This is a very notable statement, because it shows that the Nationalists, who poured out their vials of vituperation upon Lord Dunraven and the Irish Reform Association, were now eager to accept an infinitely lesser instalment of Home Rule from their own Liberal friends. And it also demonstrates that for a very meagre modicum of the Irish birth-right they were willing to sacrifice the position of Parliamentary independence, which was one of the greatest assets of the Party, and to enter into a formal alliance with the Liberals on a mere contingent declaration that "any measure brought in" should be "consistent with and leading up to a larger policy." Note, there was no guarantee, no positive statement, that a measure would be brought in, yet Mr T.P. O'Connor tells us that this declaration was "all that the Irish Nationalist Party could have expected," and that it enabled them "to give their full support at the elections to the Liberal Party." I wonder what Parnell, had he been alive, would have thought of this offer of the Liberals and whether he would in return for it make such an easy surrender of a nation's claims. And I wonder also whether a paltrier bargain was ever made in the whole history of political alliances. It does not require any special gift of vision to divine who was "the friend" who went with Mr O'Connor to Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman's breakfast-party and who was in "complete agreement as to both policy and tactics." They were good Liberals both of them, and for my own part I would find no fault with them for this, if only they had been better Nationalists. Mr Redmond publicly ratified the new policy--or rather, treaty, as it now practically was--of Home Rule by instalments in a speech at Motherwell, in which he announced his readiness to accept any concession "which would shorten and smoothen the road to Home Rule." But it is significant that although Mr Dillon was in complete agreement with the Liberals "as to both policy and tactics," yet he devoted, with a rather supercilious levity, his speeches in Ireland to a demand for "Boer Home Rule as a minimum." This was the way in which the country was scandalously hoodwinked as to the real relations which existed between the Liberals and Nationalists.