■t^ r / THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND OR THE STORY OF THE LAND LEAGUE REVOLUTION By MICHAEL DAVITT " Is there one in a thousand who foresees the great struggle against feudalism which impends over us or our children ? Nay, is there one in ten thousand of us that dreams of the fact that we arc the only nation where feudalism, with its twin monopolies, landed and ecclesiastical, is still in power ? ... It is in Ireland that the operation of the landed and ecclesiastical monopolies is felt with the bitterest severity. ... It is in Ireland that the crash of feudalism will he first heard. ■ — Richard Cobden, March lo, 1865 ; quoted in the Life 0} the Right Hon. W . E. Forster. by T. Wemyss Reid, vol. i.. pp 367, 368, first edition. Chapman & Hall. Boston Col'ega Lib HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS LONDON AND NEW YORK I 904 h9. BO! C^ BRARY .?|P7 KU.' 82 Copyright, 1904, by Harpbr & Brothers. y/// rights restrveii. Published May, 1904. ?" TO THE CELTIC PEASANTRY OF IRELAND AND THEIR KINSFOLK BEYOND THE SEAS CONTENTS PAGE Preface xi Introductory xv part ir OLIVER CROMWELL TO DANIEL O'CONNELL CHAPTER I A CHAPTER OP ENGLISH TESTIMONY 3 CHAPTER II I. TORIES AND OUTLAWS II. "tHE WHITEBOYS" III. " STEEL- BOYS " IV. " ORANGEMEN" V. " RIGHT BOYS" lO CHAPTER III "NOBILITY AND GENTRY" 26 CHAPTER IV I. DANIEL o'cONNELL II. "THE RIBBONMEN " 34 part IFir O'CONNELL TO PARNELL CHAPTER V I. THE GREAT FAMINE AND THE YOUNG IRELANDERS II. JAMES FINTAN LALOR 47 CHAPTER VI THE tenants' league: CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY 66 V CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAGE ROMANCE AND REVOLUTION; JAMES STEPHENS 73 CHAPTER VIII HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM: ISAAC BUTT 79 CHAPTER IX I. HOME DESTRUCTION II. MORE ENGLISH TESTIMONY III. WHAT IRELAND ASKED FROM THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT -IV. WHAT SHE RECEIVED FROM IT lOO CHAPTER X CHARLES STEWART PARNELL IO4 CHAPTER XI THE NEW DEPARTURE I16 part 1I1I1I THE LAND LEAGUE TO THE SPECIAL COMMISSION CHAPTER XII THE IRISHTOWN MEETING , 14I CHAPTER XIII THE LAND LEAGUE OF MAYO 156 CHAPTER XIV THE LAND LEAGUE OF IRELAND 168 CHAPTER XV THE SLIGO PROSECUTIONS 181 CHAPTER XVI THE AMERICAN MISSION 193 CHAPTER XVII GROWTH AND PLANS OF THE LEAGUE 211 CHAPTER XVIII VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT 226 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER XIX PAGE THE AMERICAN LAND LEAGUE 247 CHAPTER XX I. FRIENDS AND FOES II. " BUCKSHOT" FORSTER 256 CHAPTER XXI "hold THE harvest!" STORY OF CAPTAIN BOYCOTT . . . 266 CHAPTER XXII THE STATE TRIALS 286 CHAPTER XXIII THE ladies' land LEAGUE 296 CHAPTER XXIV LAND-LEAGUE PLANS 304 CHAPTER XXV THE LEAGUE AT BAY 31I CHAPTER XXVI THE LAND ACT OF 1881 , 321 CHAPTER XXVII THE NO-RENT MANIFESTO 330 CHAPTER XXVIII THE KILMAINHAM TREATY 346 CHAPTER XXIX THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS ..... 355 CHAPTER XXX THE NATIONAL LEAGUE 365 CHAPTER XXXI I. THE LEAGUE IN AUSTRALASIA — II. THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF AMERICA 383 vii CONTENTS CHAPTER XXXII PAGE ROME AND IRELAND 397 CHAPTER XXXIII SOME LEAGUE ANECDOTES 409 CHAPTER XXXIV THE "trial" OF HENRY GEORGE AT ATHENRY, OR HOW THE AUTHOR OF PROGRESS AND POVERTY WENT IN SEARCH OF A COLLAR-BUTTON AND WAS ARRESTED ON SUSPICION 421 CHAPTER XXXV DYNAMITE PLOTS 1. " RED JIM" McDERMOTT — -II. PARIS "DYNA- MITERS" — -III. A LADY "dynamiter" IV. SOME DUBLIN-CASTLE METHODS 427 CHAPTER XXXVI A PROGRAMME SPOILED BY THE " IN VINCIBLES " 444 CHAPTER XXXVII I. THE "invincible" CONSPIRACY II. FORSTER AND PARNELL . 452 CHAPTER XXXVIII DANGERS OF "UNCROWNED KINGS" 466 CHAPTER XXXIX PARNELL's TRIUMPH 473 CHAPTER XL HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED 485 CHAPTER XLI LAND-PURCHASE SCHEMES 5°4 CHAPTER XLII "the PLAN OF campaign" S14 CHAPTER XLIII THE r/A/£S-UNIONIST PLOT " PARNELLISM AND CRIME" . . . 531 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER XLIV PAGE "the great inquisition" 542 CHAPTER XLV PLOTS AND COUNTER PLOTS 549 CHAPTER XL VI THE CAREER OF RICHARD PIGOTT 561 CHAPTER XLVII PIGOTT's CONFESSION AND SUICIDE . . . , , 576 CHAPTER XLVIII PARNELL'S VINDICATION 596 CHAPTER XLIX SECRET-SERVICE SPIES 1. " LE CARON " II. "MAJOR YELLOW " III. THE SPY HAYES IV. DELANEY V. "SINCLAIR" .... 609 CHAPTER L HOPES AND FEARS 624 CHAPTER LI A CHAPTER OF INTERROGATION 632 CHAPTER LII SAMSON AGONISTES 635 part W FROM THE DEATH OF PARNELL TO I903 CHAPTER LIII DE.\TH OF PARNELL APPRECIATION -651 CHAPTER LIV THE NATIONAL FEDERATION 660 CHAPTER LV THE IRISH-RACE CONVENTION 675 ix CONTENTS CHAPTER LVI PAGE I. MORE REFORMS WON II. FISCAL INJUSTICE 682 CHAPTER LVII NATIONALIST REUNION: THE UNITED IRISH LEAGUE 692 CHAPTER LVIII THE LAND-PURCHASE ACT OF IQ03 702 CHAPTER LIX SOLDIERS IN THE FIGHT 713 CHAPTER LX a future racial programme 717 Index 727 PREFACE In the following pages I tell the story of an Irish move- ment which sprang without leaders from the peasantry of the country — a movement which, despite the mistakes and quar- rels of some subsequent political guides, has achieved for Ire- land the following among other results : The Land Act of 1881, completely revolutionizing the system of land tenure upheld in Ireland for over two centuries by English rule. An Arrears Act, under which the British Legislature sanctioned a breach of contract in rent oppressive to agricultural tenants in its conditions. Laborers' Dwellings Acts, embodying a rational principle of state socialism. The conversion of Mr. Gladstone and the English Liberal party from the rule of Ireland by Dublin Castle and co- ercion to the framing of a constitution which would con- fer a Home Rule government upon the Irish people. The conversion of the English Tory party to the Land League plan of land reform of 1880 — that the only true solution of the Irish agrarian question was to be found in the purchase of the landlords' interest in the land by the tenant, through the means of a state credit loaned at low interest. The passing of the Ashbourne Purchase Act of 1885 (sup- plemented in 1888), and the loan of ;^io,ooo,ooo of such credit as a means to this end. The temporary adhesion of noted Tory leaders to the Home Rule idea, in 1885-86. The introduction by Mr. Gladstone and his party of a Home Rule bill into Parliament in 1886. The enactment in 1887 by Lord vSalisbury's ministry of a land bill which nullified leases, statutory and otherwise, revised more land court rents, and carried other Land League principles into law. PREFACE The enactment of the Land Act of 1891, by the Unionist government, which provided ;^33,ooo,ooo more, in ad- ditional state credit, for the further buying out of Irish landlords. The creation of the Congested Districts Board of Ireland, with large powers for the application of the principles of state socialism, as a remedy for industrial conditions begotten of the worst evils of landlordism, in the West of Ireland. The passage of a bill through the House of Commons, in 1893, proposing to confer a Home Rule legislature upon Ireland, by a vote of 347 members against an opposing vote of 304. The bill was defeated in the House of Lords. The enactment of a law in 1896, under a Unionist gov- ernment, which aided still more the elimination of the English rent system from the tenure of land in Ireland. The enactment of a measure in 189S, also under an anti- Home Rule ministry, conferring a limited "Home Rule" upon each county in Ireland, in the form of Elective Councils, for the management of rural affairs; a measure deemed to be a "half-way house" towards a Central National Assembly for the whole country ; and The passing into law, in 1903, also under a Unionist govern- ment, of a bill by means of which ;^i 12,000,000 more of further state credit is to be employed in buying out what previous purchase acts have left of the English landlord system in Ireland. The book will narrate the ways and means by which a revolution, more or less on the lines of a passive resistance, accomplished these reforms. How men of the Irish race, scattered by eviction and the evils of unsympathetic rule in Ireland to all parts of the earth, were "enlisted" in the final struggle for the soil and rule of the Celtic fatherland, under Mr. Parnell's superb leadership, in a combative organization which at one period of its exist- ence numbered more than half a million of members. How the sinews of war, to the extent of over ;(^i,ooo,ooo, were provided by the Irish people, at home and abroad, during the campaign of the past twenty -five years, with which — To fight the evils of landlordism in Ireland; the Irish claims, and opposing English parties, in the British Parlia- ment; xii PREFACE To organize auxiliary movements in other lands; To sustain the wounded, or evicted, in the combat at home; To reward deserving service; and To uphold the cause of Irish national self-government. How upward of two thousand five hundred men, and from twenty to thirty ladies, were imprisoned in this cam- paign, including every leader and prominent member from Mr. Parnell downward, and several clergymen who joined the popular forces in the contest thus waged against the system and laws represented by the form of English government in Ireland known as "Dublin Castle." The chapter recalling the dramatic trial of the Land League and its leaders in the Special Commission of 1888 will narrate how that unscrupulous plot to destroy Mr. Parnell and the powerful movement behind him was frus- trated, and will add something not previously told to the history of a judicial inquisition unparalleled in the annals of political warfare. The story of the Irish movement since Mr. Parnell's advent to its leadership could not be told with completeness, nor to the right understanding of it by non-Irish readers, without a connecting narrative between the struggle of the present and the conflicts of past generations of the Celtic people for the repossession of the soil of the country. This struggle has, as a matter of historic fact, been an almost unbroken one, extending over seven generations or more of intermittent agrarian warfare. Herein there is seen a persistency of purpose and a continuity of racial aim not associated by English or other foreign critics of Celtic character with the alleged mercurial spirit and disposition of the Irish people. Taking into account the ferocious methods of England's policy and laws of repression, by which she has sought, in each generation of her rule, to crush every Irish movement — from the massacres and burnings of Cromwell's Settlement down to the landlord clearances of the Fifties — the disparity between the forces employed — the military might of the ruler, the unarmed condition of the ruled — this ceaseless Irish warfare of practically passive resistance against the strength of the British Empire in Ireland will compare, in an endurance of penalties, in triumphs over defeats, and in a tenacity of dauntless protest against the decrees of conquest, with any struggle ever waged by a civilized race for the re- covery of its land and freedom. The personal mention is, I regret, introduced in a few of the chapters of my story more frequently and more prom- PREFACE inently than is agreeable to the feelings of the writer. Si- lence or omission in this respect would, however, only con- vey the suggestion of a mock modesty. It would invite the less charitable imputation of an unreal and affected self- effacement. M. D. Dalkey, Ireland, January i, 1904. INTRODUCTORY The genius of misgovernment has never been more wilfully blind in its methods or more persistent in the folly of political unwisdom than in the ways and means of England's rule in Ireland. It has invariably proceeded along the lines of most resistance. Laws and force have come to us across the sea in their most provocative form and application, while con- cessions were never wisely or tactfully made to a cry for justice, but always to the pressure of turmoil, illegality, or insurrection. Every stage of the Anglo-Irish struggle attests this fact in its history. Every page of that long story pro- claims the stupid impolicy of a statesmanship and of a ruling power which preferred to hold a people down by coercion, distrust, and a fomented warfare of class interests and of sectarian passions than to give them self-government through the rational means of national feeling and of popular consent. A following chapter of " English Testimony " will more than sustain this introductory indictment of the causes, original and modern, which begot the Land League revolution of twenty-five years ago. Historically put, England's rule of Ireland, down to 1879, has been a systematic opposition to the five great underlying principles of civilized society, as these lived and had their being and expression in Celtic character: love of country, which is an exceptionally strong and affectionate sentiment in the Irish heart ; a racial attachment to the domestic hearth- stone and to family association with land, unequalled in the social temperament of any other people; a fervent and pas- sionate loyalty to religious faith, unsurpassed by that of any Christian nation ; and a national pride in learning which once made Ireland "a country of schools and scholars," with a wide European reputation. These social and spiritual qualities, recognized as virtues in other lands, have been held as crimes in Ireland during many centuries by English rulers. Patriotism was made to earn the penalty of the scaffold and the prison. A struggle INTRODUCTORY to hold the soil for labor and livelihood has drenched it with the blood of a land-loving peasantry. Homes that ought everywhere to be (what they have conspicuously been in Ireland) the nurseries of moral virtues were placed at the mercy of a sordid greed, under the laws of eviction; over two hundred thousand of them having, during the lifetime of Queen Victoria, been destroyed or made tenantless for the recovery of civil debts or to clear the inmates off the land to make room for cattle. The Catholic religion, remorselessly trampled upon in the ferocious decrees of the penal laws, is even yet penalized in many respects under a system of government created for a Protestant minority, and still upheld for the combined ascendency of class and creed; while the backwardness of popular education in Ireland to-day is directly due to causes which at one time, in the language of one of our poets, forced the people of Ireland, "feloniously to learn." These pages, however, are intended to deal with one phase of this many-sided, unnatural contest, and not with the his- tory of all the evils that were begotten of a conquest never fully consummated, because it sought its ends by despoiling the people of every right, and not by the wisdom of confidence, and of enlightened consideration for the racial qualities of the weaker side. The struggle for the soil of Ireland involved a combat for every other right of the Irish nation. The lordship of the land carried with it the ownership of government. The usurpers of the national claim to the possession of the source of employment, of food, and of social distinction, extended their power over every other privilege and right, and ruled the people only and solely for the security of that which the power of confiscation made the property of those whom England made the rulers of the country. Land has always been more essential to life and to in- dustrial occupation in Ireland than in, perhaps, any other European country, owing to exceptional economic causes. This was peculiarly so in the generations preceding mod- em times, when the extension of the franchise and other causes have encouraged a more effective resistance to unjust laws than when the Irish people, held down by an Irish landlord " Parliament," tamely submitted to the deliberate de- struction of textile and other industries by special English en- actments. The blotting-out of the Irish woollen manufacture in the eighteenth century rendered land more and more necessary to the industrial and economic life of the country. Thus, the creation by England of a land system which placed the INTRODUCTORY main source of employment for the labor energies of the people in the hands of a blindly selfish and anti-Irish interest made the struggle for existence fiercer than ever, and rendered the omnipotent owner of the soil the absolute master of the means of livelihood for the peasant toilers of the country. In this way the land war of Ireland began, and has been continued. On the side of the Irish peasantry, it has been a contest against a class and a system relatively stronger than any dominant ruHng social power in Europe. They were not only Irish landlords; they were the political garrison of Eng- land in Ireland, equipped with every weapon and resource at the disposal of a great empire for their protection. They could influence the imperial Parliament for all the coercion their injustice needed as a compelling power to the attainment of their desires. They were a class who had, by aid of this empire, seized all the spoils of conquest — land, government, law, authority, patronage, and wealth — and were backed in their secure possession by all the latent prejudices of anti- Celtic feeling in the English mind. The contest for the recovery of the soil of Ireland was waged, therefore, against all the internal agencies and ex- ternal forces of this buttressed, feudal garrison. It was al- ways England's soldiers, England's laws, or England's judges that confronted the tenants, cottiers, or laborers of the land whenever, singly or in combination, they had to assert the ordinary claims of humanity, in illegal or other ways, against this despotic social and political ruling power. Neither law nor land, homes or government, belonged to the people. They were treated as intruders and outlaws in their fatherland. The landlords owned and ruled all, and the strongest coercive force which compelled the peasantry to endure these evils was the power given to the monopolists of the soil by England's laws to seize upon or to destroy the home of the family for the recovery of rent, or in punishment for the exercise of some of the commonest rights of civilized citizenship against the prejudice or interest of the resident or absentee owner. It was this vandal warfare upon Celtic homes by the Irish landlords which made so provocative an appeal to opposing violence in every agrarian movement from that of the "Tories" to the Land League agitation. An eviction, such as occurs in Ireland, even to-day, is a challenge to every human feeling and sentiment of a man, a citizen, and a Celt. It is the callous expression of the power of profit and of property over the right of a family to live on land without the permission of an individual who controls this natural xvii INTRODUCTORY right in others for the interest of his money. It is social tyranny in its worst form, and is associated with constant confiscation; for evictions have invariably been carried out in Ireland for a combination of kindred purposes — either to make way for cattle-raising, as a more profitable use of the land, or to turn out a tenant who may have reclaimed a farm or improved one for arrears of rent having no relation in amount to the actual value given to the holding by the tenant's labors and occupation. A law thus violating the domestics right of the family, including the right to live, in a country where labor on land was virtually the sole means of existence, could only excite discontent and hatred, industrial, social, and national, and encourage every form of protest and of re- sistance that might promise a hope of its ultimate overthrow. Wherefore it is that "Tory outlaws," " Whiteboys," " Oak- boys," "Right Boys," "Thrashers," "Steelboys," "Black- feet," "Terry Alts," "Anti - Tithe - men," "Ribbonmen," and other agrarian combinations, illegal and constitutional, have carried on a warfare of social insurrection against such an oppressive land system from the time of Cromwell's con- fiscation to that of Mr. Gladstone's Land Act of 1881. PAR.T I OLIVER CROMWELL TO DANIEL O'CONNELL THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND CHAPTER I A CHAPTER OF ENGLISH TESTIMONY Edmund Spenser (1559) " I DOE much pity that sweet land to be subject to so many evills as I see more and more to be layed upon her, and doe half beginne to think that it is her fatall misfortune, above all other countreyes that I know, to be thus miserably tossed and turmoyled with these variable stormes of affliction. Perhaps Almighty God reserveth Ireland in this unquiete state stille, for some secret scourge which shall by her come unto England; it is hard to be knowne, but yet more to be feared." Oliver Cromwell " ' These poor people,' said Cromwell, ' have been accustomed to as much injustice and oppression from their landlords, the great men, and those who should have done them right, as any people in that which we call Christendom.' It was just two hundred and twenty years before another ruler of England saw as deep, and applied his mind to the free doing of justice." — Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. ii., p. 287. Dean Swift (1667-1745) "Rents squeezed out of the blood, and vitals, and clothes, and dwellings of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars." — Short View, vol. ix., p. 206. 3 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Archbishop Boulter (1671-1742) "Here the tenant, I fear, has hardly ever more than one-- third for his share; too often but a fourth or a fifth part." — Letters, vol. i., p. 292. Lord Townshend (Lord Lieutenant), 1767-1772 "I hope to be excused for representing to his Majesty (George III.) the miserable situation of the lower ranks of his subjects in this Kingdom. What from the rapaciousness of their unfeeling landlords, and the restrictions on their trade, they are among the most wretched people on earth." — English Record Office State Papers. Arthur Young (1779) "It must be very apparent to every traveller through that country that the labouring poor are treated with harshness, and are in all respects so little considered that their want of importance seems a perfect contrast to their situation in England. A long series of oppressions, aided by many very ill-judged laws, have brought landlords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that of an almost unlimited submission." Sydney Smith (1807) " Before you refer the turbulence of the Irish to incurable defects in their character, tell me if you have treated them as friends and as equals. Have you protected their com- merce? Have you respected their religion? Have you been as anxious for their freedom as your own? Nothing of all this. What then? Why, you have confiscated the territorial surface of the country twice over; you have massacred and exported her inhabitants; you have deprived four-fifths of them of every civil privilege; you have made her commerce and manufactures slavishly subordinate to your own. And yet (you say) the hatred which the Irish bear you is the result of an original turbulence of character, and of a primi- tive, obdurate wildness, utterly incapable of civilization. . . . When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool. There are always a set of worthy and moderately gifted men who bawl out death and ruin upon every valuable change which the varying aspect of 4 A CHAPTER OF ENGLISH TESTIMONY human affairs absolutely and imperiously requires. . . . I admit that to a certain degree the Government will lose the affections of the Orangemen . . . but you must perceive that it is better to have four friends and one enemy, than four enemies and one friend; and the more violent the hatred of the Orangemen the more certain the reconciliation of the Catholics. The disaffection of the Orangemen will be the Irish rainbow; when I see it I shall know the storm is over. . . . Nightly visits, Protestant inspectors, licences to possess a pistol, the guarding yourselves from universal disaffection by a police, a confidence in the little cunning of Bow Street, when you might rest your security upon the eternal basis of the best feelings; this is the meanness and madness to which nations are reduced when they lose sight of the first elements of justice, without which a country can be no more secure than it can be healthy without air." — Letters of Peter Plymley. Duke of Wellington (1830) "I confess that the annual recurring starvation in Ireland, for a period, differing, according to goodness or badness of the season, from one week to three months, gives me more uneasiness than any other evil existing in the United Kingdom. . . . Now, when this misfortune occurs, there is no relief or mitigation except a recourse to public money. The proprietors of the country, those who ought to think for the people, to foresee this misfortune, and to provide beforehand a remedy for it, are amusing themselves in the clubs of London, in Cheltenham or Bath, or on the continent, and the Government are made responsible for the evil, and they must find the remedy for it where they can — anywhere excepting in the pockets of the Irish gentlemen. Then, if they give public money to provide a remedy for this distress, it is applied to all purposes excepting the one for which it is given, and most particularly to that one, the payment of the arrears of an exorbitant rent." — (7th July, 1830.) Quoted in the Times of January 8, 1886. Mr. Lecky (Historic Survey) "The worst of them was the oppression of the tenantry by their landlords. The culprits in this respect were not the head landlords, who usually let their land at low rents and on long leases to middlemen, and whose faults were rather those of neglect than of oppression. They were commonly the small gentry, a harsh, rapacious, and dissipated class, 5 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND living with an extravagance that could only be met by the most grinding exactions, and full of the pride of race, and of the pride of creed. Swift and Dobbs bitterly lament this evil, and nearly every traveller echoed their complaint. Chesterfield, who as Lord Lieutenant studied the conditions of Irish life with more than ordinary care, left it as his opinion that 'the poor people in Ireland are used worse than negroes by their lords and masters, and their deputies of deputies of deputies.' " — Eighteenth Century, vol. ii., chap, vii., pp. 290, 291. Mr. Froude (an English Historian) "The landlord may become a direct oppressor. He may care nothing for the people, and have no object but to squeeze the most that he can out of them fairly or unfairly. The Russian government has been called despotism tempered with assassination. In Ireland landlordism was tempered by assassination. . . . Every circumstance combined in that country to exasperate the relations between landlord and tenant. The landlords were, for the most part, aliens in blood and in religion. They represented conquest and con- fiscation, and they had gone on from generation to generation with an indifference for the welfare of the people which would not have been tolerated in England or Scotland." — Short Studies on Great Subjects, vol. iii., p. 287. Devon Commission (1845) "It is admitted on all hands that according to the general practice in Ireland, the landlord builds neither dwelling-house nor farm offices, nor puts fences, gates, etc., into good order before he lets his land to a tenant. In most cases whatever is done in the way of building or fencing is done by the tenant, and in the ordinary language of the country, dwelling-house, farm buildings, and even the making of fences are described by the general word, improvements, which is thus employed to denote the necessary adjuncts to a farm without which in England no tenant would be found to rent it. Under the same common term, improvements, are also included agri- cultural operations such as draining, deep trenching, and even manuring." Sir Franklin Lewis (EngHsh Landlord) "Nothing is more striking in Ireland than that a number of burdens which English landlords are willing to take upon themselves the Irish landlords do not find it necessary to 6 A CHAPTER OF ENGLISH TESTIMONY take upon themselves. In the maintenance of a farm in England all the expensive part of the capital employed upon a^farm is provided by the landlord; the houses, the gates, the fences, and the drains, are all provided by the landlord. Everybody knows that in Ireland that is not the practice; at the same time that the landlord obtains as rent in Ireland a much larger proportion of the value of the produce of the land than he obtains in England, and in parts of Ireland it appears to me that the landlord sometimes obtains for rent more than is produced by the land." — Evidence, Parliament- ary Committee, 1825. Lord John Russell (Debate on Devon Commission Report, 1846) "However ignorant many of us may be of the state of Ireland, we have here (in the Devon report) the best evidence that can be procured — the evidence of persons best acquainted with that country, of magistrates of many years' standing, of farmers, of those who have been employed by the Crown; and all tell you that the possession of land is that which makes the difference between existing and starving among the peasantry, and that, therefore, ejections out of their holdings are the cause of violence and crime in Ireland. In fact, it is no other than the cause which the great master of human nature describes when he makes a tempter suggest it as a reason to violate the law: 'Famine is in thy cheeks, need and oppression starveth in thine eyes, upon thy back hangs ragged misery. The world is not thy friend, nor the world's law; the world affords no law to make thee rich. Then be not poor, but break it.'" — Hansard, 3d series, vol. lxxxvii.,p. 507, 1846. John Bright (1848) "Let us think of the half -million who within two years past have perished miserably in the workhouses, on the highways, and in their hovels — more, far more, than ever fell by the sword in any war this country ever waged; let us think of the crop of nameless horrors which is even now growing up in Ireland, and whose disastrous fruit may be gathered in years and generations to come." John Bright (1866) "They are a people of a cheerful and joyous temperament, they are singularly grateful for kindness, and of all people of 7 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND our race they are filled with the strongest sentiment of vener- ation. And yet with such materials, and with such a people — after centuries of government — after sixty-five years of gov- ernment by this House — you have them embittered against your rule, and anxious to throw off the authority of the Crown and Queen of this realm. This is merely an access of the com- plaint Ireland has been suffering under during the lifetime of the oldest man in this House — that of chronic insurrection." — Bright' s Speeches, vol. i., p. 351. W. E. Gladstone (Prime-Minister, 1868) "That fact, which, if it be a fact, is one of immeasurable gravity — that the mass of human beings who inhabit that country and are dependent on their industry had not due security for the fruits of their industry in the tenure of the land — that fact was brought again and again from the most authoritative and unsuspected sources under the notice of Parliament; bill after bill was produced, and bill after bill was rejected or evaded, and to this hour the account of the Irish nation with England in respect of the tenure of land remains an unsettled question." — Speech in the House of Commons, March 16, 1868, Lord Clarendon (1869) "If he were to take a farm at will, upon which the landed proprietor never did and never intended to do anything, and were to build upon the farm a house and homestead, and effectually drain the land, and then be turned out on a six months' notice by his landlord, would any language be strong enough, not forgetting the language made use of at the public meetings and in the press recently in this country, to condemn such a felonious act as that?" — September 26, 1869. General Gordon (1880) " I must say, from all accounts and from my own observa- tion, that the state of our fellow-countrymen in the parts I have named is worse than that of any people in the world, let alone Europe. I believe that these people are made as we are — that they are patient beyond belief, loyal, but at the same time broken-spirited and desperate, living on the verge of starvation in places where we would not keep our cattle. The Bulgarians, Anatolians, Chinese, and Indians are better off than many of them are. ... I am not well A CHAPTER OF ENGLISH TESTIMONY off, but I would offer Lord or his agent ;(^iooo if either of them would live one week in one of these poor devils' places, and feed as these people do." — Letter to The Times, from Ireland, November, 1880. Lord Derby (1881) "Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington did not rest their cause on the alleged justice of the Catholic claims; they could not well do so, having for many years opposed these claims as unfounded. But they could and did say that the mischief of yielding to them was less than the mischief of having to put down an Irish insurrection. The same argument that had prevailed in 1782 prevailed in 1828-29. A third example of the same mode of procedure is in the memory of everybody. The Fenian movement agitated Ireland from 1864 to 1867, producing among other results the Clerkenwell explosion. A few desperate men, applauded by the whole body of the Irish people for their daring, showed England what Irish feeling really was; made plain to us the depth of a discontent whose existence we had scarcely suspected; and the rest followed, of course. Few persons will now regret the disendowment of the Irish Church or the passing of the Land Act of 1870; but it is regrettable that, for the third time in less than a century, agitation, accompanied with violence, should have been shown to be the most effective instrument for redressing whatever Irish- men may be pleased to consider their wrongs." — Nineteenth Century for October, 1881. Mr. a. J. Balfour (Prime-Minister, 1903) "I can imagine no fault attaching to any land system which does not attach to the Irish. It has got all the faults of peasant proprietary, of extreme landlordism, and of land- lords who spend no money upon their property, and with a large part of their territory managed by a court — all the faults of tenants to whose interest it is to let their farms go out of cultivation when they are approaching the end of their term." — Speech in the House of Commons, May 4, 1903. CHAPTER II I.— TORIES AND OUTLAWS " History, looking back over this France through long times, . . . con- fesses mournfully that there is no period to be met with in which the general twenty-five millions of France suffered less than in this period which they name the Reign of Terror. But it was not the dumb millions that suffered here, it was the speaking thousands and units; who shrieked and published, and made the world ring with their wail, as they could and should: that is the grand peculiarity. The fright- fullest births of Time are never the loud-speaking ones, for these soon die; they are the silent ones, which can live from century to century!" — Carlyle, French Revolution. There was one purpose and policy in all the "confisca- tions," "settlements," "plantations," and "forfeitures" car- ried out by the English invaders, and that was to seize and own the land of Ireland. To this end the Celtic peasantry and their chieftains were to be despoiled. Every means that could effectively secure this object was justifiable. The in- terests of true "religion" in one reign, of "law" and loyalty in the next, of the blessings and enlightenment of English domination always. Nothing of the kind was ever avowedly done for the puiposes of vulgar plunder. This work was greatly helped by the unwise action of the Norman barons who had settled in the country, in taking sides, during troubles in England, with rival English rulers and sections. In the time of Henry VII. pretenders to the throne were set up in Ireland, in the persons of Simnel and Warbeck, in hostility to the Tudor monarch. These re- bellions were easily put down, but they caused the English King to take measures to defend his throne against plotting Norman nobles by planting English and Welsh colonists and adventurers in various parts of the country, as a counterpoise to this hostile element. Henry's granddaughters, Elizabeth and Mary, continued this policy, and the massacres and de- vastations which marked the period of the first lady's reign, and the plantation of King's and Queen's counties in Mary's time, were largely due to the warfare waged by these colo- TORIES AND OUTLAWS nists against the native Irish, and to the resistance of the lat- ter to the spoHations of the intruders. The first King James's plantation of Ulster was motived by the double object of raising money and of extirpating "Popery," to which ends he was loyally assisted by all the pious and disinterested adventurers who burned to mani- fest their devotion to England's monarch by seizing upon the lands over which the O'Donnells, O'Neills, O'Dohertys, O'Cahans, Maguires, and other Celtic chieftains had held kingly or tribal sway in the North. The war between the Stuarts and the Long Parliament again found Ireland dragged into the English quarrel by her leaders. The Irish nobles were induced to take the side of the miserable King who kept faith with no one, and least of all with Ireland, in the desperate fight to save his crown and head, in which he deservedly lost both. The cause of the Catholic Church was linked with that of the Stuarts in this struggle, and both brought upon the Celtic people of Ireland the scourge of Cromwell and the Act of Settlement. Pro- prietors (Norman and Irish) and people were alike involved in the wholesale ruin and confiscation which this incarna- tion of Anglo-Saxon hatred of everything Celtic and Cath- olic wrought upon an already dragooned and impoverished country. All the Irish who could not be shipped off to England's col- onies in America and the West Indies as slaves were hunted remorselessly into Connaught — nobles, proprietors, yeomen, and peasants — and upon their lands and possessions the pious servant of God, who had ruthlessly butchered the women and children of Drogheda and Wexford, planted his officers and soldiers, to create for Ireland the system of landlordism, and to give us the governors, statesmen, law- makers, and land-owners of the past two hundred years we know so well under the name of "Irish landlords" to-day. This book has only a passing concern with the regular warfare provoked in Ireland by England's rule from time to time, from the invasion to the treaty of Limerick. His- tory alone can deal fully with these national conflicts and their almost uniform adverse results for Ireland. My task is to briefly chronicle the irregular insurrections, social and agrarian, carried on by the peasantry against the enemies of their homes, whether Saxon or Irish, all through the long combat of the last two centuries. Singular enough, the first "combination," if it may be so named, which challenged the powers and law of confiscation was known as that of "The Tories." The name is supposed THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND to be derived from an Irish word signifying "robber," and the apphcation of the term to the men whom the name outlawed was due to the fact that they were among the rightful owners of the land from which they were driven by colonists and planters with the aid of English troops. They claimed their own after the Restoration, and became "Tories," or robbers; so legally and morally righteous does an act of spoliation become when it has the sanction of English rule and the support of a state religion to uphold it. Nearly all the leaders of the "Tories" had fought for the Stuarts in Ireland and abroad. They returned to Ireland after the fall of the Cromwellian commonwealth, to recover their estates as a reward for their devotion to England's kings. They obtained for their blind loyalty to the Stuarts only the blackest ingratitude. The gay Charles II. ignored their services and claims. He confirmed the Act of Settlement, and left the soldiers and planters of his father's executioner in possession of all the lands that had been taken from the loyalist gentry of Ireland for giving their swords to the cause of England's monarchy. The calling of a "Tory" became that of an outlaw. The peasantry sheltered and fed them; the English soldiers and colonists shot them on sight. They were hunted down like wolves, with a price upon their heads. Their habitations were among the woods and caves, and Irish legends have woven round the names and records of many of them deeds of romantic incident and daring. They struck back at the persons and property of their despoilers, organized bands of freebooters, terrorized the homes and garrisons of the ad- venturers, and rightly made the possession of ill-gotten property as expensive and as precarious as the fraudulent ownership of land should always be. Redmond Count O'Hanlon was a leader of Ulster "Tories" two hundred years before the birth of Colonel Saunderson. The late Mr. Prendergast, in his Tory War of Ulster, gives a brief history of this Irish Robin Hood — of his great daring, his popularity with the peasantry, whose protector he fre- quently was, and of his many encounters with troops and treacherous parties engaged in the hopeless task of putting down this early enemy of Ulster landlordism. Finally, the blackest-hearted scoundrel who ever bore the name of Ormonde bribed a near relative to kill him, and the deed of treachery is thus recorded in state papers, signed by the Lord Lieutenant of the period, this same assassin, Ormonde: "6th May, 1681. To Art. O'Hanlon for killing 'Torie' Redmond O'Hanlon, ;^ioo. 12 toRiEs And outlaws "12th December, 1681. To John Mullin, etc., as reward for killing Loughlin O'Hanlon, ;^5o."* Redmond O'Hanlon's grave is believed to be in the parish of Killevy, County Armagh. The French title of count is supposed to have been con- ferred upon O'Hanlon for signal deeds of bravery or for other services in the army of France. His early military career, about which very little has been recorded in contemporary accounts, was associated with a soldier's fortunes in conti- nental wars. He returned to Ireland to find himself out- lawed. Before O'Hanlon's time the same system of spoliation had produced similar "Tories" elsewhere. The plantation of King's and Queen's counties drove out the O'Moores, the Lalors (a descendant of the Lalors will figure prominently in this story and its sequel), the Dorans, McEvoys, and Coughlans. In Wexford the Morris Kavanaghs, O'Phelans, Donogh McKanes, and others attacked and killed several of the usurping planters, and made the enemy pay dearly in other ways before some of these leaders were finally disposed of by martial law. Both historians and poets have dealt with the romance of the "Tory" Daniel O'Keeffe. He was the head of the clan of that name, and owned the castle which still stands, in picturesque ruins, on the banks of the Black water, some eight miles westward of Mallow. He fought against Crom- well and his lieutenants in many Munster engagements, and took his sword to Spain on the collapse of the spirited stand which Owen Roe O'Neill had made against the Lord Pro- tector's lieutenants and forces. He served as an officer under the Duke of York, and won his distinction in a seven- years' campaign on the continent. He returned to Ireland on the downfall of the Roundhead revolution in England, and retook possession of the castle and lands of Dromagh. Once again, however, the Stuart cause was to be his ruin. He joinjd the standard of the most miserable of all the kings of that line, and fought at the Boyne. The flight of the royal coward with the best of the Irish troops bft the Irish forces, who had once more put faith in an English monarch, to the penalty of defeat and all that followed therefrom. The lands of Dromagh were forfeited and sold, and Daniel O'Keeffe's life was again that of a "Tory" outlaw. The "Outlaw's Cave," in a steep cliff frowning down upon the Blackwater River, was his place of retreat, whence he ' The Tory War of Ulster, p. 29. 13 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND sallied forth to harass the planters and others, who had little of security outside the garrison of Mallow, while the chieftain of Dromagh was among the clans whose lands had been stolen by the Cromwellians. But what the English in Ireland could not do by force they never failed to attempt by fouler means. Love in this instance was sought as an ally for treachery, as blood-kinship had been in the case of O'Hanlon. O'Keeffe's mistress was one Mary O'Kelly, who shared his adventures and brought him news and necessaries from the town. One day, in caressing her in his v/ild retreat, he found a letter concealed in her bosom, proving that she had been bribed by the commander of the English forces at Mallow to betray him. The sequel is told in the hnes of Davis, which relate O'Keeffe's reproach and deed: " The moss couch I brought thee To-day from the mountain Has drunk the last drop Of thy young heart's red fountain. " For this good skeane beside me Struck deep and rang hollow, In thy bosom of treason, Young Mauriade ny Kallagh." Each county in Ireland had its "Tory" hero, who became celebrated in song and legend, and helped thus to keep alive the old Celtic tradition that Cromwell's clan would one day lose again the lordship of the land. Dudley Costello, in Mayo; Cornet Nangle, in Longford; Coughlan, in King's County; Costigan,in Queen's County; Gerald Kinshela, inCarlow; and the brothers Brennan, in Kilkenny, are among the names cherished in Irish memory for their resistance to the English despoilers in days before the Whiteboys, Steelboys, and Ribbonmen could be organized as protectors for the cabins of the native peasantry. The Brennans, of Kilkenny, were of the gentleman-yeoman class, and were robbed of their lands. They became outlaws, and killed and robbed in retaliation where they could lay hands upon English grabbers. In the year 1683 they were caught, tried, and sentenced to be hanged. The scafEold was reached, but the hangman's task was interrupted by a rescue. A faithful band of adherents had attacked the sheriff and his force, and balked the law of its prey. The brothers es- caped to England in two ships, with their horses and arms, but were arrested on reaching Chester. They were prisoners only for a few days, however, for they overpowered their jail- ers, locked them in their own prison, and made good their es- 14 TORIES AND OUTLAWS cape. They made their way back to Ireland, and were next heard of in the Duke of Ormonde's castle, in Kilkenny, where they helped themselves to what they were pleased to carry away with them. But so strong was their hold upon the peo- ple, and so weak at the time was the Dublin Castle of the day, which generally hired assassins to do its work, that the Bren- nans were left at liberty ; overtures being made to them to take service as guardians of such "law and order" as the landlords of the period were able to sustain among a peasantry who had the best of human reasons to hate both.^ II.— "THE WHITEBOYS" There has been a sort of division of labor in the work of political and social emancipation between the North and the South of Ireland. Ulster, with its mixed creeds and strong pro-republican ideas, nurtured largely by its Presbyterian Church, gave the country the first popular impulse for wider political liberty in the Volunteer movement of Grattan and Flood. Like most Irish movements, ancient and modern, the leaders went wrong in gross acts of omission. They failed to seize upon the supreme chance of 1782, and the rank and file, who could easily have freed the country, if rightly led, probably formed the body of Wolfe Tone's United Irish- men, the first organization since the Cromwellian Settle- ment that rekindled the spirit and purpose of Irish national- ism in Ireland. Every political combination of a national character that has arisen since then among the Irish people has derived something, either in inspiration or in guidance, from the sacrifices, teaching, and labors of the Irish Protestant patriots of 1798. The South and West of Ireland undertook more prominently than the North the work of curbing landlord rapacity and of defending the people's right to live on the land. They had borne greater wrongs, and had to endure a more infamous oppression in the battle of life, and the desperation which drives human nature to deeds of violence against the enemies of its right of existence entered more into the struggle against landlordism in the South than in the North. The first combination of peasants having any degree of regular agrarian purpose was that of "The Whiteboys," so called from a covering which was adopted by them for dis- guise in nocturnal raids. Bands of men under this name first * The Tory War of Ulster, Prendergast, pp. 4-6. 15 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND appeared in Munster about the year 1760. Their object was a rightful one, though the means they employed borrowed most of its objectionable criminality of action from the ex- ample of barbarism shown by a land law which denied the people almost all civilized rights, and made the interests and protection of landlord property the only care or concern of civil government. The least infringement of this law meant years of savage imprisonment, and frequently death for the accused. The life of a sheep or of a pheasant was of more value in the eye of such a law than the life of a human being. Rent was the supreme end of land tenure. The soil existed for no other purpose. The rights of mere manhood were as nothing compared with the claims of rent, and against this unnatural state of things the Whiteboys levied a necessary war of social insurrection. They terrorized grab- bers, graziers, and other landlord supporters, and enforced their decrees by such powers as secret combination gave them. The owners had the service of the military, the law, the prison, and the gallows. These peasant bands fell back upon arson, outrage, and frequently upon murder as a counter- deterrent to the extreme penalties inflicted upon members of their body. In this manner they gave some protection to a peasant's life and labor, which neither the government nor the law in the hands of the landlords would offer, and White- boy ism, though guilty of many acts of cruelty and of un- necessary violence, struck the first effective blow in Ireland at the rampant tyranny of Cromwellian landlordism by assert- ing the superior natural right of the people to land for life and industry. The combinations in Ulster known as "Peep-o'-Day-Boys" and "Defenders," in the later part of the eighteenth century, were of a mixed religious and labor character. They origi- nated primarily in the incursion of laborers from bordering counties, after the great emigration of Protestant tenants from Ulster to the United States following the year 1760 to the end of the century. The Peep-o'-Day Boys resented this intrusion in attacks upon Catholic families and cabins, and the "Defenders" formed an opposing body of Catholic workers. Out of these rival combinations the more modern "Orangemen" and " Ribbonmen " were respectively evolved in the social sectarianism of the North of Ireland in our time. Organizations with a similar object to the Whiteboys were known in Connaught in the same period, under local names, generally called after some "captain" who was the leader of these secret societies. They shot obnoxious landlords and agents who carried out evictions, and otherwise punished i6 TORIES AND OUTLAWS persons who acted in any way notoriously against the in- terests of the peasantry. These bands were more numerous in Munster, however, and were frequently under intelligent leaders who understood the rights of tenant property in reclaimed land and knew how to discriminate between the owner's legitimate levy on the soil itself and the rent placed on the cultivator's industry in excessive burdens. The story of Father Sheehy and the Whiteboys has been told in Dr. Madden's work^ at great length. He was prosecuted, tried, and hanged in Clonmel, in 1766, on the most tainted evidence, simply because the government of the time wanted, for its own pro-landlord ends, to connect the insurrections of the peasants of the South with "Popish plots," the better to disguise their own despotic and inhuman conduct tow- ards the people. This humane and respected clergyman was a victim to this atrocious policy. The collection of tithes from Catholic tenants for the benefit of the Protestant Church was made the pretext for a conspiracy to involve the priest in the acts of the Whiteboys, and the services of paid per- jurers to this end completed the horrible crime of executing an innocent and educated minister of religion as part of a nefarious plot between local landlords and informers. The name of " Levellers" was also applied to the Whiteboy agrarians, because they tumbled down fences erected round commonages by the landlords. This ordinary form of legal theft of state land is known in England as well as in Ireland. Millions of acres of land, recognized for generations as of common use for pasturage, have been stolen in this way under laws made by the landlords, and though the English peasantry have never made anything like the same spirited resistance as the Irish to this despoiling of the public, there have been movements of a more legal nature in modern times to check this genteel grabbing of the nation's inheritance. In this respect the Whiteboys of the eighteenth century rendered a signal service to the movement against land monopoly. The code of laws fashioned by the Irish landlord Parliament against Whiteboyism was one of Draconian severity. There was nothing but the argument of terrorism in these savage enactments. Instead of arresting agrarian crime by rational methods, the law made itself the source of violence in ap- pealing to a responsive sentiment of reckless savagery in a people who were made to feel that government and law com- bined were for them only a despotism without justice or mercy. ' United Irishmen, vol. i., pp. 21-88. ' 17 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND These land laws were, in spirit, as infamous as the penal laws which Edmund Burke has forever pilloried in his classic description of them as "a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." Both codes were the offspring of Crom- wellian landlord rule of Ireland. Writing of Whiteboyism, and of the landlordism that gave it birth. Professor Goldwin Smith sums up the case as follows: "The Cromwellian land -owners soon lost their religious character, while they retained all the hardness of the fanatic and the feelings of the Puritan conquerors towards a con- quered Catholic people. ' I have eaten with them,' said one, ' drunk with them, fought with them, but I never prayed with them.' Their descendants became, probably, the very worst upper class with which a country was ever afflicted. The habits of the Irish gentry grew, beyond measure, brutal and reckless, and the coarseness of their debaucheries would have disgusted the crew of Comus. Their drunkenness, their blasphemy, their ferocious duelling left the squires of Eng- land far behind. If there was a grotesque side to their vices, which mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render their influence less pestilent to the community of which the motive of destiny had made them social chiefs. Fortunately, their recklessness was sure, in the end, to work, to a certain extent, its own cure; and in the background of their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts the Encumbered Estates Act rises to our view."* This English testimony to the practices prevailing among the landlord class in pre-Union times is not from a Home Ruler. Professor Goldwin Smith has been an opponent of the Gladstone policy of the later eighties. His evidence springs from a keen study of Irish history, and is influenced only by the force of facts, and a courage in letting facts accuse his own country's rule of the Irish people, where no truth can be adduced to mitigate the criminal ignorance or prejudice which tolerated the naked infamies of Irish landlordism. Such a class, thus truly photographed, begot, in their disregard of all law, moral or equitable, in the treatment of tenants, opposing agrarian conspiracies. This was inevitable and humanely justifiable. There is no tyranny worse than that of an obviously partisan and oppressive law which is expressly enacted to safeguard the power of an unscrupulous •Goldwin Smith, History of Irish Character, pp. 13Q, 140. 18 TORIES AND OUTLAWS class to rob and violate at will every right of every home- stead in a country where constituted authority is not the expression of a people's franchise but of a dominant land- owning aristocracy. Whiteboyism was the illegitimate child of social oppression, begotten in rapine and in the robbery of labor. It was the Ishmael of the social system, born of the lawless misuse of power and property by the Irish landlords. Whiteboyism made a war of "righteous" violence against the scourge of labor and country, and though, as in all wars, agrarian or military, fearful crimes made the angels weep, these confederated peasants were the soldiers of a wild jus- tice, and the defenders of homes which were otherwise aban- doned to the rapacity of the horde of drunken social despots who prostituted government, law, justice, and women to the service of an impecunious greed and of a swinish lust. Goldwin Smith brings home with unerring truth the re- sponsibility for the deeds of the Whiteboys to the only source of Irish agrarian crime. He says:* "The atrocities perpetrated by the Whiteboys, especially in the earlier period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman), are such as to make the flesh creep. No language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. But it would be unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to vSuppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the part of those who commit them or on the part of the people who connive at and favor their commission. In the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small. "In plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered the Whiteboy code were to the people the organs of a wild law of social morality, by which, on the whole, the interest of the peasant was protected. They were not regular tri- bunals; neither were the secret tribunals of Germany in the Middle Ages, the existence of which, and the submission of the people to their jurisdiction, implied the presence of much violence, but not of much depravity, considering the wildness of the times. We have seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law, had done to deserve the peasant's love. We have seen, too, in what successive guises property had presented itself to his mind: first as open rapine; then as robbery carried on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code; finally as legalized and systematic oppression. Was it possible that he should have formed so affectionate a 'Goldwin Smith, History of Irish Character, pp. 153-157. 