the sake of fixing taxes on tea and tobacco, and that when the right time came, he would say so.  The strongest arguments used against this view were that in surrendering control of customs we lost our management of the taxes which pressed upon the poor; and further, that even if we agreed, no one knew what would result.  We had no guarantee that the compact would be expressed in legislation.  But on the whole the tone showed a disposition to accept, and especially to support Redmond—­who had spoken of his political career as a thing ended.  Next day the debate in Convention continued.  Archbishop Bernard, speaking as a Unionist, said that the proposal was a venture beset with risks, but the greatest danger of all was to do nothing.  It would be a grave responsibility for Ulster to wreck the chance of a settlement.  Lord Oranmore dwelt on the composition of the proposed Legislature Power was to be entrusted to a very different Parliament from that which they had feared.  He and his like were to get what they desired—­an opportunity of taking part in the government of the country.  It looked to him as if the only possible Irish Government under this scheme must be Unionist in its complexion.

Perhaps there was an echo of this in Redmond’s speech, by far the greatest he made in the Convention, when at last he intervened on January 4th—­the Friday which ended that session.

He dealt at once with Mr. Barrie’s often repeated view that the proper object of our endeavours was to find a compromise between the Act of 1914 and the proposal for partition put forward by Ulster.  On that basis the Convention could never have been brought together.  The Prime Minister’s letter of May 16th which proposed the Convention suggested that Irishmen should meet “for the purpose of drafting a Constitution for their own country.”  On May 22nd Mr. Lloyd George had said, “We propose that Ireland should try her own hand at hammering out an instrument of government for her people.”  The only limitation was that it should be a Constitution “for the future government of Ireland within the Empire.”

Then he turned to the argument that all the sacrifices were asked from Unionists.  Let us weigh them, he said.  What sacrifices had been made by the Irish Nationalists, since this chain of events began?—­Then followed a passage which I recapitulate, not necessarily in full, but in phrases which he actually used, and I noted down: 

“Personal loss I set aside.  My position—­our position—­before the war was that we possessed the confidence of nearly the entire country.  I took a risk—­we took it—­with eyes open.  I have—­we have—­not merely taken the risk but made the sacrifice.  If the choice were to be made to-morrow, I would do it all over again.

“I have had my surfeit of public life.  My modest ambition would be to serve in some quite humble capacity under the first Unionist Prime Minister of Ireland.”

As to other sacrifices, in the way of concessions, he recited the list of what had been agreed to—­proposals so strangely undemocratic—­the nomination of members of Parliament, the disproportionate powers given to a minority.  “Shall we not be denounced for making them?” he asked.