a
prisoner in a condemned cell"--to use their own elegant
metaphor--because he showed a disposition to secure a settlement of
the Irish difficulty on a non-party basis. He was ruthlessly exiled
from office by methods which confer no credit on their authors, and
the Unionist Party retired at the close of the year 1905 with nothing
accomplished on the Home Rule issue.

When the Liberals came back to power with an irresistible majority
Ireland rang from end to end with glad promises of a great, a glorious
and a golden future. The Liberals had the reins of government in their
hands, and the tears were going to be wiped from the face of dark
Rosaleen. Never again was she to know the bitterness of sorrow or that
hope of freedom so long deferred which maketh the heart sick. Mr T.P.
O'Connor wrote to his American news agency that Home Rule was coming
at a "not far distant date." It was a fair hope, but the men who
gambled on it did not take the House of Lords sufficiently into their
calculations. And they forgot also that Home Rule was not a concrete
and definite issue before the country at the General Election. The
Liberal Party in 1906 had no Home Rule mandate. Its leaders were
avowedly in favour of what was known as "the step-by-step" programme.
This policy was less than Lord Dunraven's scheme of Devolution, but
because it was the Liberal plan it came in for no stern denunciations
from either Mr Dillon or Mr T.P. O'Connor. Even so staunch a Home
Ruler as Mr John Morley insisted that Mr Redmond's Home Rule Amendment
to the Address should contain this important addendum: "subject to the
supreme authority of the Imperial Parliament." The men who shouted in
Ireland: "No compromise," who were clamant in their demand that there"
should be no hauling down of the flag," and who asked the country to
go "back to the old methods" (though they made it clear they were not
going to lead them if they did), showed no disinclination to have
their own private negotiations with the Liberal leaders on a much
narrower programme.

Mr T.P. O'Connor, in his _Life of Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman,
M.P._, tells us exactly what happened, in the following words:--

"The Irish Nationalists had already become restive, for, while not
openly repudiating Home Rule as an ultimate solution, several of the
friends and adherents of Lord Rosebery among the leaders of the
Liberal Party had proclaimed that they would not only not support, but
would resist any atte