It indicates well the changed conditions to remember that when in 1906
Mr. Hazleton and the late T.M. Kettle were selected to go on a far less
arduous and difficult mission to America, there was much talk about the
astonishing youth of our representatives. Yet both were then older than
John Redmond was in 1882--to say nothing of his brother, who must have
been the most exuberantly youthful spokesman that a serious cause ever
found.

The Redmonds' stay in Australia, which lasted over a year, determined
one important matter for both young men; they found their wives in the
colony whose Prime Minister proposed to expel them. John Redmond married
Miss Joanna Dalton and his brother her near kinswoman, Miss Eleanor
Dalton. Willie Redmond was elected to Parliament in his absence for his
father's old seat--Mr. Healy having vacated Wexford to fight and win a
sensational election in county Monaghan.

This early visit to the great transmarine dominions, and the ties which
he formed there, left a marked impression on John Redmond's mind, which
was reinforced by other visits in later years, and by all the growing
associations that linked him to life and politics in the dominions.
Redmond knew vastly more, and in truth cared vastly more, about the
British Empire than most Imperialists. His affection was not based on
any inherited prejudice, nor inspired by a mere geographical idea. He
was attracted to that which he had seen and handled, in whose making he
had watched so many of his fellow-countrymen fruitfully and honourably
busy. He felt acutely that the Empire belonged to Irish Nationalists at
least as much as to English Tories. America also was familiar to him,
and he had every cause to be grateful to the United States; but his
interest in the dominions was of a different kind. He felt himself a