ave it cordial welcome
when it travelled our way.

As a mere statement of indisputable fact, it is but just to say
that the entire burden of organising the League fell upon the
shoulders of Mr O'Brien. When it was yet an infant, so to speak, in
swaddling-clothes, and indeed for long after, when it grew to lustier
life, he had to bear the whole brunt of the battle for its existence,
without any political party to support him, without any great
newspaper to espouse his cause and without any public funds to supply
campaign expenses. Nay, far worse, he had to face the bitter hostility
of the Redmondites and Healyites "and the scarcely less depressing
neutrality" of the Dillonites, whilst under an incessant fire of shot
and shell from a Coercion Government. After Mr Dillon's one appearance
at Westport he was not seen on the League platform for many a day. At
Westport he had exhorted the crowd to "be ready at the call of their
captain by day or night," but having delivered this incitement he left
to others the duty of facing the consequences, candidly declaring that
he had made up his mind never to go to jail again. Mr Harrington,
however, remained the steadfast friend of the League, and Mr Davitt
also gave it his personal benediction, all the more generous and
praiseworthy in that his views of national policy seldom agreed with
those of Mr O'Brien. Confounding all predictions of its early eclipse,
and notwithstanding a thousand difficulties and discouragements, the
League continued to make headway, and after eighteen months' Herculean
labours Mr O'Brien and his friends were in a position to summon a
Provincial Convention at Claremorris, in the autumn of 1899, to settle
the constitution of the organisation for Connaught. Two nights before
the Convention Mr Dillon and Mr Davitt visited Mr O'Brien at Mallow
Cottage to discuss his draft Constitution. It is instructive, having
in mind what has happened since, that Mr Dillon took exception to the
very first clause, defining the national claim to be "the largest
measure of national self-government which circumstances may put it in
our power to obtain." This was the logical continuance of Parnell's
position that no man had a right to set bounds to the march of a
nation, but Mr Dillon seemed to have descried in it some sinister
purpose on the part of Mr O'Brien and Mr Davitt to abandon the
constitutional Home Rule demand in the interest of the physical force
movement. Eventually a c