ps not a
little to the fact that he was his father's son, should have been the
one who first showed signs of recalcitrancy against Party rule and
discipline when he inveighed against the Land Act of 1881 and betook
himself abroad for three years during the time when the national
movement was locked in bitterest conflict with the Spencer Coercionist
regime. Let it be at once conceded that Parnell's lieutenants were men
whose gifts and talents would have in any circumstances carried them
to eminent heights, but it might be said also they lost nothing from
their early association with so great a personality and from the fact
that he brought them into the gladiatorial arena, where their mental
muscles were, so to speak, trained and tested and extended in combat
with some of the finest minds of the age.

In the days when the later Irish Party had entered upon its
decrepitude some of its leaders sought to maintain a sorry unity by
shouting incessantly from the house-tops, as if it were some sacred
formula which none but the unholy or those predestined to political
damnation dare dispute: "Majority Rule." And a country which they had
reduced to the somnambulistic state by the constant reiteration of
this phrase unfortunately submitted to their quackery, and have had
grave reason to regret it ever since. Parnell had very little respect
for shams--whether they were sham phrases or sham politicians. He was
a member of Butt's Home Rule Party but he was not to be intimidated
from pursuing the course he had mapped out for himself by any foolish
taunts about his "Policy of Exasperation"; he was a flagrant sinner
against the principle of "majority rule," but time has proved him to
be a sinner who was very much in the right. Mr Dillon used to hurl
another name of anathema at our heads--the heads of those of us who
were associated with Mr O'Brien in his policy of national
reconciliation--he used to dub us "Factionists." It was not fair
fighting, nor honest warfare, nor decent politics. It was the base
weapon of a man who had no arguments of reason by which he could
overwhelm an opponent, but who snatched a bludgeon from an armoury of
certain evil associations which he knew would prevail where more
legitimate methods could not.

I entered the Party in May 1901, having defeated their official
candidate at a United Irish League Convention for the selection of a
Parliamentary candidate for Mid-Cork on the death of Dr Tanner. In
those day