state of ignorance as to
what was actually happening. And the same may be said of the Irish in
America, Australia, and all the other distant lands to which the
missionary Celts have betaken themselves. They were all fed with the
same newspaper pap. The various London Correspondents took their cue
from Mr T.P. O'Connor and the _Freeman_. These and the Whips kept
them supplied with the tit-bits that were in due course served up to
their several readers. And thus it never got to be known that it was
Mr William O'Brien and his friends who were the true repositories of
Party loyalty and discipline, the only men who were faithful to the
pledge, who had never departed from the policy of Conference,
Conciliation and Consent, upon which the great Land Act of 1903 was
based and to which the Party, the United Irish League, and Nationalist
opinion stood committed in the most solemn manner.

When the General Election of 1906 took place those of us in County
Cork and elsewhere who had taken our stand by Mr O'Brien were marked
out for opposition by the Party chiefs. But a truce was arranged
through the intervention of Mr George Crosbie, editor of _The Cork
Examiner_, who generously sought to avert a fight between brother
Nationalists, which, whatever its effects at home, would be bound to
have grave results abroad, where the only thing that would be
strikingly apparent was that brother Nationalists were at one
another's throats. So we all came back, if not exactly a happy family
at least outwardly in a certain state of grace.

This state of things was not, however, to last. Without rhyme or
reason, without cause stated or charge alleged, with no intimation of
any sort or kind that I was acting contrary to any of the Party
tenets, I was, so to speak, quietly dropped overboard from the Party
ship in November 1906. I did not get any official intimation that I
was dismissed the Party or that I had in any way violated my pledge to
sit, act and vote with it. I was simply cut off from the Party Whips
and the Parliamentary allowance and, without a word spoken or written,
thus politely, as it were, told to go about my business. The matter
seemed inconceivable and I wrote a firm letter of remonstrance to Mr
Redmond. It drew from him merely a formal acknowledgment--an adding of
insult to injury. To test the matter I immediately resigned my seat
for Mid-Cork, placed the whole facts before my constituents, published
my letter and Mr Redmond's ac