The Southern Unionist Group was led by Lord Midleton; with him were Lords Mayo and Oranmore, representing the Irish peers. The Irish Unionist Alliance had sent Mr. Stewart, a great land-agent, and Mr.
Andrew Jameson (whose name, as someone said, was "a household word written in letters of gold throughout Ireland"). The Chambers of Commerce had their representatives from Dublin, Belfast and Cork.
In the Ulster group, Mr. Barrie, M.P., acted as leader, Lord Londonderry as secretary. Of the rest, Sir George Clark, chairman of Workman and Clark"s great shipbuilding yard, had been known to us in Parliament. A Scot by birth, with a life of thirty years spent in Belfast, during which time he had seen his business grow from two hundred hands to ten thousand, he knew nothing of Ireland but Belfast, and had no trace of Irish feeling. In this he stood alone; but unhappily no man carried more weight in Belfast--with the possible exception of one whom few of us outside Ulster knew before we came to that body. Mr. Alexander McDowell was a solicitor by profession, the adviser of policy to all the business men of Belfast. From the first day of our meeting he stood out by sheer weight of brain and personality. He was to some of us the surprise of that a.s.sembly, and made us realize how little part we had in Ulster when the existence of such a man could be an unknown factor to us.
Mr. Pollock, President of the Belfast Chamber of Commerce, was also new to us, and was destined to play a prominent part in our affairs. With the Catholic prelates sat the two Archbishops of the Church of Ireland--Dr. Crozier and Dr. Bernard--to both of whom the democratic const.i.tution of their Church had given great experience in management of business and discussion. Dr. MacDermott, Moderator of the Presbyterian General a.s.sembly, was the official head of his Church for the year only and had not equal knowledge of administration. An orator, with a touch of the enthusiast in his temperament, he was a simple and sympathetic figure; vehement in his political faith, yet responsive to all the human charities and deeply a lover of his country. There was no better representative there of Ulster, of the Ulster difficulty--at once so separate from and so akin to the rest of Ireland.
The Government nominees included, as was only natural, the most personally distinguished group. First of them should be named the Provost of Trinity, Dr. Mahaffy, under whose aegis we a.s.sembled--a great scholar and a great Irishman. He brought with him an element of independent unregimented political thought--often freakish in expression, but based on a vast knowledge of men and countries. In a more practical sense, Lord MacDonnell and Lord Dunraven were our chief political theorists, devisers by temperament of const.i.tutional machinery. Lord MacDonnell"s repute as an administrator, Lord Dunraven"s as a leading figure in the Land Conference, gave weight to whatever came from them. Lord Granard, who sat with them, was a Catholic peer who had commanded a battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment in the Tenth Division and had held offices in Mr. Asquith"s Government. He had now the brilliant idea of reopening for the period of the Convention one of the most beautiful eighteenth-century dwellings, Ely House, and making it a centre of hospitality and a meeting-place for friendly outside intercourse. Few more useful a.s.sistances were rendered to our purpose, and certainly none more pleasant.
Lord Desart, a distinguished lawyer, acted closely with Lord Midleton.
Sir Bertram Windle, President of University College, was another of Government"s choices--a man of science who was also very much a man of affairs. Another, far less of a debater, far more of a power, was Mr.
William Martin Murphy, Chairman of the Dublin Tramways, a powerful employer of labour who had headed the fight against Larkin in 1913, and had been mainly responsible for the character of the employers" victory.
He was the owner of the most widely circulated Irish paper, the _Irish Independent_--which stood in journalism for what Mr. Healy represented in Parliament--an envenomed Nationalist opposition to the Parliamentary party.
Mr. Edward Lysaght, the son of a great manufacturer in South Wales, combined like his father an apt.i.tude for literature and for business; he wrote books, he was concerned in a publishing venture, but he was chiefly interested in his farm in county Clare--where he had voted for de Valera. He had been chosen deliberately as a link with Sinn Fein. It stamped an aspect of the Convention that he was the youngest man there--for he would not have been noticeably young in the House of Commons. We were a middle-aged a.s.sembly. Another link, though not so explicit, with Republican Ireland was Mr. George Russell, "A.E.," poet, writer on co-operative economics, a mystic, with all a mystic"s shrewdness, an orator with much personal magnetism. Lastly, there was Sir Horace Plunkett, perhaps the only member of the Convention except Redmond whose name would have occurred to every Irishman as indispensably necessary.
