Naturally Mr Redmond and his friends did not hesitate to close with this piece of good fortune, which opened an honourable passage from a position of comparative isolation to one of triumph and power.  The Healyites, whose quarrel appeared to be wholly with Mr Dillon, to whom Mr Healy in sardonic mood had attached the sobriquet of “a melancholy humbug,” made no difficulty about falling in with the new arrangement, and the three parties forthwith met and signed and sealed a pact for reunification without the country in the least expecting it or, indeed, caring about it.  Probably the near approach of a General Election had more to do with this hastily-made pact than any of the nobler promptings of patriotism.  I believe myself the country would have done much better had the United Irish League gone on with its own blessed work of appeasement and national healing unhampered by what, as after knowledge conclusively proved to me, was nothing but a hypocritical unity for selfish salvation’s sake.  Mr O’Brien puts the whole position in a nutshell when he says:  “The Party was reunified rather than reformed.”  The treaty of peace they entered into was a treaty to preserve their own vested interests in their Parliamentary seats.

But a generous and forgiving nation was only too delighted to have an end of the bickerings and divisions which had wrought such harm to the cause of the people, and accordingly it hailed with gratification the spectacle of a reunited Irish Party.

It is probable, nevertheless, that had the process of educating the people into a knowledge of their own power gone on a little further the United Irish League would have been able at the General Election to secure a national representation which would more truly reflect national dignity, duty and purpose.

The first result of the Parliamentary treaty was the election of Mr John E. Redmond to the chair.  In the circumstances, the majority party having pledged themselves to elect a Parnellite, no other choice was possible.  Mr Redmond possessed many of the most eminent qualifications for leadership.  He had an unsurpassed knowledge of Parliamentary procedure and seemed intended by nature for a great Parliamentary career.  He was uniformly dignified in bearing, had a distinguished presence, a voice of splendid quality, resonant and impressive in tone, and an eloquence that always charmed his hearers.  Had he possessed will power and strength of character in any degree corresponding to his other great gifts, there were no heights of leadership to which he might not have reached.  As it was, he lacked just that leavening of inflexibility of purpose and principle which was required for positive greatness as distinct from moderately-successful leadership.  At any rate, he was the only possible selection, yet once again Mr Dillon exhibited a disposition to show the cloven hoof.  For some inscrutable reason he made up his mind to oppose Mr Redmond’s election to the chair, but when Mr O’Brien and Mr Davitt (who had returned from the Transvaal) got word of the plot they wired urgent messages to their friends in Parliament that Mr Redmond’s selection was the only one that could give the leadership anything better than a farcical character.  Result—­Mr Redmond was elected by a very considerable majority, and Mr Dillon had further reason for having his knife in his former friend and comrade, Mr O’Brien.