Mr. Wyndham, on behalf of the Government, had taken the unusual course of repudiating the Dunraven scheme in a letter to the Times, but in spite of this, Irish Unionists wrote to the Times to express their suspicions “whether in short the devolution scheme is not the price secretly arranged to be paid for the Nationalist acquiescence in a settlement of the land question on generous terms.”

Then it was that the Times expressed its opinion that when a Unionist Lord Lieutenant and a Unionist Under Secretary are discussing reforms which the Cabinet condemn as Home Rule in a thin disguise, it is obviously time that they quitted their posts.  Three weeks later Mr. Wyndham resigned, but Sir Antony, who had had the refusal of the Governorship of Bombay—­the third greatest Governorship in the British Empire—­retained his position, though his presence at Dublin Castle had been described by some fervent Orangemen as a menace to the loyal and law-abiding inhabitants of Ireland, and by the Irish Attorney-General as a gross betrayal of the Unionist position and an injury to the Unionist cause.  Mr. Long, however, very rapidly won the hearts of those who had succeeded in securing the resignation of Mr. Wyndham by his description of devolution as “a cowardly surrender to the forces of disorder,” and in the same strain the Earl of Westmeath spoke of “truckling to disloyalty and trying to conciliate those who will not be conciliated.”

At the opening of the session of 1905 the whole question was ventilated.  The official explanations proving unsatisfactory, the Orangemen decided to withdraw their support from the Government on all questions affecting Ireland, and the leader of the party went so far as to utter the threat that “Ulster might have to draw upon her reserves,” which was taken to mean that the Orangemen who were members of the Government would resign en masse—­an action which, in the moribund condition of the Ministry, would have meant an instant dissolution.  At the very beginning of the session Mr. Wyndham had announced that the matter of Sir Antony’s dealings with Lord Dunraven had been considered by the Cabinet, and “the Government expressed through me their view that the action of Sir Antony MacDonnell was indefensible.  But they authorised me to add that they were thoroughly satisfied that his conduct was not open to the imputation of disloyalty.”

The equivocal and ambiguous position in which the Unionists placed themselves in the course of this episode is a striking commentary on the impossibility of governing a country against its will.  The Tories tried once again, in the historic phrase, to catch the Whigs bathing and steal their clothes, but this time they failed.  When the Orangemen held a pistol at the Government’s head and bade its members stand and deliver, Mr. Wyndham had perforce to resign, but the mystery, which has not yet been cleared up, is the reason why the Viceroy and the Under Secretary, who were tarred with the same brush, retained their posts.