the
time to declare them. Far from committing himself to any dissent, when
Mr O'Brien, after a fortnight, wrote to Mr Sexton for the return of
his Memorandum, Mr Sexton wrote:

"I have read the Memo. carefully two or three times and now return it
to you as you want to use it and have no other copy. It will take some
time to look into your proposals with anything like sufficient care.
You will hear from me as soon as I think I can say anything that may
possibly be of use."

Be it here noted that Mr Sexton never did communicate, even when he
had looked into Mr O'Brien's proposals "with sufficient care." Later
he waged implacable war on the Land Conference Report and the Land Act
from his commanding position as Managing Director of _The Freeman's
Journal_ (the official National organ). He did so in violation of
the promise on which the Party had entrusted him with that position,
that he would never interfere in its political direction.

Other informal meetings between Sir Antony MacDonnell and the Irish
leaders followed, the purpose of Sir Antony being, before he accepted
office in the Irish Government, to gather the views of leading
Irishmen, especially as to the possibility of a genuine land
settlement, which he regarded as the foundation of all else.
Subsequently it transpired that Mr Sexton had engaged in some
negotiations on his own account with Sir Antony MacDonnell, and it is
not improbable that part at least of his quarrel with the Land
Conference was that the settlement propounded by it superseded and
supplanted his own scheme. Neither Mr O'Brien nor his friends were
made aware of these private pourparlers, entered into without any
vestige of authority from the Party or its leader, and they only
learnt of them casually afterwards. The incident is instructive of how
the path of the peacemaker is ever beset with difficulties, even from
among his own household.

After surmounting a whole host of obstacles the Land Conference at
long last assembled in the Mansion House, Dublin, on 20th December
1902. Mr Redmond submitted the final selection of the tenants'
representatives to a vote of the Irish Party and, with the exception
of one member who declined to vote, the choice fell unanimously upon
those named in Captain Shawe-Taylor's letter. Although their findings
were subsequently subjected to much embittered attack, no one had any
right to impugn their authority, capacity, judgment or intimate
knowledge of the te