rest of Ireland is not prosperous as they are, and is not contented; and, that being so, they have come here in a spirit of true patriotism to see what is proposed as a remedy; and, as I understand it, they only stipulate that in any scheme of reform their rights and interests and sentiments shall be safeguarded and respected. That is a reasonable and patriotic attitude, and I wish most heartily and most sincerely to respond to it.

“Now let me say what are the main objections to these schemes which have emerged from the debate. Some may be regarded as more particularly affecting Ulster, others as more particularly affecting the Southern Unionists, but all of them taken together make up what I may call the Unionist objection.

“The Archbishop of Dublin grouped these objections under three heads:

1. Imperial Security.

2. Fiscal Security.

3. Security for Minorities.

“On the question of Imperial Security, objection is taken to what is called an ‘Independent’ Parliament.

“It is supposed that what is called Dominion Home Rule implies an ‘Independent’ Parliament. This is a complete delusion. There is only one Sovereign and Independent Parliament in the Empire the Imperial Parliament; its supremacy is indefeasible and inalienable. Every other Parliament in the Empire is subordinate, and an Irish Parliament must be subordinate.

“The Imperial Parliament has created many Parliaments and given to them power to deal in general as they wish with local affairs, but it never parted with its own overriding authority it has no power to do so and in several of the colonies it has exercised that overriding authority from time to time.

“Gladstone spoke of the Irish Parliament which he proposed to set up as ‘practically independent in the exercise of its statutory functions.’ But the overriding authority of the Imperial Parliament would always be there in the background to arrest injustice or oppression, just as it is in regard to every Dominion Parliament in the Empire to-day.

“That position was specifically laid down and accepted by Parnell in 1886.

“Lord Midleton demands that the rights and authority of the Crown shall be preserved and safeguarded. There is no difference whatever between us on this, and no difficulty can arise upon it.

“As to the control of Army and Navy, no one suggests any interference with the Imperial authority over the Army and the Navy. I include in that such naval control of harbours as is necessary for security.

“Captain Gwynn has proposed that Ireland should have power to raise a force for home defence. In other words, to pass a Territorial Act for Ireland. My policy about the Volunteers is known: I proposed at the beginning of the war that the Government should utilize the existing Volunteer forces; and had this proposal been acted on in 1914 there would have been no rebellion in 1916. If I understand Captain Gwynn, he did not suggest that Irish Territorials should be under an Irish War Office and an Irish Minister for War, but that in his opinion a system of Irish Territorials was desirable, and inasmuch as the English Territorial Acts are not suitable to us, the Irish Parliament should be given the power to raise under Imperial authority a force for itself and on its own lines.

“If this is his view, I agree with it. But this is a matter on which no one would think of breaking off.

“Speaking generally, I think the Archbishop of Dublin and those who agree with him may take it for granted that upon all those questions which he grouped under the heading of Imperial Security there would be little difficulty in arriving at an agreement with, at any rate, men like myself.

“Now let me deal with the second group of subjects put forward by the Archbishop of Dublin under the heading of Fiscal Security or a reasonable prospect of national prosperity.

“The first objection is to what is called fiscal autonomy, although, after listening most carefully to his speeches, it seems to me that the real objection is not so much an objection to fiscal autonomy as establishing the full power of the Irish Parliament over the collection and imposition of Irish taxes, as an objection to giving that Parliament power to set up a tariff against Great Britain.”

He referred then at length to the Report of the Primrose Committee on Irish Finance, dated October 1911. That Committee had for its chairman a great English Civil Servant; three of its members were famous English financiers; another was the Professor of Political Economy at Oxford. Of the two names associated closely with Ireland, one was Lord Pirrie, whose fortune had been made in Belfast, and the only Irish Nationalist was the Bishop of Ross. They had reported unanimously for giving to Ireland full fiscal powers. “We tried hard,” Redmond said, “to get the principle of their Report adopted in framing the Bill of 1912.” Government insisted on adhering to the plan of “contract finance” which their own non-partisan committee of experts had explicitly condemned.

He quoted several passages from the weighty argument by which the Committee had justified its conclusions, especially those dealing with the contention that the power would be used to set up a tariff against British goods.

“Ireland is not a nation of fools.

“If in framing a new Constitution you go on the assumption that every power you confer will be abused, it would be far better to desist from your task altogether, and instead of increasing the powers of a people dead to all sense of responsibility and manifestly unfit for political freedom, you had better disestablish all existing forms of constitutional government and advocate the government of Ireland as a Crown Colony. But none of us so distrust our people.

“Dr. O’Donnell has proposed a solution of the difficulty about imposing a tariff against England by means of a Conference between the two nations. Other suggestions will be made. Protection may be found for Ulster by giving to them disproportionate representation. It may be found in the power of the Senate, it may be found in the power to suspend. If we are agreed somewhat on the general lines of the Primrose Report, the outstanding difficulty will be capable of adjustment.

“Sir Crawford McCullagh rightly pointed out the terrible burden of war taxation, which is at present over twenty millions, and he said we cannot go on on those lines, and we must get back to pre-war burdens or the country will be ruined. How are we to get back?

“If nothing is done by us, and the war goes on, as it may, for some years, we may easily be paying thirty, forty, or fifty millions, and generations to come will have to bear a crushing load. The income tax is certain to be raised, and excess profits also, and no part of Ireland will suffer more than Ulster, and especially Belfast.

“The highest interest of Ulster, therefore, is a speedy settlement whereby the increase of war taxation will cease and Ireland’s contribution to Imperial purposes will either disappear or, to put it at the very lowest, be limited and stereotyped.

“Mr. Knight raised the question of land purchase. I agree with every word he said, but what is the difficulty? The difficulty is in providing the additional money needed at a low rate of interest. As part of a settlement I feel quite sure we could obtain the completion of land purchase on satisfactory terms. Indeed, I have the highest authority for the statement that this question would be regarded as an essential portion of a settlement, and that a most generous arrangement would be made. But if there is no settlement, do you imagine the Treasury will do anything to help us? No. I fear the British Government will be more occupied in endeavouring to deal with the state of open anarchy in Ireland than in making great financial concessions on land purchase. Mr. Knight, if he wants purchase completed, had better help us to an agreement.

“The third group of objections mentioned by the Archbishop of Dublin deals with Security for Minorities.

“On this, it is impossible for the Convention to break down, because we are all in favour of the object in view. It is a mere question of the best machinery to carry out our unanimous desire and intention.

“Ulster may clearly claim a representation out of proportion to her numbers, not only, I admit, in the Senate, but in the lower chamber. Safeguards of the most stringent character would be accepted, at any rate by me, in the machinery of the Constitution to prevent the possibility of Ulster’s interest, Ulster’s prosperity and Ulster’s sentiments being injured or over-ridden.

“For Southern Unionists, the case is unanswerable. They must get proper representation in both Houses.

“Some suggestions have been made: proportional representation; Mr. Murphy’s proposal of a special representation for property; special representation for creeds, and finally a nominated element in the House of Commons. I have an open mind on them all. It may be none of these will be found wholly satisfactory. But where there is a will there is a way. We are all agreed it must be done, and therefore it can and will be done.

“In none of these objections, and they are the chief ones that have emerged on Imperial security, fiscal security, and security of minorities, is there in my mind any difficulty in coming to an agreement, if we are really animated by the desire every speaker has professed to answer the appeal of the Empire in this hour of her dire extremity by removing one of her greatest weaknesses and dangers.

“We were told by Lord Midleton to play for safety. What is safety for us? What is safety for the Empire? I strongly say the only safety is a settlement of this question.

“What will be the certain effect of a breakdown? No one could fail to have been impressed by the serious and solemn note upon which the Archbishop of Dublin concluded his speech. He reminded you this was not a question of Ulster and the rest of Ireland, not of Catholic and Protestant, or Unionist and Nationalist: it was a question of the necessity for all men of good will, all men of responsibility, all men who know that the foundation of freedom is the maintenance of order, to join hands to protect their common country from anarchy and chaos.

“The Archbishop spoke of Mr. Lysaght’s speech as a threat. No one here will be moved by threats, but let us not be mad enough to shut our eyes to the facts. Is there a man in this room who can contemplate without horror the immediate future of Ireland if this Convention fails? For my part, I see clearly a future following on our failure in which on one side there will be an angered, if you like, a maddened people, with no responsible control, and on the other, Government ruling by the point of the bayonet. Between these two forces there will be no place for a Constitutional party or for men like myself.

“That would be the effect in Ireland. What would be the effect throughout the Empire?

“I have close relations with statesmen of all parties in all the Dominions, and I am informed that twenty-five per cent, of their troops are of Irish birth or of Irish parents, and that they have practically joined because they believed the Irish problem was as good as settled.

“What has happened about Ireland has caused untold difficulties in every Dominion. Mr. Holman, the Prime Minister of New South Wales, said that conscription was defeated by the Irish vote. Mr. Hughes said the same. Two hundred thousand troops have been lost to the Empire by the feeling of disgust at the failure to settle the Irish question. It has been the same in Canada. Everywhere a breakdown will be regarded with dismay.

