Between 1908 and 1910 we were still, though with rapidly increasing success, trying to get a hearing for the Irish question—­trying to push it once more to the front.  The change of leadership from Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to Mr. Asquith had damped Liberal enthusiasm.  We got solid work done for Ireland in the University Act of 1908, though Redmond would have preferred a university of the residential type, like that in which he had himself been an undergraduate.  A highly contentious measure was also carried in the Land Act of 1909.  But a new power was coming to the front, at once assisting and thwarting our efforts.  Mr. Lloyd George put a new fighting spirit into Liberalism:  but the objects which he had at heart could only be achieved by a great expenditure of electoral power, and among those objects Irish self-government found only a secondary place.  When Mr. Gladstone spoke of liberty he thought of what he had helped to bring to Greece, Italy, Bulgaria and Montenegro—­what he had tried to bring to Ireland.  When Mr. Lloyd George spoke of liberty, he thought of what he wanted to bring to England first, and to Ireland by the way; his conviction that Ireland needed self-government was not so deeply rooted as his conviction that the poor throughout the United Kingdom needed help.

Old Age Pensions had been popular, but had not been a fighting issue.  Mr. Lloyd George provided the fighting issue with a vengeance when he set himself to pay for them.  Unfortunately, Nationalist Ireland had no enthusiasm for the Budget which English Radicalism made its flag.  A country of peasant proprietors was easily scared by the very name of land taxes.  But above all the Finance Bill dealt drastically, and many thought unfairly, with the powerful liquor trade, which in its branches of brewing and distilling included the main manufacturing interest of southern Ireland, and on its retail side was incredibly diffused through the whole shopkeeping community.

The dissident Nationalists saw their chance.  Mr. O’Brien emerged from one of his periodic retirements to lead a whirlwind campaign against the “robber Budget.”  Redmond and our party were obliged to oppose a measure which pressed so hard as this undoubtedly did on Ireland.  Our opposition to the land taxes was withdrawn when valuable concessions had been made, but no such compromise was considered possible on the liquor taxes.  On the other hand, it grew clear that the measure was likely to produce a conflict in which the power of the House of Lords might be challenged on the most favourable ground:  and for that reason, when the third reading was reached, the Irish party abstained from voting against it.  This course, while it facilitated close co-operation with Liberalism in the general election which followed, weakened us in Ireland; and eleven out of the eighty-three Nationalist members returned in January 1910 ranked themselves as outside the party; though Mr. O’Brien’s actual following was limited to seven Cork members and Mr. Healy.