Redmond, having now the chance of a lifetime to obtain Home Rule, will be given a free hand, without a word said to embarrass him. But it was difficult not to speak sometimes. When the Liberal Budget left the House of Commons that month, before the veto of the House of Lords had been abolished, Mr. Redmond's acquiescence in these tactics was freely censured. When in the autumn of the same year Mr. Redmond committed himself to the declaration: "We do not want to discontinue our representation in the House of Commons when Home Rule comes; we desire to have Irish members sitting at Westminster not only to form a nucleus of the ultimate Federal Parliament of the Empire, but also to assist in legislation concerning Great Britain and Ireland collectively," the declaration was quoted with disgust. The Home Rule of the Liberal Party was indeed far removed from the Constitution of 1782. Sinn Fein took no official part in the elections of 1910, preferring, as it said in its official organ, to remain "wholly free from any moral responsibility" for the legislation offered by the Liberals to the Parliamentary Party, while retaining the right to examine, criticise and warn. This was not purely an act of self-sacrifice. In fact Sinn Fein was never at so low an ebb. While the country was drifting farther and farther in the direction of Home Rule, Sinn Fein was insisting more and more upon first principles. Its official attitude of warm approval of the work of the Gaelic League was exchanged for one of insistence upon the urgency of making Irish the national language. "We must begin again," said _Sinn Fein_, "to be an Irish-speaking people, or there can be no future of national independence before us." With England on the one hand and America on the other, 120,000,000 people speaking English, the danger to the language was imminent. "We freely admit," it proceeded, "that this conclusion is not one we sought nor one we desired. The conviction has forced itself upon us and has been with some reluctance accepted by us." And it continued to speak plain language about the Home Rule which now seemed inevitable: "No scheme which the English Parliament may pass in the near future will satisfy Sinn Fein--no legislature created in Ireland which is not supreme and absolute will offer a basis for concluding a final settlement with the foreigners who usurp the government of this country. But any measure which gives genuine, if even partial, control of their own affairs to Irishmen shall meet with no opposition from us and should meet with no opposition from any section of Irishmen." So far was Sinn Fein at this time from any desire to do more than infuse a new spirit into Irishmen, favourable to the eventual future development of the policy outlined by the National Council, that it expressly disclaimed the title of a party. "It is not our business," was the conclusion of a pamphlet issued by the Belfast Branch of Sinn Fein, "to make one more party among