"It would be far better," Redmond had said in the House of Commons, "to have one man selected as the chairmen of these committees are to be selected, to have charge, so far as the Council is concerned, of the working of the Department, and then all these chairmen acting together could form a sort of organic body which would give cohesion, would co-ordinate and give stability to the whole of the work. I am afraid that the Government seem to have shrunk from that for fear the argument would be used against them that they were really creating a Ministry."
That was the real difficulty. A Council subject only to a veto on its acts, even though it could neither pass a by-law nor strike a rate, would undoubtedly be said by the Unionist opposition to be a rudimentary parliament. A group of chairmen possessing administrative powers like those of Ministers would be labelled a Ministry; and the Liberals who had pledged themselves not to give effect to their Home Rule principles were sensitive to charges of breach of faith.
It is a curious fact in politics that the public promise conveyed in the adoption of certain principles is generally taken to be on the level of ordinary commercial obligation. Failure to keep it jeopardizes a man's reputation for political stability, just as failure to pay a tailor's bill imperils a man's financial character. But a promise to political opponents that you will not give effect to your principles stands on the level of a card debt: it is a matter of honour to make good; and on this point Mr. Asquith in particular has always shown an adamantine resolution.
From 1907 onwards it was with Mr. Asquith that Redmond had chiefly to count. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, who, personally, had given no such limiting pledges, and who during his two years of leadership commanded a respect, an affectionate allegiance, from his followers in the House without parallel at all events since Mr. Gladstone's day, was fast weakening in health. He lived long enough to give freedom to South Africa, the one outstanding achievement of that Parliament; and by the success of that great measure he did more to remove British distrust of Home Rule than even Gladstone ever accomplished. It was no fault of his if Liberalism failed to settle the Irish question at the moment when Liberal power reached its highest point.
The failure of the Council Bill had one good result, and one only. It cleared the way for a definite propaganda on Home Rule. But before this could be undertaken it was necessary to pull Nationalist Ireland together, for it was once more rent with division and distrust. Mr. Healy, who in 1901 had been expelled from the Irish party and its organization on the motion of Mr. O'Brien and against Redmond's advice, and Mr. O'Brien, who had subsequently retired from the party against Redmond's wish, were both of them formidable antagonists; and each was vehement in attack on the main body of Nationalists and their leader. It was some time before Redmond braced himself to the struggle; but from the opening of the autumn recess in 1907 he undertook a campaign throughout Ireland which it would be difficult to overpraise. In a series of speeches at chosen centres, delivered before great audiences, he laid down once more the national demand as he conceived it; and in each speech he dealt with a different aspect of the case for Home Rule.
A formal outcome of this campaign was the re-establishment of national unity. Mr. O'Brien and Mr. Healy returned to the Irish party for a brief period. But the more important result was the re-establishment of Redmond's personal position. He had made an effort which would have been great for any man, but for him was a victory over his own temperament. That temperament had in it, negatively, a great lack of personal ambition and, positively, a strong love for a quiet life. He did his work in Parliament regularly and conscientiously, always there day in and day out; and it was work of a very exacting kind. This had become the routine of his existence and he did it without strain. But to go outside it was for him always an effort. He hated town life; but more than this, he hated ceremonies, presentations, receptions in hotels, and all the promiscuous contact of political gatherings. Nevertheless, when he came to such an occasion no living man acquitted himself better. Apart from his oratory, he had an admirable manner, a dignified yet friendly courtesy which gained attachment. In the course of the autumn and winter following the Irish Council Bill he must have met and been seen by a hundred times more of his adherents than in any similar period of his leadership. People all over Ireland heard him not only on the public platform but in small addresses to deputations, in impromptu speeches at semi-public dinners, and all of this strengthened him where an Irish leader most needs to be strengthened—in the hearts of the people. The hold which he gained then stood to him during the years which followed and up to the outbreak of the war. But it could have been still further strengthened, and if ambition had been a motive force in him, he would have strengthened it. More than that, if he had realized his full value to Ireland, he would have felt it his duty to do so. Modesty, combined with a certain degree of indolence, made him leave all that contact with the mass of his followers which is necessary to leadership to be effected through his chief colleagues, Mr. Dillon and Mr. Devlin—who, through no will of theirs, became rather joint leaders than lieutenants, so far as Ireland was concerned.
Circumstances helped to emphasize this tendency. His work lay very greatly in London, Parliament occupied every year a longer and longer space. The task of platform advocacy all over England was urgent, and in England Redmond stood out alone. It was little to be wondered at that when each long deferred recess came he made it a vacation and not a change of work. The seclusion from direct intercourse with the mass of his followers which conditions imposed upon him was further accentuated by his personal tastes and his choice of a dwelling.
In the early years of the nineteenth century the mountain range which runs along the east coast from outside Dublin through Wicklow into county Wexford was a country difficult of access and unsubdued. Here in 1803 Emmet found a refuge, and after Emmet's death here Michael Dwyer still held out: Connemara itself was hardly wilder or less accessible, till the "military road" was run, little more than a hundred years ago, from Dublin over the western slopes of Featherbed, past Glencree, and through Callary Bog, skirting Glendalough and traversing the wild recesses of Glenmalure, so that it cuts across the headwaters of those beautiful streams which meet in the Vale of Ovoca. From Glenmalure the road climbs a steep ridge and then travels in wide downward curves across the seaward side of Lugnaquilla—fifth in height among Irish mountains. Here, at the head of a long valley which runs down to the Meeting of the Waters, was built one of the barracks which billeted the original garrison of the road. Later, these buildings had been used for constabulary; but with peaceful times this grew needless, for there was little disturbance among these Wicklow folk, tenants of little farms, each with a sheep-run on the vast hills. Nothing could be less like the flat sea-bordering lands of the Barony of Forth in which the Redmonds spent their boyhood than these wild, sweeping, torrent-seamed folds of hill and valley; but the place came to him as part of his inheritance from "the Chief." Parnell's home at Avondale was some ten miles from here, lying in woods beside the Ovoca River; but the Parnell property stretched up to the slopes of Lugnaquilla, and the dismantled barrack was used by him as a shooting lodge. Here, in the early days before his life became absorbed in the masterful attachment which led finally to his overthrow, he spent good hours; and here the two Redmonds and those others of his followers who were his companions came to camp roughly in this strange, gaunt survival of military rule. After Parnell's death Redmond bought the barrack and a small plot of land about it, and it became increasingly and exclusively his home in Ireland. It was, indeed, Ireland itself for him. In it and through it he knew Ireland intimately, felt Ireland intensely and intensively, not only as a place, but as a way of being. Ireland to him meant Aughavanagh.
Partly, no doubt, the almost unbroken wildness of his surroundings appealed to an element of romance in his character, which was strongly emotional though extremely reticent. Only an artist would have recognized beauty in those scenes, for in all Ireland it would be difficult to find a landscape with less amenity; the hill shapes are featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. Redmond, a born artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to beauty in all kinds—yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical, graceful and well-planned. A sailor does not love the sea for its beauty, and Redmond loved Ireland as a sailor loves the sea—yet with a difference. Ireland to him in a great measure was Aughavanagh, and Aughavanagh was a place of rest. Ireland is a good country to rest in. But it would have been far better for Redmond and for Ireland if Ireland had been the place not of his rest, but of his work.
His work was essentially that