Mr Dillon, Mr Redmond promised that his influence would be extended to an effort to return the landlord and ascendancy class to the new Councils.  The United Irish League determined to take issue with him on this.  When the elections under the new Act were announced, Mr Redmond, honestly enough, proceeded to give effect to his promise.  Mr O’Brien decided, and very rightly and properly in my judgment, that it would be a fatal policy, and a weak one, to surrender to the enemy, whilst he was still unconquered and unrepentant, any of those new Councils which could be made citadels of national strength and a new fighting arm of the constitutional movement.  It meant that having driven the landlords forth from the fortresses from which they had so long oppressed the people, they should be immediately readmitted to them, having made no submissions and given no guarantees as to their future good behaviour.  Mr Redmond and his followers made brave appeal from the landlord platforms to their supporters “not to be bitten by the Unity dog.”  Mr Healy’s newspaper and influence took a similar bent.  Mr Dillon’s majority, as usual helpless and indecisive, promulgated no particular policy.  For Mr O’Brien and the United Irish League there could be no such balancings or doubts.  It is good also to be able to say of Mr Davitt that he assisted in fighting the insidious attempt to denationalize the County and District Councils.  The League and its supporters won all along the line.  The few reverses they sustained were negligible when compared with the mighty victories they obtained all over Ireland, and when the elections were over the League was established in an impregnable position as the organisation of disinterested and genuine nationality.

The Parliamentarians, seeing how matters stood, and no doubt with a wise thought of their own future, now proceeded to compose their quarrels.  They saw themselves forgotten of the people, but they were resolved apparently that the people should not forget them.  They took their cue from a country no longer divided over sombre futilities, and unable to make up their minds for themselves they accepted the judgment of the country once they were aware that it was irrevocably come to.  Mr Dillon after his re-election to the chair of his section in 1900 immediately announced his resignation of the office, and being, as we are assured on the authority of Mr O’Brien, always sincerely solicitous for peace with the Parnellites, he caused a resolution to be passed binding the majority party in case of reunion to elect as their chairman a member of the Parnellite Party, which numbered merely nine.