The cumulative effect of all this was to set the name Sinn Fein reverberating, ever so slightly but still clearly, in Ireland. The Parliamentarian Press began to be conscious of its existence and it was understood that it formed a lively topic of discussion, in private, amongst the younger members of the Party. The Party were at the time in very low water. The Liberals had come into power in 1906 with a majority over all parties combined, and they promptly removed Home Rule from their programme, offering instead the Devolution Bill, a plan for appeasing Ireland with a number of glorified County Councils without an Irish Parliament, and which was rejected even by a United Irish League Convention although the Party were understood to be working for its acceptance until the last moment. This offer and its rejection, and the obvious refusal of the Liberal Party to carry out their implied promises with regard to Ireland, and the helplessness of the Parliamentary Party, led to the beginnings of a revolt in the ranks of the Parliamentary Party. Mr. C. J. Dolan, member for North Leitrim, declared himself to be a Sinn Feiner; Sir Thomas Esmonde, a Party Whip at the time, followed suit; and others of the younger members were known, or were credibly believed, to be considering the same course. All the influence which the Party could muster was immediately brought to bear upon the two rebels, and in the case of Sir Thomas Esmonde with complete success. He remained a Sinn Feiner, if my memory is accurate, for about a week, and then recanted. Mr. Dolan, however, proved to have more conviction. He not alone refused to be cajoled, but he resigned his seat and contested it again as a Sinn Feiner. It was the first definite challenge since the Union to the theory of Parliamentarianism.
The Sinn Fein Executive at the time did not want an election on its hands. It was not ready for it. It knew that the movement, so far as a policy of Parliamentary elections was concerned, was only in its initial stages, that a Sinn Fein candidate outside Dublin stood no chance, and that a Sinn Fein defeat would react unfavourably on the movement, even though a good fight were made. But the circumstances gave them no choice, and both sides did their best in North Leitrim. The Parliamentary Party had all the advantage that money, organisation, and Press could give them; whereas the Sinn Feiners had no money, no organisation in the county, which, up to Mr. Dolan's conversion, did not contain a single Sinn Feiner, few speakers, no Press save the weekly "United Irishman"--in fact, they had nothing save logic and courage. Mr. Dolan polled 1,200 votes and his opponent some 800 or 900 more, a result which, considering that all the big-wigs of the Party had been sent down to the campaign, was a moral victory for Sinn Fein and heartened the movement immensely; but it undoubtedly set going a reaction against it in the country, and it arrested the flow of converts from the Parliamentarian policy.