Even yet those who sought the wreck and ruin of land purchase might be
met with and fought outright if the announcement had not appeared in
the _Freeman_ that Mr Redmond had sold his Wexford estate at
"24-1/2 years' purchase," or over two years' purchase higher in the
case of second-term rents and four and a half years' purchase in the
case of first-term rents than the prices which the National Directory
had a few weeks previously resolved to fight for, with all the force
of the tenants' organisation as a fair standard. True enough Mr
Redmond was able to plead later that these were not the terms finally
agreed upon between his tenants and himself, and beyond all question
he made no profit out of the transaction. Where the mischief lay was
in the original publication, which gave a headline to the landlords
all over the country and, what was far more regrettable from the
purely national standpoint, irretrievably tied the hands of Mr Redmond
so far as making any heroic stand against Mr Dillon and his
fellow-conspirators was concerned. Thus the country drifted along,
bereft of firm leadership or strong guidance. Mr O'Brien had to hold
his hand whilst "the determined campaigners" were more boldly and
defiantly inveighing against the declared and adopted national policy
and trampling upon every principle of Party discipline and loyalty.
The situation might have been saved if Mr Redmond had taken his
courage in both his hands, summoned the Party together and received
from it an authoritative declaration defining anew the National policy
and the danger that attended it from those who had set out recklessly
to destroy it; or if he sought an opportunity for publicly recalling
the country to its duty and its allegiance to himself and to the Party
whose chosen leader he was. Mr Redmond was fully alive to the danger,
but he hesitated about taking that bold action which could alone bring
the recalcitrants to heel. He was afraid of doing anything which might
provoke a fresh "split." Later he delivered himself of the
unstatesmanlike and unworthy apophthegm: "Better be united in support
of a short-sighted and foolish policy than divided in support of a
far-sighted and wise one." This was the fatuous attitude which led him
down the steep declivity that ended so tragically for him and his
reputation. In those fateful days, when so much was in the balance for
the future of Ireland, Mr O'Brien pressed his views earnestly upon Mr
Redmond t