We could not sit inactively under this decree of annihilation.  It was decided to continue The Cork Accent in a permanent form as a daily journal under the title of The Cork Free Press, which was founded at a public meeting presided over by the Lord Mayor.  The All-for-Ireland League was also established to advocate and expound the principles for which we stood in Irish life.  Its purposes are clearly stated in the resolution which gave it birth—­viz.: 

“That inasmuch as we regard self-Government in purely Irish affairs, the transfer of the soil to the cultivators upon just terms, and the relief of Ireland from intolerable over-taxation as essential conditions of happiness and prosperity for our country, and further inasmuch as we believe the surest means of effecting these objects to be a combination of all the elements of the Irish population in a spirit of mutual tolerance and patriotic good will, such as will guarantee to the Protestant minority of our fellow-countrymen inviolable security for all their rights and liberties and win the friendship of the entire people of Great Britain, this representative meeting of the City and County of Cork hereby establishes an Association to be called the All-for-Ireland League, whose primary object shall be the union and active co-operation in every department of our national life of all Irish men and women who believe in the principle of domestic self-government for Ireland.”

The All-for-Ireland League made memorable progress in a brief space of time.  Mr O’Brien’s return to public life was hailed even by the late W.T.  Stead in The Westminster Gazette as nothing short of a great political resurrection.  The noble appeal of the League’s programme to the chivalrous instincts of the race attracted the young men to its side with an enthusiasm amounting to an inspiration.  The Protestant minority in Southern Ireland were being gradually won over to a genuine confidence in our motives and generous intentions to safeguard fully their interests and position and to secure them an adequate part in the future government of our common country.  Even the great British parties began to see in the new movement hopes of that peace and reconciliation between Great Britain and Ireland which must be the hope of all just and broad-minded statesmanship.

It was in these circumstances that the Party surrendered “at discretion” to the expediencies of Liberalism, abjectly waiving their position as an independent entity in Parliament, with no shadow of the pride and spirit of the Parnell period left, seeming to exist for the favours and bonuses that came their way, and for the rest playing to the gallery in Ireland by telling them that Home Rule was coming “at no far distant date,” and that they had only to trust to Asquith and all would be well.  Never had a Party such a combination of favourable circumstances to command success.  They possessed a strategical advantage such as Parnell would have given his life