Two other personages should be noted. Mr. Walter MacMurrough Kavanagh, Chairman of the Carlow County Council, was by tradition and training a strong Unionist, by inheritance the representative of one of the old Irish princely families. He had been elected to the Vice-Chairmanship of his County Council while still a Unionist; later, he adhered to Lord Dunraven"s proposals of devolution, but finding no rest in a half-way house, came into full support of Redmond and for some time was a member of our party; by temperament deeply conservative, he was in no way separated by that from many of the ablest Nationalists, lay and ecclesiastic. As a speaker he had few equals in the Convention; no man there, indeed, except Redmond, could throw equal pa.s.sion into the plea of urgency for a settlement, for I think no other man felt it with such earnestness.
Captain Doran, Chairman of the Louth Council, was on his way back to France when the summons to the Convention stopped him. A Methodist, he was divided by religion from his neighbours in County Louth: but that did not stop them from putting this prosperous and capable farmer, working his land on the most modern methods, into the Chair of their County Council. Before the war, when the Larne gun-running took place, he decided that matters looked serious, called his friends together and formed a company of Volunteers, who might be needed to protect themselves or to protect other Nationalists across the adjacent Ulster border. After the war had broken out and the Home Rule Act was pa.s.sed, and Redmond had launched his appeal, this country farmer, then aged fifty, made his way to Mallow and asked General Parsons to accept him as a recruit. He was accepted, and very shortly given a commission in the Dublin Fusiliers. Out of his local Volunteers he took seventy-five into the Army with him. He was with the Sixteenth Division from its landing in France till after the day of Messines, commanding his company. All this gave him an authority in an a.s.sembly where all voices were in support of the war, and more particularly in an appeal to Ulster; and with this advantage went an unusual gift of frank and eloquent speech, linked with a fine idealism.
These were the main personal elements in the group that came together on July 25th--Mr. Duke, the Chief Secretary, acting as temporary Chairman and Sir Francis Hopwood (soon to become Lord Southborough) having been brought over as Secretary. Mr. Duke having addressed us with an earnest suavity, we were told to select a Chairman: and on the motion of the Primate, Archbishop Crozier, this embarra.s.sing task was delegated to a committee of ten, rapidly told off. We adjourned for lunch, and on rea.s.sembling found that a unanimous recommendation named Sir Horace Plunkett. The Ulstermen had expressed a willingness to accept Redmond.
This he refused to discuss; but he was put into the Chair of the selecting committee. There was a recommendation also that Sir Francis Hopwood should be Secretary to the Convention. Both these proposals were welcomed, and we dispersed feeling that we had done a good day"s work.
There was, however, one set-off to it. When the Selection Committee had done its work, its members went off singly, and outside the gate of College a small group of ardent patriots were waiting, who mobbed Redmond on the way to his hotel. They were young, no doubt; but the Republican party claimed specially the youth of Ireland; and these lads expressed with a simple eloquence very much what was said by older and more articulate voices, uttering the same thought in print. It is worth while to ill.u.s.trate here the att.i.tude taken towards Redmond by much of Nationalist Ireland, for it profoundly influenced Redmond"s att.i.tude and action in the Convention. I take, not casual and partisan journalism, but a pa.s.sage from a book published by a distinguished Irish writer who had never publicly attached himself to any party. Mr. James Stephens was in Dublin during the insurrection; he wrote a book about his own personal observation of it, which as a record of observation is admirable. But when Mr. Stephens comes to emit opinions, here is what he has to say:
"Why it happened is a question that may be answered more particularly.
It happened because the leader of the Irish party misrepresented his people in the English House of Parliament. On the day of the declaration of war between England and Germany he took the Irish case, weighty with eight centuries of history and tradition, and he threw it out of the window. He pledged Ireland to a particular course of action, and he had no authority to give this pledge and he had no guarantee that it would be met. The ramshackle intelligence of his party and his own emotional nature betrayed him and us and England. He swore Ireland to loyalty as if he had Ireland in his pocket and could answer for her. Ireland has never been disloyal to England, not even at this epoch, _because she has never been loyal to England_, and the profession of her National faith has been unwavering, has been known to every English person alive, and has been clamant to all the world beside.
