The Sinn Fein Executive at the time did not want an election on its hands. It was not ready for it. It knew that the movement, so far as a policy of Parliamentary elections was concerned, was only in its initial stages, that a Sinn Fein candidate outside Dublin stood no chance, and that a Sinn Fein defeat would react unfavourably on the movement, even though a good fight were made. But the circumstances gave them no choice, and both sides did their best in North Leitrim. The Parliamentary Party had all the advantage that money, organisation, and Press could give them; whereas the Sinn Feiners had no money, no organisation in the county, which, up to Mr. Dolan's conversion, did not contain a single Sinn Feiner, few speakers, no Press save the weekly "United Irishman"--in fact, they had nothing save logic and courage. Mr. Dolan polled 1,200 votes and his opponent some 800 or 900 more, a result which, considering that all the big-wigs of the Party had been sent down to the campaign, was a moral victory for Sinn Fein and heartened the movement immensely; but it undoubtedly set going a reaction against it in the country, and it arrested the flow of converts from the Parliamentarian policy. A daily paper had long been a cherished project of Mr. Griffith, and during the North Leitrim election he became so sensible of the part played by the daily press in that election that after it was over he set about the establishment of a daily. By sheer obstinacy he talked over the Sinn Fein Executive, none of whom viewed the project with anything but apprehension, and an appeal for funds was made. It was an inopportune time for such an appeal, as the slender purses of Sinn Feiners had just been emptied in order to defray the expenses of North Leitrim; but enthusiasm was high, and sufficient capital was subscribed for the modest venture it was intended to be. The paper, however, never had a chance of succeeding, its slender capital being counted in hundreds instead of in thousands, and it subsisted for some months only by a periodical call on the purses of its readers, and then collapsed, with adverse results. Its failure not alone damned the chance of the Sinn Fein policy sweeping the country--which chance had looked a sporting one--but it damped the enthusiasm of the individual Sinn Feiners and arrested the movement. And it was followed by another fatal complication. Some individuals who were half Sinn Feiners and half followers of Mr. William O'Brien, one foot in each camp, set on foot the idea of a combination between the two forces, with a mixture of policies, viz., that there should be a Parliamentary Party but that it should be subsidiary, and should be controlled by a National Executive sitting in Dublin, which latter body should decide, as a matter of tactics, whether the Party should attend Parliament or withdraw from Parliament on any particular occasion. (This, it will be noticed, was the after policy of the "Irish Nation League.") Mr. O'Brien