Apart from the detestation of partition, the Catholic Church conceived that the principle of denominational education would be lost in the severed counties, where the dominant Presbyterian element was opposed to it.
Very many delegates came to the Convention pledged in advance to resist the proposals: and the general anticipation was that Redmond would be thrown over.
The proceedings were secret.

But in the result the Nationalists of the North refused to be any party to denying the rest of Ireland self-government.

A division was taken, and consent to temporary exclusion was carried by a large majority.

The victory was in the main due to Mr.Devlin's extraordinary personal gifts, exercised to carry a conclusion which inevitably must injure himself where he was most sensitive to a wound, in the hearts of those among whom he was born and bred.
It must have been in the weeks immediately after this that Redmond spoke to me, as I never heard him speak of any other man, his mind about Mr.
Devlin.

"Joe's loyalty in all this business has been beyond words," he said.