"Is it that he wanted to be cheered? He could very easily have stated Ireland"s case truthfully, and have proclaimed a benevolent neutrality (if he cared to use the grandiloquent words) on the part of this country. He would have gotten his cheers, he would in a few months have gotten Home Rule in return for Irish soldiers. He would have received politically whatever England could have safely given him. But, alas!
these carefulnesses did not chime with his emotional moment. They were not magnificent enough for one who felt that he was talking not to Ireland or to England, but to the whole gaping and eager earth, and so he pledged his country"s credit so deeply that he did not leave her even one National rag to cover herself with.
"After a lie, truth bursts out, and it is no longer the radiant and serene G.o.ddess we knew or hoped for--it is a disease, it is a moral syphilis, and will ravage until the body in which it can dwell has been purged. Mr. Redmond told the lie, and he is answerable to England for the violence she had to be guilty of, and to Ireland for the desolation to which we have had to submit. Without his lie there had been no Insurrection, without it there had been at this moment, and for a year past, an end to the "Irish question." Ireland must in ages gone have been guilty of abominable crimes, or she could not at this juncture have been afflicted with a John Redmond."
Politicians everywhere need to grow tough skins; but Redmond, though he was a veteran in politics, had no special gift that way. It was not pleasant for the Nationalist leader, when an a.s.sembly of Irishmen were called together to attempt the framing of a Const.i.tution, to find himself the object, and the sole object, of public insult; it was not pleasant for him to feel that he might at any time be subjected to a renewal of this experience in the streets of Ireland"s capital, where he had been acclaimed as a hero so few years ago. It was not pleasant for him to feel that whenever he took up a book or paper dealing with Ireland he was liable to come upon some outburst such as the one which I have quoted. These things were pin-p.r.i.c.ks, yet pin-p.r.i.c.ks administered in public; and the mere effort to endure such things without wincing saps a man"s vitality. Behind them lay the definite repudiation of his policy in election after election--for Kilkenny City followed the example of Clare and replaced Pat O"Brien by a Sinn Feiner. He was repudiated in the eye of the world, and repudiated with every circ.u.mstance of contumely. Plainly in the Convention he could no longer claim to speak for Ireland; that limited gravely his power to serve.
I think, however, that deep in his heart a resentment, all the more rankling because he gave it no voice, prompted him to be on his guard against lending the least colour of justification to any plea that in the Convention he had sought to pledge Ireland without due mandate or had committed anyone but himself. All that was personal in his resources--his labour, his experience, his judgment, his eloquence--all this he put unreservedly at the Convention"s service: but he abstained, and I think not only out of policy but as the result of silent anger, from making the least use of that authority which he still possessed and which he might easily have augmented. If in the result he took too little upon him, lest anyone should ever say he had taken too much, and if because he left too much to others Ireland was the loser, Ireland must bear not the loss only but the blame.
Many even of those who most agreed with his action had, under the influence and events of these years and of public comments on these events, lost confidence in him. Some weeks after the Convention a.s.sembled, a very able priest said to me that he regarded Redmond as "a worn-out man." The genuineness of his regret was proved by the delight with which he heard what I could tell him. Never in my life did I find so much cause for admiration of Redmond as in the early stages--which were in many ways the most important--of our meetings. Never at any time did I know him exert so successfully his charm of public manner. At the second day"s meeting, when the new Chairman took up his place and function, there were several small points to be settled, each capable of creating friction; and it has to be admitted that in the technical aspect of his duty Sir Horace Plunkett did not shine: business quickly became involved. Fortunately he was of a temper to welcome help, and it was quickly to hand. Archbishop Crozier showed himself to be accomplished, resourceful, and most tactful on all points of procedure: and Redmond then for the first time did with extraordinary skill what he had to do at many stages later. By a series of questions to the Chair he suggested rather than recommended a way of clearing the involved issue; and all this was done with a precision of phrase which was none the less exact because it was easy, and with a dignity which was none the less impressive because it had no pretence to effect. His mastery both of the form and substance of procedure was conspicuous. One of the ablest among the Southern Unionists said to me in these days: "He is superb: he does not seem able to put a word wrong."
