Excerpt from The Life of John Redmond The publishers of this book have suggested that it should be prefaced with a brief synopsis of Irish history since 1798, to provide, as it were, a back-ground against which the life of John Redmond may be set. To write such a synopsis is a task less easy than it might appear. The very date selected as its starting-point is chal lenging. It invites a begging of the whole Irish question. Did the Rebellion of I 798, as Union ists assert, justify the Act of Legislative Union between Ireland and Great Britain? Or was that Rebellion, as Nationalists reply, deliberately pro yoked with the Object of providing a specious pretence of justification for the Union? It is, in fact, impossible that any survey of Irish history, however brief, should be taken up arbitrarily from the date of I 798 without reference to what went before it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Life of John Redmond The publishers of this book have suggested that it should be prefaced with a brief synopsis of Irish history since 1798, to provide, as it were, a back-ground against which the life of John Redmond may be set. To write such a synopsis is a task less easy than it might appear. The very date selected as its starting-point is challenging. It invites a begging of the whole "Irish question." Did the Rebellion of 1798, as Unionists assert, justify the Act of Legislative Union between Ireland and Great Britain? Or was that Rebellion, as Nationalists reply, deliberately provoked with the object of providing a specious pretence of justification for the Union? It is, in fact, impossible that any survey of Irish history, however brief, should be taken up arbitrarily from the date of 1798 without reference to what went before it. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The time has not yet come to write the biography of John Redmond. Not until the history of the pledge-bound Irish Parliamentary party can be treated freely, fully and impartially as a chapter closed and ended will it be possible to record in detail the life of a man who was associated with it almost from its beginning and who from the opening of this century guided it with almost growing authority to the statutory accomplishment of its desperate task; who knew, in it and for it, all vicissitudes of fortune and who gave to it without stint or reservation his whole life's energy from earliest manhood to the grave.