19 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND reverence either for law or property as would be proof against the pressure of starvation? A people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression because it is consigned to the statute book and called law." The "Oakboys" were mainly an Ulster combination. They stood for a mixed movement against special claims of the landlords to tenants' labors in repairing roads, and to the payment of tithes by both Presbyterians and Catholics to the ministers of the Established Protestant Church. It sought relief from these and other exactions by intimidation. Bands of men marched with oak leaves in their hats through various counties, and erected gallowses in some places as a warning that mob law would be resorted to unless the de- mands were considered. These threats succeeded. Anything approaching to united efforts for a common end, on the part of Ulster Protestants and Catholics, had a most persuasive effect upon the ruling mind in those times, and the prudent course of concession was adopted. Oakboyism died only to assume other names and functions in later years. IIL— " STEELBOYS" The first of these agrarian offsprings took the name of "Steelboys." The combination had a local origin, but the name only denoted the same kind of resistance to landlord wrong as that against which the southern Whiteboys had made war. The birthplace of the Hearts of Steel society was the County Down, and its origin was an attempt on the part of an absentee landlord, Lord Downshire, to levy rent upon other occupations besides that of land carried on by his tenants. Many of these were weavers, and added to their ordinary earnings the profits of cottage industry. This ap- peared to be a reason why the landlord should increase his in- come at the expense of this extra labor, and as short leases for his land fell due his agent demanded an extortionate in- crease in the way of " fines " for a renewal of the right to earn his lordship's rental. These demands were refused by num- bers of tenants, and they were evicted. Large numbers of those who were dispossessed emigrated to America. Others formed the Hearts of Steel society, and adopted the meth- ods of Whiteboyism. Grabbers were menaced or killed, their cattle were maimed, and a reign of terror was created where rents had been quietly paid in previous years. So general was the sympathy of the peasants of all creeds with the leaders of this Ulster revolt that thousands of them around Belfast were induced to march on that town under Steelboy command, and TORIES AND OUTLAWS to rescue some of the band who were being tried for outrage. The miUtary in charge of the court and prison were overpow- ered, and the accused persons were carried away in triumph. Juries in other towns refused to convict men accused of being Steelboys. This caused the government of the day to enact a law whereby prisoners could be brought to trial in counties other than those in which the crime was committed. A similar law exists in Ireland to-day. Dublin juries, how- ever, followed the healthy example set in the North, and the landlord government was compelled to fall back upon a com- bination of martial law and jury-packing in order to send a number of cases to the scaffold as an example. The move- ment was crushed in County Down ultimately, but its spirit and purpose spread into other parts of the North and West, there to burst out again when some intolerable injustice should call it into activity. The clearances which resulted from these acts of Ulster landlordism were the means, unconsciously, of striking the greatest blow at England's power it had yet received. Thou- sands of men, tenants and laborers, in Down, Antrim, London- derry, and other parts of the North, left Ireland for the then British colonies beyond the Atlantic. They carried hatred of landlordism in their hearts and no love for England in their memories. Joining the army of American independence on the outbreak of war, these and thousands more of their countrymen from the South, who had crossed the seas to escape a similar social oppression, fought and won for the great republic of to- day the freedom that has made the United States the mightiest democracy of all time and the foremost nation of the world.* IV.-" ORANGEMEN" The sanguinary encounter known in Ulster as the "Battle of the Diamond" was fought between Defenders and Wreck- ers, or Peep -o'- Day Boys, in the county of Armagh, on ' "It is surprising what a spirit of emigration pervades the devoted kingdom of Ireland. About one million of souls now stand ready to qitit their native country rather than submit to the slavery which hangs impending over them. Driven to desperation by the inroads that poverty and want are daily making on them, they have demanded of government vessels to transport them to America, the asylum of distressed virtue, to avoid their rising in insurrection, which will in- evitably be the consequence if they are obliged to stay. Unhappy Hibernians! Philanthropy mourns your condition and benevolence will stretch out the charitable hand to sweeten your cup of woe. . . . The arms of America — once yoitr sister in adversity — are extended for your reception. The banks of the Ohio will welcome your arrival, 21 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND September 21, 1795, and is still remembered on Orange fes- tive occasions as a victory won over "Popish" rebels. The fight lasted for two days, and Dr. Madden, in his narrative of the event, relates that large numbers of Catholics were killed by their better -armed opponents. This battle gave birth to the Orange organization, whose origin dates from this deadly conflict between bodies of men who were thus, unconsciously, made to shed each other's blood the better to secure and prolong the power of landlordism over both sides. Out of this fight there grew a bitter feud, which resulted in the despoiling of Catholics in their homes and farms and of the forced banishment of large numbers of them from Armagh into Connaught and elsewhere. Their lands were grabbed by the sect protected by the government and garrison of the time, and then, as now, the society so formed has been used, politically and otherwise, by the landlords of Ulster for their own purposes. It is to-day a sectarian organization of the most bigoted character, and may be called the party "mili- tia" of the Irish Tories. Orangeism is one of the typical products of English rule over the Irish. It is the embodiment of race and sectarian ha- tred, and stands for the anti-Celtic and anti-Catholic feeling which promoted the Act of Settlement and carried out the fe- rocious decrees and spirit of the penal laws. There is nothing parallel to the character and aims of this combination known in the annals of modern society outside of Ulster. Its real "religion" is hate — a wild, untamable sentiment of ignorant sectarian malignancy — unteachable and unchangeable — and in its origin, record, and raison d'etre it can be truly said to be the living and acting expression, in our time, of the anti-Irish nature of England's past government of Ireland. v.— "RIGHT BOYS" Whiteboyism survived the Draconian code of savage laws which sent hundreds to the gallows and penal colonies during the eighteenth century. Its recruiting agencies were dire poverty and the ferocious severity of legal prosecutions. and the environs of the Mississippi shall smile with your cultivation. Here nature has been liberal with her gifts. Here all the advantages that agriculture, arts, and commerce recjuire are centred. Vast regions remain vet to be explored, sufficient not only to supply you with all the necessaries but with the con\eniences of life. Here you may en- joy inviolate your rights and property, be instrumental in founding a mighty nation, help to make America the garden of the world, and rear a paradise on its surface." — The Maryland Journal, copied into the Irish Volunteers' Journal of October 25, 1784. 22 TORIES AND OUTLAWS Landlord cruelty and the pious exactions of tithes in the name of religion drove a maddened peasantry to the only manful remedy of the oppressed poor — social revolt. In Leinster this renewed insurrection took the name of "Right Boys," from the untutored peasant conception of his right to live by his labor on land without having to be a slave to his own poverty and squalor for the maintenance of "his su- periors." The Right Boys acted under captains, and terrorized the counties of Kildare, Queen's, Kilkenny, and the border coun- ties of Munster. They and their organization were attacked by prelates and priests of the Catholic Church, as well as by the law - and - order forces of the Protestant establishment and the government. Dr. Troy, the Catholic bishop of Os- sory, the subsequent tool of Castlereagh in the treachery of the Act of Union, was conspicuous in his denunciations of Right-Boyism. These were dangerous associations in many respects. All combinations against despotism are. But these bodies did, in doubtless a rude and riotous way, what Dr. Troy and his episcopal brethren did not do in any way — namely, tried to protect the people from extermination. "Captain Right" and "Captain Rock" and the rest were good subjects for pulpit censure by the priests and bishops of the period, but it was by them, by brave if desperate and sometimes criminally disposed men, that the Celtic peasantry of Ireland had both their land and religion preserved in those penal times, and not through any sacrifice made by the com- plaisant pro-English prelates of the Dr. Troy class. The Right Boys struck back at all their enemies, land- lord, legal, and ecclesiastic, and cut off supplies from both parson and priest wherever the Catholic clergy took sides against the home defenders. In Connaught the uprising took the name of "Thrashers," probably from the use of the flail as a weapon of assault. Their methods in Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim, and Longford were thus described by a contemporary Crown prosecutor a few years later than the period dealt with above: "It is notori- ous that for some time past the peace of the country has been infested by a set of persons assuming the name of Thrashers. Their outrageous associations have been in direct defiance of the law. . . . The pretext upon which these illegal con- federacies is formed is repugnance to the payments in sup- port of the legal establishment of the Church of the coun- try (tithes) and also fees to the clergymen of the Catholic Church. These persons administer oaths of secrecy. This offence is by law punishable with death or transportation. 23 THE FALL OF FEUDALISxM IN IRELAND . . . Gentlemen, it is no wonder that those who searched after democratical equaUty should be the foes of religion,"^ etc., etc. The greater wonder, rather, that the ministers of any religion should be the friends of the law and order which stood for the then government of Ireland. " Captain Right " was not frightened by the pulpit thunder- bolts of the time. His bands visited the presbyteries alike of parson and priest, and made them pay dear for their con- federacy with the common enemy of the people — the Dublin Castle of the period. Some priests were driven from their parishes, and many outrages of a revolting kind were com- mitted in the wanton exercise of force by an outlawed associa- tion. All this is to the historic discredit of the anti-landlord foes of these rude times. They have been reprobated and condemned on all sides. But, as there never yet has been in the history of human society an uprising of the common people of any country against a government, independent of an overwhelming justification for their revolt in the despotism of the rule or the infamy of the laws that oppressed them, one's indignation is constrained to expend itself a little upon the causes that drove the Right Boys into criminal pro- ceedings, and not altogether against those who on the whole were less ruffian in motives and purpose than the rulers and "classes" of their time. It has been alleged that in its later developments Right- Boyism was instigated in some of its actions by landlords who wished to avoid, by the aid of these bands, the pay- ing of tithes to their ministers. Doubtless some landlords were desirous of diverting the attentions of these rural con- spiracies from themselves to the clergy. Orangeism, which grew, in a measure, out of a labor opposition to competing workers, was made use of by both government and landlords, and finally moulded for class purposes, and it is reasonable to assume, in the Hght of this fact, that some Southern land- owners acted with a similar object in regard to Whiteboyism. But there is no conclusive evidence to prove the allegation that this peasant uprising had any other object than opposi- tion to landlordism and tithes as its governing aim and purpose. No other proof in this respect is needed than the record of the way in which these bands were hunted down by the law and the military during the dozen years or more — from 1760 to 1778 — in which this form of the Whiteboy in- surrection prevailed in parts of Leinster, Munster, and Con- naught. 1 Attorney-General for Ireland. Address to the jury, Special Com- mission, in Sligo, 1806. 24 TORIES AND OUTLAWS One marked tribute was paid to the Right Boys by John Philpot Curran, the famous patriot lawyer and wit. He opposed a coercion bill directed against this form of Whiteboyism, and said: "I will mention a circumstance of disturbance in a Kerry (Protestant) diocese from which the publication so much reprobated was issued, in a parish worth eight hundred or nine hundred pounds a year, which would make the House (Irish House of Commons) blush. It was a rising of Right Boys to banish a seraglio kept by a rector who received nearly one thousand pounds from the Church, and to reinstate the unoffending mother and innocent children in their mansion."^ ' Irish Parliamentary Debates, February 27, 1789. CHAPTER III "NOBILITY AND GENTRY" The march of events across the Atlantic began to exercise a marked and beneficial change on what passed as popular feeling in Ireland, between the period of the Volunteer movement and that of the organization of the "United Irishmen." Political opinions began to spread among the trading and commercial sections of the people. The Amer- ican War of Independence brought the hopeful knowledge to Ireland that England's power was not invulnerable, and flattered the growing force of national sentiment with the intelligence that Irishmen had played a conspicuous part in the great achievement. Men like Grattan and Flood had arisen as exponents of the liberal views which Swift, Molyneux, and Lucas had advocated when the penal code was at its worst, and "when the law of the land did not presume a Papist to exist in the kingdom, nor could they exist in it without the connivance of the government."* Class tyranny was breaking up like all decomposing systems resting upon rotten foundations, and the voice of liberty was frequently heard in the Irish landlord Parliament in favor of the fran- chise and of other measures of popular freedom. It is only just to the Cromwellian settlers to say that all the constitutional leaders of this revolt against a grinding and debasing oppression, religious, social, and political, were of English descent. Dean Swift, who may be honorably credited with being the first leader of the moral-force move- ments, which succeeded the military struggles against sub- jection that had ended for the time in the treaty of Limerick, was, like Grattan, of the Anglo-Saxon race. So were Wolfe Tone and the Emmets. These latter were republican leaders who had conceived a higher national ideal than a "Parlia- ment " nominated by landlords to act hke so many land-agent legislators solely for class and selfish interests. A movement on this high plane of public hfe put the agrarian insurrection • Plowden's History, vol. ii., p. 270. 26 "NOBILITY AND GENTRY" in the background for some years. It enlisted the best- educated men of the people in the service, first, of reform in the legislature, and, subsequently, in the rebellion which followed on the conviction and knowledge of Tone, Addis Emmet, and others, that the Parliament of the Pale was ut- terly corrupt and incapable of being emancipated from pro- English jobbery and control. The poet, Thomas Moore, in recording his contempt for a class whose "nobility" had been baptized in patricide and corruption, thus described the Irish landlord legislators of the previous generation: "A writer on Egypt mentions, as a singular phenomenon, the respect which the Mamelukes have for men who have been purchased — far beyond what they feel for the most ancient rank. A Turkish officer, in pointing out to him some personage who had held an important situation under government, said: 'C'est un homme de bonne race — il a ete achete.' What homage, then, would a Mame- luke feel for the 'hommes achetes' of the Irish nobility, many of whom might introduce an auctioneer's hammer into their coats of arms, so often have they and their illustrious sires been knocked down to the highest bidder? " During the administration of the Marquis of Buckingham, the (Irish) Pension List outstripped that of England by several thousand pounds; and when, at length, under Lord Westmoreland, as a monetary sacrifice to public opinion, a bill was allowed to pass limiting the grants of pensions to ;^i2oo a year, advantage was taken of the few months that were to elapse before the commencement of the act to grant pensions to the amount of more than ;;^i20o — being equal to ten years' anticipation of the powers of the Crown. "This system was the consummation, the coronis, of Eng- land's deadly policy in Ireland. Having broken down and barbarized our lower orders by every method that was ever devised for turning men into brutes, she now premeditately, by the encouragement of habits of expense, and the ready proflEer of the wages of corruption to maintain them, so de- moralized and denationalized our upper classes that perhaps the most harmless part many of them have since played has been that of Absentees."^ So long as the " Parliament" of Irish landlords was the sole property of that class, the guardian of their privileges and the source of their perquisites, they associated with its existence and functions a sentiment of local partiotism. They talked and wrote of "their" country in the sense in which they apoke ^Captain Rock, pp. 288, 289. 27 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND of their estates. It was the property of the Anglo-Irish gar- rison. The members, with some noted exceptions, were pa- triots or coercionists, just as their interests incHned them either to encourage, for the time being, the unenfranchised Celts to hope for the rights of representation in College Green, or to convince the English government of the day, in drastic measures of repression, that they were still the inheritors of Cromwellian plunder, and the true descendants of the Carews, Chichesters, and Mountjoys of the seventeenth century. No man saw more clearly through the sham nationalism of this " Parliament " than Wolfe Tone. And when, at last, it seemed as if the Celts were really about to obtain the franchise (in 1793), to use it, of course, only as some of their social lords and masters should direct, the majority of these patriots of the Pale resolved to auction off the whole legislative establishment in Dublin to the highest monetary advan- tage for themselves, and thus prevent the Irish people from having any direct voice in the rule of their own country. Pitt and Castlereagh have been liberally abused in Irish nationalist history and in political controversy for the de- struction of the Irish Parliament. They were, it is true, the chief engineers of the transaction. They had to provide the money and guarantee the patents of "nobility" which were to reward the venal gang who would sell the legislature rather than permit the people to share in its law-making rights and labors. But "the baseness and blackguardism of the Act of Union" were not all theirs. The purchaser of the fruits of theft, vile though his calling may be, is, after all, the immoral product of the person who steals the article for which he must seek a buyer. The Irish landlords who held both Houses of the Irish Parliament in their hands were the willing traitors and the bargaining malefactors in this base and sordid design, and theirs is the major share of the infamy belonging to this un- paralleled act of corruption. They are the only class in his- tory who will be eternally infamous for having virtually auc- tioned off a country's constitution for money so as to frustrate the hopes of their countrymen in the enjoyment of a modicum of popular liberty. Sir Jonah Barrington's Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation gives a list of the perfidy and prices of these landlord traitors, and a few of these "noble" names will not be out of place in this narrative. A Mr. Trench, seeing the ministerial and opposition parties about equal when the decisive vote for or against the Union was being taken, sold his vote to the government, actually 28 "NOBILITY AND GENTRY" within the Irish House of Commons. For this he was raised to the peerage under the title of Lord Ashtown. A Mr. Handcock, member for Athlone, who "sang songs against the Union in 1799, at a pubHc dinner of the opposition, and sang songs for it in 1800," according to Barrington, was rewarded by being made Lord Castlemaine. A General Henniker and a Colonel Blaquiere, who represent- ed pocket-boroughs, were Englishmen, and were ennobled and obtained pensions for their votes. They were the founders of the distinguished houses and peerages now bearing those names. Mr. John Bingham owned the pocket-borough of Tuam. He offered to sell its two votes — it had two members — for ;;^8ooo to the opponents of the Union. Lord Castlereagh's party raised the price to £1^,000. This settled the bargain. He was likewise made a peer, and became Lord Clanmorris. His father-in-law, a judge, was made Viscount Avonmore for supporting the Union in the House of Lords. Mr. Clotworthy Rowley, of Meath, belonged to the family of Bective, also noble. He obtained a peerage for his vote, and chose the title of Lord Langford. His brother, already a lord, was created Marquis of Headfort for supporting the same cause. Sir Richard Quin entered the Irish Parliament with the express purpose (according to Lord Cornwallis) of helping to carry the measure which was to overthrow the Irish Parlia- ment. He purchased seats (from landlord patrons) for him- self and another. " His object," remarks Lord Cornwallis, " was to be made a baron." He became Lord Adare in July, 1800, and was created Earl of Dunraven in 1822. The chairman of the Land Conference of 1903, and the author of "The Dunraven Treaty," which most successfully spoiled a radical and final settlement of the Irish land ques- tion, is the present head of this noble house. Charles Henry Coote, of Queen's County, got a peerage (Lord Castlecoote) and ;;^7ooo for his services in defeating an opponent of the Union, and electing a supporter. John Preston, of Meath, was made a peer (Lord Tara) and given ^7500 for a similar performance. Maurice Mahon, of Roscommon, was made Lord Hartland for the service of his two sons, Thomas and Stephen, who were members of Parliament and aided the Union. Henry Prittie, of Tipperary, like the noble founder of the House of Hartland, had two profitable sons, also in College Green, and they earned a peerage for their father by selling their votes. Their father was made Lord Dunally, and one of the sons became Viscount Charleville. Thomas Mullins was made a lord for the statesmanship of a 29 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND son who supported the Castlereagh poHcy. Subsequently the plebeian name of Mullins was changed into " De Moleyns" by royal license, a blue-blooded transformation almost as modest as that of the Irish-American school-girl who resolved to sign her letters " Bidelia Pomme de Terre" in lieu of Bridget Murphy. Thomas Mullins's present-day descendant is men- tioned in Dodd's Peerage as "Sir DayroUes Blakeney Eveleigh de Moleyns, Baron Ventry." Sir James Blackwood, for supporting the Union in County Down, raised his mother to a baroness, with remainder to himself and heirs, and obtained ;^i 5,000 in compensation for the disfranchisement of his pocket - borough of Killyleagh. Lord Dufferin inherited the title. William Hare, landlord in Cork and Kerry, was made Lord Ennismore, and subsequently Earl of Listowel, for putting two members into the Irish House of Commons to vote for the Union. Robert King, second son of the Earl of Kingstown, a Ros- common landlord, was made Baron Erris for Union services. The earl received ;^i 5,000 for the disfranchisement of the town of Boyle. Lord Clanricarde was made a "representative" peer for similar services. He was grandfather of the notorious Clan- ricarde of the Land League period. Henry Sandford, Roscommon landlord, was made Lord Mount Sandford, with remainder to the sons of his brother, with ;^i 5,000 compensation for the town of Roscommon ceasing to be a parliamentary borough. General Massey was made Lord Clarina in reward for sup- port of the Union. His brother had already been created Baron Massey in the year 1776. Joseph Blake.son of a Galway landlord, became Lord Walles- court as a reward for similar services. Lodge Morres, son of a landlord, was made Lord Frankfort, to blossom subsequently into Viscount Frankfort de Mont- morency in recompense for his labors. John Toler, a Castle hack of the worst character. Attorney - General in 1798, made Chief-Justice and Lord Norbury in 1800, was the judge who tried Robert Emmet in 1803. He was probably the most infamous of all the corrupt Castle agents who were ever promoted to the Irish bench in order to dispense English justice. The Marquis of Ely, a landlord, was made an English peer, and paid ;^45,ooo for compensation for six seats. Charles Agar, Archbishop of Cashel, was made Earl of Normanton. His brother received ;^3o,ooo compensation. 30 "NOBILITY AND GENTRY" John Fitzgibbon, lawyer and political renegade, was made Lord Clare for Union services. Pitt, on hearing him speak in the British House of Lords, subsequently declared him to be a rascal. When his funeral cortege was passing through Dublin dead cats were thrown at the hearse. Robert Cunningham became Lord Rossmore, and received ;(^i 5,000 to boot. He belonged to a landlord family in Monaghan, and earned his nobility and compensation in the Union market. Nicholas Lawless became Lord Cloncurry. This title was purchased for money, the cash being expended in the cause of the Union. Curran, the famous advocate and wit, alluding to this and similar transactions, said: "The sale of peerages is as notorious as the sale of cart-horses in the Castle Yard; the publicity the same, the terms not any different, the horses not warranted sound, the other animals warranted rotten." Lawless turned Protestant in order to buy landed property, and then bought himself a peerage by helping to sell the Parliament of his country. Sexton Perry, political renegade, promoted from a follower of Grattan and Flood to be Speaker of the House of Commons, got his brother raised to the peerage from the position of bishop of the State Church. This title was also bought. The Earl of Limerick is the present head of the house thus founded. James Alexander, member for Londonderry, created Earl of Caledon, and paid ;^i 5,000 compensation. Sir John Brown, a Mayo landlord, purchased the title of Lord Kilmaine with money got for services in aid of the Union. Hugh Carlton, after the manner and morals of Toler Lord Norbury, used his chances as a place - hunting lawyer to mount to Castle dignities. He earned the title of Viscount Carlton in these successful efforts. Robert Stewart's father was elevated to the peerage for loyal services as member for County Down, and assumed the title of Baron Londonderry. Robert followed the father as representative of that county, and recommended himself so well to the Pitt ministry for his enmity to Irish nationhood that he was made secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. He became the chief agent and auctioneer in the sale of the Irish Parliament, and is known to history as Lord Castlereagh. The present Lord Londonderry is the holder of the title and the representative of the nobility thus created. William Trench and his son Richard were of a Galway lawyer-landlord stock. The father was made Lord Kil- 31 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND connell for services to Lord Camden in fomenting the Re- bellion of 1798, and the son, who became member for Galway, was made Earl of Clancarty for Union services. Henry Luttrell, a mercenary renegade to his party, an apostate and traitor, was the founder of the house of Car- hampton. One of his offspring became an earl, and was commander of the British forces in Ireland during the Re- bellion of 1798. The atrocities committed during the in- surrection have never been surpassed, if even equalled, in systematic cruelties by a Turkish army. He quartered his soldiers on the peasantry and incited them by encouragement and example to a wholesale violation of women and girls. This truly monstrous family is now extinct, but it will always be in the memory of Ireland that it was a scion of the man stigmatized by Lord Macaulay as having lived a life of infamy, who was the chief instrument of landlord and anti-Irish vengeance in 1798. The last member of this house of scoundrels died a convicted thief in a German prison. John Scott, the notorious Earl of Clonmel, belongs to the Toler, Carlton, Fitzgibbon class of Irish nobles, as one of the unscrupulous legal instruments of the landlord garrison. He died before the Act of Union became law, but his title was earned in like manner to that of the ancestors of the present Irish nobility. John Hely-Hutchinson, a successful place-hunter and sine- curist, founded the noble house of Donoughmore. He wormed himself into the lucrative post of Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and succeeded in electing his son as one of its mem- bers to the House of Commons. This son was made Viscount Donoughmore in reward for his services during the rebellion of 1798. James Cuffe, member for Mayo, became Lord Tyrawley for varied services rendered to the enemies of the Irish people. Barry Yelverton, apostate from his faith and renegade from his party, earned the title of Viscount Avonmore. Barrington calls him "one of the salesmasters of the Irish Parliament." William Tonson, as owner of a parliamentary borough in County Cork, undertook to "elect" supporters of the govern- ment in return for a peerage. He was made Lord Riv- ersdale. John Burke, successful place-man, owner of a nomination borough, was made Lord Naas, and afterwards created a peer as Earl of Mayo. The customary ;^i 5,000 compensation followed the title as the price of the borough. James Corry, land-owner of Fermanagh, was create(^Earl of 2,2 "NOBILITY AND GENTRY" Belmore, and received ;^3o,ooo compensation for general support of the Camden-Castlereagh policy. Abraham Creighton was member for Enniskillen, and was ennobled in 1768. His two sons became members of the House of Commons. They first voted against, and then for, the Union. They sold their votes for a price. The father was promoted in the peerage, and was paid ;;^ 15,000. James Agar was a Kilkenny landlord, and reckoned two boroughs among his property. For voting for the govern- ment of the day he was made Baron Clifden. He quartered his sons on the public purse, one of them obtaining ;;^3o,ooo for the sale of two boroughs in behalf of the Union. St. Leger Aldworth, member for Doneraile, County Cork, was created Lord of that name for loyalty to the government and the support given by two sons who were members of the House of Commons to the Union project: ;,£i 5,000 compen- sation was paid to one of the sons. These were the peers and their political henchmen, the members of Parliament, whom the Act of Union transferred as law - makers for Ireland from Dublin to Westminster. The change of social and legislative duties brought no change for the better in their treatment of tenants or care for the country. They remained the same lavishly expen- sive, devil-may-care class, and soon contracted what new vices in London society were not theirs already by habit or natural disposition. They at once began to compete with the manners and customs of an English landocracy far richer than themselves. In this spendthrift rivalry with the owners of greater wealth commenced the ruinous phase of Irish landlordism known as absenteeism. Evictions began for the first time on a large scale. The cost of extravagant London living and of gambling fell upon their unfortunate Irish tenants, who had no right or protection of any kind in the soil beyond their capacity to earn whatever rent the own- ers' debts or rapacity caused to be placed upon the toil of a half-starved people. And it was in this way, too, that the species of legal extortion known as "rack-rent" began in modern Ireland. Famines came and went; distress was then, as later, of periodic occurrence; and English travellers through Ireland noted and told of the miserable hovels of the people, of their poverty, ignorance, and discontent, of the squalor of their homes, the rags and barbarism of the children, and denounced the lawlessness of a "semi-civilized" Popish peasantry who battled against the "humanizing spirit and character" of an enlightened English rule! 3 33 CHAPTER IV I.— DANIEL OCONNELL The agrarianism of the two first decades of the nineteenth century was but the recrudescence of previous outbursts in the three Southern provinces. The cause was that of the same operative injustice — the tyranny of the landed pro- prietors. The Cathohc Church, however, became more and more the opponent of Whiteboyism, and of its various off- shoots in Connaught and Leinster, as the deferred promises of emancipation loomed within the domain of possibility. Thrashers and Steelboys rose in all the Western counties, and made no distinction among enemies, whether clergy or landlords or their adherents. The law and its agents were defied, outrages were made to follow evictions or grabbing, in regular and certain punishment, while altar denunciations failed to frighten the leaders, who could command the loyalty of the peasants who knew that their homes were secure only through the terrorism which the doubly banned associations created. Insurrection acts and the older Whiteboy laws were enforced to put the agrarian bands down, with the usual crop of hangings and transportations. There was, however, no regular police force to deal with these lawless societies, the military being the only available power to put the law in operation, and full advantage was taken of this state of things by the various "Captains" who were the peasant leaders. An irregular insurrection was kept up in midnight raids, threatening letters, and violence in all forms in the West and in some of the Southern counties, until after 1825 the attention of the country was diverted from these doings to the great and absorbing issue of Catholic emanci- pation. The rise and wonderful career of Daniel O'Connell had more of an indirect than an actual influence upon the cause of land reform. He was not, in any sense, an active land reformer, either by the media of passive resistance or in the consti- tutional way of Gavan Duffy's Tenants' League. O'Connell was a small landlord himself, and had all the good and very 34 DANIEL O'CONNELL few of the bad qualities of the class to which he belonged. He was an occasional advocate of long leases and of fair rent, of a tenure of land which was deemed to be as radical in his time as the "Three F's"' in the reforming generation of Isaac Butt. O'Connell's dream and ambition, after first winning a measure of religious liberty for his fellow-Catholics, was to see the constitution of the pre-Union period (freed, of course, of its grosser social and religious inequalities) restored. Repeal stood for a landlord House of Lords and for a higher and middle class Irish House of Commons, in O'Connell's am- bition, though it is fair to assume that the progressive views which he developed in his parliamentary career, especially dur- ing the thirties, would have found expression in his statesman- ship at home, had he succeeded in his hope of being the first minister of a restored Irish Parliament. While he cannot be classed among those who have fought strenuously against landlordism, his mighty power in Ireland, the magic hold which his name had upon the Irish imagina- tion, as a giant champion of the race and country during a whole generation, could not fail in exercising an enormous in- fluence upon almost every Irish question. He was the first truly great leader the Celtic people had found since the death of Owen Roe O'Neill. He was Irish to the very marrow of his bones, and combined all the masculine qualities of the race, along with many of its weaker ones, in a personality that towered far above any man of his time. Ireland has never produced a greater man than O'Connell, and Europe very few that can truly be called his equal in the work of uplifting a people from the degrading- status of religious and political serfdom to conditions of national life which necessarily created changes and chances of progress that were bound to lead on to the gain of further liberty. His fame lies in the fact that he did this practically alone. He created a national public opinion in Ireland; with- out a press he welded an ignorant people into a huge combi- nation, unparalleled in the annals of reform movements, and fought the enemies of his cause, in and out of Parliament, with an ability and a mighty resourcefulness of power, aggressive capacity, eloquence, knowledge, and wit never equalled by any popular leader ever produced by any other race. It is claimed, and not without justice, that O'Connell was the originator of the reforming weapon of agitation and the founder of the modern political school of moral-force na- ' Fixity of Tenure, Fair Rents, and Free vSale. 35 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tionalism. Views differ among Irish nationalists as to his claims to praise for this service. The fame, at least, no one can deny, and the praise is subject only to the varying estimates of opinion. One need not approve of all Napoleon did in his career, but to challenge the verdict of the world as to his claim to greatness would be absurd. O'Connell's chief weakness was more induced than inherit- ed. This was his political abhorrence of revolutionary media. His constant declarations on this head, and his truly ridicu- lous contention that liberty was not worth the shedding of human blood, injured the political force of his movement enormously with English rulers. They felt that they knew the measure of their man, the limits of his power to make them uneasy, and of the danger it represented to their system in Ireland, and they shaped their policy accordingly. They, in fact, conceded more to the action of a few peasants who attacked and killed a small body of soldiers and police at Carrigshock during the tithe war of the thirties than to all the huge repeal meetings addressed by the great tribune for ten years. O'Connell was educated in a French Catholic college dur- ing some of the years of the French Revolution, and he ap- pears never to have shaken the anti-Jacobin prejudices of his early mentors out of his mind. What was to Europe and to civilized mankind an epoch of social deliverance and of political enfranchisement greater and more blessed in its re- sults than that of any previous struggle for human liberty, was but a horror and a calamity to a certain class of ultra- montane minds that would put a higher social and. moral value upon the heads of a French Catholic king and queen than on the lives of a hundred thousand peasants of France or Ireland. But, with all his limitations, O'Connell stands out promi- nently on the canvas of Irish history as a Colossus who im- pressed the world with the greatness of his Celtic personality, and who has established an undying claim to gratitude and to admiration upon the memory of his own race. The anti-tithe agitation of the thirties, being a mixed agrarian and creed movement, and inviting the co-operation of the Catholic clergy on the latter ground, showed greater force of organization than the previous irregular Whiteboy combinations. The influence of O'Connell's methods of organized public gatherings was felt in the more general plan of uniform passive resistance adopted in the tithe war. Distraint for cattle was systematically obstructed; tithe proctors were waylaid and beaten, just as process-servers 36 DANIEL O'CONNELL were in 1880-81, in the days of the Land League; and the power of social ostracism was brought to bear upon traitors to the popular revolt against an abominable form of sectarian ascendency. But the effective power behind the agitation against the payment of tithes was that of the Whiteboy spirit — the young men who ran risks and drilled at night, collected arms, and otherwise kept up the racial antagon- ism to the law that made the land the property of a rapacious and anti-Irish class. These were the men who anticipated the "boycotting" of a later period, and who made a village or county an uncomfortable place for a grabber or a proctor to reside in without English military protection. The varied forms in which Whiteboyism manifested itself in the South and West, in the earlier period of O'Connell's time, indicated little or no change in purpose or methods. Districts or counties gave names of their own to a branch of the same movement. The "Whitefeet" and " Blackfeet," the "Terry Alts," "Rockites," "The Lady Clares," and the rest, were all peasant bands leagued irregularly against the common enemy — landlordism, and the law, government, class, or interests on which it relied for the power to rack- rent the land and to harass the lives of the laboring poor. In the South the evil of turning tillage land into grazing farms, to the injury of laborers and of the interests of general in- dustry, engaged the attention of the Whiteboy s, and showed on their part an intelligent appreciation of sound political economy. It frequently happened that these names were made covers for robbery and crime, having no relation to the general pur- pose of the agrarian societies. Factions, too, grew out of some of these local combinations, like the "Caravats" and "Shanavats " of Kilkenny and Waterford, who fought among themselves at fairs and patterns, but were otherwise one in sympathy with the general policy of lawless attacks on the adherents of the landlord garrison. Raids for arms, posting of threatening notices, and firing into the dwellings of obnoxious persons were the modus operandi of all the sections in common, with occasional fights with the military forces who were in constant requisition for the pursuit and repres- sion of these nocturnal bands. Testimony to the power they wielded, and to the kind of lawless "law" upheld by them, abounds in the ofificial papers and blue-books of the time — especially in the evidence given before a parliamentary committee which inc[uired into their origin and objects in 1832. Mr. Justice Jebb, addressing the grand jury of the county 37 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND of Limerick, in a special commission, in 1831, thus defined the illegal programme of the Wliiteboys: "The offences I allude to are those against the statutes too well known to you under the name of the Whiteboy Acts; and the species of crime against which these acts provide may be fairly characterized, in a few words, as ' a war of the peasantry against the proprietors and occupiers of land.' The object of this warfare is to deprive the proprietors and occupiers of land of the power of disposing of their property as they think fit, to dictate to them the terms on which their estates and property shall be dealt out to the peasantry, and to punish by all the means that can be resorted to such as disobey those dictates which the people think proper to issue." ^ Lord Wellesley, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, writing to Lord Melbourne, on April 15, 1834, thus described the objects of Whiteboyism generally : "A complete system of legislation, with the most prompt, vigorous, and severe executive power, sworn, equipped, and armed for all purposes of savage punishment, is established in almost every district. On this subject I cannot express my opinions more clearly, nor with more force nor justice, than your lordship will find employed in a letter addressed by Lord Oxmantown, Lieutenant of the Queen's County, to Mr. Littleton. Lord Oxmantown truly observes that the com- bination established surpasses the [Dublin Castle] law in vigor, promptitude, and efficacy, and that it is more safe to violate the law than to obey it."^ The dispassionate view of Sir George Cornwall Lewis is thus given in his invaluable book upon the sources of Irish agrarian discontent : "They [the Whiteboys] act on the general impression, prevalent among their class, that land is necessary to the maintenance of a poor man's family; and though they may not have a present, yet they have a future interest in the mat- ter; though they may not be personally concerned, yet their kinsmen and friends and fellows are concerned. It is possible for men to be swayed by a regard for the general advantage of their order without reaping any individual or immediate benefit. In like manner we are not to conclude because all the Whiteboys are not ejected tenants, therefore the prevention of ejectment is not the object of their system; the fear of losing land may be as powerful a motive as the actual loss of it."^ Giving evidence before the House of Commons committee, ' IrisJi Disturbances, p. 106. ^ "House of Commons Papers," July 7, 1834, p. 5. * Irish Disturbances, p. 188. 38 DANIEL O'CONNELL in 1832, a Queen's County magistrate related this story of Whiteboy vengeance: "On the very borders of the barony of Ossory, on a noble lord's estate, an ejectment was brought against the middleman ; ahabere was issued, possession taken, and the land was relet to a Mr. Marum, not to the tenants in possession, which is the usual way, for the six months' equity of redemption. Mr. Marum deluded the tenants with the hope that he took the land for their benefit ; but when the six months expired he turned out those tenants, and I am told he sold their household effects for the six months' rent; the consequence was his cattle were houghed, and driven from the county of Kilkenny into Queen's County for that purpose. For three years that system was kept up, and Mr. Marum was shot in the open day afterwards, in the midst of a dense population."* The son of this Mr. Marum was an earnest tenant-righter under Isaac Butt's leadership, in the seventies of last century, and was one of the followers of Mr. Parnell, who gave his sup- port to the Land League on its formation. He was elected to the House of Commons for North Kilkenny, in the eighties, and was a member of Mr. Parnell's parliamentary party. It was in the bye-election which followed in this constituency, after Mr. Marum's demise, and following the split in "Com- mittee Room 15," that Mr. Parnell was defeated, in the person of his candidate (a relative of the notorious Scully, of Bally- cohy, who was shot at but not killed in 1867), by the nominee of the opposing majority, the late Sir John Pope Hennessy. Yet another singular incident connected with this contest was the death, upon the same date, of Mr. Parnell and of Pope Hennessy, October 6, 1891. Both O'Connell and Dr. Doyle, the famous Bishop of Ossory, denounced the Whiteboy s in unmeasured censure, and were anxious to disassociate the Catholic cause from the violence and raiding of the insurgent peasants. This was partly prompted by policy and partly by sincerity. The enemies of both the Repeal movement and of all Catholic claims falsely charged these disturbances against the alleged disloyal teachings of the clergy and the Liberator, when, in reality, the Church was making itself too much the slave of an abominable law, and was tacitly upholding landlordism by not denouncing the glaring injustices which drove the tenants to outrage as the only protection against a condoned and tolerated oppression of the poor. It was the same in the early period of the White- boy insurrection. Sir George Cornwall Lewis quotes from Mr. • Irish Disturbances, p. 116. 39 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Wyse's History of the Catholic Association the following con- demnation of this attitude: "Neither in a collective nor individual capacity do the Catholic gentry and clergy appear to have had much control over the lower classes of their communion. Mr. O 'Conor fre- quently complains, in terms of just bitterness, of the more than Protestant severity of the Catholic landholders; and the thunders of the episcopacy, and the exhortations of the lower clergy, in the insurrection of Munster (1760-70), fell idly on the affections and fears of the infuriated peasantry."^ The author in a similar manner points out how the historic German peasants' war, in 1525, was used as a controversial argument against the Reformation, by Catholic prelates and nobles, in being attributed by them to the revolt of Luther; while English Catholic historians attempted to father upon the doctrines of Wycliff and his followers the uprising of Wat Tyler and the peasants of Kent. Neither in Germany, Eng- land, nor Ireland did it seem to occur to the wielders of censure to search for the real source of these uprisings, and to lay the blame honestly for the true causes of them where it should rightly be placed. For the first twenty-nine years of the Union with England no measure for the protection of the Irish tenant was even in- troduced into the British House of Commons by any minister or member. Numerous acts were passed to put down dis- turbances and to make still more arbitrary tUe power of the landlord to do with the land as he pleased. The Whiteboy organization was the only security for the tenant, and its stern decrees the one restraint upon the despotism of the owner. Mr. Sharman Crawford, a Protestant landlord from County Down, introduced two bills, in the sessions of 1835-36, to effect some slight amelioration of the lot of the Irish tenant, but no attention was paid to his pleading. His bills were dropped. The legislative record of the House of Commons in this respect was summed up in two sentences by Mr. Isaac Butt, in 1866, when he said: " For two centuries they had seen all the law arrayed on the side of the landlord. Numerous statutes had been passed to enforce his rights. Not one has been passed in favor of the tenant."^ II. — "THE RIBBON MEN" The Ribbon organization, which came into prominence at the later stages of the anti-tithe movement, was founded in * Irish DisUirbances, p. 178. ^ .4 Plea for the Celtic Race, p. 75. 40 DANIEL O'CONNELL Ulster, and had its origin in the Defenders, already briefly de- scribed. It became the most powerful of all the Irish secret societies of the middle of the nineteenth century, and exer- cised very considerable influence upon the subsequent up- building of the Fenian Brotherhood. It absorbed almost all the existing agrarian bodies after 1830, Whiteboyism being largely transformed into the better organized and more wide- spread Ribbon combination. It was as exclusive in its religious constitution as Orangeism, and admitted no members to its ranks who were not Catholics. Its original object was more protective than aggressive, and had anti - Orangeism rather than anti - landlordism as its guiding spirit and purpose. The part which the society played, however, in the war against tithes, and in the Repeal gatherings of the forties, broadened the sphere of its activity, and in a few years' time united the agrarian plans of the Whiteboys to the pro-Catholic programme of its Defender organizers. It was an oath -bound society, with signs and passwords, and as such was denounced and opposed by all the powers of the Catholic Church down to recent years. This did not materially arrest its rapid spread through Ulster, and in counties stretching from Louth westward through Westmeath and Longford to the northern counties of Connaught. It had no very strong hold, at any time, upon the more southern counties of Ireland, where the power of anti-Catholic in- fluences gradually diminished after the growth of the Repeal and anti-tithe agitations. The sectarian tyranny of Ulster was not felt where laborers and farmers were of the same faith as the members of secret associations, and the need for a society of the Defenders type was not required. The Ribbon society has been remarkable among secret organizations in Ireland for the few informers it has pro- duced. Not one, I believe, of its leaders or prominent mem- bers ever betrayed the association. Spies were sent into its ranks by Dublin Castle, and many of the ordinary members turned traitors on their fellows, when arrested for complicity in some illegal action, but the secrets of the society, the names of its leaders, its methods of government and of action were far more successfully concealed than those of any other oath- bound combination among the Irish people. This was due, primarily, to a wise precaution against keeping books, doc- uments, or records that would reveal information if lost or seized. In this respect these peasant conspirators were far wiser in their plans than the educated organizers and leaders of the Fenian Brotherhood. It has been said that nature 41 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND intended Irishmen to be agitators but not conspirators. Be that as it may, it can be safely affirmed that the more or less uneducated Ribbonmen have shown themselves to be more skilled in the methods of secret conspiracy than the more cultured class of their countrymen who founded Fenian- ism, to a large extent upon the Ribbon lodges of Ireland. Ribbonism failed completely, in company with every other Irish power or influence — political, revolutionary, social, and ecclesiastical — to render any combative service to the cause of the peasantry of Ireland during the great famine of 1847-48. I shall have more to say on this shameful period of Ireland's history in the next chapter. The Ribbonmen carried their organization with them when, in the great emigration which followed the famine years, they went, with millions of their race, to the United States, Great Britain, and Canada. The Ancient Order of Hibernians, now perhaps the most powerful pro-Celtic or- ganization in the world, was the trans-Atlantic offspring of the Ribbonism of Ireland. It has long ceased to be a se- cret or oath -bound organization, and has become mainly a benevolent society. Its membership is strictly confined to Catholics, in accord with the original aim of the parent (Defender) body, and this and other causes have prevented its becoming an effective revolutionary force on the side of the general Irish struggle for freedom. But no association of Irish-American citizens rendered more loyal or more pecuniary assistance to the Land League movement, and to Mr. Parnell's parliamentary party, than the divisions of the Ancient Order of Hibernians of America. After the failure of Gavan Duffy's league, and the triumph of the Archbishop Cullen policy, James Stephens found the Ribbon lodges one of the best recruiting grounds for his democratic revolutionary brotherhood. His Fenian move- ment largely absorbed the younger members of the pro- agrarian society. One — among other — extraordinary effect of this transformation was to procure for the landlords of Ireland almost twenty years of agrarian peace — that is, of a cessation of Whiteboy forms of attack upon their system and its adherents and interests. On the seeming collapse of Fenianism, following the trials and punishments of 1867-70, the agrarian spirit asserted itself again. Ribbonism manifested great activity in West- meath, Longford, and adjacent counties in fighting the old Whiteboy cause against landlordism, and compelled the government of Mr. Gladstone, during the chief-secretaryship of the present Duke of Devonshire (then Lord Hartington) 42 DANIEL O'CONNELL to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act, and to pass one of the many Whiteboy acts of the Irish ParHament and of the first decades of the Union, under the name of the Westmeath Act, to cope with the social insurrectionary activity of the Ribbon organization in this and adjoining counties. The "Molly Maguires," largely confined to Cavan, Leitrim, and Armagh, in the sixties and seventies, grew out of and became a rival body to the Ribbon society, as "The Lady Clares " sprang from the Whiteboy movement in the thirties. They committed many outrages of a shocking kind, which were unjustly fathered upon the larger society. They an- ticipated the Moonlighters of a later period in mere sense- less lawlessness. And, as in the case of the Moonlighters, there were policemen of the Whelehan class, and informers of the Cullinan type, who planned outrages under cover of the " Mollies" for the rewards which were liberally given by Dub- lin Castle for the detection of outrage and crime. In recent years the Ribbon societies of Ireland and Great Britain have followed the lead of the new development across the Atlantic, and have ceased to be both secret and oath-bound, save in the sense in which the Ancient Order of Foresters and Odd Fellows still adhere to the forms and ceremonies of "mystery" that were necessary when all com- binations of working-men were under the ban of a blindly jealous law. The name "Hibernian" is now substituted for the old, illegal Ribbon calling of these Catholic and once agrarian societies, and they exist mainly as rival bodies to the Orange lodges, in the spirit of the Defenders of the latter half of the eighteenth century. PART II O'CONNELL TO PARNELL CHAPTER V I. — THE GREAT FAMINE AND THE YOUNG IRELANDERS " Where the corn waves green on the fair hill-side, But each sheaf by the serfs and the slavelings tied Is taken to pander a foreigner's pride — There is our suffering fatherland! Where broad rivers flow 'neath a glorious sky, And the valleys like gems of emerald lie, Yet the young men and strong men starve and die For the want of bread in their own rich land!" — "Speranza" (Lady Wilde). It is related that Mr. John O'Connell, M.P., eldest son of the Liberator, read aloud in Conciliation Hall, Dublin, a let- ter he had received from a Catholic bishop in West Cork, in 1847, in which this sentence occurred, "The famine is spreading with fearful rapidity, and scores of persons are dying of starvation and fever, but the tenants are bravely paying their rents." Whereupon John O'Connell exclaimed, in proud tones, "I thank God I live among a people who would rather die of hunger than defraud their landlords of the rent!" It is not, unfortunately, on record that the au- thor of this atrocious sentiment was forthwith kicked from the hall into the sink of the Liffey. He was not even hissed by his audience ; so dead to every sense and right of manhood were the Irish people reduced in these black years of hopeless life and of a fetid pestilence of perverted morality. There is possibly no chapter in the wide records of human suffering and wrong so full of shame — measureless, unadul- terated, sickening shame — as that which tells us of (it is esti- mated) a million of people — including, presumably, two hun- dred thousand adult men — lying down to die in a land out of which forty-five millions' worth of food was being exported, in one year alone, for rent — the product of their own toil — and making no effort, combined or otherwise, to assert even the animal's right of existence — the right to live by the necessities of its nature. It stands unparalleled in human history, with 47 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND nothing approaching to it in the complete surrender of all the ordinary attributes of manhood by almost a whole nation, in the face of an artificial famine. England's callous action has been pleaded: Smith O'Brien's warnings, in 1845, to Sir Robert Peel, and this minister's an- swer by a coercion bill, in 1846; the dilatory and heartless policy of Lord John Russell; and the lupine conduct of the Irish landlords, in pressing for money grants from public funds to relieve distress, out of which rents might be extracted. All this, and everything else that stands in the records of this awful epoch against this class, may be urged, in truth and in reprobation, but it neither explains nor extenuates nor excuses in any way the wholesale cowardice of the men who saw food leave the country in ship-loads, and turned and saw their wives and little ones sicken and die, and who "bravely paid their rent" before dying themselves. What was the explanation of this inhuman spirit of social suicide ? It is a serious question to answer, but I firmly believe the answer to be this: During the tithe war of the thirties the peasantry were organized to resist the payment of these penal levies upon Catholics. Tithes were a combined in- justice upon both priests and people, and there was a tacit, if unacknowledged, co - operation between the spirit of Whiteboyism and of the anti - tithe combinations in the conflict against the laws responsible alike for the wrongs inflicted on the peasantry both as Catholics and tenants. The great Dr. Doyle preached an endless and un- relenting war against tithes. O'Connell hurled all his powers of invective, and all the might of his great following, against this "Protestant tyranny" of the Established Church. And it is on record that it was in an attempt to seize upon the cow of a priest, on the demand of tithes from a Protestant parson, that the fight ensued at Carrigshock in which a dozen police and soldiers were killed, and the hands of the English Parlia- ment were forced in the passing of the Tithe Commutation Act of 1838. No sooner was an end put to the tithe war than the usual denunciations of secret societies, of Whiteboyism, of Ribbon- ism, and of every combination of an illegal kind or character, was recommenced in pastoral letters, from altars, and from the O'Connell platforms. To war against tithes was righteous and legitimate. To continue the combat against landlordism and unjust rent would do injury to Catholic as well as to Protes- tant interests, and this was a moral abomination, " a violation of Catholic doctrine," and all the rest. 48 THE GREAT FAMINE All this moral and loyal toadyism to the law and order of the time did not placate the enemy of Repeal. Nothing of the kind. O'Connell and some of his chief supporters were prosecuted and imprisoned, and the great moral-force move- ment, led by the Liberator and the Catholic clergy, was put down by a not very formidable show of force; not, however, before the government of Sir Robert Peel had taken the pre- caution to increase the Maynooth grant. The collapse of O'Connell — in his old age and with impaired powers — the rivalry of the Young Irelanders with the move- ment cursed by John O'Connell's leadership, and the teach- ings of The Nation newspaper, though dividing the educated national opinion of the cities and towns into factions, left the mas§ of the people — the peasantry of the country — under the all but absolute leadership of the bishops and priests. The year 1845 saw the dread herald of the coming calamity in the failure of the potato crop, and in the efforts of Sir Rob- ert Peel in the next session, with true British spirit, to safe- guard in time the menaced interests of the landlord garrison by an attempt to pass a coercion act to enforce the payment of rents. These were warnings to the people's leaders as to what the callous English and landlord spirit would stand for in any great national peril that might arise. But the altars thundered against the wickedness of Ribbonism just the same. The pastorals of the bishops smote the Whiteboys, and proclaimed the general obligation of obeying magistrates and masters, as carrying authority from a divine source; and it was in this mood, and in a kindred one of begging for alms from the Parliament of a nation that would sink Celtic Ire- land beneath the waves of the Atlantic if she could, that the awful crisis of the great famine was faced by the popular and moral guides of the peasantry of Ireland. The position and policy of these leaders, the backbone of the Repeal Associa- tion, was to proclaim, in the month of July, 1846 — with the dread famine fiend already waving its wings of death over the country — the following slavish political profession: " First. Most dutiful and ever-inviolate loyalty to our most gracious and ever-beloved sovereign, Queen Victoria, and her heirs and successors forever. "Secondly. The total disclaimer of, and the total absence from, all physical force, violence, or breach of the law; or, in short, any violation of the laws of man, or the ordinances of the Eternal God, whose holy name be ever blessed! "Thirdly. The only means to be used are those of peace- able, legal, and constitutional combinations of all classes, sects, 4 49 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND and persuasions of her Majesty's most loyal subjects, and by al- ways legal means and objects." ^ Even in the meeting in Dublin at which this crawling polit- ical creed was reaffirmed — even there only one voice — that of Thomas Francis Meagher — was raised in protest against the impotency and disgrace of this policy in face of the greatest calamity that had befallen Ireland since the Cromwellian ex- termination. The government and the Church had put down Whiteboy- ism, Ribbonism, and all illegal combinations, and the re- sponsibility for what followed — for the holocaust of humanity which landlordism and English rule exacted from Ireland in a pagan homage to an inhuman system — must be shared be- tween the political and spiritual governors of the Irish people in those years of a measureless national shame. One power ruled the material interests of the people, the other their re- ligious and moral convictions. Both authorities preached law and order — one by coercion, soldiers, police, and evictions; the other in homilies, sermons, and denunciation. Both, too, agreed in fathering upon the Almighty the cause of the famine. It was the visitation of God! Hundreds of thousands of women, children, and men were, on this hideous theory, murdered by starvation because of some inscrutable decree of the God of the poor, who, two thousand years be- fore, had died to rescue them from the actual slavery of the Roman Empire, and of other pagan powers, by His Gospel, teaching, and life among the working-people. No more horri- ble creed of atheistic blasphemy was ever preached to a Chris- tian people than this; and looking back with a shudder upon that time one can well understand now how and why it was that myriads of human beings, into whose souls this moral poison had been instilled, should have lain down and died," in obedience to the will of God," after having "bravely paid their rent." Two brave episcopal voices spoke out against this mon- strous perversion of the law of Providence, but, unfortunate- ly, in vain: Dr. Maginn, the Catholic Bishop of Derry, in let- ters addressed to Lord Stanley, and the famous Dr. Hughes, Archbishop of New York, in a fiercer and finer strain of in- dignant Christian protest. The Bishop of Derry thus palli- ated, but also condemned, the general attitude of the clergy: "... And if the Irish priesthood have anything to answer for to God, it is for the tameness and the silence and the patient submission with which most of them looked upon the * History of the Fatnine, Father O'Roiirke, p. 138. 