in a practically quiescent state, nobody taking any particular
interest in it, when the Catholic laity of Cork, supported by the mass
of the Protestant laity as well (as was now become the custom on all
great questions in the leading Irish county), came together in a
mighty and most representative gathering, which instantly impressed
statesmen that this educational disability on religious grounds could
no longer be tolerated. Mr Birrell, who failed in most other things
during his ill-starred Irish administration, was admirably energetic
and suave in getting his University proposals through. And it was by
employing wisely the methods of conciliation and winning over to his
side men of opposite political views, like Mr Balfour, Mr Wyndham, Sir
Edward Carson, and Professor Butcher that he piloted the Bill safely
through its various Parliamentary stages.

With the success of Land Purchase, with the introduction and passage
of the Labourers and University Acts, with the settlement of the
Evicted Tenants Question, and with the offering of any resistance to
the effort made to remove the embargo on Canadian cattle, which would
seriously have affected the prospects of the farmers, the Irish Party
had exercised no initiative and could not legitimately claim one atom
of credit in respect of them. Yet when their Parliamentary prestige
began to shake and show unmistakable signs of an approaching collapse,
it was ever their habit to group these among their achievements in the
same way that they appropriated the fruits of Parnell's genius--it was
"the Party" that did everything, and so they demanded that the people
should sing eternal Hosannas to its glory.

In justice to the Party, or, more correctly, to Mr J.J. Clancy, M.P.,
who stood sponsor for the measures and watched over their progress
with paternal care, they did get inscribed on the Statute Book two
Acts of considerable importance--the Town Tenants Act and the Housing
of the Working Classes Act, but beyond these the less said of their
Parliamentary conquests from 1903 onward the better. Their
achievements were rather of the destructive and mischievous than the
constructive and beneficent.

CHAPTER XVI

REUNION AND TREACHERY

It may be said that whilst all these things were going on in Ireland
and the Party marching with steady purpose to its irretrievable doom,
the British people were in the most profound