ification of Mr. Asquith's Home Rule Act which Ulster could
accept. That Act was the point of departure for its investigation, and
the quest was _ex hypothesi_ for some amendment that would not be an
enlargement of the authority to be delegated to the subordinate
Parliament, or any further loosening of the tie with Great Britain. Any
proposal of the latter sort would be in the opposite direction from that
in which the Convention was intended to travel. Yet this is precisely
what was done from the very outset. The Act of 1914 was brushed aside as
beneath contempt; and the Ulster delegates had to listen with amazement
week after week to proposals for giving to the whole of Ireland,
including their own Province, a constitution practically as independent
of Great Britain as that of the Dominions.

But what astonished the Ulstermen above everything was to find these
extravagant demands of the Nationalists supported by those who were
supposed to be representatives of Southern Unionism, with Lord Midleton,
a prominent member of the Unionist Party in England, at their head. The
only material point on which Lord Midleton differed from the extremists
led by the Bishop of Raphoe was that he wished to limit complete fiscal
autonomy for Ireland by reserving the control of Customs duties to the
Imperial Parliament. Save in this single particular he joined forces
with the Nationalists, and shocked the Unionists of the North by giving
his support to a scheme of Home Rule going beyond anything ever
suggested at Westminster by any Radical from Gladstone to Asquith.

This question of the financial powers to be exercised by the
hypothetical Irish Parliament occupied the Convention and its committees
for the greater part of its eight months of existence. In January 1918
Lord Midleton and Mr. Redmond came to an agreement on the subject which
proved the undoing of them both, and produced the only really impressive
scene in the Convention.

For some time Mr. Redmond had given the impression of being a tired man
who had lost his wonted driving-force. He took little or no part in the
lobbying and canvassing that was constantly going on behind the scenes
in the Convention; he appeared to be losing grip as a leader. But he
cannot be blamed for his anxiety to come to terms with Lord Midleton;
and when he found, no doubt greatly to his surprise, that a Unionist
leader was ready to abandon Unionist principles and to accept Dominion
Home Rule for Ir