50 THE GREAT FAMINE wrongs, the ruin of their country, or for the gentle whispers they used, when their voices should have been as loud as the roar of the deep or the crash of the thunder-storm, arousing, awakening the world to humanity, outraged in the persons of their flocks, and thereby shaming their persecutors into mercy." In a lecture delivered in New York, on March 20, 1847, Archbishop Hughes expounded the true Christian and relig- ious position in this lofty and courageous deliverance : " I fear there is blasphemy in charging on the Almighty the result of human doings. The famine in Ireland, like the cholera in India, has been for many years indigenous. As long as it has been confined to a few cases in obscure and sequestered parts of the country, it may be said that the public administrators of the state are excusable, inasmuch as the facts did not come under their notice. But in the present instance it has attracted the attention of the world, and they call it God's famine. Yet the soil has produced its usu- al tribute for the support of those for whom it is cultivated. But political economy, finding Ireland too poor to buy the products of its own labor, exported that harvest to ' a better market,' and left the people to die of famine or live by alms. "Still the rights of life are dearer and higher than the rights of property, and, in a general famine like the present, there is no law of Heaven — no law of nature — that forbids a starving man to seize on bread wherever he can find it, even though it should be the loaves of propitiation on the altar of God's temple. But I say to those who maintain the sacred and inviolable 'rights of property,' if they would have them respected, to be careful also, and scrupulous, in recognizing the rights of humanity. "Let us be careful, then, not to blaspheme Providence by calling this God's famine. The state, that great civil cor- poration which we call the state, is bound, so long as it has power to do so, to guard the life of its members from being sacrificed by famine from within as much as from their be- ing slaughtered by the enemy from without. " But the vice inherent in our system of social and political economy is so subtle that it eludes inquiry; you cannot trace it to the source. The poor man on whom the coroner holds an inquest has been murdered, but no one has killed him. There is no external wound, there is no symptom of internal disease. Society guards him against all outward violence. It merely encircled around, and in order to keep up what is called the regular current of trade it allowed political economy, with an invisible hand, to apply the air-pump to the narrow 51 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND limits within which he was confined and exhaust the atmos- phere of his physical life. Who did it ? No one did it. Yet it was done! "It is manifest that the causes of Ireland's present suffer- ing have been multitudinous. Nearly the whole of the soil is under the ownership of persons having no sympathy with the population except the cold tie of self-interest. "Since her union with England her commerce has followed capital to the sister isle. Nothing has remained but the prod- uce of the soil ; and that is sent to England to find a ' better market,' for the rent must be paid, but neither the produce nor the rent is ever returned. "It has been established that the average exportation of capital from this source alone (indeed, it is the only resource that has been left) is equal to some twenty - five or thirty million dollars annually for the last seven - and - forty years; and it is at the close of this last period, by the failure of the po- tato crop, that Ireland, without trade, without manufactures, without a return from her agricultural exports, sinks beneath the last feather; not that that feather was so weighty, but that the burden previously imposed was far above her strength to bear." Here we have both the Christian, the economic, and po- litical position clearly expounded; but Dr. Hughes spoke in New York. The prelates, priests, and people of Ireland aban- doned themselves to the soulless creed of slaves, and probably confounded "the rights of humanity" with the disloyal and illegal combinations of the Ribbonmen,and held the true mor- al gospel to be what John O'Connell boasted of — death rather than to "defraud" the landlord of his rent. The facts of this unparalleled famine are matters of history, and do not require reproduction in this story. The above extract truthfully explains the originating cause of a calamity which cost Ireland more lives than were lost in all the wars of Napoleon. There were a few disturbances at Westport, in Mayo, Dungarvan, Mallow, Skibbereen, Killarney, and other places, in most of which clergymen distinguished themselves by " restraining the people," thereby earning the special thanks of the Lord Lieutenant of the time for their services to "law and order." Had the people been encouraged to stop the exportation of food when O'Connell's demand for a measure of this kind had been refused in 1845 (^ measure resorted to by the Irish executive of the period in the famine of 1740-41), the hands of the government would have been forced in time, and the horrors of " Black '47 " would have been greatly mitigated. He 52 THE GREAT FAMINE was not backed up as he ought to have been by those who dif- fered with him on other questions. He made his proposal in October, 1845, and induced a deputation to wait upon Lord Heytesbury, at the Viceregal Lodge, to obtain a government consideration of the scheme. He pointed out how sixteen thousand quarters of Irish oats had been exported in one week of that year from Ireland to England, and urged that the further shipping of such food should be arrested; that distilling and brewing should be suspended; the ports of Ireland be thrown open to the free importation of foreign food, while a loan of a million and a half of money should be made to Ireland, on the security of the annual proceeds of the woods and forests, with which to meet the peril that menaced the country. These timely and practical proposals were, of course, rejected by the English government. The friction between O'Connell and the Young Irelanders followed ; the split of 1847 eventuated. O'Connell died in the same year at Genoa, on his way to Rome, it is said, broken-hearted, and the people were left to the consolation that they were victims of God's famine, and not of landlordism or of English rule. A dozen repetitions of Carrigshock in the three southern provinces, in the early part of 1846 — in reply to Peel's proposed coercion — would have largely saved the situation. O'Connell's proposal ought to have been the minimum demand of Ireland that year, and on its refusal the whole country should have been thrown into social revolt, against the payment of all rent to landlords, with vigilance committees in every seaport to stop all exportation of food. Lives would, of course, be lost, but had five thousand men died then for the right to live on the products of their labor, they would have redeemed the race of the period from the stigma of national pusillanimity, and have saved three-fourths of the slaves who subsequently died like sheep, without leaving on record one single redeeming trait of courageous manhood to the credit of their memories. The conduct of the Irish landlords before, during, and after the famine was only in keeping with and worthy of their record. Nothing more inhumanly selfish and base is found to the disgrace of any class in any crisis in the history of civilized society. They urged the government to pass coercion; they pressed for more stringent laws for the better payment of rents; they carried out evictions, and did every- thing else that their antecedents and character generally would incite so morally corrupt a privileged order to commit. There were a few exceptions to the general conduct of the 53 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND mercenary horde, but these only bring into greater contrast the vulture propensities of the mass of Irish land-owners of the time. Their brutal heartlessness was even too much for the London Times. That organ of the English classes lashed the sordid crew with scorpions in a series of scathing editorial attacks. Two brief extracts w^ill suffice to show what so virulent an enemy of the Celtic people felt compelled to say of the ' ' nobility and gentry ' ' for whom Ireland was held down by England's power. Times, September 22, 1846: "A confederacy of rich pro- prietors to dun the national treasury, and to eke out from their resources that employment for the poor which they are themselves bound to provide by every sense of duty to a land from which they derive their incomes. It is too bad that the Irish landlord should come to ask charity of the EngHsh and Scotch mechanic, but it seems that those who forget all duties forget all shame. The Irish rent must be paid twice over." Times, January 6, 1847: "For the future we will take no denial. We in England maintain our own poor; and unless the Irish land-owners are prepared to see the British public deliberately, formally, and explicitly demanding a summary confiscation of the whole soil of Ireland, they must and shall maintain theirs." II. — JAMES FINTAN LALOR It is no part of my task to deal at any length with the birth, teaching, and influence of The Nation, the poetry and power of Thomas Davis, or the great impetus which Gavan Duffy's and Mitchel's propaganda gave to the cause of nationalism from 1842 to the famine years. All this belongs to the do- main of popular history, and the ample records of the prog- ress thus made, left to us in the writings of Duffy and Mitchel, render any such task altogether unnecessary. Both Duffy and John Blake Dillon made The Nation a powerful advocate of land reform. They raised no uncertain voice in behalf of a fundamental change in the tenure of land, such as would offer greater security to the cultivators. Not in one but in scores of numbers of the great organ Duffy, Davis, and Dillon had founded were the doctrines of "the land for the people" advanced, almost as radically as in the later times when John Blake Dillon's son preached his father's evangel of land emancipation in every county of Ireland. But The Nation was read chiefly in the cities and towns, and 54 THE GREAT FAMINE not so generally among the common people. Its supporters were far more interested in the fortunes of the national move- ment than in the changes of tenure urged upon Parliament in the interests of the tenant farmer. The Young Irelanders were no more "agrarians" than O'Connell's following. Smith O'Brien, their leader, was him- self a landlord. While he was in every sense a chivalrous Irishman and a moderate land reformer, as a Parliamen- tarian he could not shake off all the social influences of the class to which he belonged, and anticipate the action of Mr. Parnell by becoming the leader of a revolt against the system upheld by England for the advantages of his own order. Herein lay another reason why the history of the famine years will ever be a record of Celtic humiliation. John Mitchel's fiery spirit went into revolt against the whole Repeal movement when it had nothing more to offer to the people menaced with a dire calamity than moral-force arguments and professions of loyalty. He felt that the crisis cried out for some revolutionary media as the only desperate remedy which equally desperate evils require. He had no fixed ideas of how such a revolution should be organized or carried on. He only saw the need, and he boldly proclaimed it. Up to 1847 Mitchel, like all the Young Irelanders, hoped for a coming-over of the landlords to the people's side, as did smaller men than Mitchel in later years. The landlords had encouraged this view until they saw all danger of a no - rent movement pass, when they threw off the mask and clamored as ever for repression. This conduct enraged Mitchel, and he commenced to change his views in their regard. Before this change had made any marked headway in his opinion he had proposed an extraordinary scheme — a strike against the payment of poor rates, half of which were chargeable to the landlords. The object was, of course, to force the hands of the government in this manner into the adoption of excep- tional measures of state assistance ; but the way in which this was proposed to be done condemned the plan as utterly im- practicable, and as possessing no real revolutionary impulse or impelling power. In the mean time — that is, early in 1847 — ^ series of letters commenced to appear in The Nation over the signature of an otherwise unknown person, "James F. Lalor," residing in a village in Queen's County. They at once riveted the atten- tion of Dufl[y and Mitchel by their powerful style, direct force, concentrated passion, and revolutionary fire. The't writer called for action, not debate. The time for discussion! had gone by. Repeal was not the issue then. It was thef 55 V v/ THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND agony question of the people's lives. The cause and culprit for the condition of the country were not so much the English government as the Irish landlords, and the remedy lay in a strike against rent and not in any paltry scheme for the with- i holding of rates. The incurable and calculated treason of ^he landlord class to country and people was demonstrated in language of burning invective, and the Confederation and Repeal clubs were called upon, in terms of commanding dig- nity and force, to drop their parleying with the territorial traitors and strike at the main source, not alone of the pres- ent but of past and, unless destroyed, of future calamities to the nation — landlordism. This programme captured Mitchel's combative mind. It was the plan which could alone rouse the country into most general action, cause the government most embarrassment, and give more punishment to the class who had betrayed Smith O'Brien into the expectation of their adhesion to the national cause, only to persuade the English government in the autumn session of 1847 to give Ireland coercion instead of a national administration. This perfidy won Mitchel over, more or less, to Lalor's plans and principles. Mitchel naturally wished to give expression to his more in- surrectionary ideas in the columns of The Nation, but he met with the objection of Duffy's cooler judgment, that to turn the paper into a frankly revolutionary organ would be a challenge to the Castle to suppress it, while there were neither organized forces nor arms available to carry the controversy along the logical lines of argument with her Majesty's military resources. So Mitchel broke with The Nation in December, 1847, and in a few months' time started The United Irishman. Shortly after this the difference of opinion and of principles which caused the rupture between Duffy and Mitchel broke out in the Young Ireland body, the National Confederation. A three days' discussion took place in Dublin, with Smith O'Brien in the chair, on virtually Mitchel's proposals and plans. The result was unfavorable to Mitchel, and he and his friends withdrew. Thus two splits occurred among the na- tional leaders within the famine period. The guides were de- bating and quarrelling while the people were dying. Meagher delivered a classic speech on the sword, and similar warrior sentiments were eloquently spoken and written in Dublin, jDut there was no response to Lalor's appeal for an effective \ ikttack upon the citadel of the real enemy's position and power jl — rent. ■""" Mitchel's United IrisJiman had but a brief existence. Its open defiance of government power and frankly revolution- 56 THE GREAT FAMINE ary principles challenged Lord Clarendon to repressive ac- tion. Plans of guerilla warfare were expounded in its columns and the evils and humiliations of English rule in Ireland were depicted in a style which has probably never been surpassed by any writer in the English language for combined brilliancy and power. His analysis of the human aspect of the country under the moral and physical miasma of the famine gives us a glimpse of hopeless, social despair in a setting of literary fin- ish that fascinates the reader with its magic realism of picture and expression. "Last year" (1847), he wrote, "we recollect it well, a calm, still horror was over the land. Go where you would, in the heart of the town or in the suburb, there was the still- ness and heavy, pall-like feel of the chamber of death. You stood in the presence of a dread, silent, vast dissolution. An unseen ruin was creeping round you. You saw no war of classes, no open janizary war of foreigners, no human agency of destruction. You could weep, but the rising curse died unspoken within your heart like a profanity. Human passion there was none, but inhuman and unearthly quiet. Children met you, toiling heavily on stone-heaps, but their burning eyes were senseless and their faces cramped and weazened like stunted old men. Gangs worked, but without a murmur or a whistle or a laugh, ghostly, like voiceless shadows to the eye. Even womanhood had ceased to be womanly. The birds of the air carolled no more, and the crow and the raven dropped dead upon the wing. Nay, the sky of heaven, the blue mountains, the still lake, stretch- ing far away westward, looked not as their wont. Between them and you rose up a steaming agony, a film of suffering, impervious and dim. It seemed as if the anima mmidi, the soul of the* land, was faint and dying, and that the faint- ness and the death had crept into all things of heaven and earth." ^ The story of Mitchel's trial and sentence in 1848 is part of Irish history. He was the first Irish political prisoner tried under the Treason Felony Act, a law specially passed in that year by Parliament, to degrade an Irish enemy to England's spotless Irish rule to the level of a common felon. On the seizure of The United Irishman by Dublin Castle, John Martin, a bosom friend of Mitchel's, and subsequently his brother-in-law, started The Felon, in which to uphold the principles and faith of the suppressed revolutionary organ. To this paper James Fintan Lalor contributed letters which ^ Life of John Mitchel, William Dillon, vol. i., p. 211. 57 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND further expounded his doctrines of the national ownership of land, and helped to have Mr. Martin sent to Tasmania in the "felon" footsteps of his leader and friend. There was no real Irish revolutionary mind in the '48 period except Lalor's. There were brilliant writers, ardent patriots, eloquent orators, and nationalist poets; a galaxy of talent, of fine characters, of noble idealists, and of splendidly earnest men. But it was only in the head and heart of a little, deformed gentleman-farmer's son — a descendant of an out- lawed "Tory" of the early confiscations — that the spirit and fire and purpose of a true Celtic revolutionist were found. Lalor's plan was suited to the race, the time, and the calam- ity it was intended to cope with. It was exactly what the occasion demanded. It combined the national sentiment with the agrarian interest and passion, and would have rallied the aggressive Whiteboy and Ribbon spirit, and entire peasant feeling of the country, behind a movement that would have given Lord Clarendon a social insurrection, as well as a revolutionary nationalist uprising, to deal with before that revolutionary year of 1848. To avert all the horrors of the situation would probably have been impossible even if Lalor's plans had been acted upon when first proposed. For even he had been dilatory in dealing with the spirit of social disease that crept into the life of Ireland in 1846. But there would have been less loss of life, less national shame to lament over in after years, while there would have been a far speedier settlement of the land and national cjuestions. The following extracts from his letters in John Martin's Irish Felon will give my readers a presentation of his theories ^ of the national ownership of land and of his revolutionary _) scheme in 1847-48: "For wisdom knows that in national action littleness is more fatal than the wildest rashness; that greatness of ob- ject is essential to greatness of effort, strength, and success; that a revolution ought never to take its stand on low or narrow grounds, but seize on the broadest and highest ground it can lay hands on, and that a petty enterprise seldom succeeds. Not to fall back on '82, but act up to '48, not to resume or restore an old constitution, but to found a new nation and raise up a free people, and strong as well as free, and secure as well as strong, based on a peasantry rooted like rocks in the soil of the land, this is my object, as I hope it is yours, and this, you may be assured, is the easier, as it is the nobler and the more pressing enter- prise." 58 THE GREAT FAMINE "For Repeal all the moral means at our disposal have in / turn been used, abused, and abandoned. All the military | s^ means it can command will fail us utterly. Compare the two • questions. Repeal would require a national organization; a central representative authority, formally convened, formally elected; a regular army, a regulated war of concerted ac- tion and combined movement. When shall we have them? Where is your national council of three hundred.-* Where is your national guard of three hundred thousand? On Repeal, Ireland, of necessity, should resolve and act by the kingdom altogether, linked and led, and if beaten in the kingdom there would be nothing to fall back upon. She could not possibly act by parishes. To club and arm would not be enough, or rather it would be nothing, and for Repeal alone Ireland will neither club nor arm. The towns only will do so. A Repeal war would probably be the fight and defeat of a single field day; or, if protracted, it would be a mere game of chess, and England, be assured, would beat you in a game of chess. On the other question all circumstances differ, as I could easily show you. But I have gone into this portion of the subject prematurely and unawares, and here I stop, being reluctant, besides, to trespass too long on the time of her Majesty's legal and military advisers. "I would regret much to have my meaning in any degree misconceived. I do not desire, by any means, to depreciate the value and importance of Repeal, in the valid and vigorous sense of the term, but only in its vulgar acceptation. I do ' not want to make the tenure question the sole or main topic \ and purpose of The Felon, or to make Repeal only secondary , y and subservient. I do not wish — far from it — to consider the two questions as antagonistic or distinct. My wish is to combine and cement the two into one, and so perfect and reinforce and strengthen both, and carry both. I, too, want to bring about an alliance and 'combination of classes,' an alliance more wanted and better worth, more feasible, ef- fective, and honorable than any treasonable alliance with the enemy's garrison, based on the surrender and sacrifice . of the rights and lives of the Irish people. I want to ally / the town and the country. Repeal is the question of the town population; and the tenure question is that of the country peasantry; both combined, taking each in its full extent and efficacy, form the question of Ireland — her ques- tion for the battle-day. "The principle I state, and mean to stand upon, is this, that the entire ownership of Ireland, moral and material, up to the sun and down to the centre, is vested of right in 59 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the people of Ireland; that they, and none but they, are the land-owners and law-makers of this island; that all laws are null and void not made by them, and all titles to land invalid not conferred or confirmed by them; and that this full right of ownership may and ought to be asserted and enforced by any and all means which God has put in the power of man. In other, if not plainer, words, I hold and maintain that the entire soil of a country belongs of right to the entire people of that country, and is the rightful property, not of any one class, but of the nation at large, in full effective possession, to let to whom they will, on whatever tenures, terms, rents, services, and conditions they will, one condition being, how- ever, unavoidable and essential, the condition that the tenant shall bear full, true, and undivided fealty and allegiance to the nation, and the laws of the nation, whose lands he holds, and owns no allegiance whatsoever to any other prince, power, or people, or any obligation of obedience or respect to their will, orders, or laws. I hold further, and firmly believe, that the enjoyment by the people of this right of first owner- ship in the soil is essential to the vigor and vitality of all other rights; to their vitality, efficacy, and value; to their secure possession and safe exercise. For let no people de- ceive themselves or be deceived by the words and colors and phrases and forms of a mock freedom, by constitutions and charters and articles and franchises. These things are paper and parchment, waste and worthless. Let laws and institutions say what they will, this fact will be stronger than all laws, and prevail against them — the fact that those who own your lands will make your laws and command your liberties and your lives. But this is tyranny and slavery; tyranny in its wildest scope and worst shape; slavery of body and soul, from the cradle to the coffin; slavery with all its horrors and with none of its physical com- forts and security; even as it is in Ireland, where the whole community is made up of tyrants, slaves, and slave-drivers. A people whose lands and lives are thus in the keeping and custody of others instead of in their own are not in a position of common safety. The Irish famine of '46 is example and proof. The corn crops were sufficient to feed the island. But the landlords would have their rents in spite of famine and defiance of fever. They took the whole harvest and left hunger to those who raised it. Had the people of Ireland been the landlords of Ireland not a human creature would have died of hunger, nor the failure of the potato been con- sidered a matter of any consequence. "This principle, then — that the property and possession of 60 THE GREAT FAMINE the land, as well as the powers of legislation, belong of right to the people who live in the land and under the law — do you assent to it, in its full integrity, and to the present and pressing necessity of enforcing it? Your reason may assent, yet your feelings refuse and revolt, or those of others, at least, may do so. Mercy is for the merciful; and you may think it a pity to oust and abolish the present noble race of land-owners, who have ever been so pitiful and compassionate themselves. What! Is your sympathy for a class so great and your sympathy for a whole people so small? For those same land- owners are now treading out the very life and existence of an entire people, and trampling down the liberties and hopes of this island forever. It is a mere question between a people and a class, between a people of eight millions and a class of eight thousand. They or we must quit this island. It is a people to be saved or lost; it is the island to be kept or surrendered. They have served us with a general writ of ejectment. Wherefore, I say, let them get a notice to quit at once, or we shall oust possession under the law of nature. There are men who claim protection for them, and for all their tyrannous rights and powers, being as one class of the Irish people. I deny the claim. They form no class of the Irish people, or of any other people. Strangers they are in this land they call theirs, strangers here and strangers every- where; owning no country and owned by none; rejecting Ire- land and rejected by England ; tyrants to this island and slaves to another; here they stand, hating and hated, their hand ever against us, as ours against them, an outcast and ruffianly horde, alone in the world and alone in its history, a class by themselves. They do not now, and never did, belong to this island at all. Tyrants and traitors have they ever been to us and ours since first they set foot on our soil. Their crime it is, and not England's, that Ireland stands where she does to-day — or rather it is our own, that have borne them so long. Were they a class of the Irish people the Union could be repealed without a life lost. Had they been a class of the Irish people that Union would have never been. But for them we would now be free, prosperous, and happy. Until they be removed no people can ever take root, grow up, and flourish here. The question between them and us must sooner or later have been brought to a deadly issue. For Heaven's sake and Ireland's let us settle it now and not leave it to our children to settle. Indeed, it must be settled now; for it is plain to any ordinary sight that they or we are doomed. A cry has gone up to Heaven for the living and for the dead — to save the living, to avenge the dead. 6i THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "There are, however, many landlords, perhaps, and certain- ly a few, not fairly chargeable with the crimes of their order, and you may think it hard they should lose their lands. But recollect, the principle I assert would make Ireland in fact, as she is of right, mistress and queen of all those lands; that she, poor lady, had ever a soft heart and grateful dis- position; and that she may, if she please, in reward of alle- giance, confer new titles or confirm the old. Let us crown her queen, and then let her do with her lands as a queen may do." " In the case of any existing interest, of what nature soever, I feel assured that no question but one would need to be answered. Does the owner of that interest assent to swear allegiance to the people of Ireland and to hold in fee from the Irish nation? If he assents, he may be assured he will suffer no loss — no eventual or permanent loss, I mean, for some temporary loss he must assuredly suffer. But such loss would be incidental and inevitable to any armed in- surrection whatever, no matter on what principle the right of resistance should be resorted to. If he refuse, then I say away with him — out of this land with him — himself and all his robber rights and all things himself and his rights have brought into our island — blood and tears and famine and the fever that goes with famine." "Between the relative merits and importance of the two rights, the people's right to the land and their right to legisla- tion, I do not mean or wish to institute any comparison. I am far, indeed, from desirous to put the two rights in competi- tion or contrast, for I consider each alike as the natural complement of the other, necessary to its theoretical com- pleteness and practical efficacy. But considering them for a moment as distinct, I do mean to assert this, that the land question contains, and the legislative question does not con- tain, the materials from which victory is manufactured, and that, therefore, if we be truly in earnest and determined on success, it is on the former question, and not on the latter, we must take our stand, fling out our banner, and hurl down to England our gage of battle. Victory follows that banner alone, that and no other. This island is ours, and have it we will, if the leaders be but true to the people and the people be true to themselves." "But I do not class among them the robbers' right by which the lands of this country are now held in fee from the British Crown. I acknowledge no right of property in 62 THE GREAT FAMINE a small class which goes to abrogate the rights of a numerous people. I acknowledge no right of property in eight thou- sand persons, be they noble or ignoble, which takes away all right of property, security, independence, and existence itself, from a population of eight millions, and stands in bar to all the political rights of this island and all the social rights of its inhabitants. I acknowledge no right of property which takes the food of millions and gives them a famine, which denies to the peasant the right of a home and concedes, in exchange, the right of a workhouse. I deny and challenge all such rights, howsoever founded or enforced. I challenge them as founded only on the code of the brigand and en- forced only by the sanction of the hangman. Against them I assert the true and indefeasible right of property — the right of our people to live in this land and possess it; to live in it in comfort, security, and independence; and to live in it by their own labor, on their own land, as God and nature meant them to do. Against them I shall array, if I can, all the forces that yet remain in this island. And against them I am determined to make war, to their destruction or my own. "These are my principles and views. I shall have other opportunities to develop and defend them. I have some few other requisitions to make; but I choose to defer them for other reasons besides want of time and space. Our first business, before we can advance a step, is to fix our own footing and make good our position. That once done, this contest must, if possible, be brought to a speedy close. "James F. Lalor. " Tenakil, Abbeyleix, June 21, 1S48." After the trial and sentence of Mitchel, the more moderate Young Irelanders, most of those who had opposed his appeals to the people to arm and fight for life and country the previous year, ventured to call upon the country to prepare and hold the coming harvest. It was only two years too late. Thou- sands were dying of hunger each week. Myriads had already fallen victims to starvation and fever. But so many eloquent articles on resistance had been written, and so many in- vocations to the sword had been spoken, that action of some sort was called for and resolved upon — two years too late. The government was equal to the occasion, and suspended the Habeas Corpus Act. Warrants were issued for the arrest of Smith O'Brien, Meagher, Dillon, O'Gorman, and others less prominent; Gavan Duffy, John Martin, and Kevin O'Doherty being already arrested and placed under trial for seditious articles in The Nation and The Felon newspapers. 63 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND O'Brien marched on Callan, in Kilkenny, with a small fol- lowing. They encountered some hussars, who begged not to be taken prisoners, and were allowed to proceed — with their arms. At Killenaule, over the border of Tipperary, a barri- cade was put up. John Blake Dillon commanded here, and had under him one James Stephens, a name destined to figure more prominently in after Irish history than .all the names of all the Young Ireland leaders put together. He wanted to fire upon the first soldier who approached the barricade, but Dillon had orders from O'Brien not to shed blood, if possible. So he lowered his weapon and no enemy was hurt. Similar irresolution, or aversion to real insurrection, dominated all O'Brien's actions in these days, and the inglorious rising came to an end with his subsequent arrest. Mitchel blames the priests, primarily, for persuading the people not to fight. Begging alms and making paupers of men they had already taught to be slaves was more in their line, and the taunt of Mitchel is only too well deserved: "When the final scene opened, however, and the whole might of the empire was gathering itself to crush us, the clergy, as a body, were found on the side of the enemy. They hoped more for their Church in a union with monarchical and aristocratic England than in an Ireland revolutionized and republicanized, and having taken their part, they certain- ly did the enemy's business well."^ Mr. John O'Leary, the veteran and widely esteemed na- tionalist leader, tells a delightful story in a charmingly candid manner against Fintan Lalor and himself, in connection with an "insurrection" which also missed fire. It followed that of Ballingarry in the order of time, but has figured less promi- nently in history for the reason that its leaders had the good sense not to talk or write too much about it. "After much moving about for months on the part of Lalor, Luby, myself, and others, and much conferring with many more or less influential people in the various counties, it was agreed that action was to be taken'on a certain day, or, rather, on the night of that day. My part in that action was to consist in gathering such people as I could from in and about Tipperary, and directing them on Cashel — some ten miles distant — where Lalor then was, and where he intended to attack the barracks (if sufficient forces could be got to- gether), with what exact ulterior object is more than I can now call to mind. It is probable it was intended that we should afterwards march on Clonmel with such contingents * Last Conquest of Ireland, Perhaps, p. 300. 64 THE GREAT FAMINE as might be supplied by Brennan, who was to operate, and, indeed, did operate, in another region on the same night. However, the ultimate object mattered not at all, for the im- mediate attack on Cashel proved an utter failure. . . . " However, there was no betrayal or leaking out of the de- sign. The next day Lalor and I, finding ourselves and our schem.es apparently unsuspected, moved on to Clonmel. . . . Such was, practically, the end of Lalor's conspiracy, the re- sult being substantially the same as in the operations of O'Brien and O'Mahony in the preceding autumn. The moun- tain in labor was not so big, and the mouse that came forth was not appreciably smaller; but still there was no gainsaying the fact that the product was only a mouse, and in so far ridiculous." ^ Lalor was arrested, subsequently, for proclaiming revolu- tionary ideas in Tipperary, and removed from Nenagh prison to Dublin to give evidence for John Martin in the prosecution of Mitchel's friend for publishing, among other matters, some of Lalor's letters. His health was so bad that he had to be released. He died at 39 Great Britain Street, Dublin, on December 27, 1849. He had only reached his fortieth year. Mr. O'Leary, who is himself a distinguished author and a man of high literary tastes and judgment, placed Fintan Lalor before any of the '48 school of writers for clearness, di- rectness, and strength. The wonderful little hunchback from the village in Queen's County powerfully influenced the minds and convictions of two noted men, as dissimilar as two virile minds could well be, in his brief public life of some three years. He made John Mitchel an agrarian revolutionist, and, indirectly, gave Henry George the social gospel of land nationalization — minus all its pro-rebellious Irish bearings. * Introductionby John O'Leary, Writings of Fintan Lalor, pp. 15, 16. 5 CHAPTER VI THE TENANTS' LEAGUE: CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY Both gods and men appeared to have deserted the Irish peasants during the years 1846-50. John Mitchel asserts that one milHon five hundred thousand human beings died of famine and fever during the three years of 1846-47-48. " Now, that milhon and a half of men, women, and children were carefully, prudently, and peacefully slain by the English government. They died of hunger in the midst of abundance, which their own hands created, and it is quite immaterial to distinguish those who perished in the agonies of famine itself from those who died of typhus fever, which in Ireland is al- ways caused by famine." ^ In 1847 alone food to the value of ;^44 958,000 sterling was grown in Ireland, according to the statistical returns for that year. But a million of people died for want of food all the same. The astounded world poured out its charity in lavish streams when the English and the landlords raised the cry for alms; and it is on record that some of the food-laden ships, speeding on a voyage of mercy to the Irish shores, passed on their way other ships laden with Irish produce, sailing from the same shores to England, with the exported fruits of Irish toil and land, to be turned into rent for the Irish landlords in the Eng- lish market. But, as the peasants had chosen to die like sheep rather than retain that food in a fight for life, to live or die like men, their loss to the Irish nation need not occasion many pangs of racial regret. In these years coercion reigned supreme in Ireland. Of this commodity Ireland had no famine. State trials were the order of the day in '48. Juries in all political cases were openly and systematically packed by Dublin Castle, and the only feeling this provoked in England was one of savage re- gret that there was not a more summary way of disposing of * Last Conquest of Ireland, Perhaps, p. 323. 66 THE TENANTS' LEAGUE the "felonious" editors and others who had dared to write sedition against the most humane and progressive rule known to civilized lands. So Mitchel, Meagher, O'Brien, Martin, and others were shipped as "felons" to Tasmania, while Dillon, Stephens, O'Mahony, and many more escaped into exile, leaving the country to the leadership of the priests and to the tender mercies of the landlords. One prominent leader remained. Charles Gavan Duffy was twice put on trial on treasonable charges, but he had the good-fortune not to be convicted. In after years this fact invited unworthy taunts from former friends, and the name of "Give-in" Duffy was invented to insinuate a most un- warranted charge of backing down on the part of the founder of The Nation. There was not the remotest ground for this suggestion. Duffy was a kind of compendium of the Young Ireland party. He had much of the distinguishing qualities of each of its most prominent men — Smith O'Brien's chivalrous de- votion to Ireland; Thomas Davis's poetic gifts and broad- minded nationalism; Mitchel's literary power and fervid Celtic imagination, and Dillon's high personal qualities. He had, likewise, a fuller grasp of economic questions and a wider range of information than any of those who were pos- sessed of some one quality in fuller measure than was given to the more varied equipment of Duffy's capacity. He had not been won over to Lalor's principles as Mitchel had; possibly because his mind was cast more in the mould of what is called "statesmanship" than in that of a revolu- tionist. Duffy was, however, an ardent land reformer, who saw clearly the use and abuse of parliamentary media for the attainment of measures essential to Ireland's future welfare and progress. He revolted against O'Connell's plan of mak- ing the Irish representation in Westminster a means of pro- moting Catholics to ofhce, and of waiting until some ministry might be induced by some chance to offer Repeal, for Irish support. That policy had completely and disastrously failed in 1846, and at a meeting of the National Confederation, be- fore the break-up of the Young Ireland party, Duffy proposed and carried resolutions calling for a policy of independent opposition of all English parties and governments by the representatives from Ireland. This was the identical policy which Isaac Butt put into operation in the seventies, and which Parnell carried to its full length — and a little farther — in the eighties, with marvellously successful results. In 1849 the humane rulers of Ireland passed an Encumber- ed Estates Act, to enable the impecunious Irish landlords to 67 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND break the legal bonds of the English law of primogeniture and to sell their estates. A large number of them disposed of their properties and removed from the country, to make way for a new class who were induced to invest capital in Irish land as a purely profit-making enterprise, and for the social distinction which the ownership of estates offers to the mem- bers of English society. The tenants were virtually bought with the land, under the operations of this act — that is, their improvements and occupancy rights were. In order the better to dispose of their properties, old owners began, in 1849, a system of clearances in wholesale evictions which, according to Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics, dis- posed of one hundred and ninety thousand families in three years — that is, of over nine hundred and fifty thousand peo- ple. These evicted farms were to be consolidated into large grazing ranches, and larger tillage holdings, in the expectation that English and Scotch farmers with capital would come to Ireland and occupy them. This system was carried on and extended by the new class of landlords, too, whenever possible during the early fifties. There were but comparatively few agrarian outrages in the country in retaliation for these wholesale clearances in 1849- 51, but the number that did occur seemed not to suggest to English rulers what had caused such violence. The Ribbon- men were still under the ban of the Church, and the sacred cause of English law and order had all its moral protection. Possibly this had something to do with the legislative blind- ness of Westminster. So the evicted people fled to all quar- ters of the globe, and those who had not wherewith to fly crowded themselves into the already congested workhouses of the country to live and die as paupers. In 1849 two Catholic curates, to their eternal credit be it once more recorded, broke the sickening record of apathy or indifference on the part of the clergy to the fate of the peas- antry since the tithe war, and founded a tenants' organiza- tion. They were the Rev. Thomas O'Shea and the Rev. Matthew Keefe, made known to well-deserved fame by Gavan Duffy as the "The Callan Curates," their sacred ministry being in the little Kilkenny capital of a once sturdy Whiteboy district. They started "The Callan Tenant Protection So- ciety," with a platform of "Fair Rents, Tenant Right, and Employment." This small association was the beginning of the movement for land reform, which merged later into "The Tenant League of North and South," organized by Gavan Duffy, Sharman Crawford, Frederick Lucas, George Henry Moore, and others, in 1852, and which Archbishop Cullen 68 THE TENANTS' LEAGUE and other bishops destroyed by their opposition and treach- ery in 1855. Ulster had anticipated the new combination of tenants in the South, in the formation of tenant associations in 1848, and these examples, along with the terrible lessons of landlord clearances, stimulated the action of the country elsewhere, and gave Duffy and his coworkers the opportunity of weld- ing the scattered branches into one combination. He has related in his League of North and South the story of these efforts, their temporary success and ultimate heart-breaking failure, in a narrative of absorbing interest to every student of the history of Irish land reform. Aided by Lucas (an Englishman of transparent sincerity in his labors for Ireland, and a public man of the highest char- acter), who had transferred his paper. The Tablet, from Lon- don to Dublin in 1850, and by Dr. McKnight, the editor of The Banner of Ulster, a Presbyterian organ in Belfast, Duffy and his allies succeeded in. uniting the North and South on the land question in these potential years. A tenant league was formed, a programme drawn up, and a policy of inde- pendent opposition declared, on the lines laid down by Duffy in 1848, and in a short time the leaders of the new combina- tion dominated the public life of Ireland with the popular demand that the "Tenants' Charter" should be made the law of the land. This charter practically embodied the views on land reform which Duffy, Dillon, and Mitchel had put forward in The Na- tion up to the year 1846, and embraced the (theoretical) ab- olition of landlordism, coupled with fair rents and a protec- tion to the cultivator for his improvements or property in his holding. The Tenant League had an opportunity of anticipating some of the chief plans of the Land League of later years had its leaders listened to and possessed the courage of one whose advice rang out then, as later, fearlessly for aggressive action. This tenant-righter wrote: "Let there be established in each parish a tenant society including, if possible, every tenant-farmer in the parish, whose members would take a pledge in these terms: 'We promise God, our country, and each other never to bid for any farm of land from which any industrious farmer in this district has been ejected.' Should any person violate this pledge, his name must be struck off the registry as unworthy to asso- ciate with honest men. To sustain the tenantry, there should be established, at the same time, in the chief town of every district, a tenant protection society, consisting of shop-keep- 69 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ers, professional men, and artisans, which would collect a fund for the sustenance of tenants unjustly evicted. If any member bid for land from which a tenant-farmer had been ejected, he must forfeit his membership, and at the same time 'the call and patronage of his townsfolk and the dis- trict.'"^ The author of this plan was then (1852) the Rev. T. W. Croke, Curate of Charleville, County Cork, to become the great Archbishop of Cashel, and champion of the Land League thirty years subsequently. This was the programme of the Whiteboys and Ribbonmen reduced to moral and constitutional standards and plans of action; and had the prelates and priests of Ireland backed Duffy and Father Croke in 1852, in a righteous crusade against the evils of landlordism, instead of attacking and be- traying such a movement of bright hopes and promises, un- told blessings would have been won for Ireland inside of these thirty years of wasteful agrarian warfare. English rulers, watchful over ascendency interests in Ire- land, were not slow to see the danger to their hold on the country in a unity between the Protestant North and the Catholic South. National unity would stand for strength and political progress, and it has ever been the purpose of Eng- lish rule in Ireland, and in India, to divide the people so as to keep them down. Lord John Russell, therefore, wrote his historic "Durham Letter," and raised the cry of "No Po- pery" in English ecclesiastical titles. Dr. Wiseman had been made Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, and the question whether this title should or should not be tolerated in Prot- estant England was, of course, so vitally important to the life, labor, and liberty of the peasants of Munster and Con- naught (whose temporal welfare had always been so strenuous- ly advocated by English Catholics!) that the mere secondary issue of tenant right and fair rents in Ireland could be noth- ing short of infidel folly to such churchmen as Dr. Cullen, the new Archbishop of Dublin, and to his Irish episcopal breth- ren. And as with Dr. Cullen, so with Rome. Men had crept into the councils of the League, and upon its back into Parliament, who had no sympathy with Duffy's objects. They were ofhce-seeking lawyers and adventurers; two of them, Keogh and Sadlier, having the added dangerous qualities of ability when associated with purposes of political treachery. These and similar persons soon found favor with Dr. Cullen and his colleagues. They began to burn with fiery ^League of North and South, pp. 41, 42. 