By the Prime Minister’s letter Government was pledged to legislate for the better government of Ireland, not upon condition of our reaching substantial agreement, but in any event.  Yet the letter emphasized the “urgent importance of getting a settlement in and through the Convention.”  We had secured a report for a scheme in which sixty-six out of eighty-seven concurred in the broad lines; and of the twenty-one dissentients, nineteen were a group sent to the assembly with a pledge which they construed as giving them a special position, in that no legislation affecting them was to be passed without their concurrence.  The agreement which we had reached enabled the Government, when it undertook legislation, to quote Unionist authority on the one hand and Nationalist authority on the other for many wise provisions which otherwise a Coalition Ministry might have found it most difficult to propose.

But no legislation followed.  Once more an Irish issue became involved in the wheels of the English political machine.

We have ourselves in part to thank for it.  We might in January have taken Redmond’s advice, and Lord Midleton’s declared view that legislation would follow might have proved correct.  Yet, what use are might-have-beens?  History is concerned with what happened, and our work in the Convention dragged itself on till the great German offensive had been launched and the Allied line pushed back to the very gates of Paris, and Government was at its wits’ end for men.  It is hard to blame a Ministry for what harm was done in the frantic rush to cope with perhaps the most critical instant in all history; but what was done produced infinite mischief and no good result.  Immediately after the Convention’s report (signed upon April 8th) had been received, Government proposed to apply conscription to Ireland.

It is said, and it is not difficult to believe, that without making this proposal they dare not have come upon the British people with so extreme demands for compulsory service as were made.  But by making it Ministers tore up and scattered in fragments whatever results the Convention had to show for its labours, and by legislating for conscription in Ireland they gained not one man.  The proposal, as Redmond had always told them, proved impossible to carry out.

I do not believe that if Redmond had lived this would ever have happened.  His record in the war gave him an authority in Parliament which no other Irishman could possibly claim.  It would have been impossible for Mr. Lloyd George to take such a step without giving him notice; and once that notice came, Redmond could have insisted upon the significance of the report of the Convention’s sub-committee on questions of defence.  This committee consisted of two civilians and three soldiers.  Lord Desart, a Unionist, was in the chair; Mr. Powell, K.C., a Unionist (afterwards Irish Solicitor-General and now a judge), was the other civilian; the soldiers were the Duke of Abercorn,