“What will be the effect in America? The position of America is grave and dangerous. I have close relations with many Americans of high position and influence, and they all tell me the same. This is a secret session, and I can repeat what they say. There is little or no enthusiasm for the war. Mind, I am speaking of Americans, not Irish Americans. The apathy is largely due to distrust of England. They distrust her posing as the champion of small nations while here at her doors the Irish question is unsettled. Lord Midleton says the Americans are uninformed. Perhaps so as to details. Perhaps they only see the broad effect. But how does that help us? The fact remains. Ireland is the only, or the chief, cause of American apathy to-day. This is of vital importance. Could we hope to win the war if America dropped out? Russia has gone. The President of the United States has many pacifist men around him. Their movement is strong. Germany is abstaining from outrages that would raise American feeling. I say, the danger of peace proposals which we could not accept being offered to America and accepted by her is a real and a very serious one.

“Hence it is that the Government, the diplomatic service, and all connected with our foreign affairs are feverishly anxious as to the result of our deliberations. If we break down in despair and helplessness, God only knows how terrible and far-reaching may be the consequence.

“Far better for us and for the Empire never to have met than to have met and failed of an agreement.

“Finally, what would be the effect of a breakdown at the front?

“We are called upon on all sides of this ancient quarrel to make what people call sacrifices sacrifices of inherited predilections, of old-world ideas, and of ancient shibboleths, of perhaps ingrained prejudice. I would be ashamed to speak of the surrender of such things as sacrifices, when I remember the kind of sacrifices our brave boys have made and are making this very hour while we are safe at home talking. I cannot trust myself to speak upon this matter. Only the other day, once again the Ulster Division and the Sixteenth Irish Division, shoulder to shoulder, have fought and died for Ireland. The full story is not yet known, but it is full of tragedy, of heroism and of glory. Surely they deserve some encouragement. No set of men living would be prouder and happier than they if we can send them the news of a settlement of this question which will relieve them from the daily shame they feel, every time they meet their Allies, in the consciousness that their country, Ireland, for which they are facing death, is distracted and disunited and a source of reproach.

“No, we must come to a settlement. We must rise to the occasion if only to save ourselves from a lifelong remorse for wrecking this venture for what the historian of the future would describe as a crime against the Empire in her hour of deadliest peril, and a crime against the peace and happiness of our own beloved and long-suffering country.”

One result of this speech was seen at once in an utterance from Mr. Andrew Jameson, a leading figure among the Southern Unionists. He said at once that Redmond had convinced him that all the difficulties as to maintaining the Imperial connection and providing safeguards for minorities could and would be met. The fiscal difficulty remained. He pressed the Ulster group to come to our assistance and depart from their attitude of silence. This speech went further towards our desire than any Unionist had previously gone.

In a later debate Mr. Pollock outlined two essentials of the Ulster demand. The United Kingdom must remain a fiscal unit; and Ireland must be represented at Westminster. If these points were conceded, agreement, he thought, should be possible.

On the whole, as discussion grew franker and more business-like, relations improved. There were small passages at arms, but these only served to show how strong was the general desire for harmony. One of my colleagues said that he did not know what to make of a political assembly where everyone applauded when you got up, and applauded when you sat down, and never interrupted you. Another said that the Convention was the only society in Ireland from which one always came away cheered up: and this was so generally felt that an Ulster speaker reminded us that the atmosphere of our proceedings was pleasant but exceptional. He warned us to remember that, even if we agreed, either side might be repudiated. Yet there was a marked feeling that the Convention, and the tone which prevailed in the Convention, had done good in the country. This was admitted by the Grand Master of the Orange Order, Colonel Wallace, in a speech which led to an important illustration of the mutual process of education, for it raised with great frankness the issue of religious differences and alluded specially to the recent Papal decrees over which so much controversy had raged. The Bishop of Raphoe rose to reply and expounded, as an ex-professor of Canon Law, the true bearing of these documents. His speech was a masterpiece; its candour and its lucidity commended itself to all hearers, but most of all to the Ulstermen, who applauded at once Lord Oranmore’s comment that the odium theologicum had been replaced by divina caritas; and at a very late stage in our proceedings, Mr. Barrie referred back to this speech of the Bishop’s as one of the things which they would never forget.

The Primate, who in this month of September was one of the hopeful hearts ("My confidence has grown daily,” he said), used words which met with widespread response: “We can never leave this hall and speak of men whom we have met here as we have spoken of them in the past.” There was good will in the air good will to each other and to the enterprise. At the close of the proceedings in Cork the Lord Mayor of Belfast moved a vote of thanks to the citizens through their Lord Mayor, and he closed on a note of hope anticipating “something in store for Ireland.”

Yet already these anticipations were overcast. During this week, while all seemed going so well, one of the endless unhappy and preventible things happened. It was from Redmond that I first heard the news. One of the Sinn Fein leaders who had been rearrested on suspicion after the amnesty took part in a hunger-strike as a protest against being subjected to the conditions imposed on a convicted felon. He was forcibly fed and died under the process, owing to heart-failure. Redmond told me with fury how he had urged again and again on the Chief Secretary the possibility of some such calamity, and had urged that these men should receive the treatment proper in any case to political prisoners, but above all to men who had been neither convicted nor tried.

The result was immediately seen in some hostile demonstrations in Cork, chiefly against Mr. Devlin and Redmond. But this was only the beginning. On the following Sunday the body of the dead man, Thomas Ashe, was carried through the streets of Dublin at the head of a vast procession, in which large bodies of Volunteers, openly defying Government’s proclamation, marched in uniform; and he was buried with military honours and volleys fired over his grave. With all this breach of the law Government dared not interfere. They had put themselves in the wrong; whether they prevented the demonstration or permitted it, mischief was bound to follow. A new incitement was given to the enthusiasm for Sinn Fein, a new martyr was provided, and new hostility was raised against the Convention, for whose success Government was notoriously anxious. On the other hand, Ulster Unionist opinion was violently offended; they were scandalized by the disregard for law and the impotence of constitutional authority. This attitude, however open to comments based on their own recent history, did not render them any easier to deal with. Above all, the Ashe incident emphasized the presence in Ireland of a great force over which Redmond had no control and which had no representative in the Convention. How, men asked, even if a bargain could be made with Constitutional Nationalists, should that covenant be carried into effect?

III

The Cork visit marks the close of the first stage in the history of the Convention. At the opening of our session there it was decided to appoint a Grand Committee of twenty, whose task should be, “if possible, to prepare a scheme for submission to the Convention, which would meet the views and difficulties expressed by the different speeches during the course of the debate.” The Convention itself, after its deliberations of that week, would adjourn until the Committee was in a position to report. This second stage, purely of committee work, was to last much longer than anyone anticipated: the Convention did not reassemble till the week before Christmas. If that length of adjournment had been foreseen, the Committee would never have been appointed.

Mr. Lysaght in his first address to the Convention had pressed upon us the view that Sinn Fein could be won. But he warned us also (with such emphasis that some speakers afterwards resented it as a threat) that if the Convention produced no result, or an unacceptable result, or provoked suspicion by delay, the result would be a revolution. Already impatience was growing. We could publish no account of our proceedings: but it became known inevitably that we had not as yet reached one operative conclusion in our task of Constitution building.

At Cork, Sir Horace Plunkett made an encouraging speech at the public luncheon; he announced the appointment of our Committee, which certainly looked like business. But only when we got to detail did men fully realize the difficulties and the embarrassing nature of the position.

The Ashe affair had done more harm than we knew. When the Primate was making the hopeful speech from which a few words have already been quoted, he spoke also of our experience as having been a process of mutual education, which we needed to extend beyond our own assembly. He promised his help in this, and it was felt that Ulstermen generally were on their honour to report well of what they commended in our presence. They were, it seems, at least as good as their word; the Committee behind them was favourably impressed, and when we went to Cork so I have been informed the question of giving the delegates full powers to negotiate was under discussion. But this mood was dissipated by the angry temper in all sections which arose out of the imprisonments, the hunger-strikes, the penalties imposed, and the successive concessions to violent resistance.

To this was added a new cause of quarrel. The Franchise Bill was now coming before the House of Commons; and under the provisions agreed to by the Speaker’s Conference, extension of the franchise was to be applied in Ireland, but there was to be no redistribution. This proposal was not unreasonable, since the Home Rule Act was now a statute and under it new and properly distributed constituencies were scheduled; while over and above this the Convention was in existence to occupy itself with the matter.

