hat unless he exercised his authority, and that of the Party
and the Directory, it would be impossible for them to persevere in
their existing programme, and that the only alternative left for him
would be to retire and leave those who had opposed the policy of
Conciliation a free stage for any more heroic projects they might
contemplate. Mr Redmond still remained indecisive and Mr
O'Brien--whether wisely or unwisely will always remain a debatable
point with his friends--quietly quitted the stage, resigning his seat
in Parliament, withdrawing from the Directory of the United Irish
League, and ceasing publication of his weekly newspaper on the ground,
as he says himself, that "the authorised national policy having been
made unworkable, nothing remained, in order to save the country from
dissension, except to leave its wreckers an absolutely free field for
any alternative policy of their own."

It is no exaggeration to say that the country was thrown into a state
of stupefaction by Mr O'Brien's retirement. It did not know the reason
of it. Very few members of the Party did. I was then a member of
it--perhaps a little on the outer fringe, but still an ordinarily
intelligent member--and I was not aware of the underground factors and
forces which had caused this thunderbolt out of the blue, as it were.
Needless to say, the country was in a state of more abysmal ignorance
still, and it is questionable whether outside of Munster, owing to a
scandalous Press boycott of Mr O'Brien's speeches for many years
afterwards, the masses of the people ever had an understanding of the
motives which impelled him "to stand down and out" when he was
undoubtedly supreme in the Party and in the United Irish League and
when he might easily have overborne "the determined campaigners" if he
had only knit the issue with them in a fair and square fight. This,
however, was the thing of all others he wished to avoid. Perhaps if he
could have foreseen how barren in any alternative policy his sapient
critics were to be he might have acted otherwise, but the credit is
due to him of making dissension impossible by leaving no second party
to the quarrel.

Speaking at Limerick a few days after his retirement, Mr Redmond
avowed that Mr O'Brien's principles were his own, and added these
memorable words: "But for Mr William O'Brien there would have been no
Land Conference and no Land Act." Every effort was made to induce Mr
O'Brien to withdraw his resignati