en it became known that Sir Antony MacDonnell, then Under-Secretary at
Dublin Castle, had, in consultation with Lord Dunraven, drafted a scheme
for transferring parts of Irish administration to a purely Irish
authority, a situation rapidly defined itself in which Ulster broke away
from the more liberal elements in Irish Unionism. The Ulster group
demanded and obtained the resignation of Mr. George Wyndham; they
demanded also the dismissal of the Under-Secretary. But Sir Antony
MacDonnell was not of a resigning temper; he had not acted without
authority, and he was defended zealously by the Irish members. The
section of Liberal opinion which adhered rather to Lord Rosebery than to
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman probably drew the conclusion that the Irish
party were prepared at least to tolerate the policy of approaching Home
Rule step by step; and beyond doubt they were impressed by the prestige
of Sir Antony MacDonnell's record and personality. The son of a small
Irish Catholic landlord, educated at the Galway College of the Queen's
University, he had entered the Indian Civil Service and in it risen to
the highest point of power. The recommendation that he should be brought
home to assist in the Government of Ireland had come from Lord
Lansdowne, then Governor-General of India, who knew that the famous
administrator of the Punjab was a Catholic Irishman of Nationalist
sympathies. He had been accepted by Mr. Wyndham, his official chief,
"rather as a colleague than as a subordinate." Officially and publicly,
the credit for the Land Act of 1903 went to the Chief Secretary, and Mr.
Wyndham deserves much of it. But no one who knew the two men could have
doubted that in the shaping of a measure involving so wide a range of
detail, the leading part must have been taken by the Irish Civil Servant
who in India had acquired most of his fame from a sweeping measure of
land reform.

Proposals to alter the method and conduct of Irish administration before
touching the parliamentary power to legislate and to tax came with
extraordinary weight in coming from such a man; and the history of the
previous Home Rule Bills was not encouraging to anyone, especially to
those who had been members of Mr. Gladstone's two last administrations.
From the time of the Parnell divorce case onwards, the Irish question
had brought to Liberals nothing but embarrassment and embitterment. The
enthusiasm for Home Rule which grew steadily from 1886 up to the
s