On this day, however, there was only one opinion: the business was to manifest support and to strengthen the leader's hand, Redmond at the outset laid down the proposition that it was their "duty" as Nationalists to accept what he described as a far better Bill than Gladstone ever offered.

He further indicated the need for a resolution that the question of supporting, proposing or rejecting amendments should be left to the Irish party.
This was promptly carried by acclamation.

All decisions were unanimous that day.
But before this or any other resolution was put to the Convention, Redmond asked the multitude there to give, what they gave most willingly, a welcome to Mr.Gladstone's grandson, who as a young member of Parliament had just voted for the Bill.

The greeting which he received showed that Ireland had not forgotten what Gladstone's last years had been.
In the first of his speeches upon the Bill, Sir Edward Grey, a survivor from Gladstone's Ministry, said, as he threw a glance back over the struggle from 1886 to 1893: "Two things stirred me at the time; they stir me still.

One is Mr.
Gladstone's intense grip of the fact that there was a national spirit in Ireland, and the splendour of the effort he made in his last years to acknowledge and reconcile that spirit.