On the other hand, the existing distribution of seats was hard on Unionist Ulster: the great mass of population in and about Belfast was under-represented. Ulstermen said that while Nationalists professed great desire to give favour to minorities, in reality they persisted in keeping their political opponents at an unfair disadvantage. There was no more question of enlarging the delegates’ authority in Convention: the Advisory Committee hardened their attitude, and it was our task to convince a body which could not hear our arguments at first hand. Decisions lay with Ulstermen in Belfast, not in the Convention that is to say, not subject to the daily, hourly, prompting to remember that they were not only Ulstermen but Irishmen, which arose from friendly intercourse with their fellow-delegates.

The Grand Committee of twenty, representing all groups, met on October 11th. Sir Horace Plunkett had in advance begged Redmond to undertake the presentation of a scheme which would serve as a basis for discussion. Redmond declined, on the ground that the initiative should come from someone who was not there as a politician; but he admitted that the onus of making a proposal was on Home Rulers. Dr. O’Donnell, though an office-bearer in the United Irish League, was present as a representative of the hierarchy; he was charged with the task. He had been throughout a strong advocate of claiming for Ireland all the powers possessed by any of the Dominions, with limitations on the military side; he had also been forward in his desire to give wholly exceptional rights of representation to minorities.

But when we got into Committee one man immediately took the lead. Sir Alexander McDowell had not spoken in any debate; there is reason to believe that he was glad not to commit himself in advance before the moment when his special gift might come into play. All his life he had been carrying through agreements between conflicting interests: he was a great mediator and negotiator. Now, he advocated what was, in strictness, an irregularity. A task had been delegated to us: he asked us to delegate it again to a smaller group. The whole case, he said, had been fully opened up; further debate would be no use; we all knew all the arguments. He deprecated formal procedure; it was plainly a family quarrel, and we should treat it in that spirit. Honestly, he said, he should be sorry if the Convention failed. Ulster had no fault to find with the Union; but they were living next door to a house already in flames.

That was the general tone, but it would be difficult to convey the impression of experience and authority which his manner left: and Redmond supported him. It was plain that the two men would understand each other. In the upshot their view prevailed; Redmond, Mr. Barrie and Lord Midleton were instructed to suggest names, and after an interval they came back with a list of nine. Lord Midleton was for the Southern Unionists; Mr. Barrie, Lord Londonderry and Sir Alexander McDowell for the Northern; Redmond, Mr. Devlin and Bishop O’Donnell represented the parliamentary Nationalists, and to them were added Mr. W.M. Murphy and Mr. George Russell.

This left eleven of us unemployed, and some days later we were formed into three sub-committees, the first dealing with the question of Electoral Reform and the composition of an Irish Parliament; the second with Land Purchase, and the third with a possible Territorial Force and the Police. But the marrow of the business rested with the original sub-committee of nine.

They, however, could not get rapidly to work; other affairs pulled them in different directions. Redmond was forced to go to Westminster, where the Franchise Bill was coming on; moreover, the Irish party felt that it must raise the question of Irish administration.

As our leader, he was obliged to speak on both matters. His reply to the Ulster amendment proposing to extend redistribution to Ireland was that this departed from the compromise reached at the Speaker’s Conference, and moreover ignored the existence of the Convention. He spoke with studied brevity and avoidance of party spirit: but the debate became a wrangle. Mr. Barrie brought back into it some of the Convention’s friendlier atmosphere; but his argument was that in the interests of the Convention this concession should be made.

The second debate, on October 23rd, was inevitably contentious: it deplored the policy being pursued by the Irish Executive and the Irish military authorities “at a time when the highest interests of Ireland and the Empire demand the creation of an atmosphere favourable to the Convention.” Redmond had an easy task in convicting the Government’s action of incoherence and of blundering provocation but to do this was of no advantage to his main purpose, which he served as best he could by a side-wind, eulogizing the temper of the Convention and specially the “sincere desire for a reasonable settlement” shown by the Ulster delegates.

Still, at the best, it was impossible for him not to feel that the reaction of a debate which could not be kept in the tone on which he started it must be unfavourable to the meetings of the Nine which were about to take place. He was to go in to negotiate a settlement for his country while the voices of faction were yelping at his heels all over Ireland, and all the forces of reconciliation which he had brought into play were neutralized and sterilized.

A debate of these days gave him a happier occasion to intervene than the domestic bickerings in which he had been forced to take part; yet even in this the note of sadness predominated. On October 29th, when a vote of thanks was proposed to the Navy, Army and Mercantile Marine, he joined his voice to that of other leaders of parties, to emphasize, as he said, that they spoke from an absolutely unanimous House of Commons. He recalled the exploits of Irish troops and dwelt again on the presence of a large Irish element in the Canadian and Anzac Divisions. But his reference was chiefly to those Nationalist Irish Brigades, who had remained true, he said, to the old motto of the Brigade of Fontenoy, Semper et ubique fidelis. These men had known in the midst of their privations and sufferings a new and poignant feeling of anguish: they had seen “a section at any rate of their countrymen” repudiate the view that in serving as they served they were fighting for Ireland, for her happiness, for her prosperity and her liberty.

“I wish it were possible for me to speak a word to every one of those men. If my words could reach them, I would say to every one of them that they need have no misgiving, that they were right from the first, that time will vindicate them, that time will show that while fighting for liberty and civilization in Europe they are also fighting for civilization and liberty in their own land. I would like to say to every one of them, in addition, that even at this moment, when ephemeral causes have confused and disturbed Irish opinion, they are regarded with feelings of the deepest pride and gratitude by the great bulk of the Irish race and by all that is best in every creed and class in Ireland.”

The Irish Divisions had once and again been engaged shoulder to shoulder, but this time with very different fortune, in the third battle of Ypres; yet, win or lose, they won or lost together. In that same fighting Redmond’s own son had earned special honour; the Distinguished Service Order was bestowed on him for holding up a broken line with his company of the Irish Guards. At a happier time this news would have been received with enthusiasm all over Ireland; now, the most one could say was that it delighted the Convention.

It would be quite wrong, however, to regard Redmond’s attitude in these days as unhopeful. The first meetings of the Nine were fruitful of much agreement conditional at all points on general ratification. But the true spirit of compromise was there. So far as concerned the provision to give minorities more than their numerical weight, it was agreed that there should be two Houses, with powers of joint session, and with control over money bills conceded to the Upper House. In the Lower House Unionists should (somehow) get forty per cent, of the representation: so that in the joint session the influences would be equally balanced.

The hitch came over finance. Nationalists wanted complete powers of taxation, but would agree to a treaty establishing Free Trade between the two countries for a long period. Ulster wanted a common fiscal control for Great Britain and Ireland. By November 1st a complete deadlock had been reached.

On that date the Grand Committee met to take stock informally of the position, especially in regard to the procedure of the more detailed sub-committees, and to face the fact that a grave misfortune had befallen us. Sir Alexander McDowell had been prevented by illness from attending any of the meetings. He had no further part in the Convention’s work, and died before it ended.

Redmond in a confidential talk spoke of his absence as lamentable. The two had arranged on the Belfast man’s proposal to meet for private interviews before the Nine came together. Neither had control of the forces for which he spoke; but both stood out, by everyone’s consent, from the rest of the assembly. It is impossible to say how much they might have achieved had they come to an understanding; but assuredly no other representative of the North spoke with the same self-confidence or the same weight of personality as Sir Alexander McDowell. My own feeling about him if it be worth while to record a personal impression was that he was a man with the instinct for carrying big things through that the problem tempted him, as a task which called for the exertion of powers which he was conscious of possessing. In losing him we lost certainly the strongest will in his group, perhaps the strongest in the Convention; and it was a will for settlement. It was, too, a will less hampered by regard for public opinion than that of any popularly elected representative man can be. He had, I think, also eminently the persuasive gift which is not only inclined to give and take but can impart that disposition to others.

Mr. Pollock, who replaced him, was an able man, but singularly lacking in this quality. He held his own views clearly and strongly, but his method of exposition accentuated differences: it had always a note of asperity, though this was certainly not deliberate. One of the pleasant memories which remains with me is of a day when debate grew acrimonious and hot words were used. Mr. Pollock refused to reply to some phrases which might have been regarded as taunts, because, he said, “I have made friendships here which I never expected to make, and I value them too much to risk the loss of them.” That friendly temper, combined with his ability, made him a valuable member of this Convention: but for the critical work of bringing men’s minds together, of sifting the essential from the unessential, he was a bad exchange for Sir Alexander McDowell.

Redmond said to me that he had found Mr. Barrie much more conciliatory than in the earlier and public stages. He was delighted with Lord Midleton, who was, he said, “showing an Irish spirit which I never expected"; standing up for the claims of an Irish Parliament if there was to be one. In the discussion, however, one man, Bishop O’Donnell, had been “head and shoulders above everyone else.”

Argument had ranged about the question of customs and excise. This was the dividing line. But when at last a deadlock was definitely reached, the Ulster position was stated in a letter which refused to concede to an Irish Parliament the control of either direct or indirect taxation. It was to be a Parliament with no taxing power at all.

On the other hand, in the corresponding document from the Nationalist side, the importance of immediate and full fiscal control had been put very high.

