f the people instead of
their servants.

Not that I want for one moment unnecessarily to disparage the
personnel of the Party--it was probably the best that Ireland could
have got in the circumstances--nor do I seek to diminish its
undoubtedly great services to Ireland in the days of Parnell and
during the period that it loyally adopted the policy of Conciliation.
But what I do deplore is that a few men in the Party--not more than
three or four all told--were able, by getting control of "the
machine," to destroy the fairest chance that Ireland ever had of
gaining a large measure of self-government. Knowing all that happened
within the Party in the years of which I am writing, knowing the
methods that were employed, rather unscrupulously and with every
circumstance of pettiness, to bear down any member who showed the
least disposition to exercise legitimately an independent
judgment--knowing how the paid organisers of the League were at once
dispatched to his constituency to intrigue against him and to work up
local enmities, I am not, and never was, surprised at the compelled
submission of the body of the members to the decrees of the secret
Cabinet who controlled policy and directed affairs with an absolute
autocracy that few dared question. One member more courageous than his
fellows, Mr Thomas O'Donnell, B.L., did come upon the platform with Mr
Wm. O'Brien at Tralee, in his own constituency and had the manliness
to declare in favour of the policy of Conciliation, but the tragic
confession was wrung from him: "I know I shall suffer for it." And he
did!

I mention these matters to explain what would otherwise be
inexplicable--how it came to pass that a policy solemnly ratified by
the Party, by the Directory of the League, and by a National
Convention was subsequently repudiated. Whilst Mr O'Brien remained in
the Party there was no question of the allegiance of these men to
correct principle. Mr Joseph Devlin, who later was far and away the
most powerful man in the Party, had not yet "arrived." (It was the
retirement of Mr O'Brien from public life and the resignation of Mr
John O'Donnell from the secretaryship of the United Irish
League--under circumstances which Mr Devlin's admirers will scarcely
care to recall--which gave him his chance.) Mr Dillon was a more or
less negligible figure until Mr O'Brien made way for him by his
retirement. Right up to this there was only one man for the Party and
the country, and tha