The old loyalties had gone--and he felt it.

Ending on a personal note, he referred to his age: he was over sixty; he had done thirty-five years of work which would have broken down any man less robust in constitution than it had been his luck to be born.

He believed in youth, he said, and would gladly give way to younger men.
"But one thing I will not do while I have breath in my body.

I will not give way to the abuse and calumny and the falsehoods of men whom I have known for long years as the treacherous enemies of Ireland." With all his reticence, he was a sensitive man; and for months now he could scarcely take up a newspaper, except his party's official organ, without finding himself accused of imbecility, of idle vanity, of corrupt bargaining, of every unworthy motive.

Worse than all, he realized the inherent weakness of his position.