70 THE TENANTS' LEAGUE zeal at the indignities proposed to be heaped upon English Catholic bishops in the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, and the bet- ter to protect these sacred interests from heretical assault, they sold the cause of the Irish tenants and took office and pay under the English government. These men and their followers became known in Parlia- ment as "The Pope's Brass Band," and it was their success- ful disruption of the parliamentary party and organization built up by Duffy and others which gave a death - blow to constitutional agitation in the fifties, and contributed to in- duce James Stephens to create a power out of a people be- trayed by both prelates and parliamentarians that should curb to some extent the domineering influence of "Castle" bishops in the national life of Ireland. Duffy, always a stanch Catholic, has left his impressions of the bishops of his period in true and scathing judgments on their conduct in wrecking the hopes of the people. "Nothing was to be done," he wrote, "and three-fourths of the representatives elected by the people assented in si- lence [to the continued extermination of the peasantry], and three-fourths of the bishops, born and bred among them, sanctioned the perfidy." — "In every election lost for two years, quondam members of the League co-operated with its [landlord] opponents, and if a deserter had behaved with sig- nal faithlessness he might count on presenting himself to the people leaning, like Richard III., on two bishops."^ "As the bishops aimed to control the politics of Ireland at their discretion, it was plainly declared that bishops had hitherto been the least intrepid or reliable class among the Irish people. At the invasion a synod of bishops in Munster welcomed Henry II. and confirmed his claim to possess the island, an Ulster synod, however, having taken a more pa- triotic course. In the Middle Ages bishops of English birth or selection were the bitterest enemies of Irish rights and the worst defamers of the Irish name. At the Reformation a shameful proportion of the episcopacy accepted the new doc- trines to save their revenues. In the Confederation of Kil- kenny, Charles I. had more partisans among the bishops than the Pope and the people together. In 1800 half the episco- pacy were Castle bishops, and supported the Union, and ap- plauded Castlereagh and Cooke in language which would have been unbecomingly obsecjuious if addressed to Cardinal Fran- soni or Cardinal Antonelli. If the second order of the clergy had accepted the advice of certain bishops a few years later ' League of North and South, p. 292. 71 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND no good Irishman would ever after have been permitted to attain a mitre. O'Connell declared that they favored the project of giving the English Crown ' an indirect but efficient power of nominating the Catholic bishops of Ireland,' and ve- hemently discountenanced the opposition of the laity to that measure. The same spirit was still at work; every defeat of the League at the hustings was directly attributable to the influence of some Whig bishop." ' In this way the Tenant League failed and fell. Duffy left Ireland for Australia, there to make for himself an honored career. He became a Victorian premier for a short time, and as minister of lands in one or two other administrations laid the foundation of the system of land laws now obtaining in some of the Australasian colonies. He died at Nice, France, in 1903. * League of North and South, pp. 335, 336. CHAPTER VII ROMANCE AND REVOLUTION: JAMES STEPHENS No Irish leader since the time of Wolfe Tone has had a more romantic career than the young man, then almost un- known, who was wounded in Smith O'Brien's very tame re- bellion. James Stephens was born in Kilkenny some twenty years previous to the ridiculously small revolution of 1848, and was educated to be a civil engineer He was a man of handsome address and of medium height, with a compact, well-knit frame, and of gentlemanly manners. In later years he developed, in facial features and pose of the head, a strong Garibaldian expression, denoting great strength of purpose and a masterful personality. He escaped from Ireland to France through having a notice inserted in a Kilkenny paper that he had been killed in the not over-sanguinary conflict, and in company with Mr. John O'Mahony, also a refugee rebel, led for a time a somewhat Bohemian life in the French capital. He soon acquired a good knowledge of French, and succeeded for a few years in sup- porting himself by teaching English and in translating some of Dickens's works into French. General Pepe, a refugee in Paris, taught the young Irishman Italian, in exchange for a similar tuition in the tongue of the Saxon. Stephens, who had abated no jot of his revolutionary principles and hopes, made the acquaintance of the leading European revolu- tionists who were found in Paris in these years, and thus equipped with more resourcefulness, a wider knowledge of the world, and a growing confidence in his own power to ac- complish something big and daring for Ireland, he returned home a few years after John O'Mahony had left France for America. The late John Blake Dillon, who had been "out" with the other Young Irelanders in '48, was residing in Ballybrack, County Dublin, after his return from exile in the United States. One day, on entering his library in Druid Lodge, he found himself face to face with Stephens, who was engaged in 73 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND giving lessons in French to Mr. Dillon's children. Their last meeting had been at Killenaule, on the day of the "rising," in '48. It is related that a friendly dispute at once arose as to which of the two had possessed the only rifie that had gone off on that memorable occasion, Stephens insisting that he had been armed with that unique weapon. Stephens had been recommended to Mrs. Dillon by the wife of a (subsequent) judge in whose family he had taught foreign languages, and it was while earning a livelihood in this manner that he was preparing his plans for the great movement which was destined to make history in the next decade. He had kept up a correspondence with O'Mahony, Doheny, and others in the United States, and was aware that these had formed a body in New York, in 1854, called the Emmet Monu- ment Association, with no very definite objects beyond the pledged readiness of the members to engage in revolutionary work for Ireland whenever the opportunity should arrive. This society was the herald, if not the foundation, of the future Fenian movement. Proposals from the founders of this society were submitted to Stephens, who had impressed all who knew liim with a strong confidence in his capacity. He was asked to take the lead in a movement for Irish independence, through the media of a secret-society preparation for an armed rebellion in Ireland. His answer was to dictate such terms as would give him ab- solute control of the proposed movement, and upon these con- ditions being assented to he began the work of organizing the "I. R. B.," or Irish Republican Brotherhood. This body was founded in Dublin, chiefly by Stephens, on March 17, 1858; Mr. Thomas Clarke Luby, a scholarly ex- T. C. D. man, being, next to Stephens, the most prominent member initiated at the start. I hope one day, before joining the majority, to tell the story of the Fenian movement as I know it; and as James Stephens left his papers to a personal friend of mine, who promises me the fullest use of them whenever required, I shall not want for interesting material if the task should ever be entered upon. My present work requires only a passing reference to the organization which I joined as a boy, and this for the purpose of emphasizing two important lessons, which Stephens's labors taught, that have been of enormous value to the subsequent Land League movement. His sole reliance upon what are called the "common people" in creating the I. R. B. and the pioneer work he performed in organizing the exiled Irish — in America and in Great Britain — as active auxiliaries to com- 74 ROMANCE AND REVOLUTION bative movements in Ireland. He was the first Irish leader to grasp and to act upon the idea that it was only from the masses of the Irish people, in Ireland and everywhere, that power enough could be drawn that would frighten, or force, England either to mend her government in Ireland or to clear out of it with her rule. Stephens had a very small and possibly an unfair opinion of the "rhetorical revolutionists" of 1848, as he called them. They were, in reality, only eloquent moral-force and middle- class agitators, in the temporary disguise of insurgents, who followed Smith O'Brien chiefly because he was an aristocrat and a leader of fine and courteous qualities. Mitchel was, perhaps, the only one of them to whom this view of Stephens's would not justly apply; but the author of the immortal Jail Journal could never be a "revolutionist" in any conspirator sense of the term, or anything else than what he really was — a brilliant and scathing scolder of English rule in Ireland, a fearless and remorseless critic of every one and everything not conforming to his ideals of what should be done for Ire- land and how it ought to be accomplished. Men with estates and banking accounts are not the most ready or most reliable leaders of movements which demand risks and sacrifices in a cause that worldly wisdom condemns as desperate or illegal. With this knowledge and his experi- ence of what the sorry business at Ballingarry amounted to in 1848, James Stephens left middle-class men out of "his reckon- ing, and relied upon the peasants' sons, artisans, and labor- ers for the material out of which to work a revolution. Had he been ten years older in 1846, the story of the famine years would have meant a glory and not an everlasting shame for his race. He travelled through most parts of Ireland organizing his great conspiracy in 1858 and 1859, winning over the younger Ribbonmen in large numbers to the national idea of indepen- dence. His success on this mission being very marked, he visited the United States, and placed the Fenian Brother- hood there in proper auxiliary relation with the home organi- zation, with John O'Mahony as transatlantic head centre. During the early stages of the civil war he was busy among the Irish-American regiments in the Northern army, recruiting men for his revolutionary purpose, passes being provided for him which gave him free access both to the Federal and Con- federate forces. Having thus enlisted thousands of men for his purpose on both sides of the Atlantic, he returned to Ireland. As is well known, he did what an Irish conspirator would 75 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND alone be likely to think of doing — he founded a newspaper to be a mouth-piece for a secret organization. This was his first great mistake, and led not onlv to his own arrest, but to that of almost all his chief lieutenants in 1865. His fine presence, handsome bearing, and the air of superb command which sat naturally upon a man of unlimited arro- gance and of autocratic disposition, greatly impressed the court before which he and his companions were brought for examination. With the manner of an actual president of the Irish republic, he scornfully refused to recognize in any way the jurisdiction of any English court in Ireland, and declared he would take no part in such proceedings. His dramatic escape from Richmond prison soon after- wards by the aid of a band of Fenians, under the command of Colonel Thomas Kelly (the Fenian leader subsequently rescued, in 1867, from the Manchester prison van), the res- cue being due almost entirely to an infirmary warder, the late Mr. John Breslin, and an assistant warder named Byrne, gave Dublin Castle and English society the greatest fright they had received in and from Ireland for a generation. Among the band who performed this daring act was Mr. John Devoy, whose name will figure prominently in later chapters of this story. Stephens remained concealed in a house opposite the chief loyalist club in Dublin for months, and finally made his way, accompanied by Colonel Kelly and Mr. John Flood, in a hooker sailing from near Lusk, on the coast of Dublin County, across to Silloth, in Cumberland. The three outlaws journeyed from Carlisle to London as first-class passengers, and on arriving at Euston, Flood called loudly for a carriage for "the Buck- ingham Palace Hotel," and drove off with his companions to this then very fashionable West End hostelry. Despite the descriptions of Stephens that had appeared in the press for months, and the big reward offered for his capture, he was not recognized when stepping on board the Calais boat, muffled in a fashionable overcoat, on a cold spring morning. At ten minutes past noon of March 12, 1866, he wired to Mrs. Stephens from Calais as follows: "All is well. Address Edmunds, No. 8 Rue Geoffroy Marie, Paris." Stephens, like every other Irish leader before and after his time, had been in prison, but he has the unique distinction of having flouted English law in its own courts, walked out of its custody, escaped beyond its reach with a reward upon his head, and, though having planned and organized the most 76 ROMANCE AND REVOLUTION formidable revolutionary movement in Ireland since the days of Wolfe Tone, was privileged to return home unmolested in his old age, to live quietly among his friends, and to end his days peaceably in a country for whose liberty he had run all the possible risks and devoted all the energies of a thorough revolutionist's life. As already mentioned, the Irish landlords had experienced a decade of almost uninterrupted peace from agrarian troubles while Fenianism was educating the peasantry and working- classes of Ireland in the principles of Wolfe Tone and Emmet and in the lessons of independence taught by the poetry of Thomas Davis. The movement had one negative virtue to them: it was not an agrarian association. This, perhaps, accounts for the fact that from the year 1858 to that of 1870 these same landlords succeeded in evicting close upon fifteen thousand families from home and holdings. Two events of far-reaching importance to the cause of land reform occurred in the decade of greatest Fenian activity: one was the Ballycohey shooting affray, and the other, the first of Mr. Gladstone's land measures, the Act of 1870. The desperate and successful action of Dwyer, of Bally- cohey, on August 14, 1868,^ to defend his home from the doom of eviction started the public once again to the living reality of the land question. It was the old Whiteboy spirit in revolt once more to curb the vandal insolence of the rent power, and so effectively did this Tipperary peasant and his brave companions strike for the protection of others' as well as of their own homesteads that the number of evictions in Ireland fell during the ensuing five years to a lower figure than in any similar period since 1849. The Land Act of 1870 was as "much a concession to what Mr. Gladstone termed "the intensity of Fenianism" as was the disestablishment of the twin feudal institution with land- lordism, the Irish State Church. This act did not prevent evictions, but it rendered them a costly legal undertaking to the landlord, while it likewise laid a foundation of legal pro- * Scully, the evicting landlord, commanded in person the force which was to dispossess Dwyer. Dwyer and a few friends fired from the honse upon the evicting party, killing a bailiff and a policeman and wounding the landlord and another bailiff. Scully was not much in- jured. He wore a protection of chain armor under his coat. The estate of Ballycohey was subsequently bought by a local merchant named Moore, who was elected member of Parliament for Tipperary along with John Blake Dillon, a few years after the firing upon Scully. No parties were punished for this affray. No information could be got to support a conviction. Dwyer died in 1903, having enjoyed wide celebrity in his native county since 1868. 77 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tection for tenants — a tentative, halting protection — which was to point the way to the great charter of emancipation from landlord injustice to be won by the Land League in the Land Act of 1881. What more the great organization founded by James Stephens did, indirectly, for the peasants of Ireland, will be told more appropriately in connection with the events which fall, in the order of time, within the purview of some succeed- ing chapters. CHAPTER VIII HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM: ISAAC BUTT "If the rights of property are to be exercised for the extinction of the people, we must not wonder if the people begin to think that their only hope of safety lies in the extinction of all rights of property in land." — Plea for the Celtic Race, p. 65. If James Fintan Lalor was the prophet of Irish revolution- ary land reform, Isaac Butt was its immediate if more moderate precursor. He may be said to have been the reforming link between Gavan Duffy's Tenant League and the Land League, and to have handed on the endless struggle of the Celtic peasantry for the soil from the movement de- stroyed by Cardinal Cullen and his parliamentary "Brass Band," in the fifties, to the leadership of Mr. Parnell in the agrarian uprising of 1879. He was an Ulsterman and Protestant, the son of a beneficed clergyman, and was born near Stranorlar, County Donegal, in 1 813. He claimed to be descended from a noted leader of Rapparees, a fact which might explain his championship of the cause of the tillers of the land in after years. His family was also related to the famous Bishop Berkeley, the author of The Querist. He entered Trinity College, Dublin, in 1828, and, passing through the usual university course, left a brilliant record of scholastic achievements behind him when he emerged with honors and degrees to join the legal pro- fession. The anti-national atmosphere and associations of Trinity College, Dublin, may have been responsible for Mr. Butt's early Toryism. In this the chief nursery of West Britonism in Ireland would be only true to its mission among Irish educational institutions. It has always been the university of "the Garrison," and the occasional appearance of a na- tionalist among its alumni only helps to emphasize the pro- English spirit of its atmosphere and the un-Irish tendencies of its teaching. Underneath the conservatism of the young orator of the thirties there was a patriotic love of Ireland 79 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND which offered a hopeful promise of a future development into ardent nationalism. His address as President of the College Historical Society in 1833, on the subject of oratory, indicated the warmth of his passion for liberty, when he eulogized the gift and weapon of human eloquence as being put to its no- blest use, next following the sacred service of religion, when applied to the vindication of a country's freedom from tyranny and oppression. He was called to the bar in 1838. Two years previously he had carried off the prize of the Whately Professorship of Political Economy in Trinity College from all competitors, and held the chair with much distinction for several years. In 1840 he was selected by the Irish ascendency party to rep- resent the then exclusive loyalist Corporation of Dubhn in opposition to the Irish Municipal Bill at that time before Parliament. He appeared at the bar of the House of Lords, and delivered a speech which was described in the London press as a masterpiece of able pleading. The Standard of May 6, 1840, referred to its effect on the assembly in these terms : "The learned gentleman was loudly cheered in the progress of his address and still more enthusiastically at its conclusion, a great number of peers hurrying to the bar to thank him and to congratulate him. The unusual animation of the Duke of Wellington was perhaps the highest compliment that could be paid to the speaker in the House." Meanwhile he had won distinction in other fields of effort. He was one of the brilliant band of contributors to the Dub- lin University Magazine when that periodical occupied a foremost position among the literary journals of the day. Charles Lever, Carleton, Ferguson, and other celebrities were contemporary writers in an organ as famed for the high character of its literary output as for the narrow bigotry of its sectarian views. In a number of anonymous papers under the title of "Chapters of a College Romance," Mr. Butt con- tributed a series of charming sketches of scholastic and Irish life, which gave promise of a successful reputation as a novel- ist should the career of law not satisfy the desires of more am- bitious aims. The Gap of Barnesmore, a historical romance in three volumes, was published anonymously in London in 1848. It dealt with the feuds arising out of the revolution of 1688, and enunciated the author's views, through the medium of the characters of his story, on questions social, political, and religious as these affected life in Ulster in that period. Trans- lations from Virgil and Ovid were testimonies to his love of classical studies, and are proofs of his wide intellectual culture. 80 HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM He completed a History of Italy, in i860 (Chapman & Hall, London, two volumes), and was engaged on another historical work, relating to Russia, which his death, in 1879, left un- finished. The studies and labors of his profession gave his mind its chief bent towards law and political economy, and it was on these subjects he wrote most and made his highest mark. His book. The Law of Compensation to Tenants, was a standard work after the Land Act of 1870 became law. His works on land reform came forth in later years when his political con- victions were in the process of undergoing a radical change, and he was becoming the acknowledged exponent of the then moderate land reformers of Ireland. His Plea for the Celtic Race, published in 1866, and The Irish People and the Irish Land (1887), became text-books for Land-League speakers and writers. They were storehouses of historic facts, of the doctrines of political economy, of the conclusions and findings of commissions, and of parliamentary reports relating to Ire- land, while the views and opinions of the author were instinct with Celtic feeling and indignation at the wrongs and injus- tices of the tillers of the soil. In the same year he published The Irish Querist, in which, after the style of Bishop Berkeley's celebrated work, he dissected the system of Irish landlordism, and mercilessly exposed the neglect and failure of England's administration as shown in the social misery of Ireland. His Problem of Irish Education (1875) stamped him as one of the highest authorities on this thorny Irish question. He was accepted by the Catholic hierarchy as the parliamentary ex- ponent of the Catholic demands on Irish university education, and he received the united thanks of the Irish archbishops and bishops for the labors he had put forth in behalf of the Catholics of the country. As a Protestant he always felt proud of the confidence thus reposed in him by the heads of the Catholic Church in Ireland. His earliest noted appearance in the political arena was the part he took in the famous debate on Repeal in the Corpora- tion of Dublin, of which he was an alderman, in March, 1843. O'Connell was his adversary, Mr. Butt taking the Conserva- tive side, as defender of the Act of Union. He displayed ex- ceptional capacity as a speaker in this encounter with the greatest popular orator of the day, or perhaps of all days, since those of Demosthenes. In the diplomatic moderation of his hostility to the cause he was opposing, he succeeded in con- veying the impression that he held a brief as a barrister, rather than as an Irishman, for the case against national gov- ernment, while behind the pleading of the advocate there lay THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the half-avowed sympathy of the speaker for the side he was assaiHng. He earned the high eulogium of his mighty antago- nist for this effort. O'Connell discerned in his young oppo- nent, not alone the promise of a great career, but the future ' convert to, and a possible leader of, the claims and justice of Irish national autonomy. The Liberator's prediction was a remarkable instance of verified political prophecy. Thirty years subsequent to these references to Mr. Butt he became the chosen leader of the Irish parliamentary representation, and the successor of O'Connell in the popular leadership of Ireland's struggle against the Act of Union. He appeared in his first great political trial in 1848. He de- fended Smith O'Brien and Meagher in the state prosecution arising out of the Young Ireland movement, and was leading counsel for John Martin and Kevin Izod O'Doherty when these were arraigned in the same year for alleged treasonable writings in the organs of the revolutionary movement. These state trials brought him in direct contact with men of social position and education who were prepared to risk life and lib- erty in a struggle against a system of rule responsible for the horrors of the great famine. The chivalrous character of Smith O'Brien, the soldier-patriotism of Meagher, the abso- lute purity of motive of Martin, and the earnestness of O'Doherty and Brennan in their spirit of revolt against the cause of Ireland's discontent and poverty could not fail to make a lasting impression upon the latent sympathies of their able advocate. In after years the influence of this impression was felt and acknowledged. In the case of Martin, James Fintan Lalor's fiery and frankly revolutionary writings on the Irish land question were read in court, having been published in the columns of TJie Felon, the paper which succeeded John Mitchel's United Irishman. These writings embodied the true gospel of the land for the people, and gave expression to truths and facts which ought to have moulded a great national policy two years previous- ly, and should have precipitated a revolt against the land system which made a great famine possible in a land where food was sold for rent that could and ought to have been used to avert starvation. Lalor saw clearly, and said boldly, that landlordism rather than English rule was the special scourge of the Irish people in the famine years, and against that system he was anxious to hurl the united popular might of Ireland. His revolutionary programme was unfortunately enunciated after the famine. The drastic remedy he proposed came too late to avert or to mitigate the horrors of that awful calamity, but the ideas and proposals which were published 82 HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM by Lalor in the columns of The Felon were seeds sown for an- other generation of Irish land reformers, and the man who was destined to be himself a powerful propagandist of more moderate proposals tending towards the achievement of a similar end was the counsel who had to read, explain, and ex- tenuate the rebellious agrarianism of Lalor's manifestoes dur- ing John Martin's trial. It was the unique preventable iniquity of the great artificial famine and the impotent fury of the people's leaders in face of so gigantic an infamy which taught lasting lessons to Mr. Butt on the Irish land question. His school of study in this connection was found in state prosecutions, and the facts thus learned went home. It remained for another genera- tion of political conflicts to complete his nationalist educa- tion. Twenty years after the trials of the Young Irelanders those of the leaders of the Fenian movement took place. Mr. Butt was again the trusted defender of Irish rebels against English rule. He was the leading counsel in almost every prominent prosecution in 1865 and 1867. Once more he saw a procession of men in the prime of life going from their homes to the dock and thence to penal servitude in protest against the insult and injuries of alien government. He was deeply and irresistibly impressed by the character for sincerity and the spirit of sacrifice which stamped the personality of the Fenian leaders. He believed their cause to be hope- less, and knew their plans to be utterly devoid of all chances of success. But this knowledge only increased his admiration for the evidence of unselfish patriotism which was thus given by men devoted to a great ideal, and who preferred to face an English convict prison, as confessors of Irish liberty, than live contented in a country doubly disgraced and humiliated by Castle rule and the perfidious conduct of those public men who had literally sold the movement of Duffy and Lucas to an English ministry for place and salary with the sanction and blessing of Irish Catholic bishops. What history will be concerned with in this connection is the undoubted fact that both the Home-Rule agitation, ini- tiated by Isaac Butt in 1870, and the Land League organiza- tion which came into existence nine years subsequently, de- rived their inspiration and origin from the Fenian movement. What had failed almost as disastrously in insurrectionary ef- fort as the revolutionary fiasco of Smith O'Brien in 1848 was destined to set in motion other forces and influences which were to achieve a success for Ireland that would, to a great extent, redeem the failure of 1867. 83 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Mr. Butt's testimony to the permanent work done for Ire- land by Fenianism has often been quoted, but it merits re- production again for its historic truth and as a tribute to the courage of him who obtained for it such an acknowledgment at the time. Speaking at the Home Rule conference, Dublin, in Novem- ber, 1873, Mr. Butt said: "Mr. Gladstone said that Fenianism taught him the in- tensity of Irish disaffection. It taught me more and better things. It taught me the depth, the breadth, the sincerity of that love of fatherland that misgovemment had tortured into disaffection and misgovemment, driving men to despair, had exaggerated into revolt. State trials were not new to me. Twenty years before, I stood near Smith O'Brien when he braved the sentence of death which the law pronounced upon him. I saw Meagher meet the same, and I then asked myself this : ' Surely the state is out of joint ; surely all our social sys- tem is unhinged, when O'Brien and Meagher are condemned by their country to a traitor's doom!' "Years had passed away, and once more I stood by men who had dared this desperate enterprise of freeing their coun- try by revolt. They were men who were run down by ob- loquy — they had been branded as the enemies of religion and social order. I saw them manfully bear up against all. I saw the unflinching firmness to their cause by which they tes- tified the sincerity of their faith in that cause — their deep con- viction of its righteousness and truth. I saw them meet their fate with a manly fanaticism that made them martyrs. I heard their words of devotion to their country, as with firm step and unyielding hearts they left the dock and went down the dark passage that led them to the place where all hope closed upon them, and I asked myself again: ' Is there no way to arrest this? Are our best and bravest spirits ever to be carried away under this system of constantly resisted oppres- sion and constantly defeated revolt? Can we find no means by which the national quarrel which has led to all these terri- ble results may be set right?' I believe in my conscience we have found it. I believe that England has now the oppor- tunity of adjusting the quarrel of centuries. Let me say it — I do so proudly — that I was one of those who did something in this cause. Over a torn and distracted country — a country agitated by dissension, weakened by distrust — we raised the banner on which we emblazoned the magic words, ' Home Rule.' We raised it with feeble hand. Tremblingly, with hesitation, almost stealthily, we unfurled that banner to the breeze. But wherever the legend we had emblazoned on its 84 HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM folds was seen the heart of the people moved to its words, and the soul of the nation felt their power and their spell. Those words were passed from man to man along the valley and the hill-side. Everywhere men, even those who had been despair- ing, turned to that banner with confidence and hope. Thus far we have borne it. It is for you now to bear it on with more energy, with more strength, and renewed vigor. We hand it over to you in this gathering of the nation. But, oh! let no unholy hands approach it. Let no one come to the help of our country, ' Or dare to lay a hand upon the Ark Of her magnificent and awful cause,' who is not prepared never, never to desert that banner till it flies proudly over the portals of that ' Old House at Home ' — that old house which is associated with memories of great Irishmen and has been the scene of many great triumphs. Even while the blaze of those glories is at this moment throw- ing the splendor over the memory of us all, I believe in my soul that the Parliament of regenerated Ireland will achieve triumphs more glorious, more lasting, sanctified, and holy than any by which her old Parliament illumined the annals of our country and our race." The genesis of the Home-Rule agitation was the twofold influence of the amnesty movement, led by Mr. Butt, for the release of the Fenian prisoners, and the resentment of a sec- tion of the Irish loyalists against the imperial Parliament for the disestablishment of the Irish State Church. It was an instance of two extremes being encouraged by circumstances to create a medium party. The spirit of Fenianism, acting through the agitation for amnesty, and the revolt of Irish Toryism, occasioned by an act of English justice, selected, as it were, in the person of Isaac Butt, a compendium of honest compro- mise, and enabled the one-time Irish Conservative, now a con- verted nationalist, to think out and project a programme which was to seek a solution of the Anglo-Irish question by the means of a Federal Home Rule Parliament in Dublin. Both extremes fell away from this middle programme in a few years. The imion of antagonizing Irish elements was too sudden to be enduring. A new force was soon to be created which was to carry Home Rule forward by the momentum of a land war, to be actively renewed more upon the lines of James Fintan Lalor's principles than on those of Duffy's Tenant League or Butt's programme of the three F's — fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale. It was to be a joint evolution of Fenianism and Home Rule. 85 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Mr. Butt helped powerfully to generate this new force. Without his labors of preparatory discussion and agitation the Land League would not have so easily rallied the whole coun- try to the standard of "the land for the people." Many of the Land League leaders, notably Mr. Parnell and Mr. John Dillon, took service for Ireland under Isaac Butt's leadership, and much of the credit of what has been done to free the Irish people from the evil incubus of landlordism, and to weaken the hold of Dublin Castle on the country, is due to the man who had rallied the people once again in an organized resolve to supplant the government of a landlord faction by the rule of Ireland by and for the Irish people. Mr. Butt's parliamentary career began in 1852, when he was elected for the borough of Harwich, and terminated in his death as member for the city of Limerick in 1879. He held his English seat for the brief space of two months only, as a protectionist, in the abortive attempt of British and Irish Tory landlordism to undo the free-trade work of Peel. The borough of Youghal invited his candidature after he had en- tered the House of Commons, and he was returned unopposed for this small constituency. He sat as an Irish Conservative, but made no mark in Parliament, in the fifties, despite his reputation as an orator and his many other equipments for legislative labors. He had not yet received the "call" which comes to all men destined for a great work. His Conservative entanglements stood between him and that duty which could alone enkindle his latent nationalist sympathies into activity for his country's cause. The time and circumstances had not yet arrived, and he retired in a few years from political life to attend more regularly to his professional duties. It was the amnesty agitation following the state prosecu- tions of 1867 that offered him the field in which he was to sow the seed of Home Rule. Public meetings were held through- out the country, at which enormous gatherings assembled; the aggregate attendance during a three months' series of demon- strations in 1869 being estimated at over a million. At the Cabra, Dublin, meeting on October loth, two hundred thousand persons were present. John "Amnesty" Nolan, a prominent Fenian leader, was the chief organizer of the am- nesty agitation. Mr. Butt spoke at the Cabra meeting, and received an ovation that recalled the popular enthusiasm with which O'Connell was received by the people in the Repeal movement. The country soon began to look to Butt for political guidance and action, and when, in 1870, all the prominent political prisoners were released by Mr. Gladstone as an indirect result of the amnestv agitation, the call for 86 HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM duty and leadership came from the voice of Ireland, and the man of the hour was elected member for Limerick City. How he brought about the preliminary conference of rep- resentative nationalists in 1870, in conjunction with John Martin, A. M. SulHvan, Rev. Joseph A. Galbraith, of Trinity College, and other prominent leaders, and the steps which led from the formation of the Home Government Association to the historical conference of 1873, already referred to, and the founding of the Home Rule League, belong to the domain of history and not to this work. In a few years' time he found himself at the head of the largest Irish parliamentary party • which had ever gone to Westminster on a definite popular programme from Ireland. O'Connell's prediction of 1843 was fulfilled. The young barrister who had pleaded with great force at the bar of the House of Lords against an exten- sion of the municipal franchise in Ireland was the leader within the House of Commons of a party of sixty Irish representa- tives pledged to obtain a federal constitution and parliament for his country. Professor Galbraith, of Trinity College, was the author of the political and enduring phrase, "Home Rule." The fed- eral form of national government for which it stood in Mr. Butt's programme was not, however, an original proposal. Sharman Crawford had put forward such a solution of the Irish question as a substitute for Repeal, in the thirties, while the Rev. Thaddeus O'Malley, an able and popular clergyman, had been a warm advocate of federalism inside of O'Connell's Repeal Association. Moreover, the Whig leaders, in 1844, were charged by the organ of Sir Robert Peel, the Morning Herald, with having offered a federal constitution to O'Con- nell, in substitution for Repeal, in another Lichfield House compact. Federal Home Rule did not enlist the active co-operation of advanced nationalists in the seventies, though Mr. Butt re- mained personally popular with the active members of the re- organized revolutionary body in Ireland and Great Britain up to the rise into prominence of Mr. C. S. Parnell. Federalism broke with the O'Connell tradition, and proposed to substi- tute a subordinate assembly in Dublin for the semi-national- ist constitution associated with Grattan and the Volunteers. In fact, Mr. Butt's Parliament would have been more truly "national," in the sense of representing all Ireland, and in many other popular respects, than the alleged "independent" legislature which Davis, and historians equally as poetic in their treatment of sober facts, represented that "Parliament of the Pale" to be. But Home Rule, all the same, failed to 87 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND enlist popular confidence. The mass of the people did not comprehend its true character and proposals, while the "sho- neen " elements, which were so strongly represented among Mr. Butt's parliamentary following, tended to justify this public apathy towards a party numbering in its ranks so many prac- tically unknown and unreliable personalities. Half of the party were believed to be nominal Home-Rulers only — men who had agreed to the formula of Home Rule as an easy pass- port to a membership of the House of Commons. When, therefore, in 1877, a section of Mr. Butt's party, led by Messrs. Biggar, Parnell, and O'Connor Power, commenced an ener- getic policy of parliamentary obstruction, popular favor in Ireland was won for the new methods of independent oppo- sition, and the leadership of Mr. Parnell began to appeal for preferential approval to Irish national opinions. Mr. Butt had adopted the policy of independent opposition on assuming the leadership of the first Home Rule parlia- mentary party. In this he followed the lines laid down by Gavan Duffy and Frederick Lucas in 1852, when the Tenant League had organized a popular movement and a parliamen- tary party to obtain a moderate settlement of the land ques- tion. The principle of independent opposition, as a parlia- mentary policy for Irish members, was first proclaimed, in 1847, at a meeting of the council of the Irish Federation, fol- lowing the split between Smith O'Brien's adherents and those of O'Connell. Gavan Duffy embodied this policy in a report upon the best means for achieving the Repeal of the Union, which was adopted by the supporters of O'Brien; Mitchell and Reilly excepted, who declared against all constitutional methods as useless, and urged, instead, a resort to insurrection — the programme subsequently adopted by O'Brien, Dillon, and the "left" of the Repeal movement, and which found practical expression in the pitiable affair at Ballingarry. Gavan Duffy was the historic founder of the parliamentary policy of independent opposition, which he, with Frederick Lucas, George Henry Moore, and others, put in operation in 1852, but which the Cullen-Keogh combination of ultra- montaine place-hunters subsequently betrayed. Mr. Butt adhered to the policy of Duffy and Lucas when his parliamentary following was duly organized, and em- bodied it in a resolution drafted by him and adopted at a conference of Home - Rule members held in the City Hall, Dublin, on March 3, 1874. The resolution declared: "That in the opinion of this conference the time has arrived when the Irish members who have been elected to represent the national demand for Home Rule ought to form a sep- 88 HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM arate and distinct party in the House of Commons, united in the principle of obtaining self-government for Ireland, as de- fined in the resolution of the conference held in Dublin in last November. That while our future action must depend upon the course of events and the occasions that may arise, it is essential to the due discharge of our duties to our con- stituents and the country that we should collectively and individually hold ourselves aloof from and independent of all party combinations, whether of the ministerialists or the opposition." Speaking to his constituents in Limerick, on September 23, 1875, after the session of that year, Mr. Butt, referring to the constitution of his party, said: "The men so elected (as Home-Rulers) met together as the Irish party, wholly independent of English parties. That has been done which four years ago both friends and foes deemed impossible. An independent Irish party has been formed that is no longer a miserable and despised contingent of an English party, but one that is recognized as a powerful, independent force in Parliament. A majority of the Irish members in favor of Home Rule — an independent Irish party in the House of Commons — these are accomplished facts. I am sure in their accomplishment the foundation is laid for great results, if we wisely and at the same time boldly use the vantage-ground we have gained." With Mr. Parnell and the more advanced members of Mr. Butt's party independent opposition was interpreted as "ob- struction," and to this policy the leader strongly objected, on the ground of tactics rather than on principle. He was of the older political school, of the Gladstone and Bright order of parliamentarians, wedded to long-established forms of de- bate and of traditional reverence for the House of Commons as a great legislative assembly. Obstruction, apart from oc- casion and expediency, was too revolutionary a policy for the whilom Tory member, saturated with ideas of orderly methods and maxims, and he openly disavowed some of the proceed- ings of his refractory lieutenants. He wished to win the sup- port of the House of Commons and of England for Home Rule by reasoning and by respect for the " Mother of Parliaments," and by a due regard to the rules of parliamentary procedure. He would be independent of all English parties, but not of all parliamentary respect for the House of Commons. His plan was to conciliate and persuade, not to brow-beat and antago- nize, the centre of legislative power whence he desired to obtain by recognized party media the satisfaction of the mandate intrusted to him by Ireland. Neither O'Connell nor THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the leaders of the Irish party of 1852 had adopted a systematic policy of defiance to all ministerial proposals, to standing orders, and to Speaker's rulings as a means of winning reforms for the Irish people. Moreover, the majority of his party, the nominal Home-Rule section, were more strongly hostile to the plans of Messrs. Parnell and Biggar, for less worthy motives, than was the leader of the party. Then the party had not been in existence as an organized political force for more than four or five sessions. Why not, therefore, give the policy of independent opposition, as historically handed down to them, a fair trial? Why not make a tactical use of obstruction rather than to be committed to and controlled by such a dangerous two-edged weapon? Popular feeling in Ireland made answer to all this reasoning by transferring its approval and support from the old to the rising leader. The idea of a militant obstruction was pleasing to the Irish imagination. It wore the appearance of combat, and contrasted favorably on that account with the tamer methods of conciliation. The English press savagely de- nounced it. Party leaders roundly anathematized it. But it made the reading of parliamentary debates interesting, while it compelled the world of politics outside Great Britain to listen through the press to the denunciation by Irish members of English rule in Ireland, South Africa, and elsewhere. Ob- struction was for these reasons triumphant in Irish popular judgment, and Mr. Butt and his policy fell before the assault made by Mr. Biggar upon the sacred traditions of the Brit- ish Parliament and of all its most cherished customs and ceremonies. These could make no appeal of any kind to the little hunchbacked pork-butcher of Belfast, who had launched against all House-of-Commons precepts and rules the weapon of rebellious irreverence and contempt. It is not as a parliamentarian, but as the founder of the Home - Rule movement and as a land reformer, that Isaac Butt will live in Irish political history. His land bills may have been too moderate in their proposals, from the stand- point of later times, but they were violently opposed by the landlords and their adherents as "revolutionary" in his day. His policy was to secure the tenant in the soil, to safeguard his property in his farm, and to minimize evictions. All this he tried and hoped to perform by methods akin to his parlia- mentary policy — by persuasion, reasonable compromise, and by the wise use of party contingencies in the House of Commons. The Gladstone Land Act of 1870 was primarily due to the pressure of the Fenian movement, but in a secondary sense to Mr. Butt's effective pleading in his books, pamphlets, and 90 HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM speeches on the Irish land question. Such tenant-farmer clubs and associations as existed in the country in the later sixties and seventies looked to him as the ablest exponent of their claims and as the highest authority on all questions and issues relating to the tenure of land in Ireland. Mr. Butt frequently put the lawyer and constitutionalist in the background in his speeches and writings, and spoke as the descendant of a Rapparee enemy of landlordism and as a Donegal witness of the horror and infamy of the social crime of eviction. Dealing with the record of evictions which had been carried out in his own time, he depicted the manifold evils of this savage warfare against peasants' homes in the follow- ing pregnant and burning words, which were often quoted from his Plea for the Celtic Race during the Land League struggle : "Let any man tell me the difference between an expulsion of the whole population of the highland regions of Glenveigh by a squadron of Cromwell's troopers in 1650 and an ex- pulsion of its population in 1850 by the man who has inherited or purchased Cromwell's patent. The very 'pomp and circumstance' are the same. Military force ejects the people now as it would have done then. The bayonets of the soldiery drive now as they did then the old population from their homes. Cruel men come now as they would have done then, and, amid the wailing of women and the cries of children, level the humble habitations that have given shelter to the simple dwellers in that glen. What, I ask, is the difference? By what mockery of all justice and truth can we call the one the act of inhuman conquest, the other the legitimate exercise of the sacred rights of property with which no one is to inter- fere ? Where is the difference to the evicted family ? Where is the difference to the mother that leads away her starving children from the home where her toil had found them bread .'' What is a 'clearance' such as this but the extermination of military conquest put in force under the forms of law? Let us consider the effect of the evictions upon the evicted people. To what were they to turn? The sentence that drives them from the land, to what doom does it consign them? It is the deprivation of the means of life. Enough to say that if in those twenty years all the horrors of a real and actual war of conquest — all the worse horrors of a civil war and in- surrection — had swept over Ireland, fewer hearths had been desolated and fewer families been brought to beggary and to ruin. An actual war would have brought with it its compensations. Deeds of daring would have left some 91 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND memories to become traditions of the historic past. Deeds of generosity and charity would have tempered even the atrocities of fierce passion. Heroism and self-devotion would have redeemed the crimes and the bloodshed of the battle- field. Discipline and self-denial would have purified and elevated the character of a nation. Ireland has endured all that constitutes the agony of the conflict and more, far more, than the degradation and misery of defeat. These are the things which almost justify the reasoning of those who argue that it were better for the peasantry of Ireland to risk all in one wild and mad insurrection than wait to be wasted away by the slow combustion of suppressed civil war; that all the misery which even an unsuccessful revolt could bring upon them were better and lighter than these which a tame submission to the present system entails." Here we had the spirit of the subsequent agrarian revolution of the Land League against the rent tyranny whose ultima ratio was extortion or eviction. Mr. Butt was an Irishman with all the charm of wide culture added to the highest social qualities of the Anglo- Celt at his best. He was absolutely free from all "side," and loved that familiarity of association with his fellows which enabled his kindly and absolutely unselfish nature to display itself in all its genial qualities. He was open-handed to a fault, and never permitted his all but chronic combat with monetary troubles to interfere with his borrowing powers whenever a deserving case of distress or an appeal from a friend more embarrassed than himself laid his generous disposition under contribution. Frequently this well-known tendency made him the victim of impudent importunity, but nothing of that kind could ever sour or change the consistent kindness of his heart and character. As a speaker he had no equal in Ireland during his active public career. He was not a man of words nor a polished orator in the sense of bestowing upon a careful preparation of his speeches the labor which a Grattan or an Edmund Burke is believed to have expended upon their great efforts. Isaac Butt's style was a combination of Gladstone and Bright; he had the ideas, the wide information, the gift of impromptu reasoning while speaking, and much of the re- sources of expression of the former, with the power of lofty and impassioned delivery which distinguished the latter among all his English contemporaries. He also possessed what nature denied to both these great English speakers — Irish wit and humor. His manner, too, coupled with a fine platform appearance, an expressive and intellectual if not a 92 HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM handsome face, along with a rich voice mellowed in the coax- ing music of a cultured brogue, made him an almost ideal platform Irish orator, and explained the hold which he immediately obtained upon any audience he was called upon to address during his great campaign in the cause of amnesty. One little incident in his life, one instance of his kindly nature, will always link his name in chains of grateful recol- lection to my memory. In 1872 he requested a friend of his to "search the papers for the record of the trial of a poor young fellow who seems to have been forgotten by everybody. He was tried and sentenced to penal servitude the year the other Fenians were liberated." He was among those who welcomed me from prison six years subsequently. To Mr. Butt's labors for Ireland, in almost every sphere of effort, as patriot, land reformer, legislator, advocate, journalist, and litterateur, must be added his sacrifices. These were by no means casual or insignificant. His standing at the Irish bar was one of acknowledged preeminence. He was Ireland's first and ablest lawyer, combining in his con- spicuous abilities a profound knowledge of criminal and constitutional law with a forensic eloquence unequalled by any of his Irish professional rivals. To these high qualities were added a great reputation and popularity gained by many brilliant triumphs in state and other trials. Such a man had, therefore, a unique position in the ranks of his calling. He could have easily amassed a large fortune had he exercised his abilities and opportunities to the advance- ment of his self-interest. All these invitations temptingly held out to him by the friendly hands of fortime he ig- nored. He preferred to be true to Ireland rather than to be selfishly loyal to himself, and accepted the poverty which he knew the choice must inevitably dictate. But this patri- otic self-denial was only half the measure of his willing sac- rifices. A few short years before his death took place fortune and title were put within his reach in an offer of the chief-justice- ship of Ireland. A one-time more pronounced nationalist, Mr. Thomas O'Hagan, had reconciled his revolutionary Young- Ireland principles with the position of Irish lord chancellor. He had also the examples of Plunkett and Philpot Curran to induce him to exchange his continued struggles with poverty for a munificent salary and the headship of the Irish judiciary. But these necessities and examples appealed in vain to the old man's sterling sense of duty to his cause and to the high purpose of its aim. The following letter, written to a 93 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND friend, was his answer to the overtures which had been made to confer this high post upon him : " Dublin, December i, 1876. "I hasten to thank you for your letter of yesterday. "You may rest perfectly satisfied that the occasion to which you refer will never arise. Indeed, those who have the power of making the offer must know perfectly well that, if made, it would be declined. "To say that it would be so is to forget the old and homely proverb which prescribes the propriety of 'waiting to be asked,' but I should be sorry you should misunderstand me. "If it were possible that the offer should be made, it would be impossible for me to accept it. The position I have taken towards the Home-Rule cause obliges me not voluntarily to abandon it. It is probable I may not be able long to continue to take the part I have done in public affairs, but when I cease to do so it must not be for any personal advantage to myself. " But more than this; my acceptance of such an office would by many of our countrymen be, justly or unjustly, considered a betrayal of the national cause. It would throw suspicion not only on my own motives but on the motives of all public life. There is, perhaps, no greater evil in our social state than the distrust which so largely prevails in all public men. For me to increase it would be a crime. " It is almost childish to discuss the action I would take in a contingency that will not occur; but if the miracle of its oc- currence were to be assumed, I would not hesitate one mo- ment in following the course which I believe to be the only one I could conscientiously or honorably take. "Yours very sincerely, "Isaac Butt." He clearly foresaw the coming triumph of the movement for tenant right which he had rescued from the collapse of Gavan Duffy's Tenant League to direct and hand on to his successors. He warned the landlords against the certain penalties which a continued resistance to rational reform would exact, and tried by wise and friendly admonition to induce them to grant, in a voluntary spirit, such concessions to justice and reason as popular combinations would other- wise wrench from them by force. They were deaf to his ap- peals. They had been equally so to those of Sharman Craw- ford, and to others who saw in the march of progress, however slow in Ireland, the certain doom of a feudal system which force alone could uphold in its blind resistance to progress and 94 HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM to change. In the closing words of his Plea for the Celtic Race he wrote: " But, come as it may, or when it may, the enfranchisement of the Irish serfs will surely come. It is something to feel that I have not written altogether in vain — to be assured that the day will come when the proposals I have made and the words I have written will be accepted as those of moderation and of truth. In this sure and unwavering confidence I am even content that they should be harshly judged by preju- dices which may be all-powerful, but which must yield, as many old and venerable prejudices have yielded, to the in- evitable progress of opinions and events. . . . Does any man really imagine that, if not by peaceful means, by some des- perate struggle, the expatriation of the Irish people will not be stayed ? Will any man say so who has ever counted up the elements that form the power of the