the operations of the Purchase Act of 1903 which
was so rapidly transforming the face of the country. They also passed
for Mr Lloyd George what Mr Dillon termed "the great and good" Budget,
but which really added enormously to the direct taxation of
Ireland--imposing an additional burden of something not far from three
millions sterling on the backs of an already overtaxed country. But if
the people were plundered the place-hunters were placated. The Irish
Party had now become little better than an annexe of Liberalism. They
sat in Opposition because it was the tradition to do so, but in
reality they were the obsequious followers of a British Party and
browsing on its pasturage in the hope of better things to come.

Not far off were heard the rumblings of an approaching General
Election. There were the usual flutterings of the "ins" who wanted to
remain in, and of the "outs" who were anxious to taste the social
sweets and the personal pomp of the successful politician, who had got
the magic letters "M.P." to his name. It is wonderful what an appeal
it makes to the man who has made his "pile" somehow or anyhow (or who
wants to make it) to have the right to enter the sacred portals of
Westminster, but it is more wonderful still to see him when he gets
there become the mere puppet of the Party Whips, without an atom of
individual independence or a grain of useful initiative. The system
absorbs them and they become cogs in a machine, whose movements they
have little power of controlling or directing.

It was pretended by the leaders of the Nationalists that their
subservient surrender to the Liberal Party was a far-sighted move to
compel Mr Asquith and his friends to make Home Rule "the dominant
issue," as they termed it, at the General Election. The veto of the
House of Lords, the hitherto one intractable element of opposition to
Home Rule, was to go before long and the House of Commons, within
certain limits, would be in a position to impose its will as the
sovereign authority in the State. Yet it is the scarcely believable
fact that in all these precious months, and after all the servile
sycophancy they had given to the Liberals, neither Mr Redmond nor
those true-blue Liberals, Mr Dillon and Mr O'Connor, had ever sought
to extract from Mr Asquith an irrefragable statement of his intentions
regarding the Irish Question, or whether he and his Government
intended to make it a prime plank in the Liberal platform at the
pol