Then Mr. Healy passed to "what was called • A
Convention of the Irish Race at Home and Abroad." He held out an olive-branch to the Redmondites, and thought any man who built a golden bridge for their return to the party, would do a great service ; but he evidently thought it would be a still greater service to get rid of Mr. Dillon. So far as regarded any return to unity or any settlement of the question of leadership, the Convention was hopeless while Mr. Dillon remained at the head. But though Mr. Dillon would weep conventional tears at Mr. Sexton's refusal to take the lead, he had declared that any one who discussed the differences between himself (Mr. Healy) and Mr. Dillon was to be "coughed down and run out of the room," and in that case he should much prefer to be "coughed down" at Westminster and expelled from the Westminster Parliament. Under Mr. Dillon the party had fallen to a far lower position than it had occupied even in the days of William Shaw, and had become "merely the tail-end of the Liberal party." Finally a resolution was passed that "Mr. Dillon had subordinated the interests of the national cause to the promotion of objects of personal ambition." The drift of the meeting was that the first duty of national Ireland must be to depose Mr. Dillon.
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