her
there was any possibility of slowing down the Labourers' agitation so
as to make a postponement to the following session practicable. My
reply was undiplomatically clear:--that, if the Government wanted to
deprive the Irish Council Bill of all chance of a hearing, they could
not take a better means of making the country too hot for themselves
than by proposing to fob off the labourers for another year, and that
not only would I not, if I could, but could not if I would, moderate
their insistence upon immediate redress.

"A short time afterwards, I met Sir Antony MacDonnell in the House of
Commons, and he asked 'What is your labourers' minimum?' I gave him a
brief outline of the Macroom programme. 'No rational being could
object,' he said, 'but what does it mean in hard cash?' I replied,
'Roughly, four millions.' And the great Irishman--'the worst enemy
that ever came to Ireland' of Mr Dillon's nightmare hours--ended the
interview with these laconic words: 'The thing ought to be done and I
think can be.' At the period of the session at which the Bill was
introduced, the opposition of even half-a-dozen determined men could
have at any stage achieved its ruin. Thanks, however, to the good
feeling the precedent of the Act of 1903 and the admirably
conciliatory temper displayed by the labourers themselves in their
agitation had engendered, the Bill went triumphantly through and has
been crowned with glory in its practical application. I never pass
through any of the southern counties now and feast my eyes on the
labourers' cottages which dot the landscape--prettier than the
farmers' own homes--honeysuckles or jasmines generally trailing around
the portico--an acre of potato ground sufficient to be a sempiternal
insurance against starvation, stretching out behind--the pig and the
poultry--perhaps a plot of snowdrops or daffodils for the English
market, certainly a bunch of roses in the cheeks of the children
clustering about the doorsteps--without thankfully acknowledging that
Cork was right in thinking such conquests were worth a great deal of
evil speech from angry politicians."

CHAPTER XV

SOME FURTHER SALVAGE FROM THE WRECKAGE

When Mr O'Brien retired in 1903 the majority of the members of the
Party scarcely knew what to make of it, and I have to confess myself
among those who were lost in wonder and amazement at the suddenness of
the event and the reasons