On April 29th the House adjourned for the Whitsuntide recess, after which the crisis was to come with the decision of the House of Lords whether to accept or reject the Veto Resolution, which had then passed the Commons.  On May 7th, after a short and sudden illness, King Edward died.  Both the great English parties were unwilling to renew the most acute political struggle of modern times at the opening of a new reign, and means of accommodation was sought through a Conference which sat first on June 16th and held twenty-one meetings.  No representative of Ireland was on this body.  On November 10th it reported that no result had come of its efforts, and a new general election was fixed for December 1st.

When the Conference finally broke down Redmond was on his way back from America, whither he had gone accompanied by Mr. Devlin.  Mr. T.P.  O’Connor at the same time undertook a tour in Canada.  The success of these missions showed that the interest and the confidence of the Irish race were higher than at any previous period:  the ambassadors brought back a contribution of one hundred thousand dollars to the election funds, and the ship on which they came was saluted by bonfires all along the coast of Cork.  Ireland, too, was subscribing as Ireland had not subscribed since Parnell’s zenith:  and this was an Ireland in which the land-hunger had been largely appeased.  The theory that Ireland’s demand for self-government was merely generated by Ireland’s poverty began to look ridiculous.

It was the cue of the Tory Press at this moment to excite prejudice against the Liberals by representing them as the bondslaves of the “dollar dictator”—­ordered about by an Irish autocrat with swollen money-bags from New York.  This line of argument did us little harm in Great Britain; in Ireland it improved Redmond’s position, for it was a useful answer to Mr. O’Brien’s representation of him as the abject tool of Liberal politicians.  The election, on the whole, strengthened our party.  Mr. Healy was thrown out; and Mr. O’Brien, though he retained the seven seats held by his adherents in Cork, failed in two out of three personal candidatures.

In Great Britain the second election of the year 1910 had the surprising result of reproducing almost exactly the same division of parties:  and this added greatly to the strength of the Government.  The Tory leaders now, instead of insisting on a maintenance of the old Constitution, went into alternative proposals—­including the adoption of the Referendum.  This was their constructive line; the destructive resolved itself largely into an endeavour to focus resistance on the question of Ireland—­the purpose for which alone, they said, abolition of the veto was demanded.  As has often happened, action taken by the Vatican gave the opponents of Home Rule a useful weapon.  The Ne Temere decree, promulgated in the year 1908, laid down that any marriage to which a Roman Catholic was a party, if not solemnized according to