constitutionalism appeared to have received its death-blow. The country
had lost all respect for its "Members," and young and old were sick
unto death of a movement which offered no immediate prospects of action
and no hope for the future. A generation of sceptics and scoffers was
being created, and even if the idealists, who are always to be found in
large number in Ireland, still remained unconquerable in their faith
that a resurgent and regenerated Ireland must arise some time, and
somehow, they were remarkably silent in the expression of their
convictions. Mr William O'Brien thus describes the unspeakable depths to
which the Party had fallen in those days:

"The invariable last word to all our consultations was the pathetic
one, 'Give me a fund and I see my way to doing anything.' And so we
had travelled drearily for years in the vicious circle that there
could be no creative energy in the Party without funds, and that there
could be no possibility for funds for a party thus ingloriously
inactive. Although myself removed from Parliament my aid had been
constantly invoked by Mr Dillon on the eve of any important meeting of
the Party in London, or of the Council of the National Federation in
Dublin, for there was not one of them that was not haunted by the
anticipation of some surprise from Mr Healy's fertile ingenuity. There
is an unutterable discomfort in the recollections of the invariable
course of procedure on these occasions--first, the dozens of
beseeching letters to be written to our friends, imploring their
attendance at meetings at which, if Mr Healy found us in full
strength, all was uneventful and they had an expensive journey for
their pains; next, the consultations far into the night preceding
every trial of strength; the painful ticking off, man by man, of the
friends, foes, and doubtfuls on the Party list, the careful collection
of information as to the latest frame of mind of this or that man of