In his lengthy reply, Redmond made a plea for quick action: "the life of an Irish politician is one of one long series of postponements and compromise and disappointments and disillusionments... Many of our ideals of complete, speedy and almost immediate triumph of our policy and of our cause, have faded, some almost disappeared... We have spent forty years at this work... which will have been worth it if by this Convention we can secure substantial agreement amongst our people in Ireland." However, the omens were not the best. The Ulster Unionist John Lonsdale reiterated "that they could not and would not be driven into a Home Rule Parliament, that they relied on the pledges that they would not be coerced".