account with Sir Antony MacDonnell, and it is not improbable that part at least of his quarrel with the Land Conference was that the settlement propounded by it superseded and supplanted his own scheme.  Neither Mr O’Brien nor his friends were made aware of these private pourparlers, entered into without any vestige of authority from the Party or its leader, and they only learnt of them casually afterwards.  The incident is instructive of how the path of the peacemaker is ever beset with difficulties, even from among his own household.

After surmounting a whole host of obstacles the Land Conference at long last assembled in the Mansion House, Dublin, on 20th December 1902.  Mr Redmond submitted the final selection of the tenants’ representatives to a vote of the Irish Party and, with the exception of one member who declined to vote, the choice fell unanimously upon those named in Captain Shawe-Taylor’s letter.  Although their findings were subsequently subjected to much embittered attack, no one had any right to impugn their authority, capacity, judgment or intimate knowledge of the tenants’ case.

The landlords’ representatives were also fortunately chosen.  The Earl of Dunraven was a man of the most statesmanlike comprehension, whose high patriotic purpose in all the intervening years has won for him an enduring and an honourable place in the history of his country.  He strove to imbue his own landlord class with a new vision of their duty and their destiny, and if only a few of the later converts to the national claim of Ireland had supported him when he came forward first, in favour of the policy of national reconciliation, many chapters of tragedy in our national life would never have been written.  With a close knowledge of his labours and his personality I can write this of him—­that a man more passionately devoted to his country, more sincerely anxious to serve her highest interests, or more intrepid in pursuing the courses and supporting the causes he deems right, does not live.  He has been a light in his generation and to his class, and he deserves well of all men who admire a moral courage superior to all the shafts of shallow criticism and a patriotism which undoubtedly seeks the best, as he sees it, for the benefit of his country.  And more than this cannot be said of the greatest patriot who ever lived.  The Earl of Mayo also brought a fine idealism and high patriotism to the Conference Council Board.  He had a genuine enthusiasm for the development of Irish industries and was the moving spirit in the Irish Arts and Crafts Exhibitions.  Colonel Hutcheson-Poe, a gallant soldier, who had lost a leg in Kitchener’s Soudan Campaign, a gentleman of sound judgment and excellent sense, was one of the moderating elements in the Conference.  Finally, Colonel Nugent Everard represented one of the oldest Anglo-Irish families of the Pale and the author of several projects tending to the betterment of the people.  The tenants’ representatives presented a concise list of their own essential requirements as drafted by Mr O’Brien.  It was as follows:—­