oppressed — the strength of human passion, the influence of opinion, the terrible might which the sense of injustice gives to the cause in which a whole people struggle against oppression and wrong?" Mr. Butt died in May, 1879. The Irishtown meeting had been held a month previously, and the Land League was to be duly launched in a planned national organization in the fol- lowing October. Mr. Butt's demise, at the age of sixty-seven, was acceler- ated by his deposition from the political leadership of the Irish people. He died, as a matter of fact, broken-hearted,' a by no means uncommon ending to a sincere and unselfish life service in Ireland's behalf. He had most of the marked Celtic qualities in his fine, warm-hearted nature — a deep-seated love of country, a pride in the knowledge that he had labored not in vain to advance its cause and to enfranchise its people. He was conscious, therefore, of the ingratitude of those whom he had so faithfully served. He had created a movement of great promise for Ireland's future, and had loyally and ably championed the claims of the tillers of the soil to justice and protection. In the darkest hour of her troubles and trials he had defended the confessors of Ireland's liberty, and had fear- lessly justified the purity of their motives and the personal sacrifices they freely made. Yet he saw himself thrown one side, without recognition or popular protest, in favor of a new leader, who had, as yet, no record or special abilities to recom- mend him, but who was to succeed to the headship of a movement born of the thought, initiative, labor, and sacri- fices of the old man's unrequited devotion to a great cause. He went away from his last Home-Rule League meeting, in the Molesworth Hall, Dublin, on February 4, 1879, a fallen 95 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND and a repudiated leader. On reaching his home he found a faithful friend awaiting him with words of sympathy and consolation, but he could for the moment think of nothing except the attacks that had been made upon him by his young opponents. Sitting down, he bowed his head upon a table and wept tears of defeat and humiliation. His political ca- reer was ended. He could strive no more for Ireland. His honesty and sincerity had been publicly aspersed, even where the testimony of his work and sacrifices was present to the minds of his bitterest assailants. He spoke no more for so forgetful a people, but neither did he utter one word of re- proach, of bitterness, or of rebellion. Unjust and unfair though the act of his deposition was at the time, he did not question its authority or put forward any personal claim or contention for factionist ends. His nature was too noble and his patriotism too sincere for the contemplation of any issue or object of that narrow kind. He silently acquiesced even in unmerited defeat, and gave no place in his mind to thoughts of dissension which could embitter or divide the Irish people. With a dignity worthy of his one-time position as the leader of a nation, he allowed neither the love of power nor the little- ness of jealousy nor the promptings of human resentment to provoke him into a solitary word or act of retaliation. It was the tidings of his death, three months subsequently, which alone broke to the world the silence of his retirement from public life. He was the last of Ireland's famed lawyers and tribunes. He left no successor, either as a classic speaker in the forum of public life or as a great barrister, to uphold the tradition of the Irish bar for distinguished and historic advocates. At his own request he was buried in his native village in Donegal. The simplicity of the last duty he asked from his countrymen on May 7, 1879, was in obedience to a wish he had expressed in the following letter addressed to a friend: " Dublin, St. Stephen's Day, 1876. "I write to you in fulfilment of an intention I have often expressed. If I die in England, I think it better I should be buried in Brompton Cemetery, in the grave with my mother and child. "If, wherever I die, the expense would not be an incon- venience, I would wish to be buried in Stranorlar church- yard, as close as may be to the southeastern angle. The ground is, or was, a good deal lower than the rest of the church- yard. A very shallow grave would be enough, with a mound of earth or tomb raised over it. Put no inscription over the 96 HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM grave except the date of my birth and death, and, wherever I am buried, let the funeral be perfectly private, with a few persons attending and as little show and expense as possible. "Yours very truly, "Isaac Butt." Mr. Butt's most powerful ally in the amnesty agitation, which had helped so much to create the popular conditions favorable to a Home-Rule movement, was an extremist leader named John Nolan. Mr. Nolan was a young man of remark- able organizing ability, who wielded immense influence in Dub- lin in the later sixties and early seventies. Mr. Butt was in no sense ignorant of the source of this influence. He knew of the revolutionary purposes which the resourceful secretary of the Amnesty Association sought to serve under the shield of the open labors of Mr. Butt and others, and the Home-Rule leader availed himself, in a similar spirit, for constitutional objects, of the assistance which he and his cause derived from the pop- ular forces thus marshalled by Nolan. Mr. Butt looked upon the cause of an Irish republic as a Utopian dream, while "Amnesty" Nolan, as he was popularly named, considered a federal union with Great Britain as a degenerate but unattain- able form of national government. The cause of amnesty united both leaders, while each sought to further his own ulterior purpose, beyond the release of the political prisoners, in an informal alliance with the other's forces. There was no scheme or proposal too audacious for Nolan's daring ingenuity to attempt and carry through. In 1869 funds were badly required for the local needs of the revolu- tionary cause. Members of circles were invariably of the artisan and laboring class whose small contributions could barely keep the organization alive. Splits and dissensions in the United States had created an empty exchequer, and the home movement was consequently thrown upon its own re- sources. Under these circumstances "Amnesty" Nolan as- sembled his lieutenants and laid this extraordinary proposal before them: "We will organize a grand fete in the Exhibition Building, Earlsfort Terrace, under the auspices of the new Lord Lieu- tenant, Earl Spencer. A military band will be got, and fashionable Dublin will be induced to come to meet the viceregal party. The musical programme, games, and other items are of secondary importance. The essential thing will be to exploit the new Governor-General, and make shoneen Dublin come to the assistance of our funds." And this was done. A benevolent organization of English 7 97 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN iRELAxXD origin existed in Dublin at the time. The fete was, ostensibly, to be in furtherance of the highly laudable objects of this body, the local branch being entirely under Nolan's control. He used the official note-paper of this order for his correspondence with Earl Spencer, and conducted the negotiations so adroitly that permission to announce the patronage of the Lord and Lady Lieutenant was readily obtained, and the plans for the fete were successfully launched. On the day of the sports and entertainment all Dublin wended its way to the Exhibition Building. Thousands were unable to purchase admission. At four in the afternoon the viceregal party arrived and were received by Nolan, Mr. Patrick Egan, and other local Fenian leaders, the bands playing "God Save the Queen," as in duty bound on such an occasion. "The Red Earl," as he was then called, was delighted with his reception, and expressed to Mr. Nolan his appreciation of the warmth of the welcome extended to Lady Spencer and himself. Everything passed off without a hitch, and the proceeds over all expenses added some ;(^5oo to the funds of the revolutionary movement in DubHn. Nor was Nolan less wanting in finesse when called upon to deal with troublesome members of the organization of which he was the brains and personified energy at the time. One of these meddlesome persons was a curate from a Midland county who had found his way into the secret movement. He was a constant fault-finder and letter-writing "con- spirator," who claimed to possess the only practical plan and secret capable of overturning English rule in Ireland. This plan was constantly in evidence, at meetings and con- ventions, with the eternal curate as its obstructionist author. The precious plan was this : On a given night, at twelve o'clock, twelve men armed with revolvers would conceal themselves behind a wall opposite each constabulary barracks in Ireland. Two of these would go out upon the road and commence to quarrel. The police would rush out to arrest them, whereupon the ten armed men would dash into the barracks, seize the rifles, capture the police, and proclaim the republic. All previous leaders had failed, according to Father Blank, be- cause they had not the brains or the revolutionary capacity to think out a real scheme of successful insurrection. Here was one stamped with the approval of common-sense, the fruits of years of thought and toil, and yet it was neither adopted nor its author appreciated, etc. Nolan undertook to deal with the crank curate as follows: He wrote to him asking for a copy of the plan, which was to be printed and circulated in order that due preparations g8 HOME RULE AND LAND REFORM might be made for translating Father Blank's proposals into action. The insurrectionary scheme came along in the curate's handwriting in due course. It was put in type in a printing establishment in Dublin, where documents of a "secret" character were usually "published," and which was located next door to a police station, and on that account never suspected. Nolan gave orders that the form should be broken up after one impression had been taken, and in the event of Father Blank calling for information as to what had become of the only possible plan, he was to be told that an officer from next door had called and had taken away the form and the original copy of the revolutionary scheme. Father Blank's anxiety about his plan obtained neither a letter of acknowledgment from nor an interview with Nolan. He called at the printing-office in question, and was told the message which the person in charge was instructed to deliver, whereupon the conspiring curate returned hastily to his spiritual charges, and was never heard of again at any rev- olutionary gathering. " Amnesty " Nolan left Dublin for New York in 1872, and died in St. Vincent's Hospital, in that city, in 1882. His was a brave, generous, and kindly nature, and his memory will linger affectionately in the recollections of those of his old friends who are nearing the bourne which he and others who have carried forward the cause of Ireland in their day have passed into peace and eternity. CHAPTER IX I.— HOME DESTRUCTION Parliamentary return of the number of evictions carried out in Ireland from 1849 to 1882 inclusive, compiled from offi- cial reports made by the Royal Irish Constabulary to Dublin Castle : ' EVICTED 1 EVICTED YEAR FAMILIES PERSONS FAMILIES PERSONS 1849 16,686 90,440 1867 549 2,489 1850 19,949 104,163 1868 637 3,002 1851 13.197 68,023 1869 374 1,741 1852 8,591 43.494 1870 548 2,616 1853 4,833 24,589 1871 482 2,357 1854 2,156 10,794 1872 526 2,476 1855 1,849 9.338 1873 671 3,078 1856 1,108 5. 114 1874 726 3,571 1857 1,161 5,475 1875 667 3,323 1858 957 4.643 1876 553 2,550 1859 837 3.872 1877 463 2,177 i860 636 2,98s 1878 980 4.679 1861 1,092 5,288 1879 1,238 6,239 1862 1,136 5.617 1880 2,1 10 10,457 1863 1,734 8,695 1881 3,415 17.341 1864 1865 1,924 942 9,201 1882 5,201 26.836 4.513 1866 795 3.571 Total 98,723 504,747 Families evicted > 1849-52 263,000 1852-60 110,000 1861-70 47,000 1871-80 41,000 1881-82 21,000 Total, 33 years 482,000 Readmitted as caretakers 73,000 28,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 119,000 — Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics. II.— MORE ENGLISH TESTIMONY Professor Cairnes "Most frequently, then, the evicted tenant has for himself and those dependent upon him absolutely no means of sup- 100 HOME DESTRUCTION port or place of shelter outside his farm. The evictions, moreover, having almost invariably taken place for the purpose of consolidating farms, even where non-payment has been the legal ground, the pulling down of the tenant's house has been an almost constant incident in the scene — an incident too generally performed in the sight, if not over the very heads, of the retiring family, who are thrust forth, it may be in mid-winter, frequently half naked and starving. In the rare instances in which they have saved enough to procure them a passage to New York, they will probably emigrate at once; where this is not the case, they will cower, often for days and weeks together, in ditches by the road- sides, depending for their support upon casual charity. . . . This being what is meant by an eviction in Ireland, the question might be raised whether the strict enforcement of contracts for rent by such means, in such times as Ireland has lately passed through, be altogether reconcilable with that Christian charity of which we all make such loud profession; whether, when a great national convulsion has made the performance of contracts impossible, the exaction by landlords of the tenant's pound of flesh is the precise duty which in that crisis they owe their country; in a word, whether the bare plea that rent is written in the bond ought under all circumstances to be taken as a complete discharge from responsibility for any amount of misery inflicted in enforcing it — this, I say, is a question which might be raised; but for the present I have no need to entertain it. It will suffice to call attention to the admitted fact that for a large pro- portion of the evictions there did not exist even this technical justification." — Political Essays, pp. 193-195. John Bright (1849) "The first thing that ever called my attention to the state of Ireland was the reading an account of one of these out- rages. I thought of it for a moment, but the truth struck me at once, and all I have ever seen since confirms it. When law refuses its duty; when government denies the right of the people; when competition is so fierce for the little land which the monopolists grant to cultivation in Ireland; when, in fact, millions are scrambling for the potato — these people are driven back from law, and from the usages of civilization, to that which is termed the law of nature, and if not the strongest, the laws of the vindictive; and in this case the people of Ireland believe, to my certain knowledge, that it is only by these acts of vengeance, periodically committed, lOI THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND that they can hold in suspense the arm of the proprietor, of the landlord, and the agent, who, in too many cases, would, if he dared, exterminate them. Don't let us disguise it from ourselves, there is a war between landlord and tenant — a war as fierce and relentless as though it were carried on by force of arms." III.— WHAT IRELAND ASKED FROM THE BRITISH PARLIAMENT Summarized chronologically, the failure of parliamentary efforts to obtain legal protection for the rights of Irish tenants stands recorded as follows from 1829 to the period of the Land League; 1829. Brownlow's Bill Dropped in Lords. 1830. Grattan's Waste Land Bill Refused. 1 83 1. Smith's Bill for Relief of the Aged Dropped. 1835. Sharman Crawford's Bill 1836. Sharman Crawford's Bill 1836. Lynch's Reclamation Bill 1845. Lord Stanley's Bill 1845. Sharman Crawford's Bill 1846. Mr. Sharman Crawford Abortive. 1846. Lord Lincoln, Secretary for Ireland .... " 1847. Mr. Sharman Crawford " 1848. Sir W. Somerville 1848. Mr. Sharman Crawford " 1849. Mr. Pusey *' 1850. Sir W. Somerville " 1850. Mr. Sharman Crawford " 1 85 1. Mr. Sharman Crawford " 1852. Mr. Sharman Crawford " 1853. Mr. Napier " 1853. Mr. Serjeant Shee " 1855. Mr. Serjeant Shee " 1856-57. Mr. Moore " 1858. Mr. Maguire " i860. Deasy's Bill (legislating plunder of tenants' im- provements) Passed. 1 87 1. Landed Property Act, 1847, Amendment, Ser- jeant Sherlock Withdrawn. 1872. Ulster Tenant Right, Mr. Butt Dropped. 1873. Ulster Tenant Right, Mr. Butt 1873. Land Act, 1870, Amendment, Mr. Butt . . 1873. Land Act, 1870, Amendment No. 2, Mr. Heron 1874. Land Act, 1870, Amendment, Mr. Butt . 1874. Land Act, 1870, Amendment No. 2, Sir J. Gray . 1874. Ulster Tenant Right, Mr. Butt 1874. Irish Land Act Extension, The O'Donoghue . 1875. Landed Proprietors', Mr. Smyth 1875. Land Act, 1870, Amendment, Mr. Crawford . . Rejected. 1876. Land Act, 1870, Amendment, Mr. Crawford . . Withdrawn. 102 HOME DESTRUCTION 1876. Tenant Right on Expiration of Leases, Mr. Mul- hoUand 1876. Land Tenure, Ireland, Mr. Butt . . . 1877. Land Tenure, Ireland, Mr. Butt . . . 1877. Land Act, 1870, Amendment, Mr Crawford 1878. Land Act, 1870, Amendment, Mr. Herbert 1878. Tenant Right, Lord A. Hill . . . 1878. Tenant Right, Ulster, Mr. Macartney 1878. Tenants' Improvements, Mr. Martin 1878. Tenants' Protection, Mr. Moore . . 1879. Ulster Tenant Right, Mr. Macartney . 1879. Ulster Tenant Right, No. 2, Lord A. Hill 1879. Landlord and Tenant, Mr. Herbert . . 1879. Land Act, 1870, Amendment, Mr. Taylor 1879. Land Act, 1870, Amendment No. 2, Mr. Downing Dropped. Rejected. Withdrawn. Dropped. R'j'ct'd Lords Withdrawn. Rejected. Dropped. Rejected. Withdrawn. Dropped. Rejected. IV.— WHAT SHE RECEIVED FROM IT The following record of successful efforts to give Ireland coercion acts instead of land bills is a fitting historical com- plement to the above list : 1830. Importation of Arms Act. 1848. 1831. Whiteboy Act. 1848. 1 83 1. Stanley's Arms Act. 1849. 1832. Arms and Gtmpowder Act. 1850. 1833. Suppression of Disturbance. 185 1. 1833. Change of Venue Act. 1853. 1834. Disturbances Amendment 1854. and Continuance. 1855. 1834. Arms and Gunpowder Act. 1856. 1S35. Public Peace Act. 1858. 1836. Another Arms Act. i860. 1838. Another Arms Act. 1862. 1839. Unlawful Oaths Act. 1862. 1840. Another Arms Act. 1865. 1841. Outrages Act. 1866. 1 84 1. Another Arms Act. 1843. Another Arms Act. 1866. 1843. Act Consolidating all Pre- 1867. vious Coercion Acts. 1868. 1844. Unlawful Oaths Act. 1870. 1,845. Additional Constables near 1871 Public Works Act. 1845. Unlawful Oaths Act. 187 1. 1846. Constabulary Enlargernent. 1873, 1847. Crime and Outrage Act. 1875. 1848. Treason Amendment Act. 1875. 1848. Removal of Arms Act. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. Another Oaths Act. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. Crime and Outrage Act. Unlawful Oaths Act. Crime and Outrage Act. Crime and Outrage Act. Crime and Outrage Act. Peace Preservation Act. Peace Preservation Act. Peace Preservation Act. Peace Preservation Act. Unlawful Oaths Act. Peace Preservation Act. Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act (August). Suspension of Habeas Corpus. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. Peace Preservation Act. Protection of Life and Prop- erty. Peace Preservation Con. Peace Preservation Act. Peace Preservation Act. Unlawful Oaths Act (lasting until 1879). CHAPTER X CHARLES STEWART PARNELL A YEOMAN from Cheshire, England, who was an adherent of OHver Cromwell, and who removed to Ireland after the Resto- ration of the Stuarts, was the founder of the Pamell family. His name was Thomas, the son of a respectable draper, and from this English republican was destined to spring a leader who was to be the head of a movement for the undoing of the greatest of England's many wrongs in the country into which she had poured every evil that has ever been associated with conquest, without the accompaniment of a single redeeming benefit from her rule. Thomas Pamell fixed his residence in Dublin, and appears to have bought an estate in Queen's County out of the reconfiscated lands of Leinster. The eldest son of the Cromwellian land-owner was the friend of Pope, Goldsmith, and Samuel Johnson, the poet Dr. Thomas Parnell. He was lauded by all the celebrated authors of his time for the grace and culture of his contributions to English literature. He had also won the firm and lasting friendship of Dean Swift, a fact which must be taken as an uncommon testimony to his high and lovable qualities. In this connec- tion it is a coincidence calling for mention that one in whom some of the blood of the famous dean of St. Patrick's flows, Professor Swift McNeill, M.P., enjoyed the friendship of the greatest of the Parnells, and was invited by the late Irish leader in the eighties to become a member of his party. The poet Parnell died, leaving to his younger brother John the right of succession to the father's estates. This John Parnell was a Dublin barrister, and had already entered the Irish House of Commons. He graduated in the legal pro- fession to the post of judge of the King's Bench, but died a few years afterwards, leaving his property to an infant son, also called John. This John likewise chose the law as a call- ing, after completing his collegiate studies, and in due course became a member of Parliament for Maryborough, Queen's County. He was created a baronet, after a few years in public life, for services to the state, and died in 1782, being succeeded 104 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL in the title and in a large fortune by his son, Sir John Parnell* who became chancellor of the exchequer in the Irish Parlia- ment in 1788, in succession to Mr. Speaker Foster. He held this important post for the lengthy period of twelve years, a very strong testimony to his character and capacity, and was dismissed from it by the authors of the Act of Union on ac- count of his warm support of Grattan in his opposition to that measure of unique infamy. He was a statesman of the highest probity and cleanest reputation, in days of almost universal suspicion and corruption, and left the record of a spotless political career in the history of the closing years of the Irish Parliament. After the Union he continued to represent Queen's County, and entered Westminster with most of the members, honest and corrupt, who had been his colleagues in the Irish House of Commons. He died, however, after a year's experience of London life, legislative and social, and was succeeded by his second son Henry, the eldest child, who was afflicted with incurable maladies, having during the father's lifetime been legally set aside as heir to the baronetcy and estates. Sir Henry Parnell became a prominent figure in the Whig party, and took a leading part in the overthrow of the Wellington- Peel ministry, for which services he was made secretary for war by Lord Grey. He was again intrusted with a portfolio in a Whig ministry, and was promoted to the peerage by Lord Melbourne in 1841, and took the title of Lord Congleton, after the name of the Cheshire village whence his Cromwelhan an- cestor, Thomas Parnell, had emigrated to Ireland. It was from T/Ord Congleton 's younger brother William, the third son of the Irish chancellor, that Charles Stewart Parnell was descended in direct line. The estate of Avondale, near Rathdrum, County Wicklow, had been given to Sir John Parnell as a mark of esteem by a friend, a Dublin barrister named Samuel Hayes, and this property was bestowed upon the chancellor's younger son William. This head of the Avon- dale branch of the Parnells was educated in Cambridge Uni- versity, and inherited much of the literary gifts of Swift's friend. He held, as all his family consistently did, very broad and liberal views, and was a warm and able advocate of jus- tice to the Catholics of Ireland. His work, A Historical Apology for the Irish CatJiolics, was an unanswerable indictment of all the causes that were responsible for the disloyalty of the proscribed Celtic race, and a powerful plea for a just and en- lightened toleration in all religious beliefs and worships. The cause of popular education in Ireland deeply interested him, and enlisted his advocacy for such measures as might to some 105 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND extent relieve the intellectual starvation purposely inflicted upon the Celtic people in the atrocious measures of the penal laws. Beyond this domain of controversial literary labors for religious liberty and popular instruction, he took no part in public life. William Pamell's only son, John Henry, was the first trav- eller of the family, and visited the United States after attain- ing manhood. He met a Miss Stewart in society in Boston, in 1834, was captivated by her, and brought her home to Avondale as his wife. Miss Stewart was descended from an Ulster tenant-farmer of that name, who emigrated in 1768, along with large numbers of other Protestant farmers from that province who were rack-rented and otherwise oppressed by Ulster landlordism, as already described. A son was born to this Stewart in his new home near Philadelphia, who joined the United States navy at the age of twenty. His name was Charles Stewart. He gained much experience in the West-Indian seas in encoun- ters with European privateers, and rose rapidly in the esteem of his superiors by his ability and bravery. He led the United States forces in the first "war" waged by the republic in Europe, in the naval attack upon Tripoli in 1804, and held the place under the guns of his small fleet until ample reparation had been done to the offended honor of the re- public. The history of "Old Ironsides" is too well known to Ameri- can and Irish readers to need even the briefest of summaries here. Like his fellow-countryman, Commodore John Barry, he beat his English adversaries on the seas wherever he en- countered them. His brilliant feats with the Constitution are the theme of every American school-boy's first lessons in America's naval history. Admiral Stewart married Miss Delia Tudor, of Boston, and the daughter of this union was the Boston belle who captured John Henry Parnell, the son of the Wicklow squire, and be- came the mother of Charles Stewart Parnell, at Avondale, in the month of June, 1846. Unlike most men who have achieved greatness, there was little or nothing in Mr. Pamell's youthful years that gave an indication of his future fame. Beyond a fondness for cricket, which is common to most boys, and one or two re- corded instances of obstinate self-will, the boy showed no other promise to be the father of the man who was to make most history for the name of Parnell. In his examination at the special commission in 1888 by Mr. Asquith, he re- lated that he had been educated in England; first at two 106 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL private schools, then by a private tutor at Chipping Nor- ton, in Oxfordshire, and lastly at Magdalen College, Cam- bridge. Like his boyhood life, his college career seems to have been uneventful. His studies would appear, from subsequent ten- dencies, to have leaned more to mechanics and scientific sub- jects than towards any specific mental or classical attainments; possibly due to the fact that he was to succeed to his father's Wicklow and Kildare estates, and that a practical education was that most suited to the calling of a landlord. One inter- esting incident only relating to his studentship at Cambridge is on record — namely, his being rusticated. The facts are, I believe, as follows: Coming home late from a social gathering one night, he was jostled off the foot-path by a pair of drunken drovers. They had, however, not bargained for what followed. Parnell turned on his assailants and knocked both of them down. The row brought a policeman on the scene, and he demanded Parnell's name, on the complaint of the battered drovers. Following the example of students everywhere, the accused, with the fear of the college authorities before his mind, put his hand in his pocket and handed the guardian of the peace what he believed to be a sovereign. A glance at the coin at the nearest lamp-post revealed it to be a shilling, where- upon the offended representative of the majesty of the law took insult, rearrested Parnell, invited him to the police station, and obtained his name. It is within the bounds of possibility that the shilling in question determined the future fate and career of him who mistook it for a sovereign by securing his retirement from Cambridge University, and in thus sending him back to Ireland to fall in with a train of circumstances and events which ultimately led to his active entry into Irish public life. He made a lengthened tour in the United States in 1872-73, and on returning home he entered into the local duties of a land-owner by serving in the honorary magistracy and filling a term as high sheriff" of Wicklow. Mr. Butt's Home Rule agitation attracted his sympathetic attention shortly after the Dublin conference of 1873, and he was welcomed soon after to the ranks of the movement by its founder. He contested the county of Dublin against the Tories in the general election of 1874, but was badly beaten by Colonel Taylor. Mr. Parnell's speaking abilities were of the poorest order during this election contest, and did not earn for him the promise or prophecy of future distinction. Like Disraeli, however, he commenced badly to end powerfully, and to 107 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND command the fame which modesty rather than demerit had at first turned away. His interrupted mechanical studies in Cambridge, joined to his obstinate character and indomitable will-power, stood him well in his apprenticeship to the legislative labors of the House of Commons. They shaped his policy in that assembly, and largely moulded his parliamentary career. Unlike his leader, Mr. Butt, who was a veteran of another political school, Mr. Parnell saw nothing to admire but much to mock in the absurd rules and customs of a House of Commons, boasting to be the greatest of modern legislatures, which could still adhere to ceremonies and forms and methods of procedure borrowed almost without change from the time of King Charles I. These anachronisms, which appealed for admiration to English minds, only excited ridicule in that of a man who was disposed to measure instruments as well as men to the purpose he had in hand for them; a man, too, in whose mental composition nature had provided no room for reverence of any kind. He saw how ridiculously unfitted these methods of procedure were for the practical ends of Parliament, and consequently how perfunctorily the real work of legislation was attended to by those who would sacrifice fifty useful bills rather than permit a single silly custom or precedent or rule of the time of the Stuarts to be reformed or modernized. And it was an assembly thus dominated by ancient formalities which was expected to legislate for a vast empire as well as to attend to the wants and demands of the Irish people. There was only one remedy for this state of things, and that was to turn the machinery of the House of Commons against itself and thus render it unworkable, and to do this as a means of focussing the atten- tion of public opinion everywhere upon the cause, the case, and the neglect of Ireland. This policy of combining the use and abuse of English parliamentary institutions for Irish purposes was not al- together Mr. Parnell's invention. His was a mind which readily accepted any practical plan that appealed strongly in its manner of application to those qualities which were strongest in his own mental and personal equipment. He was altogether wanting in the wide constitutional education, political information, and debating powers of Mr. Butt, and was, consequently, and for other reasons, opposed to his leader's method of furthering the. Irish cause in the House of Commons. In such a field of effort the necessary imple- ments of knowledge, culture, and capacity would be largely wanting in Mr. Parnell's case. Not so, however, in the line of ic8 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL action which Mr. Joseph Biggar had marked out for himself as a necessary medium for the expression of his hostiUty and contempt for the parHamentary sancimn sanctorum of the British Empire. Obstruction was something more than in- dependent opposition to him. It was a parliamentary in- surrection against the undue authority of ministers ; a defiant assertion of the rights of a minority where elaborate means had been provided in other days for the protection of the English taxpayer and the rights of the English people, with never a dream in the thoughts of the stoutest sticklers for "Commons privileges" that these would some day be made to subserve the sacrilegious purpose of subordinating the palladium of British liberties to the ends of Irish discontent. This policy was suited in every way to the temperament and personality of Mr. Parnell. It called for just those elements of strength which made his individuality — great courage, self- confidence, staying power, and a fearless assertion of a right or a claim which he believed he was justified or called upon to make. Parliamentary obstruction had captured the popular im- agination in Ireland. Biggar and Parnell, with the able assistance of Messrs. O'Connor Power and O'Donnell, had bearded John Bull within his legislative citadel. They had exhibited both pluck and resource in vastly unequal contests with enraged opponents, and had scored in several encounters by debating savage punishments inflicted on soldiers and marines in the strong light of parliamentary criticism, winning a recognition from even their enemies of the reason- ableness of their exposure of a degrading brutality in the English army and navy. Obstruction did even better work than this. Mr. Parnell's little party, led in this instance by Mr. F. H. O'Donnell, had laid bare the dishonest policy by which Shepstone and Sir Bartle Frere had conspired to destroy the independence of the Transvaal. The cause of the Boers was pleaded in the British House of Commons by Irish members with an earnestness, ability, and courage which impressed even hostile public opinion, while the ex- posures which were made of the duplicity with which England's representatives in South Africa had cheated the Transvaal of its liberty and deceived the people of Great Britain had no little part in shaping Mr. Gladstone's subsequent policy, which led to the ultimate adoption of a course con- sistent alike with reason and justice after the stern lesson of Majuba Hill. This work of Mr. Parnell's small following gave intense satisfaction to the Irish people. The leader who was thus 109 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND gradually displacing Butt had, on the other hand, earned the frenzied hostility of the British press. He was denounced, maligned, threatened; so much so that numerous London Irishmen, including extreme nationalists, were ready to form a body-guard for the obstructionist leader to protect him going to and coming from the House of Commons, against the open threats of certain papers. All this tended to strengthen his popularity and to increase his power in Ireland. He had successfully defied the House of Commons, with the newspaper world as an audience, and had trampled upon its dignity. Ministers and politicians assailed him and his tactics. English editors howled at him and English mobs menaced him, while the American press, remeinbering his blood-relationship with the republic, hailed him as an Irish member who had at last found a means of making John Bull "sit up " even within his own parliamentary household; and this was the young leader who made his appearance in the arena of the Anglo-Irish struggle at the time when a new departure was to be evolved from the policy and party of Isaac Butt. I met Mr. Parnell for the first time shortly after my release from Dartmoor, in December, 1877. What I had learned of the obstructionist labors of his small following in Parliament and about himself (since talking of persons and politics had ceased to be a breach of prison rules) made me curious to see what manner of man the coming leader was in the flesh. Possibly one is very impressionable when he comes out of prison in his thirty-first year, with every other year since his twenty-third a hateful memory of an intimate daily acquaint- ance with cells, criminals, and warders during all those ninety long months and more. It is like coming into the sunshine and among the flowers after a lifetime in the depths of a coal-pit. Making due allowance for this exceptional state of mind, Mr. Parnell appeared to be much superior to his recommenda- tions. He struck me at once with the power and directness of his personality. There was the proud, resolute bearing of a man of conscious strength, with a mission, wearing no affectation, but without a hint of Celtic character or a trait of its racial enthusiasm. "An Englishman of the strongest type, moulded for an Irish purpose," was my thought, as he spoke of imprisonment, of the prevailing state of affairs in the Home-Rule movement, and of the work which "a few of us" were carrying on in the House of Commons. There was not a suspicion of boastfulness in anything he said nor of confident promise for the future. He expressed, as I am sure he felt, a genuine sympathy for those who had undergone the ordeal of CHARLES STEWART PARNELL penal servitude, with its nameless indignities and privations. "I would not face it," I recollect him saying. " It would drive me mad. Solitude and silence are too horrible to think of. I would kill a warder and get hanged rather than have to en- dure years of such agony and of possible insanity." Of Mr. Butt he spoke fairly and generously, while he ap- peared desirous of creating a most favorable estimate of Big- gar, O'Connor Power, and O'Donnell, in relation to the repu- tation acquired by his small following in the obstructionist plan of action. Not a syllable did he utter about himself beyond the introspective allusions which the talk about Dart- moof called forth. He spoke of no plans for the future, but was kindly curious about what I intended doing. "I shall rejoin the revolutionary movement, of course," was my reply, and this answer elicted no comment either of approval or otherwise. I saw him a few times again before my departure for Amer- ica in July, 1878. We were travelling from London to a town in Lancashire, where an amnesty meeting was to be held. It was in the month of May. I asked him to join the revolution- ary organization; not, however, to subscribe to the silly oath of secrecy or to become a mere figure-head in a do-nothing conspiracy. These were the chief features of the Irish revolu- tionary movement which had appeared weak and absurd to me after several years' thought upon the problem of how best to rid Ireland of English rule. Irishmen were poor conspira- tors, at best, as Celtic qualities did not lend themselves very successfully to self - suppression or to the silent agencies of occult action. Men who would break a pledge of loyalty to a cause would not be bound to fealty by a hundred oaths. What was essential in order to create a really effective revo- lutionary movement in the Irish race was to have an organi- zation of selection — relatively small in numbers, but strong in reliable and representative membership and in the negative safeguards of less "conspirators" with more character. In illegal organizations relying for safety mainly upon the loyalty of its members, the larger the number in the ranks the weaker become the links which hold it safely against the intrusion of informers and the cognizance of Dublin Castle. Hereto- fore the plan had been to recruit members anyhow and any- where, and then, v/ith the boast of a "very strong" body numerically, to think of obtaining weapons with which to arm the members. Better to make the accumulation of arms a prior consideration to the swearing-in of men under conditions which scarcely suggested a common-sense protection against unsteady or disreputable elements, out of which danger or the y THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND hope of reward would easily enlist the treachery of an unfaith- ful member. Conspiracy and arms should not be the sole work of such a reorganized society, with only the eternal expectation of a Russian or American war with England as the forlorn hope of an Irish republic. The first line of defence ought to be an open movement on constitutional lines. This should be made to invite all men of separatist principles, and not to exclude honest moral-force advocates. Such a movement should em- brace similar parliamentary action to that which the obstruc- tionists were pursuing, but there must be more immediate issues put before the people, such as a war against landlord- ism for a root settlement of the land question, the better housing of laborers, doing away with the need for work- houses, and capturing the municipalities for nationalism; the parliamentary representation to be, as far as possible, recruited from men of separatist convictions, but who had not been openly identified with the Fenian Brotherhood. An Irish party of this caliber, at an opportune time — that is, when the country was sufficiently organized — to make a reasoned demand in Parliament for a repeal of the Act of Union, and in the event of the ultimatum being refused to leave the House of Commons in a body, return to Ireland, summon a national convention, and let the members of the party go into session as an informal legislative assembly. Not a word had my auditor spoken during the talk of which this is a summary, from notes made at the time, but on my concluding he quietly but instantly said, "And what next?" There was a note of friendly scepticism in the question which my answer did not modify. He then said, slowly but clearly: " No, I will never join any political secret society, oath-bound or otherwise. It would hinder and not assist me in my work for Ireland. Others can act as seems best for themselves. My belief is that useful things for our cause can be done in the British Parliament in proportion as we can get reliable men to join us and follow a resolute policy of party independence. We must endeavor to re-establish faith in parliamentary work of an earnest and honest kind, and try in this way to secure the good-will of men like yourself who are justified in doubt- ing from past experience whether any real service can be ren- dered to the Irish people by electing representatives to go to Westminster. I agree with a good deal of what you suggest about putting- a stronger programme before the public, espe- cially in relation to the land question, and I see no reason why men who take opposing views as to the best way of liberating Ireland cannot work in harmony for minor reforms. Possibly 112 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL the result of our present line of conduct in Parliament will be that we will be turned out of the House of Commons, in which event we could then give your informal Irish Parliament a chance." In his speech that evening in St. Helens, Mr. Pamell made use of these arguments: "I know there are many present here to-day who have no confidence whatever in the constitutional action of Parlia- ment, and I am willing to admit that they were fully justified in displaying that want of confidence. But how were they going to prevent the Irish constituencies from using the ad- vantage given them in the Act of Union of having themselves represented or misrepresented in the House of Commons ? So, since they were face to face with this problem, that there must be an Irish representation in the House of Commons, I rather think we ought to study how that representation should be made as little demoralizing to the Irish people as possible, and how they might extract some little good from it. ... If we see much more of the present intolerance of this British Parlia- ment and of the English people, then matters will be very much accelerated, and one or two things must result from it: either they will turn the Irish members as a body out of the House of Commons, and disfranchise the constituencies which sent them there, which would be equivalent to sending them all back to Ireland, and holding their own Parliament in Ire- land, and thus they would be themselves repealing the Union. The other alternative was to make it the interest of the Irish members to facilitate things better in the House of Commons by passing useful measures for Ireland."^ A few months later we spent an evening in a club which then existed in Nassau Street, Dublin. We were a mixed gathering of revolutionists and parliamentarians, in social intercourse only. It was the first and only time I ever saw Mr. Pamell drink champagne. He only drank moderately, and what he said could not justly be attributed to that indulgence. The subject of the invasion of Cromwell came up in an informal discussion. He joined in it with much warmth of feeling and expression, and showed a most intimate acquaintance with all the facts of that period of Irish history. He dwelt upon the relative smallness of the invading forces, and on the ease with which a resisting army of even less dimensions might have harassed the enemy, if there had been in the field or in the country a native force capable of any real fighting. "There was not. Leaders and men who ' St. Helens Newspaper and Advertiser, May i8, 1878. 8 113 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND shut themselves up in towns did not know how to fight such an enemy, even in a country familiar to themselves and strange to the intruding forces. There was no real fighting spirit in Ireland at the time, and what passed for such was concerned more about the cause of the Stuarts than over that of Ireland. The kind of resistance offered to Cromwell's handful of men, and the results of it, were a lasting disgrace to Ireland, and he doubted very much whether we could get the people ever to fight equal to the real combative qualities of the race, except outside their own country, where they, somehow, became the bravest soldiers any general could wish to command." Those who have described Mr. Parnell as being ignorant of Irish history have repeated an opinion expressed by some one who possibly never heard him on any subject which made a wide demand upon historic reading. Moreover, he was not afflicted with rhetorical tendencies, and seldom spoke upon any phase of the Irish question except with the object of making his meaning and argument clear and unambiguous. No speaker I have ever heard excelled him in this, the first essential of effective public oratory. With the ancient or Celtic history of the country he was probably unacquainted. Racial influences might explain this. Anglo-Irishmen of the Pale were consistently English in their tastes and ten- dencies. Probably not a single family among the many of them who have been distinguished for their support of the movement against England's rule in Ireland ever christened a single child in a Celtic name. Racial prejudices and predilections are not readily changed, and it is perhaps best so. The circumstances of new environment may modify them, but in their inherent traits they are better left as indications of ethnological origin. The Ipsis Hibernis Hibcrnioriim legend associated with Anglo-Irishmen is a mere poetic fiction, or if there be a few exceptions, like Tone, Emmet, and Fitzgerald, it only establishes the fact that very few of the Normans or English who took part in Irish rebellions had any true nationalist instinct or purpose in so doing. They aspired to rule Ireland by the Anglo-Irish for the aggrandizement of themselves and, in a secondary sense, for the good of the country, but not in any sense to have Ireland made an independent Celtic nation in absolute separation from England. Where one of the Norman or Anglo-Irish fought for Ireland's complete freedom, fifty opposed Eng- land's forces either in the Stuart cause or purely on religious grounds. Grattan's Parliament, in 1782, was the true and utmost measure of Anglo-Norman-Irish patriotism. Ireland's 114 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL liberty was absolutely within reach then; it only needed a mere declaration of independence to become a reality, but when the more or less histrionic Volunteers secured what appeared to be a further lease of legislative power for the landlords of the country any thought of carrying national freedom to its just and logical goal was as repugnant and as treasonable to Henry Grattan as to any member of the ruling pro-EngHsh party. Mr. Parnell never went in thought or in act a revolutionary inch, as an Irish nationalist, further than Henry Grattan. He had, however, read and digested well the history of Ireland from the Norman invasion to the '48 period, and had lived in both the Tenant-League and Fenian times, an observer of events which marked the progress of the seven-century struggle for land and liberty. His reputed ignorance of the history of this contest was only one of the many legends which newspaper gossip has woven round a name and per- sonality of fascinating contemporary interest. CHAPTER XI THE NEW DEPARTURE " I have thought, if I could be in all other things the same, but by birth an Irishman, there is not a town in this island I would not visit for the purpose of discussing the great Irish question and of rousing my countrymen to some great and united action. I do not believe in'the necessity of wide-spread and perpetual misery. I do not believe that we are placed on this island and on this earth that one man may be great and wealthy, and revel in every profuse indulgence, and five, six, nine, or ten men shall suffer the abject misery which we see so commonly in the world. With your soil, your climate, and your active and spirited race, I know not what you might not do." — John Bright, speaking in Dublin, November 2, 1866. The feeling within the Home -Rule League and in Mr. Butt's party in 1878 in favor of a more vigorous policy, en- couraged by what were believed to be the results of obstruc- tion, was coincident with a similar movement inside revolution- ary circles. Both were protests against stereotyped negative methods of hoping to free Ireland from English rule. Both these progressive tendencies were due to the growing inter- course between our people in Ireland and their race in Amer- ica. The Irish in the United States were steadily climbing upward socially and politically. They were being inoculated with practical ideas and schooled in democratic thought and action. American party organizations were training them for an active participation in public life, and in proportion as they lifted themselves up from the status of mere laborers to that of business pursuits and of professional callings did they find the opportunities and means of taking an active part in the government of cities and States. These experiences and advantages reacted upon opinion in Ireland, through the increasing number of visitors, letters, and newspapers crossing the Atlantic, and in this manner cultivated the growth of more practical thought and purpose in our political move- ments at home. There were both a need and an opportunity for a new departure if we were not to see all our energies dissipated in academic discussions upon Home Rule once or twice annually 116 THE NEW DEPARTURE in the House of Commons and in periodical state trials of the victims of informers in Ireland. Both these prevailing policies combined could make no practical headway for want of a definite and an agreed objective, while the still latent antagonism between the Fenian organization and the con- stitutional movement neutralized the potential capacity of each and was calculated to make both ridiculous. Mere conspiracy had nothing to ofifer to the mass of the Irish people except the experiences of penal servitude and the records of the abortive rising of 1867. It did not lessen the hold of England upon Ireland in any material way, though the spirit of patriotic sacrifice shown by numbers of young men who cheerfully went to prison in the cause of free- dom gave a valuable lesson of fidelity to the ideal of Irish nationhood. Beyond this no more tangible results fol- lowed or could proceed from principles tied down to a policy of hopeless impotency; principles which, if only put in ac- tion in a wider field of public effort, would exercise a far greater revolutionary influence and power in the contest of nationalism against the forces of English domination in Ireland. Fenianism in 1878 took little or no note in its ideas or aims of Irish landlordism. Its only hope lay in the advent of some great danger and difficulty for England. Many of its mem- bers believed that the sons of landlords would, in such an event, possibly be won over to nationality by learning Davis's poems or reading Meagher's speeches. These con- victions were honestly held by some of the leaders, for in revolutionary as in other creeds no belief has a stronger hold on a certain class of mind than a faith in what is impossible of comprehension to the limited cognizance of the human understanding. An Irish republic to be won by the swords of Irish landlords' sons was as Utopian a dream as to look for the advent of a prosperous Ireland through the kindly concern of an altruistic England. (_This absurd credulity did not extend to extreme circles in the United States. It was dropped in the passage over the Atlantic by those who had to thank landlordism for being the cause of their exile. ,'' Facts, not fancies, were then as now the dominant feature of Amer- ican life, and the men who were prepared to organize a re- volt against the British Empire in Ireland in 1865, and who settled subsequently on the American side of the Atlantic, grew to look upon the chance of rescuing Ireland from Eng- lish rule in a far more serious light and spirit than hereto- fore. They began to consider the magnitude of the task by the 117 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND measure of available means, by the active manifestation of a nationalist public spirit in Ireland, and how best to evoke an external sympathy for a cause so intrinsically just and worthy of the moral support of American opinion. Conspiracy and sporadic insurrection had failed. Other and more effective, if less heroic, plans were imperatively required if the Irish cause was not to die of an atrophy begotten of a dreamy do- nothingism, on the one hand, and of a spiritless, unaggressive constitutionalism on the other. So late as 1878 there was a preposterous objection in Irish extreme circles even to participation in municipal elections. To take part in such contests was as unorthodox as to be identified with parliamentary parties. Both were a violation of advanced nationalist principles and a "recognition" of English rule. Any such action spelled moral force, and moral force stood for conciliation, compromise, and surrender. All this, again, was the outcome of a sincere but a hopelessly nar- row conception of what should be the media of a rational revolutionary purpose, under conditions and circumstances which offered no reasonable hope of the possibility of any con- flict in the field of actual warfare. It was, moreover, a line of inaction most conducive to the continuance of the existing state of things. Corporations and rural public bodies were either anti-national in their complexion or colorless in political composition. They were, in addition, tame, stagnant, and unprogressive. True, the municipal franchise was restricted to a property qualification, and popular opinion in a poor country could only exert its influence indirectly. But these obstacles were not insuperable where opinion was so uniformly national as in three out of four provinces. 