“Self-government does not exist,” it said, “where those nominally entrusted with affairs of government have not control of fiscal and economic policy. No nation with self-respect could accept the idea that while its citizens were regarded as capable of creating wealth they were regarded as incompetent to regulate the manner in which taxation of that wealth should be arranged, and that another country should have the power of levying and collecting taxes, the taxed country being placed in the position of a person of infirm mind whose affairs are regulated by trustees. No finality could be looked for in such an arrangement, not even a temporary satisfaction.”

The genesis of this passage should be told, for it had importance in the history of the Convention; and also it conveys an idea of the limits to which Redmond carried self-effacement. It is important because it acted on Ulster like a red rag shown to a bull. Obviously, if this were the Nationalist view, then the Home Rule Act could not be said to give self-government for under its system of contract finance Ireland certainly had not control of her fiscal and economic policy. A measure accepted with enthusiasm in 1912 was now regarded as impossible of giving “even a temporary satisfaction.”

What had happened was this. The Chairman in his tireless efforts to bring about agreement had addressed two sets of questions, to the Nationalists and to the Ulstermen respectively, by answering which he hoped they might clear the air. The direct answers for the Nationalists were drafted by Mr. Russell, but were shown to Redmond, Mr. Devlin and the Bishop of Raphoe. It was, however, suggested that as an addendum a summary should be added. Redmond did not ask to see this addition, and it was not shown to him. It led off with the paragraph which has been quoted. The fact that he allowed anything in any stage of such a negotiation to go out in his name without his own revision marks the loosening of grip a tired man.

His exertions for the past years, the past ten years at least, had been tremendous: they had been redoubled from 1912 to 1916. Towards the end, one resource had been failing him the chief of all. A leader when he is well followed gives and takes; there is interchange of energy. For more than a year now Redmond had lacked the moral support, the almost physical stimulus, which comes from the ready response of followers. Labour at no time came easy to him, there was much inertia in his temperament; and the part which he had laid out for himself in the Convention as merely an individual member did not impose on him the same unremitting vigilance as if he acted as leader. Yet, the leadership was his; if he did not exercise it, no one else could; and this incident shows that his abnegation of leadership was not a mere phrase.

On November 22nd the Grand Committee reassembled to hear the report from the Nine. Lord Southborough, who had presided at all their meetings, detailed the conclusions which had been reached or the point on which they had broken down.

Then followed a discussion lasting some three days, in which Ulstermen and Nationalists reaffirmed their positions. Archbishop Bernard, the Primate, and Lord MacDonnell all attempted mediation. Finally, Lord Midleton, who described the position as “a stone wall on each side,” announced that he and his group would put before the Grand Committee certain proposals as a via media. These in effect conceded to an Irish Parliament all that Nationalists claimed, subject only to the reservation that customs must be fixed by the Imperial Parliament and the produce of them retained as Ireland’s contribution to Imperial services.

At this point our work was interrupted by the reemergence of the redistribution question. Redmond and the other Irish members were obliged to go to London and assist for two days at a debate in the worst traditions of the House of Commons. The change of atmosphere was extraordinary and the accusations of bad faith were not limited to what passed at Westminster. One virulent speech declared that the Convention had no prospects, never had any, and was never intended to have any. This was accompanied by an attack on the action of the Ulster group based, of course, on hearsay. Those of us who felt that at any rate the Convention offered a better hope for Ireland than any which now could be based on action at Westminster pleaded for the acceptance of a proposal which Redmond put forward as a compromise that the proposed Irish clauses should be dropped from the main Bill and the Irish matter dealt with in a separate statute. It was so agreed at last, and a conference between Irish members, with the Speaker presiding, was set up, and quickly did its work. But if all this had been agreed to in October or earlier, much friction would have been saved and a cause of quarrel with the Ulster that was not in the Convention might have been avoided. Still, peace was achieved, and the proposal to cut down Irish representation was once more defeated.

Grand Committee met for another session, but was chiefly concerned with getting ready for the reassembling of Convention fixed for Tuesday, December 18th. It was decided that a group meeting of Nationalists for informal discussion should be held on the Monday night the first occasion on which this had been done.

Ill-luck, however, seemed to dog us. Dr. Kelly, the Bishop of Ross, who was much closer in his point of view to Redmond than any of the other Bishops, was gravely ill. This was foreseen. But on the Monday a heavy snowstorm fell; Redmond, shut up in his hills at Aughavanagh, could not reach Dublin. The roads were not open till the Thursday, and then he thought it too late to come. He was in truth already too ill to face any unusual exertion.

The Convention had been summoned, not to receive a final report from the Grand Committee, but to face a new situation. An offer had been put forward by one group which altered the whole complexion of the controversy. Grand Committee had abstained from deciding whether to counsel acceptance or rejection. But for the first time an influential body of Irish Unionists had agreed, not as individuals but as representatives, to accept Home Rule, in a wider measure than had been proffered by the Bills of 1886 and 1893 or by the Act of 1914. Limitations which were imposed in all these had been struck out by Lord Midleton’s proposals.

On the other hand, it was certain that the Ulster group would reject the scheme. Conversation among Nationalists made it plain that if Ulster would agree with Lord Midleton we should all join them. For the sake of an agreement reached between all sections of Irishmen, but for nothing less conclusive, Dr. O’Donnell and Mr. Russell were content to waive the claim to full fiscal independence. Such an agreement, they held, would be accepted by Parliament in its integrity. But if Ulster stood out, there would be no “substantial agreement,” and the terms which Nationalists and Southern Unionists might combine to propose would be treated as a bargaining offer, certain to be chipped down by Government towards conformity with the Ulster demand. In the result there would be an uprising of opinion in Ireland against a measure so framed; the fiasco of July, 1916, would repeat itself.

Against this, and prompting us to acceptance, was the view very strongly held by Redmond, that Government urgently needed a settlement for the sake of the war, and would use to the utmost any leverage which helped them to this end. An agreement with Lord Midleton would mean a Home Rule proposal proceeding from a leading Unionist statesman who spoke for the interest in Ireland, which, if any, had reason to fear Nationalist government. This would mean necessarily a profound change in the attitude of the House of Lords and of all those social influences whose power we had felt so painfully. Government could undoubtedly, if it chose, carry a measure giving effect to this compact.

Further, weighing greatly with the instincts of the rank and file was the motive which prompted Irish Nationalists to welcome the advance made by those whom Lord Midleton represented. The Southern Unionists were the old landowning and professional class, friendly in all ways of intercourse, but politically severed and sundered from the mass of the population. 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. Defence was by consent of all left to the Imperial Parliament. This implied, he held, an adequate contribution, and the yield of customs to be collected by the Imperial Parliament seemed roughly to meet the case, for the period of the war. But this was not absolutely a hard-and-fast proposal. In any case, after the war, the amount should be the subject of inquiry by a joint commission.

Apart from this, the offer was their last word. It conceded to Ireland the control of all purely Irish services. This included the fixation of excise, because excise on commodities produced in Ireland did not touch the treaty-making power. Customs touched that power, and therefore customs, like defence, must be left to the Imperial Parliament. But, he argued, Irish Nationalists were not asked to give up anything which had been conceded to them by any previous Home Rule proposal.

To all Unionists he said: These proposals keep the power of the Crown over all Imperial services undiminished; they keep representation at Westminster a corollary from leaving the Imperial Parliament powers over Irish taxation; and by accepting the suggestions already agreed to, they give a generous representation to Unionists in an Irish Parliament. This special representation of minorities was, he thought, sufficient to give a guarantee of “sane legislation” while it lasted; and he suggested that the period should be fifteen years. These concessions, in his opinion, sufficiently protected Southern Unionists. To Ulster he said, “We share every danger threatening you we have many dangers you need not fear. Yet, we have no sinister anticipations. Are you still determined to stand out?”

On the other hand, when so much of the full demand was conceded, were Nationalists insistent, he asked, on demanding what they had never asked in the discussions upon any Home Rule Bill? Nationalist leaders had now the chance of leading a combination of all sane elements in the landowning and land-cultivating classes. No Irish leader had ever before been able to present such an appeal to Unionist opinion as would come from the man who represented a Convention Party.

It was a speech which Redmond, if present, must have replied to, and could not have replied to without indicating profound sympathy for he was in agreement with its main lines; and his expression of opinion upon it must have influenced strongly the views of the rank and file at the moment when they were most open to suggestion.

In his absence, men’s minds were greatly affected by the fear that if we adopted these proposals, our decision would be exposed to attack from a combination of three forces Sinn Fein, which would at least officially condemn anything less than complete separation, and would furiously assail a proposal that denied full taxing powers; the Roman Catholic Church, which would take its lead from Bishop O’Donnell, who set out in an able memorandum the reasons why Ireland must have full control of taxation; and finally, the powerful newspaper whose proprietor, Mr. Murphy, at once gave signs of his hostility by putting on the paper an amendment to Lord Midleton’s resolution which amounted to a direct negative.

