eunion
declared that the co-operation of Irishmen of all classes and creeds
willing to aid in the attainment of, among other things, "the
completion of the abolition of landlordism" is cordially welcomed.
When Mr O'Brien moved, in order that the demands of the Treasury
should be met with a united and resolute Irish front, that the Party
was prepared to appoint representatives to confer with representatives
of the landlords, Mr Dillon at once showed that on no account would be
agree to any Conference, and he proposed an amendment that the whole
matter should be referred to a Committee of the Irish Party
exclusively. This was a fatal blow at the principle on which the Party
had been reunited. Whilst the controversy raged around the Conference
idea, Mr Redmond spoke never a word, though he saw that "the
short-sighted and unwise policy" was again getting the upper hand. Mr
Dillon carried his amendment by 45 votes to 15, and thus the treaty on
which the Party was reunited was practically torn to pieces before the
ink was scarce dry on it.

One further effort was made to try to preserve the Act of 1903 from
being ham-strung by the Treasury. A short time previously a deputation
of the foremost landed men and representative bodies of Cork had saved
Ireland from the importation of Canadian cattle into Britain. It was
decided to organise now a still more powerful deputation from the
province of Munster to warn the Government of the fatal effects of the
proposed Birrell Bill. I had a great deal to do with the preliminaries
of the meeting at which this deputation was selected, and I can say
with all certainty that if we had had only the most moderate display
of political wisdom from Mr Dillon and his friends we could have the
great mass of the landlords in Ireland agreeing to the full concession
of the constitutional demand for Irish liberty. The Cork meeting was
beyond all doubt or question the most remarkable held in Ireland for a
century. It was summoned by a Joint Committee drawn from the
Nationalist and landlord ranks. On its platform were assembled all the
men, either on the landlord or the tenant side, who had been the
fiercest antagonists in the agrarian wars of the previous twenty-five
years--men who had literally taken their lives in their hands in
fighting for their respective causes. It is but the barest truth to
say that the evictors and the evicted--the leading actors in the most
awful of Ireland's tragedies--stood f