What is more, it was an assembly which Redmond found temperamentally congenial to him—­an assembly which, apart from its relation to Ireland, he thoroughly admired and liked.  In 1896, when Irish members were fiercely in opposition to the Government, he concluded his description of Parliament with these words: 

“In the main, the House of Commons is, I believe, dominated by a rough-and-ready sense of manliness and fair-play.  Of course, I am not speaking of it as a governing body.  In that character it has been towards Ireland always ignorant and nearly always unfair.  I am treating it simply as an assembly of men, and I say of it, it is a body where sooner or later every man finds his proper level, where mediocrity and insincerity will never permanently succeed, and where ability and honesty of purpose will never permanently fail.”

That was no mean tribute, coming from one who held himself aloof from all the personal advantages belonging to the society whose rules he did not recognize.  The opinion to which the Irish members of Parnell’s following were amenable was not made at Westminster; it did not exist there—­except, and that in its most rigid form, amongst themselves.

It is worth while to recall for English readers—­and perhaps not for them only—­what membership of Parnell’s party involved.  In the first place, there was a self-denying ordinance by which the man elected to it bound himself to accept no post of any kind under Government.  All the chances which election to Parliament opens to most men—­and especially to men of the legal profession—­were at once set aside.  Absolute discipline and unity of action, except in matters specially left open to individual judgment, were enforced on all.  These were the essentials.  But in the period of acute war between the Irish and all other parties which was opening when Redmond entered there was a self-imposed rule that as the English public and English members disapproved and disliked the Irishmen an answering attitude should be adopted:  that even private hospitality should be avoided and that the belligerents should behave as if they were quite literally in an enemy’s country.

Later, when Mr. Gladstone had adopted the Irish cause and alliance with the Liberal party had begun, the rigour of this attitude was modified.  Many Irish members joined the Liberal clubs and went freely to houses where they were sure of sympathy.  Yet neither of the Redmonds followed far in this direction, and the habit of social isolation which they formed in their early days lasted with them to the end.  If John Redmond ever went to any house in London which was not an Irish home it was by the rarest exception.