backed by Lord Northcliffe (the press baron who had helped topple Asquith) and his organisation. Northcliffe was in a position to transform the Nationalist-Southern-Unionist agreement into practical politics at Downing Street. It was of necessity for the party to grasp this last chance of survival, which manifestly did not apply to the church. Clerical opposition The question of O'Donnell the ecclesiastic and O'Donnell the politician are difficult to distinguish, whatever responsibility for the failure of the Convention he bears seem to lie with his ecclesiastic role. The bishops made plain their opposition to a Swiss federal system, under which Ulster would be a kind of Protestant canton, and O'Donnell went to great length to frame a scheme that would exclude any provincial autonomy, which exposed a basic nationalist misunderstanding of Ulster. The ethos of Ulster Presbyterianism is really very democratic, though it would have been most difficult to convince the average Irish Catholic of that fact. Ulster's objection to Home Rule had always been that it would set up not a democratic, but a theocratic state. O'Donnell called a meeting of Nationalists on 5 March and tried to obtain a final declaration against compromise and in favour of full fiscal claims. At this point, in Plunkett's view, O'Donnell and Murphy 'tried to rush the Convention on to the rocks'. Many delegates were now drifting back to Redmond's view, and against the likelihood of a renewed division into Nationalists and Unionists. At this point Redmond, who had undergone an operation, died on 6 March in London. Redmond, an eloquent voice for conciliation was silenced, his final tragic word to the Convention was – "Better for us never to have met than to have met and failed". Redmond's place as speaker of the moderate Nationalists was taken by Stephen Gwynn who had been called back from the war front the previous year to participate in a compromise with the Southern Unionists. Redmond was followed as leader the Parliamentary Party on 13 March by John Dillon who was less consensual and more sympathetic to the aspirations and strategies of Sinn Féin. Fourth phase Hopes dashed When the Convention reassembled after Redmond's funeral on 12 March opening its fourth phase, a resolution was put forward by Lord MacDonnell, a moderate home ruler, that Irish control of customs and excise should be postponed until after the war, on condition such control should come into automatic