tone more perfectly than Redmond, and no one that I ever heard equalled
his gift for making a complicated issue appear simple. When he was
thrown out of Parliament at the Cork election, he thought of retirement,
mainly for one reason: it would be better for his children. Yet, first
by personal loyalty to Parnell, later by his loyalty to Ireland, he was
held firm to his task--always a poor man, always knowing that it lay in
his power, without the least sacrifice of principle, to become rich by a
way of work less laborious and infinitely less harassing than that which
he pursued.

The effect upon the Irish situation produced by the payment of members
was slow to develop, and obscure. But an obvious and grave complication
was introduced into both British and Irish politics at the moment when
the democratic alliance had achieved its first great objective.
Parliament had been in session almost continuously since the beginning
of 1909, with the added strain of two general elections thrown in. There
was a widespread desire to clear the autumn of 1911, so that members
might have some breathing space, and, not less important, devote
themselves to propagandist work in their constituencies for the new
struggle of carrying measures under the hardly won Parliament Act. Each
of these measures must involve a fight prolonged over three years.

But this desire ran against the purposes of Mr. Asquith's chief
lieutenant, whose power and popularity were now at their height. Mr.
Lloyd George in the course of the session had introduced his Insurance
Bill, and it was welcomed with astonishing effusion from both sides of
the House. As discussion proceeded, however, the complexity and
difficulty of its proposals, and the number of oppositions which they
provoked, became so apparent that it was not in human nature for
politicians at such a crisis to forgo the opportunity. Most of the