as “worse than Home Rule,” Irish Nationalists should have long hesitated before they joined them in their campaign of destruction and became the abject tools of their insensate hate.  Sir Edward Carson wrote that, much as he detested the former proposals of Home Rule, he preferred them to “the insidious scheme put forward by the so-called Reform Association.”  So incorrigibly foolish were the attacks of Mr Dillon and his friends on the Reform Association that Lord Rathmore was able to say in the House of Lords:  “Not only did the Unionist Party in Ireland denounce the Dunraven scheme as worse than the Home Rule of Mr Gladstone, but their language was mild in comparison to the language of contempt which a great many of the Irish Nationalist patriots showered upon the proposals of the noble earl.”

It is the mournful tragedy of all this period that a certain section of Nationalist opinion should have seen in every advance towards a policy of conciliation, good will and understanding between brother Irishmen, some deep and sinister conspiracy against the National Cause, and in this unaccountable belief should have allowed themselves to become the dupes and to play the game of the bitterest enemies of Irish freedom.  But so it was, to the bitter sorrow of Ireland; and many a blood-stained chapter has been written because of it.  Whether a fatal blindness or an insatiate personal rancour dictated this incomprehensible policy Providence alone knows, but oceans of woe, and misery and malediction have flowed from it as surely as that the sun is in the heavens.

After Mr O’Brien’s retirement, as I have already remarked, the country was left without a policy or active national guidance.  The leaders of the revolt against the authorised policy of the nation went abroad “for the benefit of their health.” (What a lot of humbug this particular phrase covers in political affairs only the initiated are aware of!) No sooner was the Cork election announced than Mr Dillon returned from his holiday, ready “to take the field” against the Irish Reform Association and anyone who dared to show it toleration or regard.  He declared in a speech at Sligo that its one object was “to break national unity in Ireland and to block the advance of the Nationalist Cause,” and he went on to deliver this definite threat:  “Now I say that any attempt such as was made the other day in the city of Cork to force on the branches of the national organisation, or on the National Directory itself, any vote of confidence in Lord Dunraven or any declaration of satisfaction at the foundation of this Association would tear the ranks of the Nationalists of Ireland to pieces.”