Doubtless “these people” thought this the threat of a man helpless through illness, and not to be seriously noticed, for they went on with their preparations, surreptitious and otherwise, for our destruction, in suitable time and form.  I will ever remember it with pride and gratitude that the labourers of the south, the President of whose Association I was, were gloriously staunch and loyal and that there never was a demand I made upon them for support and encouragement they did not magnificently respond to.  They gave repayment, in full measure and flowing over, for whatever little I was able to accomplish in my lifetime for the alleviation of their lot and the brightening of their lives.

Meanwhile the Party had matters all their own way, yet their only “great” achievement was to get the Birrell Land Bill passed into law and to put an end to the operations of the Purchase Act of 1903 which was so rapidly transforming the face of the country.  They also passed for Mr Lloyd George what Mr Dillon termed “the great and good” Budget, but which really added enormously to the direct taxation of Ireland—­imposing an additional burden of something not far from three millions sterling on the backs of an already overtaxed country.  But if the people were plundered the place-hunters were placated.  The Irish Party had now become little better than an annexe of Liberalism.  They sat in Opposition because it was the tradition to do so, but in reality they were the obsequious followers of a British Party and browsing on its pasturage in the hope of better things to come.

Not far off were heard the rumblings of an approaching General Election.  There were the usual flutterings of the “ins” who wanted to remain in, and of the “outs” who were anxious to taste the social sweets and the personal pomp of the successful politician, who had got the magic letters “M.P.” to his name.  It is wonderful what an appeal it makes to the man who has made his “pile” somehow or anyhow (or who wants to make it) to have the right to enter the sacred portals of Westminster, but it is more wonderful still to see him when he gets there become the mere puppet of the Party Whips, without an atom of individual independence or a grain of useful initiative.  The system absorbs them and they become cogs in a machine, whose movements they have little power of controlling or directing.

It was pretended by the leaders of the Nationalists that their subservient surrender to the Liberal Party was a far-sighted move to compel Mr Asquith and his friends to make Home Rule “the dominant issue,” as they termed it, at the General Election.  The veto of the House of Lords, the hitherto one intractable element of opposition to Home Rule, was to go before long and the House of Commons, within certain limits, would be in a position to impose its will as the sovereign authority in the State.  Yet it is the scarcely believable fact that in all these precious months,