nsidered he could best help the
Convention from outside its ranks. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy had, on
different grounds, come to the same conclusion, so that we lacked the
assistance of three commanding personalities in Irish life, though we
were thereby freed from some dangers of personal friction. A vacant
place was thus left in our five, and since the Ulster party had decided
to put in only two members of Parliament, filling the other places with
local men, it was thought well that we should take a similar
representative, Mr. Harbison, who spoke for the county of Tyrone.

Of the four representatives of the hierarchy, Archbishop Harty of Cashel
had always been a downright outspoken supporter of the Parliamentary
party. He had publicly denounced the rebellion both on civil and on
moral grounds. But he had never been prominently concerned with
political affairs as such; nor had the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr.
MacRory, a man young for his office and not long in it. He had been
chosen, no doubt, to guard the special interests of Catholicism in the
north-east corner. The others were of a very different stamp; no two in
Ireland had a better right to the name of statesmen. Dr. O'Donnell, the
Bishop of Raphoe, had been for many years officially one of the
treasurers of the United Irish League. Since the foundation of the
Congested Districts Board, he had been one of its members, and served on
the Dudley Commission which inquired into these regions. His native
Donegal could show the traces of his influence in applying remedial
measures to what was once its terrible poverty. Dr. Kelly, the Bishop of
Ross, came from the extreme south of the same western coast-line; a keen
student of finance and economics, he had been a member of the Primrose
Committee on Financial Relations, and, before that, of Lord George
Hamilton's Commission on the Poor Law. His repute was great in his own
order and outside his own order. In any assembly these two brains would
have been distinguished.

The question which was discussed among us chiefly on that evening
concerned the choice of a chairman. Government had originally proposed
to nominate this all-important officer, but having failed to solve the
interminable difficulties, had left it to the assembly. Much trouble was
anticipated by the public. On the whole, our conclusion pointed, but not
decisively, to the choice which was eventually made. Redmond swept aside
peremptorily the suggestion of him