'JM\. that was needed to assert its active preponderance in these counties was to render such opinion a militant force through systematic or- ganization, directed to practical purposes, for the immediate benefit of the whole community in national, economic, and municipal activitie§T7 On the other harrd/the constitutional movement, which had Home Rule, land reform, and the franchise for its programme, lacked both popularity and combativeness. It was mainly Mr. Butt's movement. His great qualities had given it form and life out of the debris of the previous moral-force agitation, which DufTy, Lucas, Moore, and others had, in turn, rescued from the shipwreck of O'Connell's Repeal failure. Possibly the father of Home Rule was too old to lead his offspring in the field of more vigorous action. In any case, his party was not in any real sense a fighting force. He was not to blame for this. The country had been appealed to by him for a re- 118 THE NEW DEPARTURE liable parliamentary delegation, and those whom it elected to his standard shared with him the right and authority of de- ciding upon the plans and policies to be put into operation. He was held in constraint between his right and left wings — between the more numerous nominal Home-Rulers and the small Parnell-Biggar contingent — compelled to recognize the paramount claims and influence of numbers where his own views and predilections might incline him to the side of the more militant section. Had the membership of his party been in an inverse proportion to such composition, it is more than probable that Mr. Butt would have reconciled his views of parliamentary tactics to the exigencies of a more combative Irish representation in the House of Commons, backed by an organized, semi - revolutionary agitation in Ireland. Such was the political situation in Ireland when the leader- ship of the Home-Rule movement was passing from Mr. Butt to Mr. Parnell in 1878. It was a movement in no way pow- erful, either in actual strength or in cohesive purpose. It was strong in its mission and opportunities only, and, fortunately, popular feeling ripened so rapidly in a demand for an aggres- sive organization of national forces that the need for an all- round new departure in policy, means, and objects soon found satisfaction in the required combination of a revolutionary impulse infused into a moral-force campaign. There were also in the general condition of Irish public life at this period both an opportunity for and an urgent need of a programme or policy that would rally the whole people to the standard of the national cause. Existing movements, open or secret, had but a very small hold upon the active support of the race on either side of the Atlantic. The vast mass of our population had grown politically indifferent or apathetic. They were stirred only or mainly into the semblance of active public Hfe by the release of a pohtical prisoner one day or by his funeral demonstration the next. There were factions and frictions in both constitutional and revolutionary circles : fol- lowers of Mr. Butt and supporters of Mr. Parnell; adherents of "skirmishing" warfare and advocates of consistent physi- cal-force doctrines who were opposed to all such schemes, and who relied alone upon the faith and hope of total separation from England through the force or favor of an imaginary pro- Irish political Providence. There has always been an erroneous impression in English and often in some Irish minds as to the actual extent to which the total separation sentiment prevailed among Irishmen. The numerical strength of the strongest revolutionary organ- 119 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ization by no means measured the strength of the feeling for complete independence. Millions of Irishmen were and are separatists in conviction and aspiration who would on no ac- count become members of a secret society — nationalists who could see a perfectly consistent course in supporting a strong moral-force policy like Mr. Parnell's where the immediate ob- ject might be some subordinate issue or question. This would apply far more forcibly to the Irish in America than to those in Ireland. Except during the excitement caused by the raid of General O'Neill into Canada, in 1867, so soon after the ter- mination of the American civil war, the membership of Irish revolutionary bodies would be comparatively small. At the period mentioned, when large numbers of discharged Union soldiers were anxious for a war with England, there may have been from one hundred and fifty to two hundred thousand Fenians organized in America. At no time since 1870 would the number amount to fifty thousand. But probably nine- teen out of every twenty men of Irish blood among the many millions of our race on the American continent would ardently desire to see Ireland a free and independent nation. In Ire- land the proportion might not be so great, perhaps, allowing for the Anglo-Irish and moderate nationalists; but it is no exaggeration to say that in 1878 over seventy per cent, of the adults among the Celtic section of our population would be separatists at heart, though comparatively few of them would be found inside an oath-bound, illegal society. A greater proportion than this would be inimical to land- lordism, because the social and personal as well as (or rather than) the national sentiment would tend to create a wider feeling of hostility to a system upheld by England's power which touched the d^-ily lives of more than half the entire people of Ireland. TXandlordism, in its effects and record, was to tenants and others the symbol and expression of social injustice resting upon foreign rule .3 It stood for the menace of eviction, the dark, dread shadow which almost always loomed over three or four hundred thousand households. The landlord's right meant eviction or emigration to the tenant when it did not stand for rack-rent and poverty. Hatred of this system was all but universal at home, while among the exiled Irish across the Atlantic there was per- haps a more relentless feeling still against Irish landlordism, ; owing to the memories of "the crowbar brigade" being as- isociated with those of exile, and of the sufferings which both entailed in times when ocean travelling was not what it is to-day, and before the emigrant who landed in New York jpossessed the chances which welcome him or her in the better \- 120 THE NEW DEPARTURE prospects of later years. All this social discontent, and the potential power it stood for, was, as already mentioned, ignored by extreme nationalists, while Home-Rulers dealt with it on cautious and conservative lines only. It was a vast, untilled field of popular force, if its resources could only be drawn upon for the purposes of a national movement through a suitable programme or policy. What was wanted was to link the land or social question toi that of Home Rule, by making the ownership of the soil the \ basis of the fight for self-government. Tactically it would 1 mean an attack upon the weakest point in the English hold j on Ireland, in the form of a national crusade against land- lordism, while such a movement would possess the additional 1 advantage of being calculated to win a maximum of auxiliary j^y help from those whom the system had driven out of the I country. An organized agitation of this character and pur- | pose, aiming at a unity of combative forces in Ireland in a combined attack upon landlordism and English rule, and ( directly inviting the active aid of Irishmen abroad, needed a ' leader of aggressive qualities, and such a man had at this opportune juncture appeared in the person of Mr. Parnell. The origin of movements that have made history is neces- sarily a matter of public and national interest. It has its lessons of guidance and value for students of reform, especially when such agitations or revolutions have been more or less successful in achieving their ends. In any case, it is essential to know what were the causes or agencies that gave them birth the better to appreciate the worth or work of the mission for the accomplishment of which they were called into exist- ence. Movements of national importance against English power in Ireland have had this special peculiarity : they have reg- ularly alternated between attempts at insurrection and moral - force agitations. One has succeeded the other in uniform sequence for the past one hundred and fifty years. The result has been that a claim for constitutional reform by the argument of a previous attempt at rebellion has always possessed the convincing force of actuality. This, in turn, enabled the advocates of extreme measures to palliate re- bellion by pointing to the concessions which were made through its agency to the demands of moral-force agitation. The landlord Parliament of the Pale threatened England with the Volunteers, and won from fear what would not be granted to prayer or debate. The '98 rebellion was precipitated by government agency the better to crush the Parliament and leaders who might possibly call an armed body of Irishmen THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND into existence in a darker hour of England's periL But the attempts of Tone and Fitzgerald, and later of Emmet, to overthrow English rule were powerful arguments in favor of granting emancipation to the Catholics; and John Keogh and O'Connell reaped to some extent the fruits of Emmet's, Fitzgerald's, and Tone's sacrifices. Next, the organized policy of violence by which the odious tithe system was attacked and put down gave point and force to the Liberator's claims for Repeal. Though a hater of revolutions, O'Connell was aware of the potency of reason- ing which lay in the existence of extremer men and move- ments than those he controlled, and the "Litchfield House plot" was within an ace of registering on the page of history the concession of a federal form of self-government for Ireland that would have forestalled Home Rule by more than the length of Mr. Parnell's lifetime. On the collapse of Repeal the revolutionists of '48, as al- ready related, who had decried the methods of O'Connell as worse than useless, put their own panacea in evidence, and produced Ballingarry and state trials. Moral force follows physical force again in the movement of the Tenant-League and independent opposition, only to fail because the '48 "rebellion" had frightened nobody, while treachery and Archbishop Cullen had killed the hopes of Duffy and Lucas in the fifties. Next Fenianism emerges, and the failure of the insurrectionary attempt of 1867 called for a recourse once more to the alternative of action within the law. Mr. Butt's Home-Rule agitation had, however, grown out of the amnesty organization, and this fact, together with the labors of the Home-Rule leader on the land question, offered a field and an opportunity for calling for a new departure, in a movement that might enlist the spirit and purpose of revolution, in co-operation with open agitation, and possibly equalize alike the fruits of concession or the penalties of failure. Heretofore the extreme nationalists had only been able to serve the ends of the constitutionalists in efforts at revolution which purchased penal servitude for tliemselves. Their part in the struggle of Ireland was to fail and to face punishment, in order that moral-force leaders should find strong arguments in their dangerous undertakings and look for concessions as the certain fruits of their sufferings and sacrifices. The division of penalty and of concession was too one-sided to be always encouraging to the men of action, and the time had come when greater gains might hopefully be counted upon from a rational policy of making the open movement more revolutionary in aim and purpose, if not in method, and 12? THE NEW DEPARTURE without antagonizing the most earnest and reliable of the believers in parliamentary action. It would also be worth while trying to interrupt the order which had hitherto ob- tained in alternate Irish movements by combining both, as far as practicable, and for such a common-sense plan of semi -revolutionary action to enlist the active help of the fifteen or twenty millions of Irish located beyond the seas. Mr. Barry O'Brien, in his popular work,^ says: "Mr. Davitt has sometimes been credited with the invention of what came to be called 'The New Departure,' the combined action of constitutionalists and revolutionists for the common purpose of national independence. But the fact is, ' the new departure ' was in the air before Davitt arrived in America. James O'Kelly, John Devoy, and others had been thinking it out while Davitt was in jail. 'Had Davitt come to America in the beginning of 1877,' said a member of the Clan-na-Gael to me, 'he would have found a few men ready to discuss the new departure and to favor it. But neither he nor we could have dared broach it at a public meeting of the Clan. But a change had taken place in a twelvemonth. Parnell's action in Parliament had made people think that something might be done with the parliamentarians, after all. Parliamen- tarianism was apparently becoming a respectable thing. It might be possible to touch it without becoming contaminated. Parnell had, in fact, made the running for Davitt, and Davitt arrived in New York just in the nick of time. Many in- fluential members of the Clan were full of the notion of an alliance with the constitutional party, and were now ready to co-operate with Davitt in bringing it about.'" The point is not of any historic value as to who first sug- gested the particular proposal to which Mr. Barry O'Brien refers. It is, however, of some importance to correct the statement that an "alliance" between the revolutionary and constitutional parties was proposed by me, and that it- eventuated. This was the charge made by The Times against Mr. Parnell. As a matter of fact, I made no such proposal, nor did any alliance or compact such as that described ever take place. Mr. Parnell said so, on his oath, before the special commission. My knowledge of the state of feeling referred to, and which prevailed in the circles indicated in 1877, is only of a secondary value, owing to the circumstances of being in prison at that time. I have already dwelt upon the change which the in- fluences of American citizenship had worked in the minds of * The Life of Charles Stewart Parnell, vol. i., p. 165. 123 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND extreme Irishmen in the direction of wider and wiser methods of revolutionary action. It was a change of view akin to a corresponding tendency among many moral-force men, who had promoted Mr. Parnell's leadership through the machinery of the Home - Rule Confederation of Great Britain — an auxiliary branch of the Home-Rule League of Ireland. Some of the prominent men in this confederation were Fenians. They, too, were anxious to move on other lines more con- formable to a rational conception of what the work should be that could promise a hope of better things for Ireland. These moderate Fenians were active partisans of Mr. Parnell's, and this is how Mr. John Devoy alluded to them and their anticipation of a "new departure " in the very year of 1877 referred to in Mr. Barry O'Brien's book. Writing to Tlie Irishman, of Dublin, under date of December i8th of that year, he said: "Meetings of pseudo-' nationalists' are held in private to dictate a policy to be pursued by a few members of Parliament in the House of Commons, for an object that is neither desirable in itself nor likely to help the Irish cause indirectly. It is an undeniable fact that the foolish and ridiculous policy of 'obstruction' was decided on, not by a meeting of Home -Rule members of Parliament, but by a meeting of professed nationalists in England. These men who scoff at the played-out policy of saying what you mean and of standing by your principles are to be new saviors of the country, and to regenerate it with thirty clubs of the Home- Rule Confederation of Great Britain. This is the new state- craft that is to unite the Irish people and lead them with their eyes blindfolded to freedom. Why, the very existence of this Home-Rule Confederation of Great Britain is a fraud and a hypocrisy." Mr. Parnell was president of this branch of the Home-Rule movement in Great Britain and was the leader of the ob- structionist policy. The ruling spirits of the confederation were his stanchest supporters, and it was their election of him in place of Mr. Butt as president of this body, at a convention in Liverpool, which virtually placed Mr. Parnell at the head of the Home-Rule movement. But Mr. Barry O'Brien has been misled into the belief that the few Fenians who helped to do this, through the machinery of the Home- Rule Confederation, were in some bond of purpose or sym- pathy with the writer of the letter from which I have quoted the foregoing attack upon both Mr. Parnell's then parlia- mentary policy and the advanced nationalists of the con- federation, who were moving in line with the ideas subse- quently set forth in the new departure. 124 THE NEW DEPARTURE The programme and policy which were advocated by me in a series of meetings held in Philadelphia, New Haven, New London, New York, Brooklyn, and some Western cities, and in a final meeting at Boston, in 1878, were not what Mr. Barry O'Brien has been misled into stating. An " alHance " between the revolutionary or Fenian organization and Mr. Parnell was neither directly nor indirectly urged or advised in any way, at any of such meetings, or otherwise by me. What was proposed was an open participation in public movements in Ireland by extreme men, not in opposition to Mr. Parnell or moral-force supporters, but with the view of bringing an ad- vanced nationalist spirit and revolutionary purpose into Irish public life, in a friendly rivalry with moderate nationalists, in the work of making English rule more difficult or impossi- ble, and for such a line of action I appealed both for Clan-na- Gael and general Irish-American approval and support. A tentative programme put forward at these meetings em- braced : ( I ) A declaration that the want of national government was the chief want of Ireland; (2) a policy of independent ac- tion by an Irish party in Parliament; (3) an agitation for the settlement of the land question, with planks for the better- ment of laborers' dwellings, the nationalizing of education and of public bodies, and the right of Irishmen to carry arms. At one of these meetings, held in the Park Theatre, Brooklyn, on October 13, 1878, Mr. John Devoy made an impromptu speech, having been called for by the audience. It was the speech of the evening, and dealt almost entirely with my proposal to turn nationalist energies upon a solution of the land ques- tion. In the Irish World of October 26th Mr. Devoy 's speech was fully reported, and his opening sentences contained this statement : "I will say that I endorse the views set forth in the able lecture you have just heard from Mr. Davitt, and that I fully approve of the public policy he proposes for the national — that is, the revolutionary -party." On November 7th, nearly a month subsequently, Mr. De- voy, in his own and in the names of four other well-known revolutionists, cabled the following message to the late Charles Kickham, to be forwarded or handed by him to Mr. Parnell: "The nationalists (Fenians) here will support you on the following conditions: 1. " Abandonment of the federal demand and substitution of a general declaration in favor of self-government. 2. " Vigorous agitation of the land question on the basis of a peasant proprietary, while accepting concessions tending to abolish arbitrary evictions. 125 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND 3. " Exclusion of all sectarian issues from the platform. 4. " Irish members to vote together on all imperial and home questions, adopt an aggressive policy, and energetically resist coercive legislation. 5. " Advocacy of all struggling nationalities in the British Empire and elsewhere." With the cabling of these proposals I had nothing whatever to do. I was av/ay in the Western States at the time, and was not consulted. No meeting of the Clan-na-Gael executive had authorized the making of any such offer in behalf of the Amer- ican revolutionary organization. Apart from this, it was a most imprudent proceeding, amounting as it did to an open proposal, through the public press, for an alliance between men avowedly revolutionist (three of them being trustees of the "skirmishing" fund at the time) and the leader of a con- stitutionalist party in the British House of Commons. It was an illustration of Irish "conspiracy as she was made," and Mr. Parnell treated it as such by neither noticing it nor taking any action of any kind with reference to it. In his evidence before the special commission, on May i, 1889, he was closely questioned about the alleged "alliance," and he replied as follows: "I have never gone further, either in my thought or my action, than the restitution of the legislative independence of Ireland; it is absolutely false that anything like a com- bination between the two parties (extremists and constitu- tionalists) ever existed either in Ireland, England, or Amer- ica, as far as I know. I believe to this day the physical- force organization has been constantly hostile to us since 1880." 1 Again, at p. 92 of the same Report, he answers questions put by the attorney-general relating to the cable proposals of November, 1878, as follows: Attorney-General. "Do you remember Mr. Davitt sending home any telegraph or communication to you in November, 1878?" Mr. Parnell. "No. I do not recollect such a communica- tion." Attorney-General. " Do you remember the resolutions which began with the words ' the nationalists here will support you on the following conditions'?" Mr. Parnell. "No, I do not recollect that cable. I recol- lect that such a cable was published some time afterwards. I think that was not a cable from Mr. Davitt." • Special Commission Report, vol. vii., p. 88. 126 THE NEW DEPARTURE Attorney-General. " Who do you think it was a cable from?" Mr. Parncll. "I think it was a cable from Mr. Devoy." A ttorney -General. ' ' Who to ? " Mr. Parnell. "It is a cable supposed to be to me, or for me. Attorney-General. "Did you receive it?" Mr. Parnell. "I never received it." Attorney-General. "Of that you are sure?" Mr. Parnell. "I am as sure as I can be of anything." Attorney-General. "I have a reason for asking you — you did not receive any communication in 1878 from either Davitt or Devoy?" Mr. Parnell. " No. I think the history of that cable is that it was sent to some person in Dublin for submission to mej and to be published as having been sent to me if the per- son to whom it was sent in Dublin thought proper, and that they did not think it proper to submit it to me, and it never Was." This proposal, thus cabled, not having elicited any response from Mr. Parnell, it was published in the New York Herald by Mr. Devoy, who was then on the editorial staff of that paper, and in this manner it became the "origin" of the new- departure legend about which Mr. Barry O'Brien writes so entertainingly in his Life of Parnell. The agent from the Clan-na-Gael whom he describes as vis- iting London in 1877 did not come to Europe to interview Mr. Parnell on any revolutionary plan or purpose. He saw Mr. Parnell, it is true, and many others, in a social way, but the meetings were of no importance and had no results. At that time Mr. Parnell's closest political friends were the promi- nent men of the Home-Rule Confederation — men of the stamp and standing of Mr. John Barry, Mr. O'Connor Power, Mr. Joseph Biggar, Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell, and Mr. T. M. Healy, then a young and promising member of the Parnellite group. With these men of advanced views on obstruction and other questions Mr. John Devoy and his friends would have no dealings whatever. These somewhat detailed particulars are called for only to correct the error into which Mr. Barry O'Brien not unnatu- rally fell owing to the want of accurate information which mem- bership of the Clan organization or of Mr. Parnell's following at the time could have imparted. I have no wish to belittle in any way the part played by Mr. Devoy at this most critical time in what became the Land-League movement. He en- tered loyally into the most difficult task of inducing men who had hitherto opposed all moral-force politics to give sup- 127 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND port to the new line of action. He employed his efforts and influence to further in every way the work of rescuing the revolutionary body in America from a grotesque harlequinade of saloon "conspiracy" which was rapidly killing with the deadly weapon of public ridicule what was left of the force and hope which had once centred in the name of Fenianism. He brought most of the leading members of the Clan-na-Gael round to his views, and the work done by him in this way, and in line with a corresponding labor by Patrick Ford of the Irish World and John Boyle O'Reilly of the Boston Pilot, in their respective papers and widely influential entourage, paved the way for the success of Mr. Parnell's and Mr. Dillon's tour a year subsequently, and to the starting of the auxiliary Land League of America in 1880. Mr. James O'Kelly's name must be honorably associated with those mentioned in connection with this early and val- uable labor. He has always been a broad-minded thinker and worker in national movements. Narrow views or petty prejudices were never peculiar to Mr. O'Kelly. He favored every kind of useful action that could advance a cause in the service of which he has given the best years of his life, and throughout his varied and romantic career he has preferred the part of a silent worker to that which earns most distinction by inviting most public notice.* ' "Mr. John Devoy has been interviewed by an American reporter. He said; 'The cause of my despatch was originally the speech of Mr. Forster in introducing the Coercion Act, in which he said, speaking of the Irish nationalists: "These people are all united on this question, and our only remedy is to strike terror into them." In reply to this, I made a speech in the city (New" York) , which was, I think, incorrectly reported. In time it reached London, and Sir William Harcourt, in commenting upon it, said it was the duty of the English people to stamp out such people as Davitt and Devoy and their many allies in England and Ireland. Next day I cabled this despatch in reply: "Sir William Vernon Harcourt, London, — Two can play at stamping; the greatest sufiferers are those who have most to lose. The day when you can stamp with impunity has passed forever. — John Devoy." I deny this was a threat. It was only a warning.' Mr. Devoy was subse- quently interviewed in reference to a statement in one of the London papers that Michael Davitt, and not Mr. Parnell, was the organizer of the Land League movement, and that in its formation he had the as- sistance of Mr. Devoy. He said this statement was correct, but he objected to the assertion that when Davitt returned to Ireland he set to work to gather up the threads of the old Fenian conspiracy. Mr. Devoy denied that the Fenian cause, or more correctly the Irish Re- publican Brotherhood, was ever disorganized. Mr. Davitt came to America, and in conversation with him (Devoy) and Mr. John Breslin gave the outline of a plan of action in Irish affairs which not only in- cluded the land question but the national question. It was not until about a year ago that the Land League proper was formed, and 128 THE NEW DEPARTURE The "new-departure" campaign in the United States ter- minated in a meeting at Boston on December 8, 1878. It was held under the auspices of the revolutionary bodies of that city, with Major Logan in the chair. The late Mr. John Boyle O'Reilly was the chief inspiration of the meeting. It was on his suggestion it had been organized. Like Devoy and myself, he had been in penal servitude for Fenianism, and had experienced the feeling common to all thinking men who find themselves thus contemptuously disposed of by the enemy — the feeling of bitter chagrin that you are suffering more for an intention than for action. We had "conspired," and were informed upon, imprisoned, and punished — that was all. There was no satisfaction to be found in a consoling thought or knowledge that we had displaced a solitary brick in the edifice of English rule in Ireland, or had otherwise advanced our cause one single step forward. Here is where the chief sting of imprisonment lay, and as we had personal as well as political accounts to settle with our late jailer, we could not, as human nature goes, be expected to consider England's interests or peace of mind overmuch in respect to future plans of action. A new movement was essential if Irish revolutionists were ever to accomplish anything beyond wasting themselves in barren conspiracy and in English convict cells, and the need for such a step was a growing conviction in every earnest Irishman's mind on both sides of the ocean. No one entered more heartily into the idea of the new policy than O'Reilly, who was then on the threshold of his literary fame in the United States. He was probably as lovable a character as nature in her happiest moods ever moulded out of Celtic materials: handsome and brave, gifted in rarest qualities of mind and heart, broad-minded and in- tensely sympathetic, progressive and independent in thought, with an enlightened and tolerant disposition, in religion and politics, more in keeping with a poetic soul than with an ordinary human temperament. He was a personification of all the manly virtues. No one could know him without becoming his friend, and it was impossible to be his enemy once you experienced the spell of his affectionate personality. then Mr. Parnell was put at the head of it by Mr. Davitt. ' We have no fault to find,' continued Mr. Devoy, ' with Mr. Parnell, but he is connected with the Land League only, and had nothing to do with the national — i.e., the revolutionary party. . . . Mr. Davitt's idea was greater than the land question. When he first organized the league he believed in separation, and the Land League was only a stepping- stone to that.' " — The Flag of Ireland, February, 1881, copied from the New York press. 9 129 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND The night before the meeting the future movement was fully discussed at the home of the late Dr. Joyce, author of Deirdre. O'Reilly, Devoy, Joyce, and the writer v>rere present. The progress made in the propaganda of the new policy was considered most encouraging, and big hopes were entertained in the possibility of organizing a race struggle for the rule of Ireland by Irishmen. It was agreed that the land should be made the basis of the national fight, and that all na- tionalist energies should be enlisted in a contest with the English landlord and political garrison for the ownership of the land and the control of the public bodies in the country. "Let us do this," said O'Reilly, "and a new era will dawn for the old land. Throw down the gage of battle to land- lordism, as the source of Irish poverty, eviction, and emigra.- tion, and a mighty power will be enlisted in the fight against English rule. America's moral support would be won for a practical Irish proposal that would link a solution of the social problem with the national question, while the financial help of the Irish in the States would be forthcoming in a land-for-the-people struggle in Ireland. I am confident this is going to become the greatest of Irish revolutionary move- ments." And this confidence continued in O'Reilly until his death. The resolutions put before the meeting in the Mechanics' Hall, Boston, were as follows: " I. National self-government as the chief want of Ire- land. "2. Irish representatives in Westminster to be thoroughly nationalist in conviction and declaration, and opposed to all coercive measures. "3. A demand for the immediate improvement of the Irish land system by such a thorough change as would prevent the peasantry from being further victimized by landlordism. This change to lead up to a system of small proprietorship similar to what at present obtains in France, Belgium, and Prussia. Such land to be purchased or held directly from the state. The state to buy out the landlords and to fix the cultivators in the soil. "4. Legislation for the encouragement of Irish industries; the development of Ireland's natural resources; substitution as much as possible of cultivation for grazing; reclamation of waste lands; protection of Irish fisheries, and improvement of peasant dwellings. "5. Assimilation of the county to the borough franchise, and reform of the grand-jury laws, and also those affecting (penalizing) the right of convention in Ireland. 130 THE NEW DEPARTURE "6. Vigorous efforts to improve and nationalize popular education; and, " 7. The right of the Irish people to carry arms." In support of such a programme the meeting cordially endorsed these views: "Why is the Irish tenant-farmer not an active nationalist? To answer this question, I will crave permission to place myself in the position of a tiller of the soil in Ireland, say one of the victims of a landlord on the barren slopes of the Galtee Mountains. I will assume that I have just reached the level of my mud-walled cabin on the mountain-side, carrying a load of manure on my back from the plain below. I have seen the short-horn sheep from England and Scotland grazing upon the rich land in the valley — the land which formerly belonged to my ancestors, and the produce of which is now fattening brute beasts while my six children are starving with hunger. I might be supposed to say to myself : ' How is it that I who have done no wrong to God, my country, or society should be doomed to a penal existence like this? Who are they that stand by and see the beasts of the field preferred before me and my family? I am powerless to do anything but to provide for the cravings of those whom God has sent to my care, and to relax my labor for a day might be a day's hunger for my little ones. If I go down to the castle and avenge my wrongs upon the head of the landlord, I am but injuring him, and not the system that enables him to plunder me. I must, therefore, refrain from an act which might cause me to die on a scaffold and my children to enter the workhouse. If no one else will assist me I am con- demned to this miserable existence for the remainder of my life. Who are they that, having time and energy to take part in the political strife of the day, say they are working for Ireland and for people like me? The nationalist (rev- olutionary) party tells me that when independence is won I will no longer be at the mercy of an English landlord. That is like feeding my children with a mind's-eye view of the dinner that will be served in the landlord's castle to-day. Yellow-meal porridge is a more substantial meal than vision- ary plenty. If the nationalists want me to believe in and labor a little for independence, they must first show them- selves willing and strong enough to stand between me and the power which a single Englishman, a landlord, wields over me. Let them show that the social well-being of our people is a motive in their actions and the aim of their endeavors, while striving for the grand object ahead, and the farming- classes in Ireland will rally round them to assist in reaching 131 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND that object. But me and the Hkes of me are told that we have friends in all parties, while we are never made to feel anything but the power and influence of our enemies — the landlords. I must bring another creel of manure from the bottom of the mountain before mid-day, and then share my bowl of stirabout with my little ones. God's will be done! but it is a hard life to lead in Ireland in the nineteenth century.' "This is no exaggeration of the thoughts or attitude of the class who are compelled to stand aloof from political strife in Ireland; and this vast class, recruited alike from the one instanced as well as from all those whose avocations and actions have their root in the virtue of the honest, selfish cares of social life, are within reach of the party of action if the necessary steps are taken to enlist their zeal and co- operation in the struggle. . . . No party has the right to call itself a national party which neglects resorting to all and every justifiable means to end the frightful misery under which our people suffer. It is exhibiting a callous indif- ference to the state of social degradation to which the power of the landlords of Ireland has sunk our peasantry to ask them to plod on in sluggish misery from sire to son, from age to age, until we by force of party power may free the country. In the name of the common good of Ireland, its social and political interests, let the two Irish parties agree to differ on party principles, while emulating each other in service to an impoverished people. Let each endeavor to find points upon which they can agree instead of trying to discover quibbles whereon to differ. Let a centre-platform be adopt- ed, resting on a broad, generous, and comprehensive nation- alism, which will invite every earnest Irishman upon it. The manhood-strength of Ireland would then become an irresist- ible power, standing ready at its post, while the whole Irish race, rallying to the support of such a platform, would cry: "We want the land that bore lis! We'll make that cry our chorus — And we'll have it yet, though hard to get, By the heavens bending o'er us! "... Apart from the material good which would assuredly follow from such a platform being adopted, how inestimable would be the collateral advantages that would accrue from Irishmen acting together, at last, for some tangible common benefit to be conferred upon themselves and their country? The gradual but certain sweeping away of West British ideas before the advance of a united national sentiment ; the 132 THE NEW DEPARTURE harmonizing of the hitherto conflicting elements in poUtical parties; the development of our people's political education; the creation of a healthy and vigorous public spirit, which would at once attract the attention of foreign opinion, and concentrate upon Ireland an international interest in a renascent people who can exert a powerful influence over the destiny of a declining empire, the prestige and power of which are obnoxious to rival nations. Then the immense impetus that would be given to the national cause in the active support of such a practical policy by the Irish-American element in this country, by far the greater part of whom have heretofore stood aloof from Ireland's struggles because no feasible plan had been put before them whereby their assist- ance and influence could be profitably employed in the same. . . . The national party in Ireland has a right to participate in everything concerning the social and political condition of the country, to compete with the constitutionalist and other parties who cater for public support, and to stamp in this manner its nationalist convictions and principles on everything Irish from a local board of guardians to a repre- sentation in an alien Parliament."^ Meanwhile the report of the Brooklyn meeting on October 13th, and the publication in the New York Herald of the message cabled by Mr. Devoy and his friends to Mr. Parnell, had reached the press in Ireland, and had occasioned con- siderable public interest. The moderate nationalist organs criticised, in a friendly manner, this change of policy on the part of leading extremists in Irish America. It was wel- comed as some indication that an attitude of hostile aloofness from the constitutional movement hitherto followed by ad- vanced Irishmen would be changed into one of friendly rivalry in common endeavors for the popular weal. A contrary tone was adopted by two weekly papers which were more or less the exponents of Fenian sentiment at the time. These were TJic Irishman and The Flag of Ireland, both owned by Richard Pigott, of subsequent forgery fame. They were not "organs" of the extreme nationalists, in any official sense, Pigott never having been a Fenian nor having any authority to represent his papers as the accredited mouth- piece of the revolutionary party. He catered alike for the support of physical-force and moral-force nationalists, but as men of advanced opinions made his papers a vehicle for the propaganda of their views, these journals were con- sidered by the public to be more or less representative of •Speech by Mr. Davitt; the Boston Pilot, December 21, 1878. ^33 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the principles which found frequent expression in their columns. Among those who thus occasionally utilized The IrisJiman was the late Mr. Charles J. Kickham. He was very popular among extreme men, and universally esteemed among all classes of Irishmen for his fine character, literary and poetic gifts, and owing to his imprisonment as one of James Stephens's lieutenants in the Fenian movement in 1865. It was to Mr. Kickham Devoy had cabled his proposals to Pamell early in November, and in The Trishman for the 9th of that month Mr. Kickham attacked the whole proposal and the policy which it suggested. He did this in an (unsigned) editorial. He took the John Mitchel view that no good but probably harm could come to Ireland from parliamentarianism, and scouted the proposed new departure as contrary to advanced nationalist principles, mischievous, and demoralizing. This line of opposition was followed week after week by other but less influential extremists and many anonymous critics, who strongly assailed Devoy and myself for weakness or treachery, or both, in suggesting that nationalists who favored total separation should identify themselves actively with moral- force agitators. It was the attitude already alluded to as that of honest but narrow-minded men who were held in the grip of a strong prejudice, which begat an equally stubborn antipathy to methods of advancing the general national cause which did not harmonize with the media of conspiracy. Mr. Kickham was well qualified to take a much broader view than other opponents of the new policy, while his hostility was in no sense due to any want of sympathy with the cause of the tenant - farmers. He convinced himself, however, that any co-operation between extreme and mod- erate nationalists, in any line of public action, would work injury to the revolutionary cause without winning any sub- stantial advantage for the country, and this stand, honestly taken by a man of singular earnestness and sincerity, de- termined the policy of other revolutionary leaders, and secured the rejection by them of the proposed new departure. This discussion in the columns of Pigott's papers was calculated to do much harm, and Mr. Devoy addressed a long and ably written letter to the Freeman'' s Journal in reply to his critics. It appeared on December 27th, and made a most favorable impression by the sound sense and strong reasoning in which he defended his proposals, and the broad- minded, progressive views in which he supported the new policy as against what he termed "the rat-hole methods of conspiracy." 134 THE NEW DEPARTURE In this and in a subsequent press discussion arising out of the same proposals Pigott took the side of the opposition. He virtuously assailed the unprincipled promoters of such an anti-national scheme, and finally, in a letter to the Free- man, disposed of them and of their plans in the following words: "Mr. Davitt being successful to a limited extent in the United States, he considered there was nothing further to be done than to foist the shapeless abortion on Ireland. But, unhappily, despite the able aid of his assistant accoucheur, Mr. Devoy, it was stillborn. Tremendous preparations were made to usher it into the world of Irish politics, but, alas! it did not survive. The light of day was too much for it ; it was only born to expire. Hardly a voice of the least influence has been heard in Ireland to sustain 'the new departure,' and now it has passed into the region of things forgotten ; its name is hardly ever mentioned. This result has been created by The Irishman, and hence the rage of Messrs. Davitt and Devoy." Within three years the miserable writer of this attack had vanished from The Irishman; a year later he was offering information to Dublin Castle; in 1886 he forged Mr. Parnell's name, and in 1888 he committed suicide in Madrid to escape imprisonment for his crime. The opposition given to the new policy in his papers by better men had, however, done its work, and the revolution- ary part)^ became antagonistic both to the proposed widening of the sphere of action of advanced nationalists and Mr. Devoy's suggested union between the physical-force body in America and Mr. Parnell's wing of the moral-force movement. All the then recognized Fenian leaders in Ireland repudiated the policy, in the transparently honest belief that while it might in some way serve the purpose of open agitation, it could only in their belief result in seducing men from the extreme to the constitutional movement. Mr. Devoy crossed from America to defend the position he had taken up, but after a long consideration of the matter before the elected council of the Fenian organization, he and the writer were found to be the only advocates of the new policy within that body. This was keenly discouraging. It upset a long- cherished hope of rendering the revolutionary movement the real, active force in Irish public life, and for bringing all nationalist elements into a struggle against the pro-British faction of landlords and office-seekers who owned and govern- ed Ireland. The fault of the scheme really lay in the fact that it was too truly revolutionary to recommend itself to the political thought and intelligence of men who could only 135 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND reconcile the word with the methods and object of a secret society, and whose conception of the work for which the term stood was restricted in meaning to an armed uprising under some favoring circumstance against Enghsh rule. But, as already pointed out, the majority of separatists really lay outside the ranks of the revolutionary body, while members who suffered in common with other fellow-country- men from the evils of the landlord system could be reckoned upon also for encouragement and support. There were, like- wise, men like Mr. Thomas Brennan and Mr. Patrick Egan, of Dublin, ex-Fenian leaders and associates with Mr. John Nolan in the Amnesty Association, who wielded much influ- ence in nationalist circles, and who had already promised adhesion to the new departure. The guiding spirits of the Home-Rule Confederation of Great Britain, Mr. Parnell's ex- tremist supporters, were also of the new revolutionary way of thinking. With, therefore, a promised and potential back- ing of this kind, and the hope that the working-classes, espe- cially the agricultural laborers, would join in the proposed solution of a great economic and social problem, the loss of official revolutionary help, though deeply regretted, was in no way fatal to the chances of the projected movement. Looking back at this circumstance through the light of the past twenty-four years' experience, it is, perhaps, fortunate that the direction of the agitation which has dethroned land- lordism and shaken Dublin-Castle rule to its foundations was not taken in hand by those under whose guidance it would have fallen. Neither by temperament nor capacity were they men capable of controlling such a revolutionary spirit as was evoked by the legal and illegal insurrection of the Land League. They were not " built " that way, to use an expressive American word. Still, on the other hand, the intense earnest- ness of purpose, the spirit of self-sacrifice and utter unselfish- ness, which have been the qualities conspicuous in the great majority of active Fenians, would have been a source of much strength and prestige to the league. An active exercise of these qualities in the work of the land movement would have prevented the friction and casual opposition which sub- sequently occurred to the injury alike of the league and the extremist organization. Meanwhile Mr. Parnell was rapidly gaining ground in his progress towards the leadership of the Home-Rule agitation. According to his evidence before the special commission of 1887, he paid very little attention to the "new-departure" controversy in the Dublin press at the time. Up to the date of the Irishtown meeting there had been no real development 136 THE NEW DEPARTURE which promised any practical results or made any direct ap- peal to him for recognition. He had, however, commenced to give more attention to the land question in his speeches. He appeared to hesitate between the "Three F's" programme of Mr. Butt (embodied by Mr. Gladstone in the Land Act of 1881) and the radical solution of complete landlord expro- priation. Speaking in Tralee, on November 15, 1878, he put forward both these plans of settlement in a manner so cautious that it would leave him free to support consistently whichever scheme the country might make up its mind to prefer. He said: "At the same time they had this landlord system existing in Ireland and in England — about the only two countries in the world where it did exist, and he thought they were bound to make the best of it. The law gave those landlords exten- sive power at the present time, and unless they went in for a revolution he confessed he did not see how they were going to bring about a radical reform of the system of land tenure in this country. For his own part, therefore, he was disposed to devote his energies to endeavoring to obtain a settlement on the basis laid down by Mr. Butt's Fixity of Tenure Bill as introduced in 1876. If after a time they found that by the extension of the principles of the Bright clauses of the Land Act (and he might tell them that he hoped for very important results from the committee of the House of Commons which sat last session upon this question of the Bright clauses) — if after a time by extending that principle they found they could enable all the tenants of properties which came for sale into the Landed Estates Court to purchase their holdings, they might be preparing the way perhaps some day for a radical alteration of the land system, and for the establishment of what he believed to be the true system of land tenure — the proprietorship of the soil by the people who cultivated it. But until that time came, if it ever did come — and there was no reason why they should not all work to bring it about — until then it was their bounden duty to amend Mr. Glad- stone's Land Act, either by bringing in a supplementary bill such as Mr. Butt's, or by an amendment of the act itself; and he confessed he doubted that it could ever be amended in such a way as to satisfy the requirements of fixity of tenure at fair rents until the time came when perhaps a radical change might be made." ^ ' Freeman's Journal, Dublin, November 16, 1878. 137 PART III THE LAND LEAGUE TO THE SPECIAL COMMISSION CHAPTER XII THE IRISHTOWN MEETING Mr. Butt had framed and introduced a land bill in the session of 1876 on the lines of fixity of tenure and fair rents, with the Ulster custom of free sale for tenant right to be ex- tended to all farmers. It was a moderate bill, intended to amend the defects of Mr. Gladstone's first Land Act (1870) on points which the Irish land reformers of the time believed would solve the agrarian problem. The bill was rejected, but the discussion upon it was re-echoed at meetings of tenants' defence associations in Dublin, Limerick, and Cork; small bodies of farmers who met occasionally and passed resolutions, under the leadership of Mr. Butt, for a redress of the griev- ances of their class. In this year an attempt was made to shoot the land agent of an English landlord who had bought a property that had been a portion of the Kingston estate. The outrage occurred near Mitchelstown, County Cork, and created a sensation, mainly from the fact that the shot intended for the agent had killed the driver of his car. The London Standard, in referring to the crime, called it an instance of " infamous bad shooting," a comment which may possibly have suggested to the inno- cently logical mind of Mr. Joseph Biggar the remark, made by him some time subsequently, that he disapproved of the prac- tice of firing at landlords, because the driver, a perfectly inno- cent person, was sometimes shot by accident. A libel case arose during the following year out of this outrage, a local Fenian leader, Mr. Sarsfield Casey, having written letters to the press accusing the fortunate agent of the Buckly property of being guilty of excessively harsh and tyrannous conduct towards the poorer class of tenants, who rented small holdings on the barren slopes of the Galtee Moun- tains. Mr. Casey gave a graphic account of the misery and suffering of these tenants and the rack-renting of their hill- side farms, and his letters created a wide-spread interest. Mr. Patten S. Bridge, the agent of the estate, proceeded against Mr. Casey for defamation of character. The trial 141 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND lasted for eight days in Dublin, Mr. Isaac Butt being counsel for the defendant. Several tenants from the wild regions of the Galtees had been examined for the defence, and their stories of hardship, of unremitting toil, of the carrying of lime and manure on the backs of men and boys up the steep moun- tain-side to fertilize land which had paid little or no rent before the advent of Mr. Buckly, created such a feeling against the landlord system in the minds of the jury that they disagreed, the result being equal to an acquittal. It was a triumph for popular feeling over the legal forces which upheld the land- lord system. Commercialism in land had resorted to uncon- scionable rack-renting in this as in most other instances, under a law that virtually made the tillers of the soil mere rent-pro- ducers for the profit of the speculating landlord who had pur- chased the property. The law was for the owner, but the moral equities and the popular conscience were on the other side, and the anti-landlord case triumphed. Mr, Casey, who had served a short sentence for Fenianism previously, was hailed as a small David who had brought down a landlord Goliath, and was elected coroner for the district a short time afterwards, in popular recognition of his services to the Galtee Mountain tenants. The honor of thus dragging the worst evils of the landlord system once more into public light and of subjecting it to the penalties of a moral defeat belonged to a recognized local Fenian leader. Mr. Butt's unequalled pleading and remorseless exposure of the injustices done to the tillers of the soil gained half the victory; but the credit of having struck the blow which brought the case into court was due to Mr. Casey. He was a man of considerable literary gifts, and had been an occasional contributor to The Irish People, James Stephens's organ, under the nom de plume of "The Galtee Boy." His services to the land movement in his contest with the agent of the Buckly estate ought not to be forgotten by the peasantry of his native county. Scarcely had the echoes of the shot fired at Mr. Patten Bridge died out of public memory before another and a more sensational crime startled the country. In April, 1878, Lord Leitrim and two servants were assassinated while driving near Milford, in County Donegal. The attendants were guards, or protectors, who accompanied their employer, and these were killed in the desperate resolve of the assailants to settle ac- counts with the landlord. He had, it was said, earned an evil reputation in the management of his estate, being suspected, among other acts of oppression, of using his^power over the tenants for designs against the honor of their daughters. 142 THE IRISHTOWN MEETING This was no isolated instance of Irish landlord attempts to exercise a privilege akin to the infamous droits des seigneurs which had helped to precipitate the French Revolution and to bring the heads of some of the libertine noblesse under the knife of the avenging guillotine. This power was an inevi- table infamy of a social economic system under which a family could be deprived of its means of livelihood and turned adrift from its home, or otherwise ruined, at the will of the landlord; the law, as the mere creature of this privileged order, conniv- ing at the excesses of the class who ruled the country because they owned the land. Lord Leitrim had not the best of reputations in this or in any other respect as a land-owner, and he fell a victim, it is said, to the revenge of a farmer's son whose sister had suffered an unforgivable wrong. Several persons were arrested on suspicion of being implicated in the crime, but the real per- petrators were never discovered, though I have been assured by one who was well qualified to offer an opinion on the mat- ter that "the whole country-side" knew the persons who did the deed. It was considered by the peasantry as an act of war, a resort to retahatory justice where no civic redress could be obtained by an appeal to a class law. It was a deed of savagery, it is true, deliberately resolved upon and executed, just as many a similar crime had reddened with the stain of murder the records of this same agrarian struggle. Every tenant in Ulster knew and felt that it was by acts of this kind that the oppression of landlordism was kept within bounds and the homes of the peasantry were rendered more or less secure against the fate of eviction. This was why the per- sons who killed Lord Leitrim and his guards were never dis- covered or punished by the law. This savage act was the subject of a fierce debate in the House of Commons. Attempts were made by landlord mem- bers to disparage Irish peasant character over the crime. This provoked Mr. Parnell's small party into a discussion of the whole facts relating to the unfortunate nobleman's life and estate management, the result being an expose which told heavily in the public mind against a social system that was considered the main bulwark of English rule in Ireland. The deed in question had lifted once more the veil which hid from the view of the British public the feudal power wielded by Irish landlordism and the fierce passions which its exercise was liable to enkindle in the minds of peasant victims. The revelation was not a surprise in Ireland. The character and history of landlordism was a too familiar theme in every peas- ant mind and home. But the story of the killing of Lord 143 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Leitrim, and the chapter of Irish social misery and wrong to the discussion of which it led the House of Commons, were warnings given to the assembly which first sanctioned the CromweUian Act of Settlement that the long revolt of Celtic Ireland against this English land system was soon to carry its warfare into the arena of this same House of Commons. A bad harvest in 1878, following an indifferent one in 1877, and a marked falling off in agricultural prices, caused serious apprehension to Irish tenants in the spring of 1879 for their prospects should this condition of things not improve. The importation of food-stuffs from the United States, Canada, and elsewhere was also rapidly increasing in Ireland's only market for her surplus produce, Great Britain, and she was met in this market with meat, grain, butter, and eggs grown upon American or European soil for which little if any rent was paid. The owners of this foreign land were its cultiva- tors. The rent - burden was no obstacle to the full exercise of their energies and enterprise in the industry of their calling. They were secure against every power, caprice, and exaction which discouraged and taxed the labor of the Irish food pro- ducer, and this fact brought home to the public mind again, ■i what periods of depression had often done before, the great economic evil which the landlord system was to Ireland and the intolerable injustice that lay in the power of a land-owner to impose an unfair rent upon a farmer's holding. It was the evidence of a great economic truth tendered by circumstance in support of a movement which the facts of the situation im- peratively called for at the time, r The county of Mayo had suffered more from the manifold evils of the landlord system than any other Irish county. It had lost more of its population, had experienced more evic- tions, had witnessed more "clearances," possessed a greater number of people on the border-line of starvation, and had more paupers in proportion to the population than any of its i sister counties. In a period of thirty years its inhabited dwell- ings had decreased over twenty-five thousand in number, and yet there had been no corresponding improvement in the con- ^. ditions of the enormously reduced numbers of land-workers ; who remained. The explanation was this: cattle and not labor were placed on the lands from which the cultivators had been evicted since 1849, while the diminished population were crowded in upon the poorer soils of the county. This, however, was only half the evil. The reclaimed bog-land, or mountain-side, onto which the people who could not emigrate were compelled to migrate, was rack-rented in defiance of all economic or equitable principles. Without the labor which 144 THE IRISHTOWN MEETING alone reclaimed such soil and kept it in a state of cultivation, it could not produce a shilling of rent per acre. Rent for such land was, therefore, sheer robbery, sanctioned by law, and evictions carried out for arrears of such legal blackmail, in seasons of distress, differed in one sense only from the common crime of house-breaking — the law in one case punished the common burglar for invading a citizen's home and stealing his property, while in the other case the law made itself the in- strument of wrong and oppression at the instance of the land- lord. This, at any rate, was the untutored view of the Celtic cottier and tenant of Mayo, and hence the certainty with which every movement or agitation against landlordism found its readiest recruits in the part of Ireland that of her thirty- two counties had perhaps the bitterest experience of all the wrongs and privations, losses and trials that have followed in the trail of this system since the fatal hour in which it came to inflict the country with its social warfare, poverty, and crime. ^Except during the epidemic of national cowardice which was common to all Ireland at the period of the great famine, Mayo was no tame sufferer under landlordism. \ She played her part in every phase of the land war waged by the despoiled Celt for the recovery of his confiscated soil. Whether in secret combination or in open action, a section of her people were always found in the fray. Whiteboyism, Steelboys, Thrashers, and Ribbonmen had each their active adherents among the Mayo peasantry in times of agrarian troubles. These societies were the only protectors of the people. Where they failed to prevent acts of oppression on the part of land- lord or agent, they frequently avenged the eviction of a family or the grabbing of a holding in some deed of violence against the authors of this wrong. In the legal agitations for reform the county was also well represented. The late Mr. George Henry Moore, though him- self a Mayo landlord, was a loyal member of Gavan Duffy's Tenant League party in the fifties. He was a moderate but earnest land-reformer, and remained an advocate of Duffy's proposals after the break-up of the party following the Sad- lier-Keogh treachery. Father Lavelle, of Partry, was in his day a militant tenant- righter. He attacked a local landlord from the altar and in the press for alleged proselytism through the terrors of threat- ened evictions and rack-rents. The publication by him of facts relating to the poverty of the people in and around the Mount Partry district of Mayo aroused the sympathies of the then Bishop of Orleans, Monsignor Dupanloup, who on one lo 145 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND occasion preached a sermon in one of the Paris churches upon the subject of the Partry tenants and their sufferings. A princess of the Bonaparte family and other titled ladies took up a collection for the relief of the sufferers. So great was the sensation caused by this sermon that the then British ambassador at Paris protested to the French government against Bishop Dupanloup's action. Father Lavelle wrote a work on the Irish land question in 1870, under the title, Irish Landlordism Since the Revolution. It was found very useful by speakers at Western meetings during the subsequent Land League movement, and was often quoted from on public platforms. In 1874 Mr. John O'Connor Power was elected one of the members for Mayo. He was one of Mr. Pamell's obstruc- tionist party, and he at once interested himself actively in the social condition of the Western peasantry. He was the only member of Parliament invited to or who attended the historic Irishtown meeting, which began the land agitation out of which the Land League movement grew. y^ This demonstration was organized as follows: After my return from America, in December, 1878, 1 visited most parts of my native county and portions of Connemara and North Galway in company with Mr. John W. Walshe, of Balla, County Mayo. In this tour I had opportunities of meeting all the local leaders and those of the priests who took an active interest in national politics. Early in 1879, as al- ready mentioned, the condition and prospects of the Irish tenant - farmers were topics of general public interest and discussion, and I found farmers, business-men, and others in the West intelligently anxious about the outlook, and all eager to take part in any movement that might promise some hope of a relief from excessive rents. In the month of March I happened to be in Claremorris, County Mayo, where I was introduced to a few tenants from the Irish- town district. They complained of their heavy rents, and gave me the following facts and figures to sustain their case : The old landlord of Quinaltagh, a townland near the village of Irishtown, was a Mr. R. Kirwan. His estate was pur- chased in 1857 by one Walter Burke. The new landlord doubled the old rent immediately on the twenty-two tenants of the property, and in addition fined each a half-year's rental with the alternative of eviction. Some of the land was of poor quality, and the increased rents could only be paid by the smaller tenants out of remittances from relatives in America. 