brief years before was the terror of the British
Parliament and the pride of the Irish race.

One occasion there was between the Parnell Split and the subsequent
reunion in 1900 when the warring factions might have been induced to
compose their differences and to reform their ranks. A Convention of
the Irish Race was summoned in 1906 which was carefully organised and
which in its character and representative authority was in every way a
very unique and remarkable gathering. I attended it myself in my
journalistic capacity, and I was deeply impressed by the fact that
here was an assembly which might very well mark the opening of a fresh
epoch in Irish history, for there had come together for counsel and
deliberation men from the United States, Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland, the Argentine, as well as from
all parts of Great Britain and Ireland--men who, by reason of their
eminence, public worth, sympathies and patriotism, were calculated to
give a new direction and an inspiring stimulus to the Irish Movement.
They were men lifted high above the passions and rivalries which had
wrought distraction and division amongst the people at home, and it
needs no great argument to show what a powerful and impartial tribunal
they might have been made into for the restoration of peace and the
re-establishment of a new order in Irish political affairs. But this
great opportunity was lost. The factions had not yet fought themselves
to a standstill. Mr Redmond and Mr Healy resisted the most pressing
entreaties of the American and Australian delegates to join the
Convention, and, beyond a series of laudable speeches and resolutions,
a Convention which might have been constituted the happy harbinger of
unity left no enduring mark on the life of the people or the fate of
parties.

When Mr Gerald Balfour became Chief Secretary for Ireland after the
Home Rule debacle of 1895 he determined to continue the policy,
inaugurated by his more famous brother, of appeasement by considerable
internal reforms, which have made his administration for ever
memorable. There have ever been in Irish life certain narrow coteries
of thought which believed that with every advance of prosperity
secured by the people, and every step taken by them in individual
independence, there would be a corresponding weakness in their desire
and demand for a full measure of national freedom. A more fatal or
foolish conviction there could not be.