They were men lifted high above the passions and rivalries which had
wrought distraction and division amongst the people at home, and it
needs no great argument to show what a powerful and impartial tribunal
they might have been made into for the restoration of peace and the
re-establishment of a new order in Irish political affairs. But this
great opportunity was lost. The factions had not yet fought themselves
to a standstill. Mr Redmond and Mr Healy resisted the most pressing
entreaties of the American and Australian delegates to join the
Convention, and, beyond a series of laudable speeches and resolutions,
a Convention which might have been constituted the happy harbinger of
unity left no enduring mark on the life of the people or the fate of
parties.

When Mr Gerald Balfour became Chief Secretary for Ireland after the
Home Rule debacle of 1895 he determined to continue the policy,
inaugurated by his more famous brother, of appeasement by considerable
internal reforms, which have made his administration for ever
memorable. There have ever been in Irish life certain narrow coteries
of thought which believed that with every advance of prosperity
secured by the people, and every step taken by them in individual
independence, there would be a corresponding weakness in their desire
and demand for a full measure of national freedom. A more fatal or
foolish conviction there could not be. The whole history of nations
and peoples battling for the right is against it. The more a people
get upon their feet, the more they secure a grip upon themselves and
their inheritance, the more they are established in security and
well-being, the more earnestly, indefatigably and unalterably are they
determined to get all that is due to them. They will make every height
they attain a fortress from which to fight for the ultimate pinnacle
of their rights. The more prosperous they become, the better are they