I think that the secret of his happiness of manner lay simply in this, that within the Convention he was happy. There was a note in it that I never felt in the House of Commons, even when he was at his best. There he always spoke as if almost a foreigner, no matter among how familiar faces. Here he was among his own countrymen, and for the first time in his life in an a.s.sembly in no way sectional. For from the first it was plain that, by whatever means, there had been gathered a compendium of normal, ordinary Irish life: farmer, artisan, peer, prelate, landlord, tenant, shopkeeper, manufacturer--all were there in pleasantly familiar types. The atmosphere was unlike that of a political gathering; it resembled rather some casual a.s.semblage where all sorts of men had met by accident and conversed without prejudice. Everybody met somebody whom he had known in some quite different relation of life and with whom he had never looked to be a.s.sociated in any such task as the framing of a Const.i.tution. It was all oddly haphazard, full of interest and surprises; all of us were a little out of our bearings, but much disposed to reconnoitre in the spirit of friendly advance.
After the first day of Sir Horace Plunkett"s chairmanship there was an adjournment of something like a fortnight to give the Chairman and secretariat time for preparation: and in this interval a plan of action was formed. The object in view was to avoid the danger of an immediate break and to give play to the reconciling influences. It was decided to begin by a prolonged process of general discussion, in which men could express their minds freely without the necessity of coming to an operative decision on any of the controversial points, until the value of each could be a.s.sessed in relation to the possibility of a general agreement.
The plan adopted was to discuss, without division taken, the schemes which had been submitted by members of the Convention and by others.
Members would propose and expound their own projects: for the exposition of the others some member must make himself responsible.
At this "presentation stage" and at all stages, Redmond absolutely declined to put forward a plan in his own name. This was not only from temperamental reasons: there was an official obstacle. He was an individual member of the Convention: but he was Chairman of the Irish party, pledged not to bind it without its consent. He felt, no doubt, that any detailed proposal from him would be taken as binding the party, whom he could not consult without bringing them into the secrets of the Convention.
But this att.i.tude of self-abnegation was pushed very far by him, and perhaps too far. In his early utterances he deprecated all official recognition of sections. Yet from the moment when committees came to be appointed this recognition was claimed; and from the first the Ulster group maintained a compact organization. They had their own chairman, Mr. Barrie, and their secretary; they secured a committee-room for their own purposes; they voted solidly as one man. All this, though we did not know it at first, was dictated by the conditions of their attendance.
They were pledged to act simply as delegates, who must submit every question of importance to an Advisory Committee in Belfast--behind which again was the Ulster Unionist Council. They had therefore no freedom of action and were of necessity extremely guarded in speech.
The Southern Unionists, including the representatives of the Irish peers, were also organized as a group; but they came to the Convention with much fuller powers. They felt themselves bound to consider, and in certain conditions to consult, those whom they represented; but they were free to originate suggestions, and individually each man expressed his own view. But they too had their meeting-place and their frequent consultations.
The handful of Labour men also met and discussed action, though they were not organized as a group and did not feel pledged to a joint course. Each, according to his own lights, represented the interests of Labour. Still, they met.
The only group which had no common centre of reunion was that of the Nationalists--a majority of the whole a.s.sembly. This included the representatives of the Irish party and the County and Urban Councillors, all of whom had been returned as its supporters. It included also the four representatives of the hierarchy, every one of whom had been either actually or potentially a part of Nationalist Conventions, and of whom three had been most prominent supporters of the general organization.
But a difficulty existed in the presence of other personages who were in general support of us, but who outside the Convention belonged to a different category. Lord Dunraven was a Home Ruler, but had been no supporter of the Irish party. Lord MacDonnell stood much nearer to us, but was a power in his own right and had never been a party politician.
