tion and were of necessity extremely guarded in speech.

The Southern Unionists, including the representatives of the Irish
peers, were also organized as a group; but they came to the Convention
with much fuller powers. They felt themselves bound to consider, and in
certain conditions to consult, those whom they represented; but they
were free to originate suggestions, and individually each man expressed
his own view. But they too had their meeting-place and their frequent
consultations.

The handful of Labour men also met and discussed action, though they
were not organized as a group and did not feel pledged to a joint
course. Each, according to his own lights, represented the interests of
Labour. Still, they met.

The only group which had no common centre of reunion was that of the
Nationalists--a majority of the whole assembly. This included the
representatives of the Irish party and the County and Urban Councillors,
all of whom had been returned as its supporters. It included also the
four representatives of the hierarchy, every one of whom had been either
actually or potentially a part of Nationalist Conventions, and of whom
three had been most prominent supporters of the general organization.

But a difficulty existed in the presence of other personages who were in
general support of us, but who outside the Convention belonged to a
different category. Lord Dunraven was a Home Ruler, but had been no
supporter of the Irish party. Lord MacDonnell stood much nearer to us,
but was a power in his own right and had never been a party politician.
Mr. Lysaght had voted against us in Clare. Mr. Russell had very often
attacked the party on aspects of its general action. Above all, there
was Mr. W.M. Murphy, who, like Mr. Healy, had been at one time a member
of the Irish party, and whose paper had for long been in nominal support
of its purposes, but who had throughout recent years done more than all
forces together to discredit and weaken its influence.

All of these five men were Government nominees, as were also Lord
Granard and Sir Bertram Windle, who in different ways gave Redmond
complete and most useful backing. It would have been possible to call
together a group consisting of men who had been members of the national
organization which would have excluded all these and included the
Bishops;[10] but Redmond probably felt it would be ungracious to do
this. His chief desire was to avoid all recognition of party and