settlement will be arrived at."

The country rubbed its eyes to see who it was that had put forward
this audacious but not entirely original proposal. (It had been
suggested by Archbishop Walsh fifteen years before.) Captain John
Shawe-Taylor's name suggested nothing to the Nationalist leaders. They
had never heard of him before. In the landlord camp he stood for
nothing and had no authority--he was simply the young son of a Galway
squire, with entire unselfishness and boundless patience, who
conceived that he had a mission to settle this tremendous problem that
had been rendered only the more keen by forty-two Acts of the Imperial
Parliament that had been vainly passed for its settlement. It is
surely one of the strangest chances of history that where generations
of statesmen and parliaments had failed the _via media_ for a
final arrangement should have been made by an unknown officer who
prosecuted his purpose to such effect that he forced his way into the
counsels of the American Clan-na-Gael, and even, as we are told,
"beyond the ante-chambers of royalty itself." It is probable that
Captain Shawe-Taylor's invitation would have been regarded as the
usual Press squib had it not been followed two days later by a public
communication from Mr Wyndham in the following terms:--

"No Government can settle the Irish Land Question. It must be settled
by the parties interested. The extent of useful action on the part of
any Government is limited to providing facilities, in so far as that
may be possible, for giving effect to any settlement arrived at by the
parties. It is not for the Government to express an opinion on the
opportuneness of the moment chosen for holding a conference or on the
selection of the persons invited to attend. Those who come together
will do so on their own initiative and responsibility. Any conference
is a step in the right direction if it brings the prospect of a
settlement between the parties near, and as far as it enlarges the
probable scope of operations under such a settlement."

This official declaration gave an importance and a significance to
Captain Shawe-Taylor's letter which otherwise would never have
attached to it. The confession that "no Government can settle the
Irish Land Question" was in itself a most momentous admission. It was
the most ample justification of nationalism, which held that a foreign
Parliament was incompetent to legislate for Irish affairs, and now the
accredited mo