ng wholly unacceptable.
Redmond, on the other hand, while declaring that the Government had gone
to "the extremest limits of concession," said that the proposals had one
merit: they would "elicit beyond doubt or question by a free ballot the
real opinion of the people of Ulster." This indicated his conviction
that if Home Rule really came the majority in Ulster would prefer to
take their chances under it; the proposal of exclusion being merely a
tactical manoeuvre to defeat Home Rule by splitting the Nationalists.

Its efficacy for that purpose was immediately demonstrated. Mr. O'Brien
followed Redmond with a virulent denunciation of "the one concession of
all others which must be hateful and unthinkable from the point of view
of any Nationalist in Ireland." Opposition from Mr. O'Brien and from Mr.
Healy was no new thing. But by acceptance of these proposals the
Nationalist leader made their opposition for the first time really
formidable. Telegrams rained in that March afternoon--above all on Mr.
Devlin, from his supporters in Belfast, who felt themselves betrayed and
shut out from a national triumph which they had been the most zealous to
promote. From this time onward the position of Redmond personally and of
his party as a whole was perceptibly weakened. Especially an alienation
began between him and the Catholic hierarchy. It was impossible that the
clergy should be well disposed towards proposals which, as Mr. Healy put
it, would make Cardinal Logue a foreigner in his own cathedral at
Armagh.

Yet upon the whole the shake to Redmond's power was less than might have
been expected--largely, no doubt, because the offer was repelled. Sir
Edward Carson described it as "sentence of death with stay of execution
for six years." With a great advocate's instinct, he fastened on the
point in the Government's proposal which was least defensible.

In my opinion these modifications of the Bill were never adequately
discussed in the meetings of the Irish party. All was done between the
Government and Redmond's inner cabinet, consisting of Redmond himself,
Mr. Dillon, Mr. Devlin and Mr. T.P. O'Connor. The negotiations were most
delicate and difficult, and above all secrecy is hard to maintain when a
body of over seventy men, each keenly concerned for the view of his
constituents, comes to be consulted. Yet I think it a pity that the
party never thrashed this question out. Once the principle of option was
admitted, a great deal