is,
of using discussion to prevent legislation from being put through--the
best service that a member can render to Government is to say nothing,
but vote.

The tactics of limiting discussion to chosen speakers in important
debates and of discouraging sharply any intervention which might help to
delay a division were pushed further in the Irish party than elsewhere.
We were there under different conditions from the rest; our objective
was as clearly defined as in a military operation: and we all understood
the position. We recognized also that negotiation must be a matter for
Redmond and his inner cabinet of three, and that many things could not
be usefully discussed in a body of seventy men. But the net result was
that the bulk of the party lost interest in their work, and, which was
worse, that Ireland lost interest in the bulk of the party. It followed,
not unnaturally, that the constituencies held one voting machine to be
as good as another, and they did not generally send any men who could
have been of service in debate. They did not any longer see their
members heading a fiery campaign against rents, or flamboyant in attack
on the Government; they heard very little of them at all. They knew
little and cared less about the work of education in British
constituencies, which had to be carried on through the mouths of Irish
members.

Redmond has often been blamed, but quite unjustly, for failure to
attract men of talent into his ranks. Parnell had that power. He had,
and used, the right of suggesting names. But under the constitution of
the United Irish League (originally the work of Mr. William O'Brien when
reunion was accomplished in 1900) the machinery of local conventions was
set up and no interference with their choice was permitted to the
central directorate--which could only insist that a man properly
selected must take the party pledge. Whether this machinery was
inevitable or no, cannot be argued here; but Redmond himself complained
repeatedly in public that it worked badly. Candidates were often chosen
purely for local and even personal considerations, and seldom with any
real thought of finding the man best fitted to do Ireland's work at
Westminster.

This evil, for it was an evil, resulted from the political stagnation in
a country where one dominant permanent issue overshadowed all others.
There being no Unionist candidature possible in the majority of
constituencies, any contest was deprecated--and f