It needs not to follow out in any detail the steps by which we reached the end of our labours.  In the upshot, the Ulster group of nineteen dissented from everything and joined in a report which renewed the demand for partition.  The Primate and the Provost signed a separate note declaring that a Federal Scheme based on the Swiss or Canadian system offered the only solution which could avoid the alternative choice between the coercion of Ulster and the partition of Ireland.  The remaining members, sixty-six in all, accepted one common scheme.[14] Their number included ten Southern Unionists, five Labour representatives (three of whom were Protestant artisans from Belfast), with Lords Granard, MacDonnell and Dunraven, Sir Bertram Windle and the representatives of the Dublin and Cork Chambers of Commerce.

The scheme on which we concurred recommended the immediate establishment of self-government by an Irish Ministry responsible to a Parliament consisting of two Houses, composed on highly artificial lines.  For a period of fifteen years Southern Unionists were to be represented by nominated members, while Ulster was to have extra members elected by special constituencies representing commercial and agricultural interests.  The Parliament was to have full control of internal legislation, administration and direct taxation.  The fixation of customs and excise was to be from Westminster, but the proceeds of these taxes to be paid into the Irish Exchequer.  There was to be a contribution to the cost of Imperial defences, and representation at Westminster, but a representation of the Irish Parliament rather than of the constituencies.  All of this was agreed to at our last meeting, and nothing could have been more pleasant than the atmosphere of good will which prevailed.  But this was after a critical division—­the most critical in which I have ever voted—­in which those of us Nationalists who were for accepting the Government proposals voted with the Southern Unionists and those who were against with the Ulster group.  The combination of Ulstermen and extreme Nationalists was thirty-four strong; those who adopted Redmond’s policy and Lord Midleton’s were thirty-eight.  We had in our lobby sixteen of the Nationalist County and Urban Councillors; they had eleven.

If that vote had gone otherwise, we were told plainly that the Southern Unionists would be no parties to the rest of the compromise.  They were willing to recommend self-government only if the Convention recommended the reservation of customs to the Imperial Parliament.  This point had become in their minds important even more as a symbol of the close union between the two kingdoms than by reason of the economic advantages which they attributed to it.

Once the sticking-point was passed, the divided Nationalists recombined, and we were all at one in our mutual felicitations on the harmony which prevailed at the close.  But as one of our rank and file said in my ear, “If we had not given the vote we did, where would be all this talk of harmony?  And mind you now, it was not easy to give it.”