Lord MacDonnell stood much nearer to us, but was a power in his own right and had never been a party politician.
Mr.Lysaght had voted against us in Clare.

Mr.Russell had very often attacked the party on aspects of its general action.

Above all, there was Mr.W.M.Murphy, who, like Mr.Healy, had been at one time a member of the Irish party, and whose paper had for long been in nominal support of its purposes, but who had throughout recent years done more than all forces together to discredit and weaken its influence.
All of these five men were Government nominees, as were also Lord Granard and Sir Bertram Windle, who in different ways gave Redmond complete and most useful backing.

It would have been possible to call together a group consisting of men who had been members of the national organization which would have excluded all these and included the Bishops;[10] but Redmond probably felt it would be ungracious to do this.

His chief desire was to avoid all recognition of party and still more of partisan machinery.