His tact was unfailing.

In all those years, under the most envenomed scrutiny, he never let slip a word that could be used to our disadvantage.

This is merely a negative statement.

It is truer to say that he never touched the question without raising it to the scope of great issues.

Nothing petty, nothing personal came into his discourse; he so carried the national claim of Ireland that men saw in it at once the test and the justification of democracy.
That is why the Irish cause, instead of being a millstone round the neck of the parliamentary alliance, was in truth a living cohesive force.