Reading Jail that day was a mustering of the clans. All the isolation
men from the various prisons, Wakefield, Knutsford, and Wandsworth,
including many who had been to Frongoch, were gathered together at
Reading. It was meant as an elect company; but it was not at all as
elect as the selectors imagined. We ourselves entertained no delusions
on that head. One of the most distinguished of our company had been
wildly hailed on his arrival months before at Wandsworth, as the man
who “’ad been a-hinciting of ’em”; and apparently the net had been
thrown to sweep into Reading all those who “’ad been a-hinciting of
’em”; but the net had had a singularly faulty mesh. Even the original
net that had swept through the country during the month of May,
carefully though it had been wrought, and thoroughly though it had been
cast, had had a mesh none too perfect. There were but twenty-eight of
us gathered together that day; and we had, as it were, a double crown
pressed on our heads; but we made haste to disown the title to wear it.
Yet we were glad to meet. National work necessarily intersects at many
points, and so most of us who foregathered that day for our months of
association had met before in differing combinations, and at different
times, in differing groups of work that were but part of the one great
work. Yet we had never met in that particular combination before.
Some came representing the leadership of large districts, counties
or cities, and some represented national leadership from some more
central focus. The provinces were indeed as nearly represented as they
could well be: eight came from Connacht, seven from Leinster, seven
from Munster, and six from Ulster; or, fourteen from Leth Chuinn and
fourteen from Leth Mhogha. It was exceedingly well arranged. Though we
were not as complete as we might have been, though we did not venture
to conceive of ourselves as an assembly either inclusive or exclusive
of anything, yet the general representation was very evenly matched.
And it was yet more evenly when, two days later, another Ulster
representative arrived; for, as it so fell out, a Connacht man had
been elected as Ceannphort, and so the provinces were left matched with
a perfect seven apiece.
Such was the skill the Government of England had taken to see, not only
that we had an opportunity of meeting and understanding one another
such as we never could have hoped for, but that we should meet as a
well-balanced and proportionate whole. The care with which this was
wrought must have been considerable.
The only drawback to our assembly was the uncertainty of date when we
discontinue it, and the building in which we met.