mpt to introduce a Home Rule measure in a
Parliament that was about to be elected. It was under these
circumstances that I had an interview of any length with
Campbell-Bannerman for the last time. He invited a friend and me to
breakfast with him.... This exchange of views was brief, for there was
complete agreement as to both policy and tactics.... It was shortly
after this that he made his historic speech in Stirling. That was the
speech in which he laid down the policy that while Ireland might not
expect to get at once a measure of complete Home Rule, any measure
brought in should be consistent with and leading up to a larger
policy. Such a declaration was all that the Irish Nationalist Party
could have expected at that moment and it enabled them to give their
full support at the elections to the Liberal Party."

This is a very notable statement, because it shows that the
Nationalists, who poured out their vials of vituperation upon Lord
Dunraven and the Irish Reform Association, were now eager to accept an
infinitely lesser instalment of Home Rule from their own Liberal
friends. And it also demonstrates that for a very meagre modicum of
the Irish birth-right they were willing to sacrifice the position of
Parliamentary independence, which was one of the greatest assets of
the Party, and to enter into a formal alliance with the Liberals on a
mere contingent declaration that "any measure brought in" should be
"consistent with and leading up to a larger policy." Note, there was
no guarantee, no positive statement, that a measure would be brought
in, yet Mr T.P. O'Connor tells us that this declaration was "all that
the Irish Nationalist Party could have expected," and that it enabled
them "to give their full support at the elections to the Liberal
Party." I wonder what Parnell, had he been alive, would have thought
of this offer of the Liberals and whether he would in return for it
make such an easy surrender of a nation's claims. And I wonder also
whether a paltrier bargain was ever made in the whole history of
political alliances. It does not require any special gift of vision to
divine who was "the friend" who went with Mr O'Connor to Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman's breakfast-party and who was in "complete
agreement as to both policy and tactics." They were good Liberals both
of them, and for my own part I would find no fault with them for this,
if only they had been better Nationalists.

Mr Redmond publicly ratified the