If that length of adjournment
had been foreseen, the Committee would never have been appointed.

Mr. Lysaght in his first address to the Convention had pressed upon us
the view that Sinn Fein could be won. But he warned us also (with such
emphasis that some speakers afterwards resented it as a threat) that if
the Convention produced no result, or an unacceptable result, or
provoked suspicion by delay, the result would be a revolution. Already
impatience was growing. We could publish no account of our proceedings:
but it became known inevitably that we had not as yet reached one
operative conclusion in our task of Constitution building.

At Cork, Sir Horace Plunkett made an encouraging speech at the public
luncheon; he announced the appointment of our Committee, which certainly
looked like business. But only when we got to detail did men fully
realize the difficulties and the embarrassing nature of the position.

The Ashe affair had done more harm than we knew. When the Primate was
making the hopeful speech from which a few words have already been
quoted, he spoke also of our experience as having been a process of
mutual education, which we needed to extend beyond our own assembly. He
promised his help in this, and it was felt that Ulstermen generally were
on their honour to report well of what they commended in our presence.
They were, it seems, at least as good as their word; the Committee
behind them was favourably impressed, and when we went to Cork--so I
have been informed--the question of giving the delegates full powers to
negotiate was under discussion. But this mood was dissipated by the
angry temper in all sections which arose out of the imprisonments, the
hunger-strikes, the penalties imposed, and the successive concessions to
violent resistance.

To this was added a new cause of quarrel. The Franchise Bill was now
coming before the House of Commons; and under the provisions agreed to
by the Speaker's Conference, extension of the franchise was to be
applied in Ireland, but there was to be no redistribution. This proposal
was not unreasonable, since the Home Rule Act was now a statute and
under it new and properly distributed constituencies were scheduled;
while over and above this the Convention was in existence to occupy
itself with the matter.

On the other hand, the existing distribution of seats was hard on
Unionist Ulster: the great mass of population in and about Belfast was
under-represented. Ulste