Neither section of us who voted for agreement achieved anything by facing the risk of unpopularity.

We had followed Redmond's policy and we shared Redmond's fate.

We had done our best to help the British Government and that Government itself defeated us.
By the Prime Minister's letter Government was pledged to legislate for the better government of Ireland, not upon condition of our reaching substantial agreement, but in any event.

Yet the letter emphasized the "urgent importance of getting a settlement in and through the Convention." We had secured a report for a scheme in which sixty-six out of eighty-seven concurred in the broad lines; and of the twenty-one dissentients, nineteen were a group sent to the assembly with a pledge which they construed as giving them a special position, in that no legislation affecting them was to be passed without their concurrence.
The agreement which we had reached enabled the Government, when it undertook legislation, to quote Unionist authority on the one hand and Nationalist authority on the other for many wise provisions which otherwise a Coalition Ministry might have found it most difficult to propose.
But no legislation followed.

Once more an Irish issue became involved in the wheels of the English political machine.
We have ourselves in part to thank for it.