This course, while it facilitated close co-operation with Liberalism in the general election which followed, weakened us in Ireland; and eleven out of the eighty-three Nationalist members returned in January 1910 ranked themselves as outside the party; though Mr.O'Brien's actual following was limited to seven Cork members and Mr.Healy.
IV The action of the Lords in rejecting the Budget of 1909 had an important personal result.

It placed Mr.Asquith in a role which no one was ever better qualified to fill--that of a Liberal statesman defending principles of democratic control menaced after a long period of security.

The Prime Minister, not the Chancellor of the Exchequer, now became the protagonist; and this was to Redmond's liking, for he felt that Mr.Asquith was more concerned with the problems which had occupied Gladstone's closing years and Mr.Lloyd George with those of a later day.
Yet in the first grave encounter after the rejection of the Budget, Redmond and the leader of the Liberal party came to sharp differences.
The general election had amply justified the advice which was urged by him on Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman when the House of Lords rejected the Education Bill in 1906--namely, that the Liberal party should take up at once the inevitable fight before their enormous strength had been frittered away in a series of disappointments.

The majority of 1906 was too swollen to be healthy: owing to the ruling out of Home Rule, it included a number of men only partial adherents of the full Liberal programme; and a diminution of its proportions owing to the traditional swing of the pendulum was certain.

But in January 1910 the losses were more than even sanguine Tory prophets predicted.