had heard Butt use in a Home Rule debate of that year.  In May 1880 his father procured him a clerkship in the House.  The post to which he was assigned was that of attendant in the Vote Office, so that his days (and a great part of his nights) were spent in the two little rooms which open off the Members’ Lobby, that buzzing centre of parliamentary gossip, activity and intrigue.  Half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the Chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical strip of matting which indicates the bar of the House.  From this point of vantage he watched the first stages of a Parliament in which Mr, Gladstone set out with so triumphant a majority—­and watched too the inroads made upon the power and prestige of that majority by the new parliamentary force which had come into being.

Redmond himself described thus (in a lecture delivered at New York in 1896) the policy which came to be known as “The New Departure”: 

“Mr. Parnell found that the British Parliament insisted upon turning a deaf ear to Ireland’s claim for justice.  He resolved to adopt the simple yet masterly device of preventing Parliament doing any work at all until it consented to hear.”

In the task of systematic and continuous obstruction Parnell at once found a ready helper, Mr. Joseph Biggar.  But Parnell, Biggar and those who from 1876 to 1880 acted generally or frequently with them were only members of the body led by Butt; though they were, indeed, ultimately in more or less open revolt against Butt’s leadership.  When Butt died, and was at least nominally replaced by Mr. Shaw, the growth of Parnell’s ascendancy became more marked.  In the general election of 1880 sixty Home Rulers were returned to Parliament; and at a meeting attended by over forty, twenty-three declared for Parnell as their leader.  A question almost of ceremonial observance immediately defined the issue.  Liberals were in power, and Government was more friendly to Ireland’s claims than was the Opposition.  Mr. Shaw and his adherents were for marking support of the Government by sitting on the Government side of the Chamber.  Parnell insisted that the Irish party should be independent of all English attachments and permanently in opposition till Ireland received its rights.  With that view he and his friends took up their station on the Speaker’s left below the gangway, where they held it continuously for thirty-nine years.

Mr. William Redmond was no supporter of the new policy.  As the little group which Parnell headed grew more and more insistent in their obstruction, the member for Wexford spoke less and less.  His interventions were rare and dignified.  In the debate on the Address in the new Parliament of 1880 he acted as a lieutenant to Mr. Shaw.  Yet he was on very friendly terms with Parnell—­almost a neighbour of his, for the Parnell property, lying about the Vale of Ovoca, touched the border of Wexford.