The majority of them were mere automatons—­very honest, very patriotic, exceedingly respectable, good, ordinary, decent and fairly intelligent Irishmen, but as Parliamentarians their only utility consisted in their capacity to find their way into the voting Lobby as they were ordered.  To their meek submission, and to their rather selfish fear of losing their seats if they asserted an independent opinion, I trace many if not all of the catastrophes and failures that overtook the Party in later years.  Needless to say, neither the country nor the other parties in Parliament had the least understanding of the real character and composition of the Nationalist Party.  It had always a dozen or more capable men who could dress the ranks and hold their own “on the floor of the House” as against the best intellects and debating power of either British party.  Irish readiness and repartee made question time an overwhelmingly Irish divertissement.  Our members had a unique faculty for bringing about spectacular scenes that read very well in the newspapers and made the people at home think what fine fellows they had representing them!  All this might be very good business in its way if it had any special meaning, but I could never for the life of me see how taking the Sultanate of Morocco under our wing could by any stretch of the imagination help forward the cause of Ireland.

The policy of the Party, in the ultimate resort, was supposed to be controlled by the United Irish League acting through its branches in Convention assembled.  Inasmuch as the Party derived whatever strength it possessed in Parliament from the virility and force of the agitation in Ireland, it was in the fitness of things that the country should have the right of ordering the tune.  When he founded the United Irish League Mr O’Brien unquestionably intended that this should be the case—­that the country should be the master of its own fate and that the constituencies should be in the position of exercising a wholesome check on the conduct of their Parliamentary representatives, who, in addition to the pledge to sit, act and vote with the Party, also entered into an equally binding undertaking to accept neither favour nor office from the Government.  As the Party was for the greater part made up of poor men or men of moderate means, members received an indemnity from a special fund called “The Parliamentary Fund,” which was administered by three trustees.  This fund was specially collected each year, and in principle, if the subscriptions came from Ireland alone, was an excellent method of making members of the Party obey the mandate of the people, under the penalty of forfeiting their allowance.  But in practice, most of the subscriptions were collected in America, and we had in effect the extraordinary situation of Irish representatives being maintained in Parliament by the moneys of their American kith and kin.  And the situation after 1903 was rendered the more ludicrous