I think that the secret of his happiness of manner lay simply in this, that within the Convention he was happy.  There was a note in it that I never felt in the House of Commons, even when he was at his best.  There he always spoke as if almost a foreigner, no matter among how familiar faces.  Here he was among his own countrymen, and for the first time in his life in an assembly in no way sectional.  For from the first it was plain that, by whatever means, there had been gathered a compendium of normal, ordinary Irish life:  farmer, artisan, peer, prelate, landlord, tenant, shopkeeper, manufacturer—­all were there in pleasantly familiar types.  The atmosphere was unlike that of a political gathering; it resembled rather some casual assemblage where all sorts of men had met by accident and conversed without prejudice.  Everybody met somebody whom he had known in some quite different relation of life and with whom he had never looked to be associated in any such task as the framing of a Constitution.  It was all oddly haphazard, full of interest and surprises; all of us were a little out of our bearings, but much disposed to reconnoitre in the spirit of friendly advance.

After the first day of Sir Horace Plunkett’s chairmanship there was an adjournment of something like a fortnight to give the Chairman and secretariat time for preparation:  and in this interval a plan of action was formed.  The object in view was to avoid the danger of an immediate break and to give play to the reconciling influences.  It was decided to begin by a prolonged process of general discussion, in which men could express their minds freely without the necessity of coming to an operative decision on any of the controversial points, until the value of each could be assessed in relation to the possibility of a general agreement.

The plan adopted was to discuss, without division taken, the schemes which had been submitted by members of the Convention and by others.  Members would propose and expound their own projects:  for the exposition of the others some member must make himself responsible.

At this “presentation stage” and at all stages, Redmond absolutely declined to put forward a plan in his own name.  This was not only from temperamental reasons:  there was an official obstacle.  He was an individual member of the Convention:  but he was Chairman of the Irish party, pledged not to bind it without its consent.  He felt, no doubt, that any detailed proposal from him would be taken as binding the party, whom he could not consult without bringing them into the secrets of the Convention.