146 THE IRISHTOWN MEETING Early in 1879 Mr. Burke died. All the tenants on the estate were in arrears. The executor under the landlord's will was his brother, the late Rev. Geoffrey Canon Burke, ot Irishtown. It was represented to me by the tenants that the executor had threatened to dispossess them unless the arrears were paid, while they complained that because he was a clergyman they could not obtain a hearing for their case in the local press. It was likewise reported that the bailiff or agent for the property had resigned his post rather than carry out the instructions given to him to proceed against the tenants for the rents then due. On consulting with Mr. John Walshe, Mr. John O'Kane, and a few other nationalists in Claremorris, it was resolved, on my suggestion, to hold a meeting in Irishtown, to protest against the action of Canon Burke, to demand a reduction of rents, and to denounce the whole landlord system. The late Mr. P. W. Nally, of Balla, a fine type of young Mayo yeoman, and, like O'Kane, a Fenian, volunteered his influence and help, and all the necessary arrangements were made to hold a large demonstration on Sunday, April 19th. The task of collecting the audience was left in the hands of Messrs. Nally, O'Kane, Walshe, J. P. Quin, and a few others, while I undertook to find speakers, and prepare the necessary res- olutions. Mr. Thomas Brennan, of Dublin, subsequently secretary of the Land League; Mr. John O'Connor Power, member for the county, and Mr. John Ferguson, of Glasgow, a veteran land reformer and Home - Ruler, accepted invita- tions to attend. Mr. James Daly, of Castlebar, proprietor of a local newspaper and an active local leader, was selected as chairman, while Mr. J.J. Louden, of Westport, a local barrister, was also a speaker. The meeting was a great success. Fully seven thousand people were present, while upward of five hundred mounted men acted as a body-guard for the speakers. The resolutions and some of the speeches were on the lines of the new-de- parture proposals, and they voiced the spirit and sentiments on the land question which characterized the subsequent Land-League meetings. Owing to the important part played in the final struggle against landlordism by this meeting, it will not be out of place to give short extracts from the three speeches which opened the new campaign in Mayo. These utterances at this initial gathering indicated the three view- points from which the land question has been discussed in the country since then : the semi - revolutionary (or root- and-branch settlement) line of Fintan Lalor and John Mitchel, taken by Mr. Brennan; the constitutional and par- 147 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND liamentarian, adopted by Mr. O'Connor Power, and the strictly economic treatment of the problem by Mr. John Ferguson. The resolutions were as follows: " I. Whereas, the social condition of the Irish people having been reduced, through their subjection to England and its coercive legislation, to a state below that of any civilized country in the world; and whereas, the mouth-piece of English public opinion when speaking of continental mis- government in late years having declared that 'government should be for the good of the governed, and that whatever rulers will fully and persistently postpone the good of their subjects either in the interests of foreign states, or to assist theories of religion or politics, such rulers have thereby forfeited all claim to allegiance'; be it therefore resolved, that we Irishmen assembled to-day in our thousands do hereby endorse the foregoing declarations as embodying the position and wrongs of our misgoverned and impoverished country, and as likewise affording us a justification for re- cording our unceasing determination to resort to every lawful means whereby our inalienable rights — political and social — can be regained from our enemies. "2. That as the land of Ireland, like that of every other country, was intended by a just and all-providing God for the use and sustenance of those of His people to whom he gave inclination and energies to cultivate and improve it, any sys- tem which sanctions its monopoly by a privileged class, or as- signs its ownership and control to a landlord caste, to be used as an instrument of usurious or political self-seeking, de- mands from every aggrieved Irishman an undying hostility, being flagrantly opposed to the first principle of their hu- manity — self-preservation . ' ' 3. A resolution demanding a reduction in unjust rents by local and Mayo landlords. Mr. Thomas Brennan said: "I will not tell you what my opinions are as to the best means by which this state of things can be changed. I am but a student on this great question, and there are some dis- tinguished authorities on it to follow me; but I will tell you that I have read some history, and I find that several coun- tries have from time to time been afflicted with the same land disease as that under which Ireland is now laboring, and although the political doctors applied many remedies, the one that proved effectual was the tearing out, root and branch, of the class that caused the disease. All right-thinking men would deplore the necessity of having recourse in this country 148 THE IRISHTOWN MEETING to scenes such as have been enacted in other lands, although I for one will not hold up my hands in holy horror at a move- ment that gave liberty not only to France but to Europe. If excesses were at that time committed, they must be measured by the depth of slavery and ignorance in which the people had been kept, and I trust Irish landlords will in time rec- ognize the fact that it is better for them at least to have this land question settled after the manner of a Stein or a Hardenberg than wait for the excesses of a Marat or a Robes- pierre. The Irish people have often been charged with being very sentimental. They say all our grievances are sentimental. Well, I trust the day will never come when all sentiment will be crushed in the Irish heart. But this is no mere sentimental question; it is one on which your very existence depends, and any change in the government of Ireland that would not also change the present relations be- tween landlord and tenant would be a mere mockery of freedom. You may get a federal parliament, perhaps Repeal of the Union — nay, more, you may establish an Irish republic, but as long as the tillers of the soil are forced to support a useless and indolent aristocracy, your federal parliament would be but a bauble and your Irish republic but a fraud. . . . There is an opportunity for every Irishman, no matter how moderate or how extreme may be his views, to work for Ireland ; and in the combined energy and unceas- ing labor of all classes of Irishmen lies the hope of the national cause. Let you continue the struggle in your own way, avoiding all brag and bluster, on the one hand — men who are determined will prove their determination by deeds and not by words — and all semblance of fear on the other; "Be our people then still daring, Bold in word and brave in fight. And when comes the day of trial, Then may God defend the right!" Mr. O'Connor Power urged the radical remedy of peasant proprietary : "Whence arises this difference in the conduct of British and Irish landlords? It arises from the fact that we have no organized public opinion in Ireland, and the lords of the soil here may do the grossest acts of tyranny with impunity — acts which if committed in Great Britain would bring upon them the well - merited condemnation of the community. Now, if you ask me to state in a brief sentence what is the Irish land question, I say it is the restoration of the land of Ireland to the people of Ireland. And if you ask me for a 149 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND solution of the land question in accordance with philosophy, experience, and common-sense, I shall be equally brief and explicit. Abolish landlordism, and make the man who occupies and cultivates the soil the owner of the soil. I am afraid, however, that some time must elapse before we can induce Parliament to adopt a solution of the question which commended itself long ago to the ablest statesmen of Europe, and the economic and social value of which experience has amply proved. We must, therefore, take note of our present difficulties and apply an immediate remedy. Eviction must be stopped at all hazards. Ireland cannot afford to lose any more of her industrious children. She has lost too many already. True, we must resolve now, at last, to make a stand against the unholy work of the exterminator. I have great faith in the power of an enlightened public opinion, and, depend upon it, there is nothing tyrants dread so much as public exposure." Mr. Ferguson's speech was not fully reported. This is an extract from the summary given in the local press : "Mr. Ferguson then dwelt at great length on the import and export trade of the country, and demonstrated that it is only by breaking up the large tracts of territory owned by a few aristocrats and dividing it among peasant proprietors that a sufficient supply of food can be raised so as to check the enormous demand which exists at present for food im- ported from abroad. He pointed out how the land question had thus become one of vital interest to the artisans and working-men of the great manufacturing towns of England, and he said that the time had arrived when it was the duty of Irish tenants and English working-men to demand such a settlement of the land question as will bring about the prosperity and happiness of the people." No resolution or speech advocated the "three F's," or Mr. Butt's bill, which represented the official programme of the Home -Rule party on the land question, so that the Irishtown meeting broke with the then moderate parliamen- tary land reformers, and began the movement which was to demand "the land for the people" as the only real remedy for the intolerable evils of the Anglo-Irish land system. It was, in every sense, a people's meeting. No leaders, either revolutionary or constitutional, had been consulted about it, or had anything to do with its organization or success. No priests had been invited. None could, in any case, attend, as one of the purposes of the demonstration was to exert pressure upon the parish priest of Irishtown to abate the rack-rents which he demanded from his tenants. ISO THE I R I S H T O W N MEETING In this respect the meeting scored an immediate success. Canon Burke granted an abatement of twenty-five per cent, a few days after the invasion of his quiet Httle village by seven thousand sturdy Mayomen shouting "Down witii land- lordism! The land for the people!" Subsequently, it may be remarked, the same rents were reduced forty per cent, more, under the provisions of the Land Act of 1881. The Dublin press did not report the demonstration, nor even allude to it in any way. It was not held under official Home-Rule auspices, while the fact that one of its objects was to denounce rack - renting on an estate owned by a Catholic clergyman would necessarily, at that early stage of a popular movement, frighten the timid editors of Dublin from offering it any recognition. But the local prestige won by the meeting was enormous. The speeches were fully given in the Connaught Telegraph. The meeting had within a few days knocked five shillings in the pound off the rentals of the estate which was singled out for attack. This news flew round the county, and requests for meetings reached the organizers from various districts. It was generally known that the active spirits in the organizing of the meet- ing were members of the Fenian body, and on this account, but chiefly owing to the "attack" made upon Canon Burke, many of the altars in Mayo rang with warnings and denun- ciations against gatherings called by "irresponsible people," and which showed "disrespect" towards the priests. But Mayo nationalists have always had a record for courage and independence, and this opposition had no effect upon the men who were resolved to push forward the work that had scored so significantly at its initial step. Mr. Pamell soon learned all the facts relating to the Irish- town meeting. He was intensely interested, especially about the clerical opposition, and this hostility may, perhaps, have been one reason why he showed some disinclination for a time to become identified with the movement. There was, likewise, a disposition on his part to shy at what he suspected to be a revolutionary plan and purpose, in the disguise of a public agitation. He was made acquainted with the de- cision of the leaders of the Fenian body in Ireland not to lend countenance to the new departure, but also with the resolve of those who believed in the need for such a policy to push it forward on the merits of its programme, no matter who might oppose or approve of such action. It was pointed out to him that the rank and file of the extreme party would in all likelihood act as those did who organized the Irishtown meeting, and support as farmers, laborers, and artisans an THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND agitation which promised them, in common with others of the industrial classes, a share in general benefits to be won for the country. The assistance of Irish America could also be counted upon as certain if he would throw himself into the movement, and upon a due consideration of these facts he agreed to attend a meeting which had been announced to be held at Westport on June 8th. In his evidence before the special commission {Report, vol. vii., p. lo), Mr. Parnell, in reply to a question put to him about this meeting, said: "Mr. Davitt was very anxious that the Land League should be formed, and that the tenants should be supported by an agrarian movement. I had in my mind advice given to me by Mr. Butt one or two years previously, when I pressed upon him the extension of the Home-Rule movement by the formation of branches throughout the coun- try. He said, looking at it from a lawyer's point of view, that we should be made responsible for every foolish thing done by the members of the branches. I was rather disin- clined to entertain the idea of the formation of an extensive agrarian movement on account of that caution which I re- ceived from Mr. Butt. But ultimately I saw that it was necessary for us to take the risk." And, again, on cross- examination (p. 95) he gave a fuller explanation of what he understood the proposed league movement to stand for. "I think we had many discussions before the Westport meeting. ,1 don't know that there was any particular plan propounded ! about the Land League at these interviews. Mr. Davitt spoke with regard to the desirability of a combined social and po- litical movement, a movement that would interest the tenant- farmers by directing attention to their condition and pro- posing remedies for their relief, and a movement which at the same time would interest the Irish nation at home and abroad in the direction of the restitution of an Irish Parliament. We must have had many conversations upon this subject, and I am not at all sure that I did not more than once put these ob- jections, and other objections which occurred to me at the time, to Mr. Davitt." Mr. Parnell's consent to speak at Westport was an enor- mous gain for the infant movement, and an act of great cour- age on his part, considering the hostile attitude of a section of the Mayo priests. But his reputation for dogged resoluteness of purpose was soon to be put to the utmost test. The Archbishop of Tuam, Dr. MacHale, the friend and col- league of O'Connell in the Repeal movement, and probably the strongest personality in Ireland in 1879, was induced to launch a thunderbolt against the proposed meeting. Rumor 152 THE IRISHTOWN MEETING charitably asserted at the time that, though the name was that of "John of Tuam," he whom O'Connell had called" The Lion of the Fold of Judah," the spirit and composition of the following letter were of another and lower origin: "THE WESTPORT MEETING " Westport, June $th. " To the Editor of the ' Freeman ': "Dear Sir, — In a telegraphic message exhibited towards the end of last week in a public room of this town, an Irish member of Parliament has unwittingly expressed his readi- ness to attend a meeting convened in a mysterious and dis- orderly manner, which is to be held, it seems, in Westport on Sunday next. Of the sympathy of the Catholic clergy for the rack-rented tenantry of Ireland, and of their willingness to co-operate earnestly in redressing their grievances, abundant evidence exists in historic Mayo, as elsewhere. But night patrolling, acts and words of menace, with arms in hand, the profanation of what is most sacred in religion — all the result of lawless and occult association, eminently merit the solemn condemnation of the ministers of religion, as directly tending to impiety and disorder in Church and in society. Against such combinations in this diocese, organized by a few design- ing men, who. instead of the well-being of the community, seek only to promote their personal interests, the faithful clergy will not fail to raise their warning voices, and to point out to the people that unhallowed combinations lead invariably to disaster and to the firmer riveting of the chains by which we are unhappily bound as a subordinate people to a dominant race. I remain, dear sir, "Faithfully yours, "+JoHN, Archbishop of Tuam." This bolt from the blue fell upon the prospects of the meet- ing the day before it was to be held. Mr. Parnell had crossed from London to attend, and as I wended my way to Morri- son's Hotel, Dublin, on the Saturday morning, it was with the conviction that he would follow the example of other invited guests by pleading some excuse to remain away. "Will I attend ? Certainly. Why not ? I have promised to be there, and you can count upon my keeping that promise." This was superb. Here was a leader at last who feared no man who stood against the people, no matter what his reputation or record might be; a leader, too, who, though a Protestant, 153 L THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND might, on that account, be more poHtically subservient to a great CathoHc prelate on pubHc issues than the CathoHc na- tionahsts of Mayo would consent to be in such a democratic cause. i/It was Mr. Pamell's first momentous step in his prog- ress towards the leadership of a race mostly Catholic, and I have always considered it the most courageously wise act of his whole political career. The assemblage was a repetition of that of Irishtown, only, if possible, a greater success. Some eight thousand persons were present, while about five hundred young fellows on horseback formed a body - guard for Mr. Parnell from the hotel to the place of meeting. The organization of the gather- ing was perfect, and this fact, together with the indifference shown by the nationalists and tenants to the extraordinary clerical influence that had been evoked against the demon- .stration, impressed him very strongly. He felt that there was a power being evolved at last out of the people which was about to bear down all opposition and to carry things before it, and he responded to this coming power and spirit in the best fighting utterances he had yet delivered. It was in this speech he gave to the movement one of its subsequent watchwords, "Hold a firm grip of your homesteads." The prevailing spirit of the meeting was anti-rent and anti- eviction, and he took inspiration from this feeling. He spoke as follows on these questions : "A fair rent is a rent the tenant can reasonably pay accord- ing to the times, but in bad times a tenant cannot be expected to pay as much as he did in good times three or four years ago. If such rents are insisted upon, a repetition of the scenes of 1847 and 1848 will be witnessed. Now, what must we do in order to induce the landlords to see the position? You must show them that you intend to hold a firm grip of your homesteads and lands. You must not allow yourselves to be dispossessed as your fathers were dispossessed in 1847. You must not al- low your small holdings to be consolidated. I am supposing that the landlords will remain deaf to the voice of reason, but I hope they may not, and that on those properties where the rents are out of all proportion to the times a reduction may be made, and that immediately. If not,' you must help yourselves, and the public opinion of the world will stand by you and support you in your struggle to defend your home- steads." ^ The root remedy for the injustices of landlordism was strongly voiced by another of the speakers at this historic gathering: ' Freeman' s Jonrnal, June 9, 1879. THE IRISHTOWN MEETING "To confiscate the land of a subjugated but unconquered people and bestow it upon adventurers is the first act of un- righteous conquest, the preliminary step to the extermination or servitude of an opponent race. And the landlord garrison established by England in this country, centuries ago, is as true to the object of its foundation, and as alien to the moral instincts of our people, as when it was first expected to drive the Celtic race 'to hell or Connaught.' It is the bastard off- spring of force and wrong, the Ishmael of the social common- wealth, and every man's hand should be against what has proved itself to be the scourge of our race since it first made Ireland a land of misery and poverty. If the tenant-farmers of Ireland will organize themselves in one body, with but one purpose, and resolve upon a settlement which the organized determination of such a purpose would render comparatively easy, the landlords of Ireland would be compelled to sell out to the government within less time than has already been occupied in the discussion of Mr. Butt's complicated and un- satisfactory land bill. Instead of 'Agitate, agitate,' the cry i of the present should be 'Organize, organize.' " ^ ' Speech by Mr. Davitt; Connaught Telegraph, June 14, 1879. CHAPTER XIII THE LAND LEAGUE OF MAYO f Mr. Parnell's presence at this demonstration insured the attention of the DubHn papers. His speech and the res- olutions were fully reported in the metropolitan press, while pro-landlord organs took notice of some strong expressions by other speakers, and made these a text on which to lecture the member for Meath upon the "communistic company" he had associated with. The Freeman's Journal, then edited by its proprietor, Mr. E. D. Gray, was severely critical upon the "raw theories" of land reform which were put forward. Other Dublin papers severely condemned "the wild language " of Western meetings, and leading British journals joined in the critical censure of the speakers and the anti-rent sentiments which were spoken as they never had been expressed before on an Irish platform. All this condemnation was a gratifying testimony to the reality of the new movement, and a proof that its advanced doctrines had arrested public attention. There was also the recognition of the new power which had brushed aside the great archbishop's opposition by simply ignoring it, and it was thus made evident to friend and foe alike that the new departure had come in time and was des- tined to stay as a movement of great political possibilities. Nature, too, gave it a helping hand. The early summer of 1879 offered to the country an alarming prospect of a bad harvest, and, as a consequence, the gloomy promise of a winter of severe distress. The outlook was far more dis- couraging than in the previous year, and this condition of things caused the tenants in Connaught to join more readi- ly in "the anti-rent agitation," for by this time the move- ment had earned this name from the pro-landlord press. We made no objection. Rent was the basis of landlord power, the very life-blood of the system we were resolved, if possible, to destroy. The more rent for land we abolished, the weaker became the organism of the system which had almost ex- terminated our race in Ireland. And the cry of "No rent!" L was soon heard from one end of Mayo to the other. 156 THE LAND LEAGUE OF MAYO Meetings commenced to multiply rapidly, but only within the county in which the movement had taken birth. Some- thing was wanted to encourage it to cross the borders, and in a short time the necessary impulse was given. It came from a Tory chief secretary. The Miltown meeting, held on the borders of Mayo and Galway, on the Sunday following the Westport gathering, was the greatest demonstration in point of numbers held in the West during the whole league agitation. Fully fifteen thousand people were present. There were over a thousand men on horseback. Hundreds of young men carried imitation pikes, while the various contingents taking part in the meet- ing marched to the rendezvous in military order. Banners inscribed with "Down with the land robbers!" "Down with tyrants!" were a feature of the procession. A large number of police were in attendance, and for the first time a govern- ment reporter made an appearance in behalf of Dublin Castle. The speeches were very violent ; far more so than at Irishtown. Rent was attacked as "legal robbery," which was to be put down by combination. The doctrine was preached that the"l tenant who did not consider his children's wants and his household's comfort before thinking of the claim of the landlord was disobeying a natural law, and should be held accountable to justice if any of his offspring suffered from hunger or privation while rents were paid. The frightful cowardice of the '47 victims who paid their landlords and then lay down to die was held up as a warning, while on the other hand "a word of sound advice" was spoken to persons who might be tempted to covet a vacant holding to let it alone, if they wished to live at peace with their neighbors. The final note struck was one demanding ample reductions in rent with which to meet the serious situation of bad harvests and low prices. A question was asked in the House of Commons about this meeting and the speeches thus described, and Mr. James Lowther, who had been made chief secretary for Ireland by Lord Beaconsfield, replied as follows: "One of the resolutions proposed at the meeting was moved by a clerk in a commercial house in Dublin [Mr. Thomas Brennan], and seconded by a person who was de- scribed as a discharged school - master [Mr. M. O 'Sullivan]. Another resolution was moved by a convict at large on tick- et-of-leave — [loud laughter and cheers] — and the same reso- lution was seconded by a person who was stated to be the representative of a local newspaper" [Mr. James Daly]. The language of this reply was intended to be insulting to me,^ 157 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND and it was resented by Mr. O'Connor Power, who moved the adjournment of the House in order to discuss the chief sec- retary's answer. A great uproar ensued — the ministerial- ists trying to drown the voice of the member for Mayo, and some of the Irish members shouting back and creating a pan- demonium. Finally, Mr. John Bright intervened and politely reprimanded Mr. Lowther for his want of parliamentary tact in using provocative phrases, which were rightly resented by the member for Mayo. Nothing could have helped our meetings and movement better at the time than the foolish attack that had thus been made upon the agitation by a British minister inside Parlia- ment. The "scenes" in the House were fully described in the British press, while the anti-rent theories of the Miltown meeting were given a publicity which nothing else could at the time have secured for speakers or speeches. The whole country was now watching with growing inter- est the progress of "the Western meetings." The Dublin press began to abate its indifference and hostility, while much indignation was expended upon Mr. Lowther for the happy blundering which had served so much to popularize what he had hoped might suffer in some way under the slight and ridicule of his ministerial sarcasm. At our next large meet- ing, held in Claremorris, Mr. John Dillon joined the move- ment, and brought into it a sterling character, a fighting power, and a tireless energy which added probably more to the ultimate success of the new departure than the labor of any other single leader. Mr. A. J. Kettle, of County Dublin, a veteran land reformer and lieutenant of Mr. Butt's, also strengthened the ranks. Mr. Matthew Harris, a local leader of conspicuous ability in County Galway, an old-time Fenian, had taken part in the Westport meeting, and became one of our leading organizers and speakers in Connaught. But our most valuable recruit, after Mr. Dillon, was the late Dr. Duggan, Bishop of Clonfert. He entered whole-heartedly into the spirit and aim of the agitation, and from his posi- tion and record afforded us an encouragement all the more valuable and welcome on account of the open or badly con- cealed hostility of bishops and priests elsewhere. Nor did this warm and loyal support ever flag afterwards; always, how- ever, given privately and silently. In every crisis, whether caused by coercion or resulting from interference by Rome, his counsel and assistance were eagerly sought for and were al- ways, and in either case, at the service of the league. But the agitation had not yet (in July, 1879) pleased or placated the veteran Archbishop of Tuam. The old warrior 158 THE LAND LEAGUE OF MAYO who had once warned O'Connell not to cross the Shannon, had failed to frighten the people of Westport, and some of his admirers organized a meeting at Ballyhaunis, in rivalry with the new movement, invited the archbishop to attend, and ignored the parties who had incurred his censure. He wrote a reply in which, following the bad example of Mr. James Lowther, he referred as follows to the organizers of the new- departure meetings: "In some parts of the country the people, in calmer mo- ments, will not fail to be astonished at the circumstance of finding themselves at the tail of a few unknown, strolling men, who, with affected grief, deploring the condition of the tenantry, seek only to mount to place and preferment on the shoulders of the people; and should they succeed in their ambitious designs, they would not hesitate to shake aside at once the instrument of their advancement as an unprofitable encumbrance." On the appearance of this ill-tempered letter in the press, it was resolved to come to close quarters immediately with this arrogant hostility, and settle the question once and for all whether the people trusted men from their own ranks or those in higher places who had counselled the bravest race on earth to lie down and die like soulless animals before the English-made famine of 1846-47 rather than act as men and as true Christians by putting the natural rights of their families above the landlords' rent. A meeting was organized for Tuam, where the archbishop resided, and on the advertised day five thousand men, with two or three hundred on horse- back, marched into the cathedral town, and put an end to the notion that either an Irish archbishop or an English chief secretary was strong enough to frown down such a movement or turn its leaders from the objects upon which they had embarked. This was, for the time being, an end of clerical opposition. There were later developments of a more dangerous kind, which will be referred to in the order of time, but they fared no better in their purpose than these early attempts to emasculate a people's resolve to deliver themselves from the social scourge of landlordism. Mr. Parnell was pressed again about this period to co- operate in creating a permanent organization for the control and direction of the new movement. He hesitated. Its progress in the West gratified him. There were signs, too, that other parts of the country were awakening to the need of a militant agitation and were calling for the Connaught "in- cendiaries" in preference to the tenant-righters who held to Mr. Butt's moderate programme. All these symptoms of ac- 159 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tivity were keenly noted by him, but he could not see his way to take a step which might look like the abandonment of the tenants' defence associations, and the throwing over of their local leaders in Limerick, Tipperary, Cork, and elsewhere, for a new organization which had its birth in extremist plans. He further and frankly confessed that he did not like the idea of a wide-spread organization which would embrace all kinds of elements and probably resort to illegality and violence, as all such popular combinations were only too prone to do. These objections, however, were apparently more ex- pedient than determinate, and it was felt that it would only require the pressure of the continued growth in power and prestige of the agitation to induce him to place himself openly at its head. It was then resolved to form an organization for Mayo as the nucleus for a national body. The name fixed upon was that of "The National Land League," and a convention was summoned to meet at Castlebar, on August i6th, to put the new departure into concrete shape. The following abridged report of the proceedings is taken from the Dublin Freeman's Journal of August i8, 1879: "LAND LEAGUE CONVENTION AT CASTLEBAR" " A meeting in connection with the land agitation in Mayo (the first convention of tenant-farmers held in Ireland since the repeal of the Convention Act) took place at Castlebar, Saturday, August 16, 1879, at Daly's Hotel, and was attended by representative delegates from all parts of the county. On the motion of Mr. James Daly, Castlebar, seconded by Mr. William Judge, Claremorris, the chair was taken by Mr. James J. Louden, B.L., Westport. " DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES " Mr. Michael Davitt then read the following document em- bodying the declaration of principles and rules of the proposed association : " ' Declaration of principles: The land of Ireland belongs to the people of Ireland, to be held and cultivated for the suste- nance of those whom God decreed to be inhabitants thereof. Land being created to supply mankind with the necessaries of existence, those who cultivate it to that end have a higher claim to its absolute possession than those who make it an article of barter, to be used or disposed of for purposes of profit or pleasure. The end for which the land of a country 160 THE LAND LEAGUE OF MAYO is created requires an equitable distribution of the same among the people who are to live upon the fruits of their labor in its cultivation. ..." Before the conquest the Irish people knew nothing of absolute property in land, the land virtually be- longing to the entire sept. The chief was little more than the managing member of the association. The feudal idea, which views all rights as emanating from a head landlord, came in with the conquest, was associated with foreign dominion, and has never to this day been recognized by the moral sentiments of the people. Originally the offspring, not of industry but of spoliation, the right has not been allowed to purify itself by protracted possession, but has passed from the original spoliators to others by a series of fresh spoliations, so as to be always connected with the latest and most odious oppression of foreign invaders, in the moral feelings of the Irish people. The right to hold the land goes as it did in the beginning with the right to till it." Those are the words of John Stuart Mill, the English political economist. " '. . . Over six million acres of Irish land are owned by less than three hundred individuals, twelve of whom are in pos- session of one million two hundred and ninety-seven thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight acres, while five millions of the Irish people own not a solitary acre. For the protection of the proprietorial rights of a few thousand landlords in the country, a standing army of semi-military police is maintained, which the landless millions have to support. Thus the right of the cultivators of the soil, their security from arbitrary dis- turbance, their incentives to social advancement, together with the general well-being, peace, and prosperity of the people at large, are sacrificed for the benefit of a class insignificant in numbers and of least account in all that goes towards the maintenance of a country. Yet this idle, non-producing class are enabled by English land laws to extract from twelve to fifteen million pounds annually from the soil of Ireland, without conferring any single benefit in return on the same, or upon the people by whose industry it is produced. If the land in possession of, say, seven hundred and forty-four land- lords in this country was divided into twenty-acre farms, it would support, in ease and comparative independence, over two and a half millions of our people. . . . The interests of the landlords are pecuniary and can be compensated, but the in- terests of the people of Ireland, dependent upon the produce of the soil, are their very existence. In denouncing existing land laws and demanding in their place such a system as will recognize and establish thejqultivator of the soil as its pro- prietor, we desire that coinpensation be given the landlords II i6i THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND for the loss of their interests when the state, for the peace, benefit, and happiness of the people, shall decree the abolition of the present system. . . . " ' We appeal to the farmers of Ireland to be up and doing at once, and organize themselves in order that their full strength may be put forward in behalf of themselves and their country in efforts to obtain a reform that has brought security and comparative plenty to the farming-classes of continental countries. Without an evidence of earnestness and practical determination being shown now by the farmers of Ireland and their friends in a demand for a small proprietary, which alone can fully satisfy the Irish people, or finally settle the great land question of the country, the tribunal of public opinion will neither recognize the urgent necessity for such a change, nor lend its influence in ameliorating the condition of our country or in redressing the social and political wrongs of which we complain. . . . " ' RULES AND OBJECTS " ' This body shall be known as the National Land League of Mayo, and shall consist of farmers and others who will agree to labor for the objects here set forth, and subscribe to the conditions of membership, principles, and rules specified below. " ' OBJECTS " ' The objects for which this body is organized are: " ' I. To watch over the interests of the people it represents, and protect the same as far as may be in its power to do so from an unjust or capricious exercise of power or privilege on the part of landlords or any other class in the community. " ' 2. To resort to every means compatible with justice, morality, and right reason which shall not clash defiantly with the constitution upheld by the powers of the British Empire in this country for the abolition of the present land laws of Ireland, and the substitution in their place of such a system as shall be in accord with the social rights and inter- ests of our people, the traditions and moral sentiments of our race, and which the contentment and prosperity of our country imperiously demand. " ' 3. Pending a final and satisfactory settlement of the land question, the duty of this body will be to expose the injustice, wrong, or injury which may be inflicted upon any farmer in Mayo, either by rack-renting, eviction, or other arbitrary exercise of power which the existing laws enaMe the landlords 162 THE LAND LEAGUE OF MAYO to exercise over their tenantry, by giving all such arbitrary acts the widest publicity, and meeting their perpetration with all the opposition which the laws for the preservation of the peace will permit. In furtherance of which the following plan will be adopted: Returns to be obtained, printed, and circulated of the number of landlords in this county, the amount of acreage in possession of same, and the means by which such lands were obtained, the farms owned by each, with the conditions under which they are held by their tenants, and the excess of rent paid by same over the government valuation. To publish by placard, or otherwise, notice of contemplated evictions for non-payment of ex- orbitant rent, or other unjust cause, and the convening of public meetings, if necessary or expedient, as near the scene of such evictions as circumstances will allow, and on the day fixed upon for the same. The publication of a list of evictions carried out, together with cases of rack-renting, giving full particulars of same, name of landlord, agents, etc., concerned, and the number of people evicted by such acts. The publication of the names of all persons who shall rent or occupy land or farms from which others have been dis- possessed for non-payment of exorbitant rents, or who shall ofEer a higher rent for land or farms than that paid by the previous occupier. "'4. This body to undertake the defence of such of its members or others of local clubs affiliated with it who may be required to resist by law actions of landlords or their agents, who may purpose doing them injury, wrong, or in- justice in connection with their land or farms. " ' 5. To render assistance when possible to such farmer members as may be evicted or otherwise wronged by the landlords or their agents. " ' 6. To undertake the organizing of local clubs or defence associations in the baronies, towns, and parishes of this county, the holding of public meetings and demonstrations on the land question, and the printing of pamphlets on that and other subjects for the information of the farming-classes. "'7. Finally, to act as a vigilance committee in Mayo, noting the conduct of its grand jury, poor-law guardians, town commissioners, and members of Parliament, and pro- nouncing on the manner in which their respective duties are performed, whenever the interests, social or political, of the people represented by this club render it expedient to do so.' " With the summoning of this convention, the framing of the programme put before it, or the naming of the new organiza- tion, neither Mr. Parnell nor any of the constitutional party 163 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND was in any way concerned. Mr. Parnell was made aware of the fact that the step was to be taken, but he had neither expressed approval nor offered objection to what was pro- posed. Mr. Thomas Brennan and Mr. Patrick Egan, of Dublin, and Mr. Matt. Harris, of County Galway, were among the pro- moters. With the exception of Messrs. Louden and Daly, these promoters had been members of the Fenian organization. The plan and purpose of the leaders of the new league were to supplant the tenants' defence associations, which had provided a platform for Mr. Butt and the Home-Rulers on the land question, and to create an aggressive movement which would try to rally the whole country in a fight against the whole land system. An organized Mayo, where the people had already wrung reductions of rents from several landlords and silenced clerical opposition, was the vantage - ground from which the agitation was to operate for the capture of the moderate land movement, with the moral certainty that success in this easy enterprise would mean the capture of Mr. Parnell, too, as the leader of the forces which were to be recruited for the contemplated struggle. It was found necessary at this stage of the new departure to insist as much as possible upon certain root principles as to the ownership and tenure of land. The mass of small tenants, who were the main support of the movement, under- stood very little of the land problem beyond the question of rent and the dread reality of eviction. There could be no ignorance upon these powers of landlordism in Ireland, but otherwise the people generally were the enemies of the system by force of Celtic instinct more than by any process of in- dependent thought or conviction. A speaker at a meeting near Castlebar insisted upon "the complete abolition of the landlords," meaning of their system, when an old man in the audience interjected the remark, " Arrah, to who would we pay the rint, thin, sir?" The speaker tried to make his proposal clearer to the rather pertinent questioner, and apparently succeeded. At a subsequent meeting, however, the writer saw the same intelligent inquirer marching at the head of a contingent from his village, and bearing a pole which carried a rough banner, across which two words, in large, uneven characters, were painted. The words were, "Pay Nothing!" Manifestly education in this instance had progressed a little too rapidly. There was a greater evil than economic ignorance to beat down among the tenantry of Ireland, and that was their slavish social attitude towards not alone the landlord but his agent and whole entourage. It was a hateful and heart- 164 THE LAND LEAGUE OF MAYO breaking sight to see manly looking men, young and old. doffing their hats and caps and cringing in abject manner to any person connected with an estate, and before magistrates and others associated with the administration of pro-landlord laws. It was a moral malady, born of feudalism and fear, the demoralizing results of the power possessed by those who owned the land and who had the legal authority to carry out the dreaded penalty of eviction. Generations of suffering and tyranny had inflicted this slavishness of manner upon a Celtic peasantry. It was, therefore, resolved to undo this as far as possible by holding the landlord class, its arrogance and acts, up to opprobrium and contempt, as being the sordid beneficiaries of a system of legal injustice which had robbed the nation of its patrimony and industry of its right reward. It became necessary to instil confidence into minds in which fear of the landlord had given birth to helot qualities of un- manly subserviency, and in the pithy phrase of Mr. Thomas Brennan, "the gospel of manhood" as well as that of "the land for the people" became a necessary part of the new propaganda. There was another and a kindred evil to assail in the carrying out of these purposes. The land-grabber was the buttress of the rack - renting evil and the worst foe of the struggling tenant. He was never a man who, from the coer- cion of real want, took a holding from which a neighbor was ejected for inability to pay an unfair rent. The necessity of existence breaks no law when it obeys the highest impulse of human nature and seizes upon the means to live. No grabber in Ireland is ever impelled to take land on this principle. He is always a man who possesses a farm or holding and covets more, or a person with means otherwise earned which prompts him to go contrary to the public sentiment by outbidding a poorer occupant of some tempting piece of land. It would be necessary, therefore, to put this practice down by popular power, and this was one of the planks we inserted in the Cas- tlebar programme. No person taking land from which an- other was evicted was to be admitted to the Land League, while the names of such transgressors against the unwritten agrarian code would be published as notoriously going con- trary to the interests of his fellows. The resolve to support persons who might be evicted, to help them fight their legal claims or objections in the courts, and to defend them against all attacks, legal or otherwise, on the part of their oppressors, instilled great courage into the Western tenants, and brought them by thousands into the new organization. Meetings grew very numerous, and were no longer confined to Mayo, though the Western "incendiaries" were not always 165 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND invited to attend the gatherings which were organized else- where. The Dubhn press still harped upon extreme utter- ances and impracticable proposals, the moral necessity for safeguarding the landlords' interests, and, above all, the need to keep within the law, and these warnings explained the ob- jections to our presence at these meetings. But the Con- naught movement held on its own course, aided by the growing certainty of an unprecedentedly bad season and the fears of an eviction campaign should rents not be paid in full at the coming November gale. Our chief speakers were, as a rule, those already named, few, if any, members of Parliament being available, owing to their absence in London during the session. Local talent had to be relied upon, and though it was extremely difficult to obtain a chairman or the proposer of a resolution at the earlier meetings, owing to fears of landlord resentment, this feeling soon vanished, and it became equally difficult to limit local volunteer orators either in number or in verbosity. The political ballad-singer has always been a familiar feat- ure of modem Irish movements, but chiefly in connection with electioneering contests. He was once a mighty power in the more Celtic life of Ireland, for it is on record that in the early part of the fifteenth century one Nial O'Higgins, of Usnagh, whose stock of cattle had been plundered in a foray by Lord Deputy Stanley, retaliated by writing such a caustic attack upon him that he "rhymed the viceroy to death," according to the annals of the times. The Land League movement appealed to the poetic patriotism of the now less powerful order of tuneful propagandists, and few meetings came off in the West or South which had not its singer with some "lament" of a hero of agrarian repute, or a versified malediction upon an evictor or other obnoxious enemy of the cause. One of the best of such ballads was much in vogue in these early days of the movement, and emphasized the teach- ing of the new departure. It ran as follows: "AN IRISH PEASANT'S LAMENT "to his wife " The harvest is over, my corn not sold, Ochone! acushla machree; But I'm Httle the better, if truth must be told, Ochone! acushla machree. For though mine was the toil, yet the landlord's the spoil. Sure he says that the soil belongs not to me, As if God, through some whim, made the world for him, Ochone! acushla machree. i66 THE LAND LEAGUE OF MAYO " Though in labor unceasing my days are all spent, Ochone! acushla machree, A just rent to pay I did always consent, Ochone! acvishla machree. Though in sunshine and snow I delve and I sow, Yet to pay what I owe I will surely agree; But 'tis hard to resign what is rightfully mine, Ochone! acushla machree. " The fish in the brook and the bird in the brake, Ochone! acushla machree. Were made for his honor, without a mistake, Ochone! acushla machree. While I toil all the day, with pains for my pay, He dwells far away, amid wild revelry. And squanders in sin what I labored to win, Ochone! acushla machree. " And now that I ask an abatement of rent, Ochone ! acushla machree, Sincerely hoping his honor's consent, Ochone! acushla machree, Though my holding is small, I can't see at all Why he should take all and leave nothing to me. If it's legally so, 'tis not justice, 1 know, Ochone! acushla machree. " From the law-shop in London no succor we'll get, Ochone! acitshla machree. Still, 'tis vain to complain, and 'tis idle to fret, Ochone! acushla machree. But courage awhile, for soon o'er our isle, Kind Heaven will smile, and each Saxon decree, Will be righted straight away, and I ferventl)^ pray, May God hasten the day, a cushla-machree! " CHAPTER XIV THE LAND LEAGUE OF IRELAND During August and September the fears of a coming par- tial famine grew into the certainty of a deep and wide-spread distress, as a result of crops destroyed by continuous rains. As usual, there was an official denial by Dublin Castle of the ex- istence of such a state of things. It was all an invention of "mercenary and disloyal agitators." The government were closely observing the condition of the country, and while there could be no doubt about the excessive rainfall and the ap- pearance of blight in the potato-fields, there were no real grounds for the cries of alarm raised at seditious meetings. This was the official attitude. The country saw clearly, how- ever, that the league warnings were only too well justified, that a crisis threatening a possible famine was at hand, and meetings were called for from all quarters. Most of those which were held outside of Connaught were organized by the Tenants' Defence Clubs or the Home - Rule League, in re- sponse to popular feeling. The speeches and resolutions, while being in advance of previous utterances in denunciation of landlordism, wore the appearance of a final attempt to bar the progress of the Land League across the Shannon. It was the last rally of the moderate land reformers to save their movement. Meetings in Tipperary, Limerick, Cork City, Mallow, Enniscorthy, and in other centres showed that while large gatherings could be assembled by the old associations, under the pressure of impending distress, the spirit of the au- diences was that of the "Western incendiaries," and that the ^-country demanded something more to fight for than the re- ' form comprised in the formula of "The Three F's." At the Limerick demonstration, held on August 31st, Mr. Parnell went so far as to say to the farmers, "It is the duty of the Irish tenant-farmers to combine among themselves, and ask for a reduction of rent, and if they get no reduction, then I say that it is the duty of the tenant to pay no rent." In the mean time, the Western agitation had won the active support of Irish- American bodies and papers. The Irish 168 THE LAND LEAGUE OF IRELAND World, of New York, a journal with a circulation of unique extent and character, had strenuously backed from the beginning the Connaught revolt against landlordism. Mr. Patrick Ford, its editor, was a native of Galway. His paper had been, from its initial number, an advocate of extremist views on Anglo-Irish problems, and the new departure was in ^•' line with its general attitude on the questions of Irish land and government. The Irish World rendered enormous assistance to the league movement up to the Kilmainham treaty ; send- ing, during that period, from its readers and friends more financial help than has probably ever been contributed by the efforts of a single weekly paper to any political move- ment. The Boston f^ilot, under Boyle O'Reilly's editorship, was equally earnest in our support, though not in a position to extend the same amount of help. O'Reilly had been one of the promoters of the new departure, and he was kept regularly informed of the progress we were making in Ireland. Mr. John Devoy sent us the first monetary assistance from America. It was a grant from the "Skirmishing Fund," changed in name to the "National Fund," and was made in reply to a communication I had addressed to O'Reilly, Devoy, Ford, and others, asking their support for a contemplated lecture tour in the United States in behalf of the new move- ment. This money was originally subscribed for "warfare" against England, and was intended solely for revolutionary purposes. The acceptance of any of it for the furtherance of the new departure would be attended with risk, while be- ing, under the circumstances, an unwise proceeding anyhow. After a long consideration of the whole matter, the friendly motives of those who sent it unsolicited were deemed to be a sufficient reason for accepting it in that sense, and the first big mistake of the infant league was thus committed. The trans- action being associated with "conspiracy," it was certain at no distant day to be confided to the strict obligations of se- crecy which are peculiar to the New York press, and then there might be trouble in explaining the innocent purpose of this accidental connection with revolutionary funds. These fears were only too truly realized. In a few months' time it was . revealed in some New York papers that money belonging to the " Skinnishing Fund" had been used for parliamentary purposes, which was quite untrue, and that there were serious troubles brewing in extreme circles over the business. Ulti- mately (June, 1882) I told the public, through an interview in the American press, the facts as I am now recording them, when this chapter in the history of the new departure was 169 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND closed in the publication of a small document of which this is a copy: " New York, July 13, 1882. "Received from Michael Davitt the sum of seven hundred and thirty-five dollars ($735), being the balance of the whole amount advanced to him by the trustees of the Irish National Fund, and liquidating all monetary claims against him by that body. "On behalf of the trustees of the Irish National Fund. "John Devoy. "Witnessed by WiUiam K. Redmond." It is but just to Mr. Devoy to add that the publication of the facts about the grant which had been made out of the National Fund was not due to him. Returning to the position in Ireland in September, 1878, Mr. Parnell was again approached and urged to join in trans- i forming the Land League of Mayo into the National Land , '' '' League of Ireland. He consented; but on the understanding that the platform to be put forward should be a parliamentary one — that is, the planks should be such as could be advocated as freely in the House of Commons as at meetings in Ireland, vl This was not objected to. On the other hand, Mr. Parnell agreed to the absorption of the Tenants' Defence Associations in the new league, and that its active promoters should be included in the executive of the enlarged organization. It was a reasonable compromise, on both sides; the concessions to Mr. Parnell's position being necessary on our part, owing to the refusal of the extremist leaders in Ireland to have any- thing to do with the new departure; while Mr. Parnell was obtaining the prestige of the Western agitation, and the pros- pect of financial aid from the United States, without running any serious risks in joining the movement which he had helped so much by attending the Westport meeting. Mr. A. J. Ket- tle, the honorary secretary of the Tenants' Defence Associa- tion, was readily persuaded to merge this body in the Land League, and it was arranged that he should be a member of the executive of the new organization. All necessary discussions with Mr. Parnell having taken place, he consented to write a circular of invitation to representative nationalists and land reformers to meet in conference in Dublin to form the Central Land League. The invitation to [this historic conference was worded as follows : 176 THE LAND LEAGUE OF IRELAND " AvoNDALE, Rathdrum, September 29, 1879. "My dear Sir, — Some friends have urged upon me the strong desirabiHty of forming a committee for the purpose of appeaHng to our countrymen abroad, and more especially in America, for assistance in forwarding the new land agitation in favor of the ownership of the soil by the occupier, and also for the purpose of upholding the tenants during this terrible crisis by the promotion of organization. I enclose you a copy of the appeal that we have drawn up, and trust that you will permit yourself to be added to the committee, and allow your name to be appended to the appeal. I am, dear sir, "Yours very truly, "Charles S. Parnell." In addition to consenting to become the president of the Land League, Mr. Parnell had agreed to a proposal to visit the United States in November with Mr. John Dillon, to ob- tain material help for the movement. The appeal to which allusion is made in the above circular was drawn up for pub- lication in the home and American press, with the view of preparing the way for the Parnell - Dillon mission. It set forth the changed condition that had taken place in popular feeling in Ireland on the land question, the hopeful pros- pects of national organization, and asked for help and co- operation from exiled Irishmen who had been driven from Ireland by landlordism, to assist those of the race at home in their resolve to drive landlordism in a final struggle from the country. The conference assembled in Dublin on October 21, 1879, and the following abridged report of the proceedings is taken from the Freeman's Journal for the 2 2d of that month : " In response to a circular from Mr. Parnell, M.P., a meeting was held in the Imperial Hotel, Dublin, on Tuesday, at two o'clock, for the purpose of forming a central body in connec- tion with the present land agitation. The chair was taken by Mr. A. J. Kettle, P.L.G. "Among those present were; "Mr. C. S. Parnell, M.P.; Rev. Mr. Behan, C.C; Lau- rence M'Court, P.L.G. ; Wilham Dillon, B.L.; James Rourke, George Delany, Rev. Father Sheehy, William Kelly, Dona- bate; Patrick Cummins, P.L.G.; Thomas Roe, Dundalk Demo- crat; John Sweetman, Kells; Michael Davitt, Thomas Brennan, Thomas Grehan, Loughlinstown ; Patrick Egan, Thomas Ryan, J. F. Grehan, P.L.G., Cabinteely; T. D. Sullivan, Charles 171 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Reilly, Artane; Dr. Kenny, R. J. Donnelly, James O'Connor, etc. " The Rev. Father Behan, C.C, proposed, and Mr. William Dillon, B.L., seconded, the following resolution: "'That an association be hereby formed to be named the Irish National Land League.' " Proposed by Mr. W. Kelly, seconded by Mr. Thomas Roe: "'That the objects of the league are: First, to bring about a reduction of rack-rents; second, to facilitate the obtaining of the ownership of the soil by the occupiers.' "Proposed by Mr. Parnell, M.P., seconded by the Rev. Father Sheehy, C.C: "'That the objects of the league can be best attained by promoting organization among the tenant-farmers; by de- fending those who may be threatened with eviction for re- fusing to pay unjust rents ; by facilitating the working of the Bright clauses of the Land act during the winter; and by ob- taining such a reform in the laws relating to land as will en- able every tenant to become the owner of his holding by pay- ing a fair rent for a limited number of years.' "Proposed by Mr. John Sweetman, seconded by Mr. T. D. Sullivan : '"That Mr. Charles S. Parnell, M.P., be elected president of this league.' "Proposed by Mr. George Delany, seconded by Mr. W. H. Cobbe, Portarlington : " ' That Mr. A. J. Kettle, Mr. Michael Davitt, and Mr. Thomas Brennan be appointed honorary secretaries of the league.' "Proposed by Mr. Patrick Cummins, P.L.G., seconded by Mr. Laurence M'Court, P.L.G.: '"That Mr. J. G. Biggar, M.P., Mr. W. H. O'Sullivan, M.P., and Mr. Patrick Egan be appointed treasurers.' "An appeal to the Irish race for the sustainment of the movement having been submitted, was approved and ordered to be circulated. "On the motion of the Rev. Father Sheehy, seconded by Mr. Michael Davitt, it was resolved: "'That the president of this league, Mr, Parnell, be re- quested to proceed to America for the purpose of obtaining assistance from our exiled countrymen and other sympa- thizers for the objects for which this appeal is issued.' "Proposed by Mr. Thomas Ryan, seconded by Mr. J. F. Grehan : " ' That none of the funds of this league shall be used for the purchase of any landlord's interest in the land or for further- ing the interests of any parliamentary candidate.' 