Mr. Redmond then concluded his speech with the paragraph to which most prominence was given in the English Press, with a view to suggest that he accepted, with only minor reservations, the proposals of the Government. I quote it in extenso to show how slender is the ground for this imputation:—
“I am most anxious to find, if I can, in this scheme an instrument which, while admittedly it will not solve the Irish problem, will, at any rate, remove some of the most glaring and palpable causes which keep Ireland poverty-stricken and Irishmen hopeless and disaffected. It is in that spirit that my colleagues and I will address ourselves to the Bill. We shrink from the responsibility of rejecting anything which after the full consideration which this Bill will secure, seems to our deliberate judgment calculated to ease the suffering of Ireland, and hasten the day of full convalescence."[27]
No one can suggest, in view of these words, that Mr. Redmond committed himself or his colleagues to anything further than to consider the Bill in a critical but not a hostile spirit. As to the suggestion that a vote for the first reading and the printing of the Bill in any sense involved the party in even a modified acceptance of the measure, in doing so the Irish members were acting in fulfilment of a pledge given by Mr. Redmond six months before, when, speaking on September 23rd, he said:—
“When the scheme is produced it will be anxiously and carefully examined. It will be submitted to the judgment of the Irish people, and no decision will be come to, whether by me or by the Irish Party, until the whole question has been submitted to a National Convention. When the hour of that Convention comes any influence which I possess with my fellow-countrymen will be used to induce them firmly to reject any proposal, no matter how plausible, which, in my judgment, may be calculated to injure the prestige of the Irish Party and disrupt the National movement, because my first and my greatest policy, which overshadows everything else, is to preserve a united National Party in Parliament, and a United powerful organisation in Ireland, until we have achieved the full measure of National freedom to which we are entitled.”
If the Irish Party had not voted for the first reading we should have been told by their critics that their action was a despotic attempt to override and smother the freely-expressed opinions of the Irish people, but it must not be forgotten that it is due to Mr. Redmond’s own initiative that in the case of this Bill, as in the case of the Land Bill of 1903, the final decision has rested, not, as in the case of the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, with the members of the Parliamentary Party, but, by a sort of referendum, with a National Convention containing representative Irishmen elected for the purpose from every part of the country in the most democratic manner. It is worthy of attention that the very people who