Sir, - In reply to your correspondent J. L. B. Deane (July 31st), I was of course aware that meetings of the March May 1922 Constitution Committee were in practice chaired by Griffith's nominee, deputy chairman, Darrell Figgis. Collins's own preference for the chairmanship had been James Douglas, and it was because Collins distrusted Figgis that he made sure that he himself retained the chairmanship.
At the opening session, Collins told the committee that he wanted a "true democratic Constitution". When it produced three drafts, it was a revised version of that prepared by his preferred choice as chairman, James Douglas, the American socialist lawyer C. B. France and Hugh Kennedy, (legal adviser to the Provisional Government) which Collins adopted.
Against that background, and given Collins's notorious command of detail, it stretches credibility to suggest that he did not favour the property articles which, in the initial version of the draft he adopted, constituted Articles 1 and 2 of the proposed Constitution. In a condensed form, they were included in the final draft that Collins brought to London for the negotiations with the British Government. My source for this material is Joseph Curran's The Birth of the Irish Free State.
Incidentally, in my article 1 inadvertently described the Provisional Government as having been "under Arthur Griffith's Presidency". It was, of course, Michael Collins who was Chairman of the Provisional Government from its establishment on January 14th, 1922 Arthur Griffith four days earlier had been elected President of Dail Eireann, and thus of the parallel Dail Ministry. Yours, etc., Palmerstown Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6.