The reassembly of the Convention was fixed for Wednesday, January 2nd. Redmond came to Dublin on the Monday. He told me that he was inclined to move that while we thanked Lord Midleton for his substantial contribution towards our purpose, we could not accept his proposal, unless it opened the way to a settlement. What he meant by this was not merely that if Ulster agreed, we should accept; for that would certainly open the way. But he had also in his mind the possibility of a guarantee from Government that an arrangement come to, as this might be, by four-fifths of the Convention, and repudiated only by the pledge-bound Ulster block, would be regarded as substantial agreement, and taken as a basis for legislation. In that case, also, the way would be open; but he had no written assurance of such an understanding, though I gathered that he was urging the Government to give it. We were, however, told on good authority in these days that if the Southern Unionists’ proposal was accepted by the Nationalists and other elements outside of Ulster, the Prime Minister would use his whole influence with his colleagues to secure acceptance of the compact and immediate legislation upon it. This would mean, we were also assured, that the whole thing would be done before Easter.

On January 2nd the resumed debate for the first time brought the Convention face to face with concrete proposals for a settlement. In tone and in substance it would have done credit to any Parliament that ever sat. I shall not try to summarize the arguments, but simply to note certain outstanding facts.

Lord Midleton modified his original proposal that collection of customs should be an Imperial service throughout. He agreed that collection might be done by the Irish Civil Service. Moreover, he admitted that Ireland must have full means of checking the account for these taxes, great part of which must necessarily be collected at English ports, since tea, tobacco and the other dutiable articles were seldom shipped direct to Ireland.

But he made it plain that the essential of his proposal was the maintenance of a common customs system, leaving the fixation of customs to the Imperial Parliament for Great Britain and Ireland. If this was denied, as it would be by the acceptance of Mr. Murphy’s amendment, all Unionists would be driven once more into the same lobby; all chance of uniting elements heretofore divided would disappear.

This was the fact against which we were brought up. Insistence on the full Nationalist demand as it had been outlined in the Convention meant the refusal of a new and powerful alliance which now offered itself, and the destruction of anything which could be called an agreement.

In the close, Lord Midleton reinforced his appeal by a solid material argument. The sub-committee presided over by Lord MacDonnell had reached unanimous conclusions embodying proposals for the completion of land purchase within a very brief period. Landlords, agents, tenants, representatives for Ulster as well as from the South and West, were parties to this plan. Lord Midleton now looked back on the past as one who had been in the fight since Mr. Gladstone’s first Home Rule Bill. Every fresh settlement had been wrecked, he said, by standing for the last shred of the demand. In 1885, if Gladstone had abandoned the identity of democratic franchise for both countries and had made to the Irish minority such concessions as this Convention was willing to make, he would have carried the Liberal Unionist element with him. Then, as now, a great land purchase scheme depended on the solution of the main problem. To-day land purchase stood or fell with the Convention.

He was backed by Lord Dunraven who waived his preference for his own original proposal and by Lord Desart, in most able argument: the latter declaring that the proposal to give Ireland a separate customs system could never be carried in England. But the speech of the day came from Mr. Kavanagh, who, speaking as a Nationalist who had been a Unionist, ended a most moving appeal for agreement with a declaration that he at all events would vote for the compromise. There was no mistaking the effect produced by the earnestness of this speaker, who knew as much of Ireland and was as well fitted to judge of its true interests as any man in the room. That effect was felt, I think, in the tone of a private meeting of Nationalists held the same night. Redmond, with the art of which he was a master, indicated support for the proposal without forcing a conclusion. He dwelt on the fact that if we did not agree we not only lost our chance of immediate and complete land purchase but left ourselves subjected to the entire burden of war taxation. Other speakers pointed out that we ought not to let ourselves be lured into driving the Southern Unionists and the Ulstermen together against us. Mr. Clancy said in his downright manner that he would not as yet express his view publicly: but that he was not going to reject this offer for the sake of fixing taxes on tea and tobacco, and that when the right time came, he would say so. The strongest arguments used against this view were that in surrendering control of customs we lost our management of the taxes which pressed upon the poor; and further, that even if we agreed, no one knew what would result. We had no guarantee that the compact would be expressed in legislation. But on the whole the tone showed a disposition to accept, and especially to support Redmond who had spoken of his political career as a thing ended. Next day the debate in Convention continued. Archbishop Bernard, speaking as a Unionist, said that the proposal was a venture beset with risks, but the greatest danger of all was to do nothing. It would be a grave responsibility for Ulster to wreck the chance of a settlement. Lord Oranmore dwelt on the composition of the proposed Legislature Power was to be entrusted to a very different Parliament from that which they had feared. He and his like were to get what they desired an opportunity of taking part in the government of the country. It looked to him as if the only possible Irish Government under this scheme must be Unionist in its complexion.

Perhaps there was an echo of this in Redmond’s speech, by far the greatest he made in the Convention, when at last he intervened on January 4th the Friday which ended that session.

He dealt at once with Mr. Barrie’s often repeated view that the proper object of our endeavours was to find a compromise between the Act of 1914 and the proposal for partition put forward by Ulster. On that basis the Convention could never have been brought together. The Prime Minister’s letter of May 16th which proposed the Convention suggested that Irishmen should meet “for the purpose of drafting a Constitution for their own country.” On May 22nd Mr. Lloyd George had said, “We propose that Ireland should try her own hand at hammering out an instrument of government for her people.” The only limitation was that it should be a Constitution “for the future government of Ireland within the Empire.”

Then he turned to the argument that all the sacrifices were asked from Unionists. Let us weigh them, he said. What sacrifices had been made by the Irish Nationalists, since this chain of events began? Then followed a passage which I recapitulate, not necessarily in full, but in phrases which he actually used, and I noted down:

“Personal loss I set aside. My position our position before the war was that we possessed the confidence of nearly the entire country. I took a risk we took it with eyes open. I have we have not merely taken the risk but made the sacrifice. If the choice were to be made to-morrow, I would do it all over again.

“I have had my surfeit of public life. My modest ambition would be to serve in some quite humble capacity under the first Unionist Prime Minister of Ireland.”

As to other sacrifices, in the way of concessions, he recited the list of what had been agreed to proposals so strangely undemocratic the nomination of members of Parliament, the disproportionate powers given to a minority. “Shall we not be denounced for making them?” he asked.

On the other hand, what sacrifices had been made by the Southern Unionists? These were the men who had had the hardest battle to fight in the struggle over Home Rule. They were not, like Ulster Unionists, “entrenched in a ring-fence,” but the scattered few, who had suffered most and who might naturally have entertained most bitterness. Yet Lord Midleton’s speech had been instinct with an admirable spirit. The speech of the Archbishop of Dublin had touched him deeply.

“Between these men and us there never again can be the differences of the past. They have put behind them all bitter memories. They have agreed to the framework of a Bill better than any offered to us in 1886, 1893 or 1914.”

As for us Nationalists he emphasized that each man came here free, untrammelled.

“I speak only for myself. But even if I stand alone, I will not allow myself, because I cannot get the full measure of my demand, to be drawn to reject the proffered hand of friendship held out to us. In my opinion we should be political fools if we did not endeavour to cement an alliance with these men.”

As concerned the Labour men, Mr. Whitley, who had always been a Unionist, had declared willingness to agree. But the Ulster Unionists what sacrifice had they made?

“The last thing I desire is to attack Mr. Barrie and his friends. But they are not free agents. I was shocked when I heard that a section here openly avowed the need to refer back to some outside body. If we had been told we were going into a body which would consist of two orders of members, it would have been difficult to get us here.”

On the essential point Ulster had made no concession. What did Mr. Barrie say in his formal document? ’We are satisfied that for Ireland and for Great Britain a common system of finances with one Exchequer is a fundamental necessity.’ If they denied the taxing power to Ireland, any proposal on these lines must give Ireland less than any proposal for Home Rule ever put forward. This was Ulster’s original position and they had not budged an inch.

“This is their response to the Empire’s S.O.S. Is it worthy of Ulster’s Imperial loyalty? I don’t believe it is their last word.”

Lord Londonderry, however, in replying, did not add any ground of hope. The last speech of the day announced that of six trade unionists five would support the compromise.

Redmond that evening put on the notice paper a motion adopting Lord Midleton’s proposals provided that they “be adopted by His Majesty’s Government as a settlement of the Irish question and legislative effect be given to them forthwith.”

On the day before this motion was tabled, a party was given at Lord Granard’s house which everybody attended, and which marked the most festive moment of our comradeship. When we separated on the Friday most men were absolutely confident of an agreement covering four-fifths of the Convention.

Unhappily, the motion could not come under consideration for a period of ten days. In the following week Lord Midleton thought it necessary to attend the House of Lords. It was settled that we should spend the interval discussing the land purchase report, for which his presence was not essential. Redmond, whose health was still bad, did not come up to Dublin. All this gave time for agitation, and agitation was at work.

