century ago the barony of Forth retained a dialect of its own which was
in effect such English as men spoke before Chaucer began to write; and
even to-day in any Wexford fair or market you will see among the strong,
well-nourished, prosperous farmers many faces and figures which an
artist might easily assimilate to an athletic example of the traditional
John Bull. Redmond himself, hawk-faced and thick-bodied, might have been
taken for no bad reincarnation of Raymond Le Gros. To this extent he was
less of a Celt than many of his countrymen; but he was assuredly none
the less Irish because he was a Wexfordman. The county of his birth was
the county which had made the greatest resistance to English power in
Ireland since Sarsfield and his "Wild Geese" crossed to Flanders. Born
in 1857, he grew up in a country-side full of memories of events then
only some sixty years old; he knew and spoke with many men who had been
out with pike or fowling-piece in 1798. Rebel was to him from boyhood up
a name of honour; and this was not only a phase of boyish enthusiasm. In
his mature manhood, speaking as leader of the Irish party, he told the
House of Commons plainly that in his deliberate judgment Ireland's
situation justified an appeal to arms, and that if rebellion offered a
reasonable prospect of gaining freedom for a united Ireland he would
counsel rebellion on the instant.

But if he was always and admittedly a potential rebel, no man was ever
less a revolutionary. As much a constitutionalist as Hampden or
Washington, he was so by temperament and by inheritance. The tradition
of parliamentary service had been in his family for two generations.
Two years after his birth his great-uncle, John Edward Redmond, from
whom he got his baptismal names, was elected unopposed as Liberal member
for the borough of Wexford, where his statue stands in the market-place,
commemorating good service rendered. Much of the rich flat land which
lies along the railway from Wexford to Rosslare Harbour was reclaimed by