Note Mr Dillon’s extreme zeal for national unity—­the man who, less than twelve months before, had set himself at the head of “a determined campaign to defy the decisions of the Irish Party, the National Directory and the United Irish League,” and who did not in the least scruple whether or not he “would tear the ranks of the Nationalists of Ireland to pieces” in the gratification of his purpose!  The “attempt made in the city of Cork” which called forth Mr Dillon’s thunders was a resolution of the Cork branch of the United Irish League which hailed with sympathy the establishment of the Irish Reform Association as proof of the continuance of the spirit of conciliation “among those classes of our countrymen who have hitherto held aloof from us”—­a spirit which had already led to such happy results in the abolition of landlordism “by common consent,” and which was capable of “still wider and more blessed results in the direction of a National Parliament of our own.”  The resolution also expressed gratification “at the statesmanlike spirit in which Mr Redmond has greeted the establishment of the new Association.”  It will be observed that there was here a clear line of demarcation.  Mr O’Brien and his friends wanted, in moderate and guarded language, without in any way binding themselves “to the particular views set forth in the programme of the Irish Reform Association,” to give a message of encouragement to a body of Irish Unionists, who, as Sir Edward Carson, The Times and every other enemy of Home Rule declared, had become converts to the National demand for self-government and who looked likely to bring the bulk of the Protestant minority in Ireland with them.  Mr Dillon and those who thought with him savagely repelled this movement towards a national unity which would embrace all classes and creeds to the forgetfulness of past wrongs, animosities and deep divisions.  It seemed to have got into their minds that the appearance of the Irish Reform Association covered some occult plot between Lord Dunraven, Mr Wyndham, Sir Antony MacDonnell and Mr O’Brien.  Mr Davitt declared that “No party or leader can consent to accept the Dunraven substitute without betraying a national trust.”  Others of lesser note denounced the new movement and its authors with every circumstance of insult and used language of a coarseness that deserves the severest condemnation.

Mr Joseph Devlin, who had succeeded Mr John O’Donnell as Secretary of the United Irish League, now began to be a rather considerable figure in Irish politics on the Dillonite side.  He told his constituents in North Kilkenny that they were not going to seek “the co-operation of a few aristocratic nobodies,” and he, quite unjustly, as I conceive, attributed to Lord Dunraven and his friends a desire to weaken the national demand.