Still, during that week there was no sign of any change in tone. Members of the local bodies who had gone to their homes at the week’s end came back just as much inclined to settle as before.

I met Redmond on the night of Monday, January 14th. He had seen no one in these ten days. He told me that he was still uncertain what would happen, but asked me to get one of the leading County Councillors to second his motion. Next morning I came in half an hour before the meeting to find the man I wanted. When I met him he was full of excitement, and said, “Something has gone wrong; the men are all saying they must vote against Redmond.” Then it was evident that propaganda had been busy to some purpose.

When Redmond came in to his place, I said, “It’s all right. Martin McDonogh will second your motion.” He answered with a characteristic brusqueness, “He needn’t trouble. I’m not going to move it; Devlin and the Bishops are voting against me.”

He rose immediately the Chairman was in his place.

“The amendment which I have on the paper,” he said, “embodies the deliberate advice I give to the Convention.

“I consulted no one and could not do so, being ill. It stands on record on my sole responsibility.

“Since entering the building I have heard that some very important Nationalist representatives are against this course the Catholic bishops, Mr. Devlin and others. I must face the situation at which I am surprised; and I regret it.

“If I proceeded I should probably carry my point on a division, but the Nationalists would be divided. Such a division could not carry out the objects I have in view.

“Therefore, I must avoid pressing my motion. But I leave it standing on the paper. The others will give their advice. I feel that I can be of no further service to the Convention and will therefore not move."

There was a pause of consternation. The Chairman intervened and the debate proceeded, and was carried on through the week. During its course a letter to the Chairman from the Bishop of Ross was circulated to us, most dexterous in exposition, most affecting in the tone of its conclusion. It can be read in the Report of the Convention and it cannot with justice be quoted except at full length so admirable is the linking of argument. It need only be said here that it was an appeal “to my fellow-Nationalists who have already made great concessions” to yield, for the sake of a settlement, this further point, and that the appeal was signed “from my sick-bed, not far removed from my death-bed.” That eloquent voice and subtle brain could ill be spared from our assembly: but the letter came too late. It is plain that the writer had no inkling of what would happen till it was actually taking place.

No one can overstate the effect of this episode. Redmond’s personal ascendancy in the Convention had become very great. I am certain there was not a man there but would have said, “If there is to be an Irish Parliament, Redmond must be Prime Minister, and his personality will give that Parliament its best possible chance.” The Ulstermen had more than once expressed their view that if Home Rule were sure to mean Redmond’s rule, their objections to it would be materially lessened. Now, they saw Redmond thrown over, and by a combination in which the clerical influence, so much distrusted by them, was paramount.

IV

A new stage in the history of the Convention now opens. In the interval between the meeting which began by Redmond’s withdrawal of his amendment and that of the following week, Sir Horace Plunkett went to London and laid the situation before the Prime Minister. Redmond had also written to Mr. Lloyd George stating that no progress could be made unless Government would declare its intentions as to legislation. The Chairman came back with the following letter in his pocket:

10 DOWNING STREET,

WHITEHALL, S.,

January 21, 1918.

DEAR SIR HORACE PLUNKETT,

In our conversation on Saturday you told me that the situation in the Convention has now reached a very critical stage. The issues are so grave that I feel the Convention should not come to a definite break without the Government having an opportunity of full consultation with the leaders of the different sections. If, and when, therefore, a point is reached at which the Convention finds that it can make no further progress towards an agreed settlement, I would ask that representatives should be sent to confer with the Cabinet. The Government are agreed and determined that a solution must be found. But they are firmly convinced that the best hope of a settlement lies within the Convention, and they are prepared to do anything in their power to assist the Convention finally to reach a basis of agreement which would enable a new Irish Constitution to come into operation with the consent of all parties.

Yours sincerely,

D. LLOYD GEORGE.

Before acting on this, Sir Horace Plunkett allowed the debate to continue during two days. Since no movement towards agreement manifested itself, but only evidence of widespread and various divergence, he laid the Prime Minister’s invitation before the Convention. There was considerable difference of opinion before a decision was reached for acceptance. Groups separated to select their representatives on the delegation.

It was agreed in private conference that only one view should be presented from the Nationalist side, and that the view of what was at this point clearly the majority. Redmond, in agreeing to act as a delegate, agreed to set aside his own judgment and to press the claim for full fiscal responsibility which, like other Nationalists, he regarded as in the abstract Ireland’s right. But illness prevented him from attending when at last the delegates were received by the Prime Minister on February 13th.

On the 5th he had asked a question in Parliament the last he was to ask there. It concerned the starting of a factory for the manufacture of aircraft in Dublin one of the things for which he was pressing in his ceaseless effort to bring Ireland some industrial advantage from the war. I saw him towards the end of that month in his room at the House, and he commented bitterly upon a raid carried out by Sinn Feiners, in which some newly erected buildings were destroyed at one of the aérodromes near Dublin which he had helped to establish. But the main thing he had to say concerned the course of the Convention. Everything, in his judgment, was wrecked; he saw nothing ahead for his country but ruin and chaos.

He spoke of his health. A bout of sickness which had prostrated him at Christmas in Dublin had left him uneasy. He was at the time, I thought, unduly alarmed about himself, and I believed that the continuance of this frame of mind was simply characteristic of a man who had very little experience of ill-health. I left him with profound compassion for his trouble of spirit, but without any serious apprehension for his state of body.

The Convention reassembled on February 26th to consider the result of the delegation, which was summed up in a letter from Mr. Lloyd George. This well-known document begins with a definite pledge of action. On receiving the report of the Convention the Government would give it immediate attention and would “proceed with the least possible delay to submit legislative proposals to Parliament.” The date of this pledge was February 25, 1918. Mr. Lloyd George pressed, however, for a settlement “in and through the Convention”; and he declared his conviction that “In view of previous attempts at settlement and of the deliberations of the Convention itself, the only hope of agreement lies in a solution which on the one side provides for the unity of Ireland by a single Legislature, with adequate safeguards for the interests of Ulster and of the Southern Unionists, and, on the other, secures the well-being of the Empire and the fundamental unity of the United Kingdom.”

Ireland’s strong claim to some control of indirect taxation was admitted; but it was laid down that till two years after the war the fixation and collection of customs and excise should be left to the Imperial Parliament: and that at the end of the war a Royal Commission should report on Ireland’s contribution to Imperial expenditure and should submit proposals as to the fiscal relations of the two countries.

For the war period, Ireland was to contribute “an agreed proportion of the Imperial expenditure,” but was to receive the full proceeds of Irish revenue from customs and excise, less the agreed contribution. The police and postal services were to be reserved also as war services.

These provisions were laid down as essentials. A suggestion was made of an Ulster Committee within the Irish Parliament, having power to modify or veto measures, whether of legislation or administration, in their application to Ulster.

Lastly, Government expressed their willingness to accept and finance the Convention’s scheme for land purchase and to give a large grant for urban housing.

The question now before the Convention was whether it should or should not accept this offer, which differed from the Midleton proposals in that it withheld the control of excise as well as of customs, and that it retained control of police and Post Office for the war period. It also adumbrated an Ulster Committee, which had been an unpopular suggestion when put forward in the presentation stages. On the other hand, it offered great material inducements in the proposed expenditure for land purchase and for housing. Some of the County Councillors who had been most vehement in their opposition to the Midleton compromise were now disposed to think this too good an offer to let go, but believed it could be obtained without their taking the responsibility of voting for it. It was necessary to point out that the Irish party could not lower a standard of national demand set up by the Nationalists in the Convention, and that if they did so they would be hooted out of existence.

The main argument of those who advised against acceptance was that Ministers had pledged themselves to act in any case. Let them. We could best help by enunciating our own programme. Then they would know the real facts of the Irish situation. If a majority of the Convention accepted the proposals of the Prime Minister’s letter, there was no pledge that the Bill would be on those lines. We needed to keep a bargaining margin in what we put forward. It was even suggested that the Government proposals would be more likely to attract support in Ireland if put forward as a generous offer from a largely Unionist Government than if published as a compromise to which Nationalists had condescended.

Our reply was that the essential thing was to make a beginning with self-government, and that by refusing to accept the Government’s offer, on which alone we could combine with an influential Unionist section, we gravely increased the difficulties in the way of carrying Home Rule. If, as we held, the main need was to unite Ireland, the last thing on which we should insist was the concession of complete financial powers. When the lack of those powers began to prove itself injurious to Ireland’s material interests, Ireland would certainly become united in a demand for the concession of them; and the history of the British Empire since the loss of America showed that every such demand had been granted to a self-governing State.

At this moment interest centred on the discussion in private councils of Nationalists. The debates in full Convention were animated, but somewhat unreal by comparison. Lord Midleton’s motion had been dropped, by consent, for a series of resolutions tabled by Lord MacDonnell which were in substance an acceptance of Government’s proposal.

