strengthen the leader's hand, Redmond at the outset laid down the
proposition that it was their "duty" as Nationalists to accept what he
described as a far better Bill than Gladstone ever offered. He further
indicated the need for a resolution that the question of supporting,
proposing or rejecting amendments should be left to the Irish party.
This was promptly carried by acclamation. All decisions were unanimous
that day.

But before this or any other resolution was put to the Convention,
Redmond asked the multitude there to give, what they gave most
willingly, a welcome to Mr. Gladstone's grandson, who as a young member
of Parliament had just voted for the Bill. The greeting which he
received showed that Ireland had not forgotten what Gladstone's last
years had been.

In the first of his speeches upon the Bill, Sir Edward Grey, a survivor
from Gladstone's Ministry, said, as he threw a glance back over the
struggle from 1886 to 1893:

"Two things stirred me at the time; they stir me still. One is Mr.
Gladstone's intense grip of the fact that there was a national spirit in
Ireland, and the splendour of the effort he made in his last years to
acknowledge and reconcile that spirit. The other is the Irish response
to Mr. Gladstone. It was not the assent of mere tacticians who had
gained an advocate and a point. It was genuine, warm and living feeling,
a response of gratitude and sympathy the same in kind and as living as
his own."

If Redmond's task from 1912 onwards was not lightened by the existence
of any such genuine, warm and living feeling for any of Mr. Asquith's