Mr. Lysaght had voted against us in Clare. Mr. Russell had very often attacked the party on aspects of its general action. Above all, there was Mr. W.M. Murphy, who, like Mr. Healy, had been at one time a member of the Irish party, and whose paper had for long been in nominal support of its purposes, but who had throughout recent years done more than all forces together to discredit and weaken its influence.
All of these five men were Government nominees, as were also Lord Granard and Sir Bertram Windle, who in different ways gave Redmond complete and most useful backing. It would have been possible to call together a group consisting of men who had been members of the national organization which would have excluded all these and included the Bishops;[10] but Redmond probably felt it would be ungracious to do this. His chief desire was to avoid all recognition of party and still more of partisan machinery. His conclusion was to do nothing; and it was a conclusion to which he was p.r.o.ne at all times when he did not see his way clear. This temperamental disinclination to take any action which might create difficulties was in these days at its height with him.
Since the spring his usually perfect health had been failing; he suffered from the physical inertia which accompanies the growth of a fatal disease; and sorrow upon sorrow, rebuff upon rebuff, had weakened the resilience of his mind. It was not that he lacked courage or confidence in his own judgment; but he was bound as a statesman to make allowance for the estimate which others, his followers, would put upon that judgment when he declared it. Sensitive by nature, he was deeply aware of failure which had resulted from the most disparaging of causes--not flat rejection, but belated, half-hearted and blundering adoption, of whatever course he had proposed. He overrated, I am sure, the extent to which his personal position had been depreciated in the minds of those who were there. It was true, as the event was to prove, that he could no longer count on unquestioning support of any policy simply on the ground that he advocated it; but any opinion which he presented would have been commended not only by the cogency of his argument but by an old esteem for his wisdom, and, above and beyond this, by a personal feeling Men would have inclined to his side not for the argument"s sake only, but for his sake.
There was felt, too, precisely at the moment when it mattered most, the defect in his quality as leader. He lacked the personal touch. It was not that he would not, but that he could not, put himself into contact with the individual minds of men. He owed it, I think, to the rank and file to give them more of his guidance than they actually received. He was a genial presence when they met; but of confidential discussion upon details I am sure that nothing pa.s.sed. Had he called the group together, had he spoken his mind to them collectively, in confidence, things would in all ways have been better. But there was ingrained in him a sort of shyness, a repugnance to force his view on others by argument, an indisposition to controversy, which was his limitation; and all this was at this time accentuated by the hurt sense that there would be always in men"s minds a memory, not of the hundred times when his wisdom had amply justified itself, but of recent occasions when he had advised them and the result was not what he foretold.
To sum up, then, this criticism--what he said and did publicly in the Convention could hardly by stretch of imagination have been bettered.
But outside its sessions he did not handle his team. On the balance, probably, he thought it better to leave them to their own devices; but his temperament weighed in that decision. As a result, the County Councillors and other local representatives used to hold meetings of their own. They were shrewd and capable men; but in the matters with which we had to deal the most skilled direction was necessary; and there was never a man more capable of giving them guidance out of a lifetime"s experience than was Redmond, nor one from whom they would have more willingly accepted instruction.
Discussion in the Convention itself was not of great value for the education of opinion, because men naturally were reluctant to get up and state precisely their individual difficulties, which in a confidential interchange of views might have been shown to proceed from some defect in comprehension. The chief value in the debates lay in what they revealed rather than what they imparted. One fact was salient. No Nationalist was prepared to recommend acceptance of the Home Rule Act as it stood, though some of its most vehement a.s.sailants adopted great parts of its framework. Broadly speaking, Nationalists wanted for Ireland the powers which were possessed by a self-governing Dominion, but were content to leave all control of defence to the Imperial authority and did not press any demand for a local militia. On the other hand, there was strong insistence on the right of an Irish Parliament to have complete power of taxation within its jurisdiction.
It was manifest that the financial clauses of the existing Act would no longer apply. They were framed in view of a situation which found Ireland contributing ten millions in taxation and costing twelve to administer. Now, less than half the taxation paid the cost of all Irish services and the balance went towards the war.