But neither in the private councils nor in the public debates had we Redmond’s presence. His illness had grown serious; an operation was necessary; it passed over hopefully, and on Tuesday, March 5th, when the debate resumed, Mr. Clancy had a telegram saying that he was practically out of danger.

It was plain in these days that we were nearing a most critical decision, and Nationalist opinion was profoundly uneasy. Many men were drifting back to Redmond’s view, and recoiled from the prospect of dividing the Convention once more into its original component parts Nationalists on the one side, Unionists on the other. It was proposed that on the Wednesday Nationalists should meet and, if possible, concert joint action; if not, determine definitely each to go our own ways; for a painful part of the situation was that all of us had been used to act together, and none now felt himself free of some obligation. This had to be cleared up When we came down to Trinity College that morning, the news met us that Redmond was dead.

The Convention adjourned its work, although time pressed most seriously, till after the interment. Ireland is a country where a public man can always count on a good funeral. The body was brought to Kingstown, and thence by special train to Wexford, where he had expressed the wish to be laid, in the burying-place of his own people and in the town with which he had been most closely associated. Hundreds of men came from distant parts to mark their sorrow and respect: what remained of him was carried in long and imposing procession through the streets. Over the grave Mr. Dillon, who had been chosen to succeed him in the chair of the Irish party, spoke eloquent and fitting words. Some day, no doubt, a monument to his memory will be set up in the streets of Wexford, where his great uncle’s statue stands, and where will be placed the memorial to his gallant brother, subscribed for from all parts of the kingdom and from all Irish regiments in the Army.

But I say without hesitation that the first and most striking endeavour to put in lasting shape a tribute to John Redmond was made in the Convention, not by great men, but by the ordinary rank and file of Irish Nationalists, who went back from the graveside to the work which his death had interrupted.

Those who had been inclined before to accept his advice still standing on our minutes were now more than ever determined to follow it. That advice was not to refuse the hand of friendship which offered itself from men who by alliance with us could take away from the Home Rule demand all sectarian character: who could bring for the first time a great and representative body of Irish landlord opinion and Irish Protestant opinion into line with the opinion of Irish tenants and Irish Catholics. 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. The remaining members, sixty-six in all, accepted one common scheme. Their number included ten Southern Unionists, five Labour representatives (three of whom were Protestant artisans from Belfast), with Lords Granard, MacDonnell and Dunraven, Sir Bertram Windle and the representatives of the Dublin and Cork Chambers of Commerce.

The scheme on which we concurred recommended the immediate establishment of self-government by an Irish Ministry responsible to a Parliament consisting of two Houses, composed on highly artificial lines. For a period of fifteen years Southern Unionists were to be represented by nominated members, while Ulster was to have extra members elected by special constituencies representing commercial and agricultural interests. The Parliament was to have full control of internal legislation, administration and direct taxation. The fixation of customs and excise was to be from Westminster, but the proceeds of these taxes to be paid into the Irish Exchequer. There was to be a contribution to the cost of Imperial defences, and representation at Westminster, but a representation of the Irish Parliament rather than of the constituencies. All of this was agreed to at our last meeting, and nothing could have been more pleasant than the atmosphere of good will which prevailed. But this was after a critical division the most critical in which I have ever voted in which those of us Nationalists who were for accepting the Government proposals voted with the Southern Unionists and those who were against with the Ulster group. The combination of Ulstermen and extreme Nationalists was thirty-four strong; those who adopted Redmond’s policy and Lord Midleton’s were thirty-eight. We had in our lobby sixteen of the Nationalist County and Urban Councillors; they had eleven.

If that vote had gone otherwise, we were told plainly that the Southern Unionists would be no parties to the rest of the compromise. They were willing to recommend self-government only if the Convention recommended the reservation of customs to the Imperial Parliament. This point had become in their minds important even more as a symbol of the close union between the two kingdoms than by reason of the economic advantages which they attributed to it.

Once the sticking-point was passed, the divided Nationalists recombined, and we were all at one in our mutual félicitations on the harmony which prevailed at the close. But as one of our rank and file said in my ear, “If we had not given the vote we did, where would be all this talk of harmony? And mind you now, it was not easy to give it.”

He was right, and within six months it cost him the chairmanship of his County Council. Others paid the same penalty, I am sure, without grudging it, for most of us were prouder of that action than of any other in our political lives. It may be well to set down the names of the local representatives and Labour men who voted as Redmond would have advised on that first crucial division.

They were: W. Broderick, Youghal Urban Council; J.J. Coen, Westmeath
County Council; D. Condren, Wicklow County Council; J. Dooly, Kings
County County Council; Captain Doran, Louth County Council; T. Fallon,
Leitrim County Council; J. Fitzgibbon, Roscommon County Council; Captain
Gwynn, Irish Party; T. Halligan, Meath County Council; W. Kavanagh,
Carlow County Council; J. McCarron, Labour; M. McDonogh, Galway Urban
Council; J. McDonnell, Galway County Council; C. McKay, Labour; J.
Murphy, Labour; J. O’Dowd, Sligo County Council; C.P. O’Neill, Pembroke
Urban Council; Dr. O’Sullivan, Mayor of Waterford; T. Power, Waterford
County Council; Sir S.B. Quin, Mayor of Limerick; D. Reilly, Cavan
County Council; M. Slattery, Tipperary (S. Riding); H.T. Whitley,
Labour.

In so far as we were led by anyone, Mr. Clancy, fulfilling in public what he had privately spoken, was our leader and spokesman.

We were along with the Southern Unionists and our natural allies, Lords Granard and MacDonnell and Sir Bertram Windle. Archbishop Bernard and Dr. Mahaffy voted with us in that pinch, so that both the late Provost of Trinity and the present one did their part to secure an agreement.

In the other list, the Archbishop of Armagh and the Moderator were grouped with the Archbishop of Cashel and the Bishops of Raphoe and Down and Connor; the Lord Mayor of Cork and Lord Mayor of Belfast were together; Mr. Devlin was with Mr. Barrie. This list represented no unity except a common refusal to agree to any compromise. Those who voted in it followed one or other of two trains of cogent reasoning; but the reasonings led to opposite conclusions. These men were beyond doubt as honest in their convictions as those who went the other way; but they took the easier course, whether they were Nationalist or Unionist: they swam with the tide.

The troubles which Nationalists brought on themselves by supporting Lord Midleton were answered by the troubles which his group met for supporting Nationalist demands. The men who refused to make the compromise possible have the laugh of us. Neither section of us who voted for agreement achieved anything by facing the risk of unpopularity. We had followed Redmond’s policy and we shared Redmond’s fate. We had done our best to help the British Government and that Government itself defeated us.

By the Prime Minister’s letter Government was pledged to legislate for the better government of Ireland, not upon condition of our reaching substantial agreement, but in any event. Yet the letter emphasized the “urgent importance of getting a settlement in and through the Convention.” We had secured a report for a scheme in which sixty-six out of eighty-seven concurred in the broad lines; and of the twenty-one dissentients, nineteen were a group sent to the assembly with a pledge which they construed as giving them a special position, in that no legislation affecting them was to be passed without their concurrence. The agreement which we had reached enabled the Government, when it undertook legislation, to quote Unionist authority on the one hand and Nationalist authority on the other for many wise provisions which otherwise a Coalition Ministry might have found it most difficult to propose.

But no legislation followed. Once more an Irish issue became involved in the wheels of the English political machine.

We have ourselves in part to thank for it. We might in January have taken Redmond’s advice, and Lord Midleton’s declared view that legislation would follow might have proved correct. Yet, what use are might-have-beens? History is concerned with what happened, and our work in the Convention dragged itself on till the great German offensive had been launched and the Allied line pushed back to the very gates of Paris, and Government was at its wits’ end for men. It is hard to blame a Ministry for what harm was done in the frantic rush to cope with perhaps the most critical instant in all history; but what was done produced infinite mischief and no good result. Immediately after the Convention’s report (signed upon April 8th) had been received, Government proposed to apply conscription to Ireland.

It is said, and it is not difficult to believe, that without making this proposal they dare not have come upon the British people with so extreme demands for compulsory service as were made. But by making it Ministers tore up and scattered in fragments whatever results the Convention had to show for its labours, and by legislating for conscription in Ireland they gained not one man. The proposal, as Redmond had always told them, proved impossible to carry out.

I do not believe that if Redmond had lived this would ever have happened. His record in the war gave him an authority in Parliament which no other Irishman could possibly claim. It would have been impossible for Mr. Lloyd George to take such a step without giving him notice; and once that notice came, Redmond could have insisted upon the significance of the report of the Convention’s sub-committee on questions of defence. This committee consisted of two civilians and three soldiers. Lord Desart, a Unionist, was in the chair; Mr. Powell, K.C., a Unionist (afterwards Irish Solicitor-General and now a judge), was the other civilian; the soldiers were the Duke of Abercorn, an Ulster Covenanter, with Captain Doran and myself, Nationalists from the Sixteenth Division. We found unanimously that if an Irish Parliament existed, whatever might be the claims of the Imperial authority, it would be impracticable to impose conscription without the Irish Parliament’s consent. This unanimous finding was bound to influence the view of any Ministry, no matter how hard pressed. But, as debate revealed, Mr. Lloyd George had never heard of it.

