onvention met ten days later in Belfast. Mr. Devlin had
been strenuous in his exertions throughout the province, but the whole
force of the ecclesiastical power was thrown against him. Apart from the
detestation of partition, the Catholic Church conceived that the
principle of denominational education would be lost in the severed
counties, where the dominant Presbyterian element was opposed to it.
Very many delegates came to the Convention pledged in advance to resist
the proposals: and the general anticipation was that Redmond would be
thrown over.

The proceedings were secret. But in the result the Nationalists of the
North refused to be any party to denying the rest of Ireland
self-government. A division was taken, and consent to temporary
exclusion was carried by a large majority. The victory was in the main
due to Mr. Devlin's extraordinary personal gifts, exercised to carry a
conclusion which inevitably must injure himself where he was most
sensitive to a wound, in the hearts of those among whom he was born and
bred.

It must have been in the weeks immediately after this that Redmond spoke
to me, as I never heard him speak of any other man, his mind about Mr.
Devlin. "Joe's loyalty in all this business has been beyond words," he
said. "I know what it has cost him to do as he has done." He knew well
that the younger man's influence had been more efficacious than the
threat of his own resignation--which was not withheld. A man of other
nature might have been jealous of the young and growing power: but such
an element as this was so foreign to Redmond's whole being that even
the thought of it never entered the most suspicious mind.

The result of the Belfast Convention was communicated and discussed at a
meeting of the Irish party held at the Mansion House on June 26th. It
was one of the most hopeful moments in our experience; reaction from a
depression approaching to despair gave confidence to the gloomiest among
us. Hope was in the air. The effect of Mr. Asquith's sentence upon the
whole machinery of Dublin Castle had not yet worn off. No new Government
had been installed: the Chief Secretaryship remained vacant, the
Lord-Lieutenant also had retired from his office. It seemed a certainty
that we should enter, under whatever auguries, into the realization of a
self-governing Ireland. Even those who were most enthusiastic for the
birth of a new and glorious era that was to date from the stirring
action of the rebe