It was also evident that Nationalists were prepared to make concessions to the minority quite inconsistent with the current democratic view of what a Const.i.tution should be. The Bishop of Raphoe, for instance, expressed willingness to have the Irish peers as an Upper House. Lord Midleton, however, for the Southern Unionists, insisted that those whom he spoke for must have a voice in the House of Commons--however they got it; and there was general desire to give it them, even by methods which no one could justify for general application.
In short, it became increasingly clear as the debates proceeded that we could come to an arrangement with Unionists if Lord Midleton represented Unionism. But he did not. Ulster was there; and the Ulster men made it plain that their business was to hear suggestions, not to put them forward. Two facts, however, emerged about Ulster"s att.i.tude. The first was that in coming to the Convention the Ulstermen had expected to negotiate on the basis of taking the Home Rule Act as the maximum Nationalist demand. The only compromise which they had contemplated was a mean term between the provisions of that Act and Ulster"s demand for a continuance of the legislative Union so far as Ulster was concerned. The second was that Belfast regarded as ruinous to its interests any possibility of a tariff war with Great Britain, and believed that if Ireland were given the power to fix its own customs duties the dominant farming interest would seek to find revenue by new taxation on imports.
Hence, the proposal to give Ireland full fiscal powers could not be acceptable to Ulster. Here lay the main rock in our course.
As the discussion proceeded, one category of proposals was summarily dealt with--those which contemplated the setting up of some provincial authority intermediate between the central Parliament, which all postulated, and the existing local bodies in the counties. This policy did not lack advocates. But the County Councillors were solid against it: evidently their private meeting discussed and decided against an expedient which they held would detract from the dignity of the central Parliament and from the dignity of the County Councils. Those who defended it as a plan which might meet Ulster"s difficulty got no backing from Ulster; that group said neither for nor against it. In the rest of the a.s.sembly there was a strong feeling against anything that looked like part.i.tion or might in public be called part.i.tion. Several of us had thought in advance that this was the most likely path to the solution; and looking back, I think it ought to have been much more fully explored. But encouragement was lacking.
Another antic.i.p.ation proved illusory. We all realized that in the circ.u.mstances Ireland could come to a financial arrangement with Great Britain on easier terms than at any time in her history; that to settle at once would be highly profitable; and more particularly, that we could probably secure the completion of land purchase as part of the bargain.
It was thought that this argument would appeal to the commercial sense of Ulster. We were met by a resolute reiteration that Ulster considered it Ulster"s duty and Ireland"s duty to take a full share, equally with the rest of the United Kingdom, in all the consequences of the war--even if it cost them their last shilling; and Ulster speakers denounced our argument as a bribe. Some Nationalists were inclined to discount these protestations, yet I see no reason to doubt their sincerity. At all events, no one disputed that it was to Ireland"s interest financially that a settlement should be made.
It is quite unnecessary to summarize here in any detail the course of these general discussions in full Convention, which began on August 21st. One thing, however, resulted from them on which too much emphasis cannot be laid. In the process of "exploring each other"s minds," as the phrase went, we came to know and to like one another. Later in the year, a friend of mine, high placed in the Ulster Division, but not an Ulsterman by upbringing or sympathy, came home from France. He told me that the main impression on the minds of Ulster delegates had been made by the Nationalist County Councillors. They had expected noisy demagogues; they had found solid, substantial business men, many of them with large and prosperous concerns, all of them rather too silent than too vocal, and all of them most good-humoured in their tolerance of dissent. What Willie Redmond had foretold in his last speech was coming true: Irishmen brought into contact with one another in the Convention, as other Irishmen had been brought into contact in the trenches, and no longer kept apart by those unhappy severances which run through ordinary Irish life, came under the influence of that fundamental fellowship, deeper than all divergence of politics or creed, which draws our people into a sense of a common bond.
The desire to bring delegates together in friendly social intercourse had shown itself in many quarters. The Viceregal Lodge pressed invitations on us, and Redmond, though in the circ.u.mstances he himself would go to no entertainment anywhere, expressed his wish that Nationalists should alter their traditional att.i.tude and accept what was offered in so friendly a spirit. But the first place where we met as a body with informal ease was at the Mansion House as guests of the Lord Mayor--a popular figure in our a.s.sembly.
