It will thus be seen that at a very early stage indeed of the discussions on Home Rule, distinguished statesmen were agreed that the ideal way of settling the Irish Question was by an arrangement or understanding between the two great British parties—­otherwise by those methods of Conference, Conciliation and Consent which Mr William O’Brien and Lord Dunraven were so violently and irrationally assailed by Mr Dillon and his supporters for advocating.  The great land pact was arranged by those methods of common agreement between all parties in Parliament—­it could never have been reached otherwise.  And, as these pages will conclusively show, the “factionism” of Mr O’Brien and those associated with him consisted in pressing a settlement by Conference methods consistently on the notice of the leaders of all parties.  But Mr Wyndham was treated by the Dillonite section as “a prisoner in a condemned cell”—­to use their own elegant metaphor—­because he showed a disposition to secure a settlement of the Irish difficulty on a non-party basis.  He was ruthlessly exiled from office by methods which confer no credit on their authors, and the Unionist Party retired at the close of the year 1905 with nothing accomplished on the Home Rule issue.

When the Liberals came back to power with an irresistible majority Ireland rang from end to end with glad promises of a great, a glorious and a golden future.  The Liberals had the reins of government in their hands, and the tears were going to be wiped from the face of dark Rosaleen.  Never again was she to know the bitterness of sorrow or that hope of freedom so long deferred which maketh the heart sick.  Mr T.P.  O’Connor wrote to his American news agency that Home Rule was coming at a “not far distant date.”  It was a fair hope, but the men who gambled on it did not take the House of Lords sufficiently into their calculations.  And they forgot also that Home Rule was not a concrete and definite issue before the country at the General Election.  The Liberal Party in 1906 had no Home Rule mandate.  Its leaders were avowedly in favour of what was known as “the step-by-step” programme.  This policy was less than Lord Dunraven’s scheme of Devolution, but because it was the Liberal plan it came in for no stern denunciations from either Mr Dillon or Mr T.P.  O’Connor.  Even so staunch a Home Ruler as Mr John Morley insisted that Mr Redmond’s Home Rule Amendment to the Address should contain this important addendum:  “subject to the supreme authority of the Imperial Parliament.”  The men who shouted in Ireland:  “No compromise,” who were clamant in their demand that there” should be no hauling down of the flag,” and who asked the country to go “back to the old methods” (though they made it clear they were not going to lead them if they did), showed no disinclination to have their own private negotiations with the Liberal leaders on a much narrower programme.

Mr T.P.  O’Connor, in his Life of Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, M.P., tells us exactly what happened, in the following words:—­