amounted only to twenty pounds a month. The new payment came from the
British Treasury; it was made irrespective of the desire of
constituents, or of any other consideration; and it amounted to a sum
which in a country of small incomes sounded very imposing.
Unquestionably the receipt of it weakened the position of the party in
the eyes of Ireland, and gave a new sting to the charge of a bargain.

All this was clearly discerned in advance, by no one more than by
Redmond; and an amendment was moved to strike Irish members out of the
application of the resolution. But the situation was hopelessly
involved, the Irish party having repeatedly voted for payment of members
as part of the Radical programme which they supported as affecting any
normally governed country; and Government refused to make the exception.

As a result, Redmond's following lost much of the prestige which had
resulted from scrupulous observance of the understanding that no
Nationalist member should take office under Government. To join the
Irish party had been, in effect, for most men, to make a vow of
poverty. Now, on the contrary, it involved acceptance of what was in
Ireland's eyes a well-paid and unlaborious office. The Irish are no less
prone than any other nation to take a cynical view of these matters.

Yet assuredly no man ever gave more service for less pay than the
Nationalist leader, and it was the harder because he was a man who liked
comfort and had no ambition. If at the time of the great "split" he had
stood down from politics, success would have been assured to him at the
Bar in Ireland, or, more surely still, and far more profitably, at
Westminster itself. There never was anyone so well-fitted for the work
of a parliamentary barrister who has to deal with great interests before
a tribunal largely composed of laymen. No one had the House of Commons