It was never his habit to reply to inconvenient communications--a policy which he inherited from Parnell, who held that nearly every letter answered itself within six months, if it were let alone.

Certainly in this case it so happened.

Long before six months were up, facts had made argument superfluous.
Wisdom is easy after the event, and few would dispute now that the constitutional party ought either to have dissociated itself completely from the appeal to force, or to have launched and controlled it from the outset.

Neither of these lines was followed, and the responsibility for what was done and what was not done must lie with Redmond.

Yet, as I read it, the key to his policy lay in a dread, not of war, but of civil war.