The proceedings were secret.  But in the result the Nationalists of the North refused to be any party to denying the rest of Ireland self-government.  A division was taken, and consent to temporary exclusion was carried by a large majority.  The victory was in the main due to Mr. Devlin’s extraordinary personal gifts, exercised to carry a conclusion which inevitably must injure himself where he was most sensitive to a wound, in the hearts of those among whom he was born and bred.

It must have been in the weeks immediately after this that Redmond spoke to me, as I never heard him speak of any other man, his mind about Mr. Devlin.  “Joe’s loyalty in all this business has been beyond words,” he said.  “I know what it has cost him to do as he has done.”  He knew well that the younger man’s influence had been more efficacious than the threat of his own resignation—­which was not withheld.  A man of other nature might have been jealous of the young and growing power:  but such an element as this was so foreign to Redmond’s whole being that even the thought of it never entered the most suspicious mind.

The result of the Belfast Convention was communicated and discussed at a meeting of the Irish party held at the Mansion House on June 26th.  It was one of the most hopeful moments in our experience; reaction from a depression approaching to despair gave confidence to the gloomiest among us.  Hope was in the air.  The effect of Mr. Asquith’s sentence upon the whole machinery of Dublin Castle had not yet worn off.  No new Government had been installed:  the Chief Secretaryship remained vacant, the Lord-Lieutenant also had retired from his office.  It seemed a certainty that we should enter, under whatever auguries, into the realization of a self-governing Ireland.  Even those who were most enthusiastic for the birth of a new and glorious era that was to date from the stirring action of the rebels, and who were most open-mouthed in condemnation of Redmond’s futile efforts, in practice shared our view.  I asked one such man how he counted on securing the necessary first step of establishing an Irish Government.  “Oh, I suppose,” was his answer, “the Irish party will manage that somehow.”

But soon delay began to hang coldly on this temper of anticipation, and to delay were added disquieting utterances.  On June 29th Lord Lansdowne announced in the House of Lords that the “consultations” which had been taking place were “certainly authorized” by the Government but were not binding upon it; and that he, speaking for the Unionist wing of the Cabinet, had not accepted the proposals.  This was disturbing.  Lord Selborne had retired from the Government before the negotiators went to Ireland, because he knew of the proposals and was not prepared to sanction them.  We assumed that other Unionists who shared this view would have followed him in his frank action.  Now we perceived that Lord Lansdowne and his friends had frugally husbanded their force.  It was expected by many that Ireland would do the work for them.  Failing that, they had still the last stab to deliver.  But we counted upon one thing:  that Mr. Lloyd George, if not Mr. Asquith, would feel himself committed to see the deal through—­and that his resignation would have to be faced as a part of the consequences if attempts were made to go back on the bargain.