But this did not mean that Parnell or we abandoned Ireland's right to manage her own police.

Reservation of the police in perpetuity would have been impossible to accept.

In the same way, said Redmond, "the automatic ending of any period of exclusion is for us a fixed and immutable principle." To maintain this conformity with national sentiment great advantages were sacrificed.

The whole debates of this period turned on the question of the time-limit.

If it had never been raised, opposition would still have existed, but the fact would have been plain from the outset that Protestant Ulster claimed to dictate not only where it had the majority, but where the majority was against it.