[John Redmond’s Last Years by Stephen Gwynn]@TWC D-Link book
John Redmond’s Last Years

CHAPTER VIII
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The body was brought to Kingstown, and thence by special train to Wexford, where he had expressed the wish to be laid, in the burying-place of his own people and in the town with which he had been most closely associated.

Hundreds of men came from distant parts to mark their sorrow and respect: what remained of him was carried in long and imposing procession through the streets.

Over the grave Mr.Dillon, who had been chosen to succeed him in the chair of the Irish party, spoke eloquent and fitting words.

Some day, no doubt, a monument to his memory will be set up in the streets of Wexford, where his great uncle's statue stands, and where will be placed the memorial to his gallant brother, subscribed for from all parts of the kingdom and from all Irish regiments in the Army.
But I say without hesitation that the first and most striking endeavour to put in lasting shape a tribute to John Redmond was made in the Convention, not by great men, but by the ordinary rank and file of Irish Nationalists, who went back from the graveside to the work which his death had interrupted.
Those who had been inclined before to accept his advice--still standing on our minutes--were now more than ever determined to follow it.

That advice was not to refuse the hand of friendship which offered itself from men who by alliance with us could take away from the Home Rule demand all sectarian character: who could bring for the first time a great and representative body of Irish landlord opinion and Irish Protestant opinion into line with the opinion of Irish tenants and Irish Catholics.


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