I believe that Redmond could have persuaded Mr. Lloyd George to adopt in April the course on which but after the harm was done he fell back in June, when Lord French asked for a large, but limited, number of recruits to refill the Irish Divisions within a specified time at the end of which time, failing the production of the volunteers, other measures must be taken. Here, however, we are back in the region of speculation. Conscription was proposed and anarchy let loose in Ireland. Redmond’s words, “Better for us never to have met than to have met and failed,” stand as the final sentence on this notable episode in Irish history.

That is the Convention’s epitaph as, I think, he would have written it. How shall we write his own?

No attempt has been made in this book, and none shall be made, to represent him as a hero. But there are certain attributes which malice itself can scarcely deny him. All his ideals were generous. His love of country, the master-motive in his life, had nothing in it exclusive or tribal or partisan. His was a policy forward-looking and constructive; without narrowness or jealousy, it aimed to bring the destinies of Ireland into the hands of Irishmen, not greatly caring what Irishmen they were indeed, if they were in a real measure responsible to Ireland, not caring at all. In this spirit he grasped masterfully at the chance which the war offered; in this spirit, he went out to meet his fellow-countrymen in the Irish Convention.

And not only towards his countrymen was he magnanimous. His love of Ireland was free from all attendant hates. His resentment was never on private grounds, and it was without rancour. He spent his whole life in opposition, and was not embittered; his mind remained constructive after thirty years spent in criticism. His experience of political life and of English Ministers had rid him of any credulous faith in mankind; yet his instinct was always to perceive the best in men. The friend who knew him best in Convention, and who had seen him in his darkest hours then and long ago, said this of him: “He was always an optimist.” The speaker did not mean he could not have meant that in those last months Redmond was sanguine. He meant, I think, that he had faith; that in a country where suspicion is the prevailing disease, he credited men with honest motives and with his own love of Ireland.

If he went wrong at any time, he went wrong by too generous a judgment of other men, too open-handed a policy. Perhaps, too, he may have erred it was his characteristic defect in not pressing his policy upon others with more vehemence. He had not the temperament which, when once possessed with an idea, rests neither night nor day in pursuit of it and spares neither others’ labour nor its own to carry the conception into effect. There was an element of inertia in his nature, and of the ordinary self-seeking motives which impel men not a trace. Ambition he had none none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always underestimated his personal influence. A man less single-minded, vainer, more ambitious of success, might with the same gifts have achieved more for Ireland in thrusting towards a personal triumph. A man with more love for the homage of crowds might have kept himself in closer touch with the mass of his following.

The way of life to which he was committed was in its essence distasteful to him. I do not believe that history shows an example of a statesman who served his country more absolutely from a sense of duty.

All this might be admitted without conceding greatness to him. But he was a great man, unlike others, cast in a mould of his own. Without the least affectation of unconventionality, and indeed under a formal appearance, he was profoundly unconventional. His tastes, whether in literature, in art, in the choice of society, in the choice of his way of life, were utterly his own, unaffected by any standard but that which he himself established. Without subtlety of interpretation, his judgments cut deep into the heart of things. You could not hear him speak, could not be in his presence, without feeling the weight of his personality.

A statesman, if ever there was one, he was never given the opportunity of proving himself in administration; he can be judged only by his gifts in counsel and by his power of guiding action. As a counsellor, he was supreme. He had that faculty for anticipating the future, that broad, far-reaching vision of the chain of events which can proceed only from long, deep and constant thought, and which is truly admirable when united, as it was in him, to a sovereign contempt for this or that momentary outcry. In these qualities of insight and foresight I have only seen one man approach him, the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, to whose credit stands the greatest work of Imperial reconciliation accomplished in our day. But Redmond had supremely what the wise old Scotsman lacked the gift of persuasive speech, to win acceptance for his wisdom and his vision.

He could persuade, but he could not compel. His was not the magnetism which constrains allegiance almost in despite of reason the power which was possessed by his first and only leader, Parnell. Redmond’s appeal was to men’s judgment and convictions, not to those instincts which lie deepest and most potent in the heart of man. That was the limitation to his greatness. He could lead only by convincing men that he was right.

If in the end it is true he failed to convince his countrymen and failed to carry them with him, this book has told what difficulties were set in his way, not so much by those who desired a different end than his, but by those who desired the same end. Yet admit that he failed and that he fell from power. No man holds power for ever, and during seventeen continuous years he held the leadership among his own people with far more than all the personal ascendancy of a Prime Minister in one of the oversea Dominions; and he held it without any of the binding force which control of administration and patronage bestows. He left his people improved in their material circumstances to an almost incredible degree, as compared with their state when he began his work.

Yet Ireland counts his life a failure, and he most assuredly accepted that view; for he died heartbroken, not for his own sake but for Ireland’s, because he had not won through to the goal. His action upon the war was his life’s supreme action; he felt this, and knew that it had failed to achieve its end. By that action let us judge him, for all else is trivial in comparison beside it.

It is said by his critics that he bargained badly. If reply were made that he believed the Allied cause to be right and desired to lead his country according to his conception of justice, we should be answered that he was in charge of his country’s interests, not of her morals; and he would have admitted an element of truth in this. Yet, as in the Boer War he had led his countrymen to support what he conceived to be the right cause, even with certain injury to their own, so now assuredly he would not have acted as he did, had he not been convinced that Ireland’s honour was to be served as well as her advantage.

But when there is talk of bargaining, it is well to consider what he had to bargain with. No one in August 1914 anticipated the course of the war. No one foresaw the need for the last man available. It was more than a year before Great Britain could even equip the men who pressed themselves forward for service. All that he really had in his hand to give or to withhold was the value of Ireland’s moral support. Could he by waiting his time have made a better bargain?

When that critical hour came, Redmond knew in his, bones the weight of Ireland’s history; he knew all the propensities which would instantly tend to assert themselves, unless their play was checked by a strong counter-emotion. He knew that if Ireland said nothing and did nothing at the crisis, things would be said of Ireland which would rapidly engender rising passion; and with the growth of that passion all possibility, not of bargaining but of controlling the situation between the two countries would be gone. In plain language, if he had not acted at once, his only chance for action would have been in heading an Ireland hostile to England. In this war, with the issue defined as it was from the outset, he could only have done this by denying all that he believed. But apart from his judgment of the merits, there was his purpose of unity to be served. Ulster was the difficulty; all other obstacles were disposed of. How could he hope for an Ulster united to Ireland, if Ulster were divided from Ireland on the war?

Everything depended on an instant and almost desperate move. He might have left the sole offer of service from Ireland to lie with Sir Edward Carson. What he did actually was to offer instantly all that the Ulstermen had offered, and more, for he proposed active union in Ireland itself. It was a bold stroke, but it was guided by an ideal perpetually present with him the essential unity of Ireland. To set Irishmen working together at such a crisis in the common name of Ireland was an object for which he was willing to jeopardize the whole organization which stood behind him, at a moment when he could speak of full right for three-fourths of his countrymen. And, when he is called a failure, let it be remembered that in this he did not fail.

This fight is not yet ended, the long battle is not lost. Had Ireland from the first stood aloof, had she been drawn at the war’s opening into the temper which she displayed in its closing stages, then indeed we might despair of any hopeful issue, any genuine peace between these two neighbouring islands, and, what matters infinitely more, between the strong yet divergent strains that make up Ireland itself.

But as the mists of passion clear and deeds rather than words come into sharp light, it will be seen and realized that for a thousand Irishmen who risked their lives to defeat Redmond’s effort there were fifty thousand who at his summons took on themselves far greater hardships and faced dangers far more terrible. By them we take our stand we who followed Redmond, who believed and still believe in his wisdom. We wish no word of his last years unspoken, no act undone by that great and generous-hearted Irishman in the supreme period of his life. In his defeat and ours, we accept no defeat; we shall endeavour to keep our will set, as his was, for a final triumph which can mean humiliation for no Irish heart. Tangled as are the threads of all his policy, he leaves the task far nearer to accomplishment than he found it; and if in the end freedom and prosperity come to a united Ireland, they will be found to proceed however deeply overlaid by years and by events may be the chain of causation from the action which John Redmond took in August 1914, and upon which his brother, with a legion like him, set the seal of his blood.

To have served long and faithfully without reward to have given all of life to one high purpose to have faced a great crisis greatly these are claims enough for Redmond that the allegiance of his comrades and followers may be justified when it is judged. The grave has closed over him, and the rest is for us to do, that a coping-stone may be set on his life’s labours, and that reparation final and conclusive, for what he suffered undeservedly, may yet be offered to the dead.