Next day the Lord Mayor of Belfast rose at the adjournment to express all our thanks, and to insist that there should be a session in Belfast, where he could return the compliment. Immediately, there came another proposal for a similar visit to the South of Ireland. We went to Belfast at the beginning of September, and the att.i.tude of the Ulster members, which had till then been somewhat guarded and aloof, changed into that of the traditional Irish hospitality. They showed us their great linen mills and other huge manufactories; they showed us the shipyards, in which the frames of monster ships lay cradled in gigantic gantries, works of architecture as wonderful in their vast symmetry as any cathedral, and having the beauty which goes with any perfect design combining lightness and strength. Perhaps the most impressive sight of all was the disbandment of workmen from the yards. Endless lines of empty tramcars drawn up on the quay awaited the turn-out of some ten thousand artisans, who streamed past where we stood a.s.sembled; and as the crowds swept along, all these eyes, curious, but not unfriendly, scrutinized us, and one word was in all their mouths as they came up--"Which is Redmond? Where"s John Redmond?"
A fortnight later Cork completed what Belfast had begun; and, perhaps because Cork is less strenuous, the whole atmosphere there was even friendlier. It had almost the quality of a holiday excursion, for we a.s.sisted at the ancient ceremony by which the Lord Mayor of Cork a.s.serts his jurisdiction over the harbour waters--proceeding outside the protecting headlands and flinging from him a ceremonial dart outwards to the sea. This day, however, we accomplished the ceremony well within the limits; we pa.s.sed the narrow gateway in the chain of mines, but outside that, submarines were a very real menace, and the Admiralty cut short our steamer"s voyage. We were none the less festive on board.
It was not all mere holiday in Cork. One speech in particular at this meeting impressed the whole Convention. A Southern delegate ill.u.s.trated from his personal knowledge how c.u.mbrous and uneconomic were the dealings of a government at Westminster with the meat supply from Ireland; and a ma.s.s of complicated and important trade detail was skilfully linked to the larger issue of war interest and Imperial interest; there was genuine eloquence as well as commercial shrewdness in this discourse. A short speech, too, from one of the Ulster County Councillors indicated by its tone, what was in my opinion the general sentiment, that as a result of these preliminary discussions almost everybody in the a.s.sembly expected and desired an effective agreement.
At least for the purposes of this book, and perhaps many purposes, the trend of our debates can be best summarized by reproducing Redmond"s main contribution to them. He intervened on the first day when Mr.
Murphy"s scheme was proposed, on August 21st, but only with a few welcoming words, and to emphasize his view that we were all there to accept whatever commanded most support. But at Belfast on September 5th he spoke fully; and I do not think his speech would have been materially different had he delivered it three weeks later in Cork. What I print here is based on the unusually full notes made by him, so full that they admit of being treated like a press telegram, and read clearly when small and obvious words are added. The ma.n.u.script is scored with underlining, single, double and treble, to guide the voice in reading from it; it has interest as ill.u.s.trating the technical devices which a great orator employed for a special occasion; and for this speech he spared no effort. I thought, then as always, that he was less impressive and less effective in so fully prepared an oration than when he was putting his thought into the form which immediately came to him. But as a doc.u.ment it represents beyond doubt his considered opinion and his most deliberate advice.
Dealing briefly at first with the contention that the system of the Union had been a success and should not be touched, he outlined the familiar arguments. But, as he said, the existence of the Convention was the final answer. The head of a Coalition Ministry had declared, without dissent from any of his Unionist colleagues, that Dublin Castle had hopelessly broken down. The Prime Minister of another Coalition, mainly Unionist in its composition, had set up this a.s.sembly, charging it to find another and better system of government.
Beneficent legislation had been quoted. Yes, but how was it attained?
"In any const.i.tutionally governed country, once public opinion is converted to some great reform, it naturally pa.s.ses, surely and easily, though perhaps slowly, into law. In Ireland, after Irish public opinion has made up its mind, the reformer has to convert the public opinion of another country which is profoundly ignorant or apathetic, and unhappily it is uncontrovertible that scarcely a single piece of beneficent legislation on land, or anything else, has been pa.s.sed since the Union except by long, violent, semi-revolutionary agitation.