172 THE LAND LEAGUE OF IRELAND "The following committee was appointed: "Charles Stewart Parnell, M.P., president, Avondale, Rath- drum; Purcell O'Gorman, M.P., Waterford; John Ferguson, Glasgow; Dean of Cashel, W. Quirke; Dr. Cummins, Liver- pool; Matthew Harris, Ballinasloe; Very Rev. Canon Bourke, P.P., Claremorris ; J. O'Connor Power, M.P., London; Rev. John Behan, C.C., Francis Street, Dublin; Richard Lalor, Mountrath; J. L. Finegan, M.P., London; Rev. R. Sheehy, C.C, Kilmallock; J. J. Louden, Westport; O'Gorman Mahon, M.P., London; John Dillon; Rev. W. Joyce, P.P., Louisburgh, County Mayo; N. Ennis, M.P., Claremount, County Meath; Thomas Roe, Dundalk Democrat; Dr. J. R. M'Closkey, Lon- donderry; George Delany, Dublin; T. D. Sullivan, The Nation, Dublin; James Byrne, Wallstown Castle, Cork; Dr. J. E. Kenny, Dublin; Mulhallen Marum, J. P., Ballyragget; P. F. Johnston, Kanturk; Rev. M. Tormey, Beauparc; Very Rev. Canon Doyle, P.P., Ramsgrange; Philip J. Moran, Finen, Granard; O. J. Carraher, Cardestown, County Louth; Rev. J. White, P.P., Milltown-Malbay ; P. Cummins, Rathmines; James Daly, Castlebar; P. M. Furlong, C.C, New Ross; Thomas Ryan, Dublin; James Rourke, Dublin; Richard Kelly, Tuam Herald; William Dillon, Dublin; I. J. Kennedy, T.C., Dublin; M. O' Flaherty, Dunoman Castle, Croom; John Sweet- man, Kells;M. F. Madden, Clonmel; J. C. Howe, London; J. F. Grehan, Cabinteely; Rev. D. Brennan, Kilmacow, County Kil- kenny; William Kelly, Donabate, County Dublin; C. Reilly, Artane, County Dublin; L. M'Court, Dublin; Stephen O'Mara, Limerick; Thomas Grehan, Loughlinstown, County Dublin; Rev. M. K. Dunne, C.C, Enniscorthy; Rev. M. J. Kenny, P.P., Scariff ; R. H. Medge, Navan; Rev. M. Conway, Skreen, Sligo." The last resolution was agreed to by Mr. Parnell with some reluctance. It was scarcely fair to him that it should be in- sisted upon by the promoters of the new departure. It was felt, however, at the time, that it would be most difficult to obtain funds in America for the work of organizing the coun- try, of fighting the landlords in the courts, and for resisting evictions unless it were made clear that such funds were not to be expended on parliamentary elections. It was a con- cession to extremist prejudices in the United States, and was a necessary expedient in the temper of the time. At this period Mr. W. Shaw, of Cork, was the chairman of the Home- Rule party, in succession to Mr. Isaac Butt, who had died in May. Mr. Shaw had no leanings of any kind towards radical views on land or national questions, and it would be very un- reasonable, therefore, to ask men of advanced opinions to col- 173 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND lect funds for the use of a party with such a head. When, in due course, Mr. Parnell would be placed by the country in the position held by Mr. Shaw, the question might then be recon- sidered. Mr. Shaw's leadership of the Irish party is remembered in nationalist minds chiefly by two sayings; one by himself, and the other of him. Speaking on one occasion on the land ques- tion, he declared that he never saw a sheriff's party driving to the scene of an eviction that he did not wish he could pull the linchpin out of the wheel of the car. Of himself, after being elected to succeed Mr. Butt, it was said, with some truth, that the Irish members had placed a man at their head who was known in England as the leader of the Irish Home- Rule party, and only known in Ireland as chairman of the Munster Bank. Mr. Parnell at this period had grown in popularity and very much in capacity. If Mr. Shaw was the nominal, his young rival was the real, leader of the parliamentary party. He had greatly improved as a speake/, and appeared to be obtaining a better grasp of such public questions as formed the general stock of contemporary political discussion. I do not think he held any definite convictions on the land question at this time. His views appeared to be in process of formation. He frequently, in our conversations, expressed himself in favor of a solution of the question in the form of a state tenantry, under, of course, a Home-Rule or other national administra- tion. Peasant proprietary he was never heartily in favor of, though he advocated it as a party proposal. He knew the economic danger which existed in absolute class ownership of land in a country with little or no alternative industry for the masses except agriculture, and how prone the Irish peas- ant would be to mortgage his interest to banks and others when once he possessed a proprietary right in his farm. "It would matter little if we had Home Rule," he was wont to say, "whether the farmers were proprietors of their land or tenants with fixity of tenure and low rents under national government. But land-ownership and loyalty are generally inseparable with a peasantry no way prone in any country to care or sacrifice much for the principle of patriotism. It is here where the risk is incurred in fighting for a final settlement of the land question, rather than for an Irish Parliament through which a settlement safe for the national cause could be insured." He frequently came to my lodgings in Amiens Street, Dub- lin, in the autumn of 1879, to chat with Mr. Brennan, Mr. Egan, and other new-departure extremists upon the move- 174 THE LAND LEAGUE OF IRELAND ment and other matters. No man enjoying such growing popularity and poHtical prospects could be more modest in his talk and manner, or more agreeable to those whom he met. He had a peculiar personal charm when in company where all formality was suspended. He was in complete health at the time, and looked the very picture of manly strength, being strikingly handsome in general appearance and in facial ex- pression. His laugh was most infectious, the whole counte- nance lighting up with merriment, and the eyes expressing a keen enjoyment of the fun or point of the story or in- cident. He liked to listen to stories about eccentricity of character and of ridiculous situations in which some acquaintance, po- litical or personal, might be involved. He frequently told a good story himself, but I never recollect him repeating any- thing that could not have been said in the presence of ladies. There was sure to be a point or a moral in his contributions to the pleasantries of social intercourse, and he always laughed at his own efforts, and thus helped to make others laugh. Referring, on one occasion, to his contest for Meath, he said: "I went strong on John Stuart Mill upon the ownership of land and political economy in my speeches, but I noticed somehow that the priests who gave me great assistance did not seem to like this authority. One day a friend told me he had dined the previous evening with a number of clergymen, and that my speeches were the topic of conversation, and were not too highly praised. 'This young man,' remarked one of the clergymen, referring to me, 'comes down to Meath and talks a great deal of John Stuart Mill, but I'd like to tell him that the priests of Meath know nothing about John Stuart Mill.'" Of Mr. Biggar he always spoke in patronizing affection, and the name of his then most loyal colleague in the policy of baiting the House of Commons would bring up the subject of obstruction. There was something that might be called Cromwellian in Parnell's dislike of the House of Commons. Neither at this nor at any other period of his career had he any genuine racial or personal hatred of England or of English- men. Statements to the contrary are more legend than fact, and have been invented to support some theory of incurable hostility to the nation from which he sprang by overzealous eulogists, with the object of justifying his attitude of personal antipathy to those who opposed him after the catastrophe of 1890. But he had a strong feeling against the House of Com- mons; possibly due to its browbeating conduct towards him- self during stormy scenes in the chamber. To defy it, worry 175 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND it, scandalize it, appealed most strongly to his feeling of per- sonal animus against that assembly- "We were dividing the House one night," he told us, "just at the dinner-hour. It was so arranged by Biggar and others. We forced three divisions, and drove them furious. I noticed one old country squire, a Tory, who had been wounded in the Crimean War, limping along to the dining-room after each division to resume his interrupted meal. He glared at me each time we passed each other, as if he would like to have me in some situation that would enable him to settle accounts with me in his own way over his outraged appetite. The third call of the bell was too much for him, and, coming up to me, he said, in a voice choking with anger, ' Sir, in the name of God, tell me what it is you want; take it and go, and let me have my dinner in peace!' "That is the temper you have to provoke in that place. Make them feel that it is not all their own, that they have to face some of the discomforts of the Irish fight; punish and worry them, and they may then begin to think there is some- thing wrong behind it all which requires setting right so as to promote their own peace of mind. An ounce of parliamentary fear is worth a ton of parliamentary love." Mr. Parnell did not enter into the plans of the Land League in 1879 in any careless or indifferent spirit. Quite the con- trary. He knew that though the new departure had been op- posed by the recognized Fenian leaders in Ireland, the men of the Clan-na-Gael in America were most favorable to it, and that Egan, Brennan, Harris, myself, and others, though not actually within the revolutionary organization at the time, were in no way changed in our plans or aims in adopting a change of method in working them out. But at no time did Parnell enter into any compact or agreement to carry out any proposal that would be likely to involve him in any treasonable proceedings. Nor was any such proposal ever made to him after that already referred to. He thoroughly approved of all efforts to bring the revolutionary forces into the open and to y employ them in the work of wringing reforms out of Parlia- / ment, but beyond this and a natural desire to learn all that could be told to him about the struggle within the secret movement between the inflexible and expedient Fenians he took no part in the plans or councils of either wing. Mr. John Devoy has asserted the contrary more than once, but he is mistaken. Mr. Parnell saw him twice in this year (1879) and not earlier, as he (Parnell) was misled into saying in his evidence before the Parnell Commission. I was present at both interviews; one in the house of Mr. Patrick Egan, who 176 THE LA.ND LEAGUE OF IRELAND then resided at Synnot Place, Dublin, and the second time at Morrison's Hotel. The conversation on both occasions was very general, and Mr. Parnell's part was that of a listener mainly. There was neither compact nor treaty, agreement or understanding of any kind drawn, discussed, or even alluded to that could warrant any one in saying a union between Mr. Parnell and the revolutionary bodies had been entered into or was in contemplation. It would serve no purpose, cause, or motive to deny the existence of such a union now had it ever been in existence. It would be no injustice to Mr. Parnell's memory, nor could it be any censure or reflection upon any conduct of mine after I had tried but failed to induce him to enter the revolutionary ranks. The mistake in this connec- tion arose in supposing that Mr. Parnell was "run" because he showed a friendly personal feeling towards extreme men who, he knew, all respected him, and on account of his hav- ing accepted the leadership of the Land League which had grown out of the new departure. Mr. Parnell's attitude might be called that of friendly neutrality towards the revo- lutionary movement and nothing more. Offices for the new combination were secured at 62 Middle Abbey Street, Dublin, premises owned by Mr. Patrick Gordon, and the headquarters of the league soon became the centre of organizing activity. Meetings of an informal committee (made up of those whose names appear in the report of the Imperial Hotel meeting on October 21st) were held once a fortnight, at which Mr. Parnell occasionally attended. The chief business was that of extending the league, encouraging meetings, and printing and circulating literature against land- lordism, and showing the inadequacy of Mr. Butt's Land Bill, which still stood for the parliamentary programme of the Home- Rule members on the land question. The league was steadily extending in the West and a few other counties, but not as rap- idly as was wished. There was still a good deal of clerical opposition to the extreme opinions associated with the league propaganda, while the Freeman's Journal, the leading nation- alist daily paper, was loyal to Mr. William Shaw's leadership, and more or less hostile to Mr. Parnell and his new supporters. In this situation something even more stimulating to prog- ress in organization than impending distress was required, and our hopes were centred in sanguine expectancy upon the usual asinine stupidity of Dublin Castle. Nor did we hope in vain. The league was, of course, anathema to the land- lords from its inception. It attacked the sacred right of rent, and that fact alone demonstrated the treasonable purpose of the agitation, and was an overwhelming reason why the gov- 12 177 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ernment should prosecute those who preached so abominable a doctrine. And as Dublin Castle has never been anything in the rule of Ireland unless a subservient agent or state bailiff for landlordism, it followed that the action which this class clamored for would sooner or later be taken by the Castle executive, which was ready to prostitute England and its laws to the purposes of its Irish landlord masters. Our policy at this juncture was to force the hands of the Castle, and thus to compel our enemies to render the league a service which no other agency could at the time offer us. The eternal blunder- ers on Cork Hill, Dublin, played into our hands, as we knew they would. A league meeting was arranged for Gurteen, County Sligo, on Sunday, November 2d. It was the first of the league gatherings in County Sligo, and Mr. John Dillon, Mr. Daly, of Castlebar, and Mr. Killeen, a Belfast barrister, along with myself, attended. I made a very violent attack upon rent, and hinted at a coming combination of farmers and others which would sweep landlords and rent out of the country. Messrs. Daly and Killeen followed in a similar strain, the speeches being taken down by a government reporter. A fortnight subsequently, on learning that there was to be an eviction at Balla, in Mayo, on or about the 24th, it was resolved to plan a resistance to the proceeding in the form of a huge demonstration close to the scene of the threat- ened expulsion of Anthony Dempsey and his family of six children from their cabin home. At midnight of November i8th, as I was retiring to bed, the following communication was handed to me by a special messenger from the late Mr. E. Dwyer Gray, editor of The Freeman: "You will be arrested to-morrow morning for your speech at Gurteen, and your ticket - of - leave will be can- celled. I would advise you to avoid being sent back to penal servitude by leaving the country until the storm blows over." This friendly advice was not followed, and at five o'clock next morning my lodgings were raided from Dublin Castle and I was carried a prisoner to Sligo. Messrs. Daly and Kil- leen were also arrested. We were taken before the resident magistrate the same day and remanded until the following Monday for trial on a charge of sedition. Nothing could surpass Mr. Parnell's courageous loyalty to the league in face of this action of the government. He at once denounced the arrests, called an indignation meeting immediately, which was held within forty-eight hours in the Rotunda, Dublin, presided over by Mr. Dwyer Gray, and ad- 178 THE LAND LEAGUE OF IRELAND dressed by the late Mr. P. J. Smythe, Mr. Dillon, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, others, and himself. He worked up popular feeling so successfully in Dublin and elsewhere against the obvious intention of the Castle to send me back to penal servitude that they abandoned this plan, and put me on trial with the others on the merits of the Gurteen speech. He not only aroused public sympathy in our favor, he boldly faced danger himself. The Balla meeting had been arranged for before my arrest, and I was to attend together with Mr. Brennan and others to prevent an eviction, if possible. Men were to come with such weapons as could be provided to en- able them to defend themselves if attacked by the police. In the event of the meeting being proclaimed, it was to be held all the same in defiance of any Dublin Castle edict. Mr. Par- nell volunteered to attend the demonstration, and announced his resolution at the Rotunda indignation meeting in these defiant words: "To-morrow, at Balla, we propose to test the rights of Irish- men to assemble in public meeting. I believe that to-morrow will be the turning-point of this great land movement. If the people will contain themselves, if they refuse to be driven by the government into illegal courses, I say that the victory is ours. As for the rest, we do not fear them. Let them pro- ceed with their action ; let them bring forward their false and suborned witnesses, and let them arrest, if they will, those other men who have made themselves prominent in the agita- tion, and for every one that is lost to you the fresh hopes and aspirations and spirit which tyranny always produces among a people will abundantly compensate." ^ The Balla meeting was held, and was so extraordinary a demonstration of organized strength and determination that no attempt was made either to interfere with it or to proceed with the eviction. Mr. Parnell delivered a thoroughly fight- ing speech, and went straight from the meeting to Sligo, ac- companied by Mr. John Dillon, to attend the trial of the prisoners. He visited us in the prison on Monday, and his very first concern was to describe the Balla meeting, over the success of which he was full of enthusiasm. "We formed our men in two columns, military style, and seeing the constabu- lary mustering in force near Dempsey's house, we sent one col- umn round to their left, while the other marched to the right, our object being to encircle the police with our ten thousand men. But when they saw how they were certain to be caught by our manoeuvre, the officer retired his men beyond our lines * Freeman's Journal, November 22, 1879. 179 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND and escaped the net. They were thoroughly frightened, and we held our meeting unmolested, Mr. Brennan making a fiery and splendid speech." For which speech, it may be re- marked, he was subsequently prosecuted, and added to the Land League's first batch of political confessors. CHAPTER XV THE SLIGO PROSECUTIONS By a happy inspiration Mr. Joseph Biggar had divined what we purposed doing with the prosecution in SHgo — to turn the whole proceedings into ridicule, and to cover the Castle and its law with public contempt. Acting in sympathy with this plan, he engaged John Rea, of Belfast, to defend Mr. Killeen, who was a native of that city and, like Rea, a Protestant. John Rea was a solicitor with a career as extraordinary as his personality. Those of my readers who may never have heard of a man who was in his time the most popular as well as the most eccentric character in Ulster will probably find a better picture of him in the following piece of self-portraiture than in any longer description by another pen. The press at the time when this document was published referred to John in these terms: "The eccentric John Rea, who is now a prisoner in Down- patrick jail for contempt of court, lately sent the following extraordinary telegram to his solicitor: "'Manage, if you can, every morning to send up breakfast at seven o'clock, or even sooner, for, as a most experienced jail-bird, I know what a very great comfort it is for a prisoner to get his ham, eggs, and tea and toast very early; hot dinner to be sent up at one in the afternoon, and tea at six in the evening. "'With dinner be sure also to transmit a gallon or two of essence of shamrocks. By that, of course, you know I mean good Ulster buttermilk, with just a dash of sweet milk through it — say one-fourth, not more — to take off the acidity, and to make it agree better with persons not habituated, as every Christian Irishman ought to be, to its lavish use. "'Poets may sing as they like of Falernian, Old Coleraine, Guinness's stout. Bass's beer, and French champagne, but from life-long experience (and you have often had practical knowl- edge during our thirty-five years' friendship of the fact that I never was a teetotaller) I can certify that there is not a drink available for the human race at all equal to the essence of THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND shamrocks. If a man will drink nothing but that (except on an odd time, such as St. Patrick's Day or the Twelfth of July), and will keep, for the purpose of compelling himself to take morning and evening exercise, from one to three brace of Irish water-spaniels (the best of all existing dogs), I will guar- antee him both health and longevity. But for my great love of mixed milk and brown curled dogs I would now, to a dead certainty, be not an Orange prisoner in Downpatrick jail, fifteen-stone weight, and in the highest possible spirits, but a very unsubstantial Irish -Orange- Fenian angel flying through purgatory with a plumage of a most dingy hue, or, perhaps, if in favor of St. Peter, of orange, green, and crimson, the Irish tricolor. '"God save Ireland, and no surrender!'" Rea was accounted one of the best criminal lawyers in Ire- land despite his peculiarities. He was the terror of the petty sessions and other magistrates in the North of Ireland, before whom he generally defended Orange rioters or other disturb- ers of the peace after party processions. He loved to call himself "Her Orthodox Presbyterian Britannic Majesty's Orange-Fenian Attorney-General for Ulster." Whenever he appeared in any case in which he was likely to come into con- flict with the justices, he carried his portmanteau with him. On rising to address the bench he would open it, and reveal, along with his law books, preparations already made for a sojourn in prison for expected contempt of court. This prac- tice was a deliberate game to intimidate the magistrates. He would then inform the bench that he objected on principle to being removed from court by any number less than seven policemen. He stood nearly six feet high, had a massive head of a most combative formation, a loud voice with a pronounced Ulster accent, and a provocative manner which would drive a bench of Quakers into a militant mood of retaliation. This was the man whom we planned to let loose upon the Crown and its representatives in the proceedings in which the Land League and Dublin Castle were to have the first of many encounters for the palm of supremacy in Ireland. There began in the court-house, SHgo, on Monday, Novem- ber 24, 1879, one of the most successful legal farces ever acted off a theatrical stage. The bench was occupied by a resident magistrate (whom Rea at once addressed as "Mr. Promoted- Policeman," the unfortunate president of the court having once been an humble "peeler") and three or four local jus- tices. The Crown was represented by Mr. Monroe, a rather gentlemanly opponent of ours (whom Rea immediately sa- 182 THE SLIGO PROSECUTIONS luted as being associated in blood with the '98 Monroe who was hanged by the English as a rebel in County Down), and a local Crown prosecutor. On our side towered Rea in his most aggressive and most insolent manner, conscious of his own superiority in legal knowledge and in talkative powers over the entire Crown side, and revelling in the circum- stance, described by himself: "I know I am pleading in the hearing of twenty-seven press reporters, and before a bench on which an ex-policeman presides, for the right of meeting and free speech." Mr. Louden represented Mr. James Daly, and I had decided to be my own defender, with Messrs. Par- nell and Dillon as lay assessors. The day's proceedings began by the Sligo brass-band and a huge crowd escorting the prisoners from the county jail to the trial, the procession parading the whole town on its way to the court, like a newly arrived circus company. The court was as crowded as a theatre with the attraction of a popular play, a large number of ladies being present. Then began the sol- emn farce of reading an indictment, and the customary legal fray over points, precedents, and previous judgments between the opposing counsel. The luckless magistrate who pre- sided happened to mispronounce a word in ruling on a point of order, when Rea jumped to his feet and wanted to know "whether it was permissible for a man in the pay of the Crown to murder the Queen's English?" The audience roared, the reporters carefully noted the point, and the helpless victim of the "Orange-Fenian Attorney-General for Ulster" did not offer another remark to court or counsel during the day. In this manner the first session of the magisterial investi- gation went on and ended, the sitting being adjourned until the following morning. Back we went to the prison, the brass-band leading, the police escorting, and the whole town following and cheering Parnell, Dillon, and the prisoners. And when the "villains" of the piece were disposed of for the night in the jail, a public meeting was held in the town, addressed by Mr. Parnell and others in speeches which rang with fierce denunciations of the prosecution, and the curtain was rung down upon the first act of the precious perform- ance. Then the twenty-seven newspaper correspondents did their part of the day's work. They spread their reports of the trial on the wings of the press of Ireland, Great Britain, and the United States. Indignation meetings were at once called for in Limerick, Cork, London, Liverpool, Bradford, Glasgow, Dundee, and elsewhere; while cable messages of sympathy and promised support came flashing across the Atlantic in 183 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAxND reprobation of this most tyrannous action of the British government. The situation was superb, and some cells in Sligo jail echoed each night with the chuckling of contented inmates. Here we had the imbecihty of English rule in Ireland dis- played in its most rampant antics. The "crime" consisted of three speeches that would not have been heard of outside of the circulating radius of the local press, or by chance in Dublin, had the Castle possessed common-sense enough to ignore them. They were tame enough utterances, in all con- science, compared with subsequent league pronouncements. Yet they were being wired to every quarter of the three king- doms, together with accounts of "scenes" between John Rea and the bench, and with reports of meetings of protest ad- dressed by Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon. We could not have done the league work of propaganda and of covering the law with ridicule as effectively if we hati spent ;;^5ooo on the task. Our enemies were our best friends in this sense, and it became a most anxious consideration with us how we could best pro- long the priceless entertainment. The programme for the second day resembled that of the first — brass-band, police, prisoners, procession, cheers, and a re-entry into the temple of the law converted into a judicial vaudeville. When Rea would grow tired of gibing at the bench, " '98 Monroe," and the rest, he would leave the build- ing, stand on the steps, and harangue the crowd outside upon the composition of the court, and end by lauding William of Orange, denouncing the pro-British politics of Italian cardi- nals, and the incurable stupidity and corruption of Dublin Castle. His programme was to try and carry on the pro- ceedings for a week, insult the bench at the end of the trial, get sentenced to a short imprisonment for contempt of court, and then terminate the whole business in a physical struggle to prevent the police removing him to the jail. But so com- pletely did he terrify the magistrates by his vitriolic tongue that they allowed him to tire himself out, and in this way only did they frustrate what was to have been the final scene of this ludicrous performance. The trial continued almost the whole week. We were each committed for trial, and then admitted to bail, being serenaded with torches and tar - barrels in turn each night ; every day's sitting of the court being followed by the inevi- table public meeting, with more speeches from Messrs. Parnell and Dillon. I recollect one evening, after we had escorted Mr. Killeen to prison (he being the last of the trio to be "tried"), finding myself seated at dinner in the hospitable home of 184 THE SLIGO PROSECUTIONS Dr. Michael Cox, with the head officer in charge of the Sligo poHce between Mr. Parnell and myself. He is dead some years now, and the mention of this fact will not injure his chances of promotion. We had no more ardent sympathizer in Sligo, and no one enjoyed the exquisite fooling which had been carried on at the expense of the majesty of the law more thoroughly than its chief protector in the prosperous little western borough. Near the end of the play the press began to "hiss" the Crown performance off the stage. The farce was becoming too broadly ludicrous, and the purpose of the league was too plainly obvious to deceive any one. For almost a week it had turned the Castle court into a spectacle of public mockery, the country chuckling all the time at the complete success of the comedy which had been provided for the public at the initial instigation of the league by Lord Beaconsfield's Irish chief secretary, the Right Hon. James Lowther, M.P. But John Rea was not happy. His plans had not all been agreed to by Mr. Parnell. The league president began to tire of John's dangerous allusions to "Romish priests and Italian cardinals" as being extra gag, and not contemplated by Mr. Biggar when that consummate strategist had engaged the "Orange-Fenian" lawyer to make an English court of justice a public laughing-stock to all Ireland. So the end of the "Sligo state trials " was the retirement of the justices from the bench, after committing Mr. Killeen for trial, while John Rea was left the sole occupant of the court. Wondering why he remained behind after the place had been ordered to be clear- ed, I re-entered the building and found the big, burly Orange- man leaning with his back against the bench on which his victims had sat in terror of his tongue for several days, hands folded across his huge chest and head bent down. "What is the matter, John? Why don't you come out?" "Only for Parnell, my friend," Rea answered, "this thing could have gone on for nearly another week. He has spoiled the play. I don't like him. His head is too small to contain much brains, and he will come to a bad end. I was in jail in Kilmainham in 1848, with Mitchell and others, and I have been many times in prison since, as you know, but there never was such a chance for John Rea as that fellow Parnell has spoiled. And I know why he did it. He saw that I would, in the end, have things all my own way, and wind up in a blaze of glory as a contempt -of-court prisoner, to be selected as an Orange-Fenian candidate for the next vacancy in a po- litical-papist constituency, and that nothing could stop my progress to a seat in the House of Commons. Heavens, how 185 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND I could help Biggar, if I got there, to make things lively! And now Parnell has gone and spoiled it all." And John, sorrow- ing over the failure of his parliamentary hopes, left the scene of his week's professional entertainment with slow and re- luctant steps. A few weeks subsequently the traversers were notified to attend the assizes at Carrick-on-Shannon for trial by jury. Mr. Thomas Brennan had been added to the list in the mean time for a speech at Balla. We organized a league demon- stration in the town in which we were to be tried, and arranged for it to be held the day before the court assembled. We re- peated our indicted speeches in defiance of the threatened penalties, only to find on the following day that Dublin Castle had virtually thrown up the sponge.' They learned from the police and others, what we well knew already, that no jury in Connaught could be empanelled to convict us in face of impending distress. The league had triumphed. The Castle was defied, ridiculed, and defeated, the country was at our back, and the way was clear for the projected mission of Par- nell and Dillon to the United States. The priceless assistance rendered to the league by the blun- dering tactics of the Sligo prosecution broke down almost all barriers hitherto operating against its progress outside of Connaught. Its influence in the country grew by leaps and bounds. Dublin Castle had grappled with it and had been thrown badly in the encounter, and, wdiat was worse, was laughed at by the public in the disgrace of its defeat. Its prestige had suffered while that of the league became enor- mously enhanced. The landlords had forced the action of the government in the trials, and the result would tell against them and their rentals in a situation which was soon to hoist them more or less by their own petard. They had attempted to kill the "no-rent" feeling, when they saw clearly that a terrible winter was approaching, and instead they had helped to create a power that was destined in that and another winter to kill the rent system which had the British Empire behind it for hundreds of years. It was a matter of indifference to the Downing Street rulers of Ireland how or to what extent the bad harvests and fall- ing prices of the years 1877 and 1878 could or should aft'ect the payment of rents after a culminating crop failure in the summer of 1879. A domestic government would not be blind to such a condition of things, but an English govern- * The trials vv'ere removed to Dublin on the application of the Crown, and were sitbsequently abandoned on the eve of the general election of 1880. 186 THE SLIGO PROSECUTIONS ment of Ireland was extra blind where it did not wish to see or know the truth. According to official statistics issued by the Irish registrar- general, the total value of Irish crops in 1876 was estimated to be worth ;^36,ooo,ooo; in 1877, ;^28,ooo,ooo; in 1878, ;i<^3 2,000,000, and in 1879, ;^22,ooo,ooo. The year 1876 was by no means a good year in the matter of prices; but, taking it as an average, the actual loss by Irish farmers in the three following years, as compared with the produce of 1876, amounted to a total sum of ;^26,ooo,ooo, or over two and a half years' rental for all the agricultural land of Ireland. This was how all the rent-paying tenants of the country were affected by three successive bad seasons. In the province of Connaught the condition of things was relatively worse, owing to the fact that the greatest failure of all Irish crops in these years was that of potatoes, and because this was and still is the chief food crop for the peasantry of the counties along the Western seaboard. In 1876 the value of the Irish potato crop was given in official statistics at ;;^i2,464,ooo; in 1877 at ;;^5,27i,ooo; in 1878 at ;^7,579,ooo, and in 1879 at ;^3,34i,ooo only. The loss in this last year, as compared with the yield of 1876, was near four hundred per cent, in value. There was likewise a marked falling-off in the earnings of the migratory laborers from Connaught who seek harvest employment in England each year, and as this work, with all its attendant privations and self-denial, was a main source whence rents were to be drawn by large numbers of families in the West, it became absolutely impossible for such rents to be paid in such cases. In view of all these facts, the attacks which the Land League made upon rent in the autumn of 1879 and in 1880 were justified on every ground and upon every theory which legally evolves a rent for land out of the surplus yield or value of its produce, and takes note of the right of the tenant or worker to live from the fruits of such industry. In a word, there was no rent earned by the crop lands of Ireland in 1879, and we were resolved as far as possible to prevent any being screwed out of the impoverished people. One thing was determined upon: there should be no slavish moral cant like that of 1846-47 — that the tenants should starve rather than "defraud" the landlord of his rent — preached with impunity or practised through fear. No matter from what quarter, religious, social, or political, this doctrine of cowardice and voluntary starvation might be taught, it was to be met and stamped upon remorselessly by the power 187 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND of our organization. Evictions would, of course, follow. That was inevitable. Wars are not waged without losses nor battles won except by daring and sacrifice. The enemy was landlordism, and the more we reduced its rentals and injured their annual or sale value, or otherwise damaged a system which trampled upon the homes and happiness of our peasantry and was an insolent usurpation of a national right, the sooner would England recognize the necessity for a radical reform by the sweeping away of the whole institution, with its infamous record of failure, wrong, and imposture. It was the power of landlordism to demoralize which was its most hateful feature. It owned the law, it influenced the churches, it terrorized the homes of those on whose earnings it alone subsisted, and in addition arrogated to -its members a status of social superiority which taught the landlord class to despise the very people by whom and upon whom they lived. Against this enemy, therefore, it was necessary to employ every force which we could influence or employ, and foremost among the allies on whom we counted in such a contest was the Irish race in the United States. The Castle coup in November had compelled Mr. Parnell to postpone his departure on the American mission. Had he left at the time originally intended it would look as if he went away from danger, a ridiculous charge actually brought against him subsequently in the United States, and replied to in his speech at St. Louis in the sensational words which will be found reproduced in the next chapter. It was es- sential before starting to encourage the country in the policy laid down at the Western meetings — no rent without abate- ments, no tame submission to evictions, and no land grabbing to be permitted. No revolutionist in the movement sur- passed Mr. Parnell in the fearless assertion of this policy. At meetings in Cork, Navan, Enniscorthy, Belfast, and Liverpool he proclaimed it, and thus openly challenged the law to proceed against him. At the Liverpool demonstra- tion he declared that he accepted and repeated all that had been spoken at the Gurteen meeting, denying that there was anything said which could be proved to be illegal where a fair trial, as in England, would determine the issue between the accused and the Crown. The London Standard called upon the government to accept Mr. Parnell's challenge, declaring that he had uttered sedition, but the advice was not taken. The Sligo fiasco had given Lord Beaconsfield's administration quite enough of state prosecutions for the present. Mr. Parnell and other prominent Land-Leaguers were in THE SLIGO PROSECUTIONS daily receipt of threatening letters at this time. All kinds of violence were to be resorted to by "a landlord's son," "the son of an agent," "an anti-communist," "a hater of rogues and vagabonds," and others who were careful, like all writers of sanguinary epistles, to conceal their real names. For every landlord fired at one of us was to experience the sensation of being made a human target of in retaliation. This was not altogether fair, seeing that our attacks were not made upon landlords personally, but upon rents, which were a violation of all laws except those passed expressly by a landlord-ridden Parliament for the selfish interests of the class. But threat- ening letters are not concerned with nice distinctions between the sanctity of rent and the worth of a life, and we were constrained to purchase revolvers, and to be on the defensive against possible assaults in Dublin and other places where there were comparatively large pro-landlord partisans and pro-British minorities. On one occasion about this period Mr. Parnell was proceed- ing to London from Holyhead, and found himself in a carriage with four other persons, all travelling first class. He was unrecognized. The subject of the anti-rent agitation was soon broached by one of his companions, and the strongest language of abuse was resorted to. "The man who sat next to me," said Parnell, in relating the incident, "declared that Parnell was a renegade to his own class, and ought to be shot for stirring up the country against the landlords. I wondered at the time how he would feel if he knew that he was sitting close up to a six-chambered loaded revolver in my right-side pocket." There were other assailants also, of a less violent but of a more dangerous and insidious kind, who indirectly backed up the clamors of the landlord organs to suppress the league. The then Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. McCabe, had had the good taste to assail the movement in a pastoral letter, which was issued the very day before the trial of the prosecuted leaguers at Sligo. The archbishop was full of sympathy for the victims of distress, and strong in that complacent charity which can give an abundance of advice and blame to those who suffer wrong and the silence of sympathy or support towards the authority that upholds and the class which inflicts the suffering. It was quite in keeping with the propaganda of this one-sided charity that the Castle which prosecuted us in Sligo should reinforce its case by quoting Archbishop McCabe against us, and the press of Great Britain and Ireland had to publish the following extract from the opening speech of the Crown prosecutor: 189 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "Counsel thought that when language of that kind was received by ten thousand tenant-farmers of this country with loud and enthusiastic cheering, it was no wonder that the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin addressed the faithful clergy of his Church, who he trusted would ponder well the words he used. 'Unfortunately,' he said, 'men proclaiming their sympathy with the people in their distress are going through the country disseminating doctrines which, pushed to their logical conclusion, will strike at the root of that good faith and mutual confidence which are the foundation of social life.'" There was an angry feeling created among the supporters of the league at this language and action of Archbishop Mc- Cabe. Unlike the aged and patriotic Dr. MacHale, he had no claim of any kind, in any past service to people or country, to lecture or denounce men who had resolved to grapple with the root-causes of periodical distress in a death-struggle, and his Pharisaical talk about good faith and national confidence was bitterly resented. It was the slavish doctrine of the great famine time once more; the mendicants' remedy again for the victims of the landlord system ; alms from the public for starv- ing tenants to pay rents with, seasoned with "morality" — the morality that is religiously blind to the theft of rack-rents and the social sacrilege of eviction, but which is proclaimed from the house-tops in trumpet tones against the reformers who do not follow the footsteps of the modern Levites when they pass by the down-trodden or oppressed with averted eyes. The Archbishop McCabe opposition was not lost upon the class of parliamentary politicians who had crept into Irish public life on a lip profession of Home Rule. These men were the stanch supporters of Mr. Shaw and the unsparing moral and political critics of Mr. Parnell and the league. The anx- ious concern of Dr. McCabe for national faith and honor, based on rack-rents and eviction, was piously re-echoed by the Sir George Bowyers and Lord Robert Montagues and Dr. Bradys, who were then (how almost impossible it is to credit it now!) the exponents of Irish opinions in the House of Commons. These were the class of "representatives" who responded to the ideal level of Churchmen like Dr. McCabe. Men of "po- sition and standing," and not of the common herd whence some archbishops like some agitators spring, who would no more dream of contesting the wish or the opinion of a bishop in matters political than to question the law of gravitation. And it was creatures of this caliber who succeeded in creating the impression in Rome that the Land-Leaguers were "the enemies of religion," "the foes of morality," and all the rest; 190 THE SLIGO PROSECUTIONS an impression which, at two later periods of the Hfe of the league movement, caused the greatest of the Popes to tacitly sanction pronouncements in support of the Dr. McCabe code of social and political ethics, which led the Vatican to receive from the Catholic laity of Ireland two of the sternest rebuffs given to it in modern times. The combined ignorance and presumption which went to the formation of opinion about Irish national politics in Rome at the time will be illustrated in the following extract which was repro- duced in the London Globe, the high Tory and landlord organ : "The Osservatore Romano, the leading organ of the Vatican, writes in no complimentary terms of Messrs. Biggar and Par- nell. Mr. Biggar is described as a pizzicagnolo [bacon-seller], who became a member for Cavan and is a species of Irish Naquet. 'It is evident,' says the Osservatore, 'that the Irish press is trying to get rid of all those Catholic members who are too high-minded to pander to the revolution, and that the Freemasons Parnell and Biggar think it their interest to make war on a pontifical zouave whom they find rising above their party passions. The head of the obstructionists [it says] has completed a tour of agrarian agitation in his native country. Mr. Parnell, instead of demanding, along with his Catholic colleagues, better legislation, urges his auditors to confisca- tion, and allows them in his presence to utter prayers for as- sassination and armed revolt. Ireland is now in an acute moral and political crisis.' " It was this same Osservatore Romano that had declared, in 1875, that "forty miscreants" were then in the prison of the County of Thnrles, Ireland, on a charge of "murdering priests." All this and more of the same kind of opposition was borne with at the time, tempered with the anticipated satisfaction of being able before long to deal with those whom it was in- tended to uphold in Irish public life. The Bowyers and Montagues, O'Conor Dons and Bradys, papal zouaves and the rest, would soon meet the "bacon-sellers" and "Free- masons" and Fenians, and the second-hand retailers of the moral precepts which were stone-blind to evictions while ablaze with holy indignation at a people's revolt against a crime and pauper-making system would have to disappear into political oblivion. The general election would be a time of reckoning with this class of opponent, and the league had already marked down the professional pious politician for its quarry in every nationalist constituency. We had, however, some stanch friends and supporters among the Irish bishops, while many priests were on our side, where they were afraid to openly take part in the movement. 191 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Dr. Duggan was always with us, to counsel and encourage the league. Dr. MacCormick, then Bishop of Achonry, freely al- lowed his priests to take part in the agitation. One of these, Father Denis O'Hara, spoke at the Gurteen meeting, and began there a career of work for the good of the people which has never been surpassed, if ever equalled, by any priest who has labored with the kindest of Irish hearts and the most level of Irish heads for the protection and for the material welfare of the Connaught peasantry. Father Joyce, of Louisburgh, was, I believe, the first priest to join the Land League, followed by Father James Corbett, then of Claremorris, now parish priest of Father Lavelle's old parish of Mount Partry, Father Eugene Slreehy, of Limerick, Father John Behan, of Dub- lin, and Father O'Connor, of Achill. Dr. Croke, Archbish- op of Cashel, had not yet identified himself anew with the work he began when curate in Mallow in 1852, but he was soon destined to become the league's stoutest defender and strongest supporter among the Irish hierarchy, and on that account to be singled out by English intrigue in Rome for a humiliation which only made him the more revered and popular with his Catholic fellow-countrymen until the day of his death. This was how the Land League stood on the eve of the mission to the United States in December, 1879. The government had been compelled by the facts of the sit- uation to recognize the perilous state of the tenantry, espe- cially in the West, and the remedies suggested for the distress which we had foretold in August were the customary panaceas of relief committees and appeals for money to the charitable public. Mr. Parnell had demanded an autumn session of Parliament as the only effective means by which adequate state provisions might be made against possible starvation in the winter. There was no response from the Prime-Minister, who had once declared that worse things had happened in Ireland than the great famine of the forties. Lord Beacons- field's sympathies took, instead, the form of a suggestion to the wife of the Lord Lieutenant, the Duchess of Marlborough, to make an appeal to the Lord Mayor of London and the public generally to come to the rescue of the rent-paying peasantry with subscriptions that were certain to find their indirect way into landlords' pockets. This appeal was issued on Christ- mas eve, and it was resolved by the league to commission Messrs. Parnell and Dillon to ask the friends of Ireland in the United States for assistance to relieve distress as well as for aid for the movement which was to seek the overthrow of the system that was primarily responsible for this periodic in- fliction of poverty and beggary upon oar people. 192 CHAPTER XVI THE AMERICAN MISSION Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon sailed on the Scythia from Queenstown on December 27, 1879. To give even the briefest account of the historic mission thus entered upon, with its huge meetings, speeches, interviews, and list of prominent people who supported the league envoys, would be impossible within the limits of this volume. Still, the cities which were visited by them aided the Land League enormously at a time when it needed most assistance, and without this and subse- quent help sent from these great American centres the work that has to some extent been accomplished would not be on record. A brief summary of the tour is for this and other reasons a necessary part of the plan of this book. The following rough diary of the whole mission was prepared by Mr. Parnell for use during the special commission of 1888. His address before Congress has an historic interest, both in itself and in the record of the distinction thus conferred upon the grandson of Admiral Stewart, and is reproduced under the date of its delivery. One or two quotations from other speeches, together with extracts from addresses delivered by Henry Ward Beecher and the great abolitionist orator, Wen- dell Phillips, in support of the envoys and their cause, are like- wise added for their intrinsic worth and interest. ''New York, January 2, i8Sg. — We arrived per Scythia. The steamer was boarded down the bay by a reception committee. "General reception committee consisted of three hundred gentlemen, including distinguished judges, Senators, mer- chants, Presbyterian ministers, and Germans. "Addressed great meeting at Madison Square Garden, Jan- uary 4, 1880; eight thousand people estimated to be present. Was accompanied to platform by Thurlow Weed and others. The chair was taken by Judge Henry A. Gildersleeve. [Mr. Parnell explained the nature of his mission in the following words : "'Our objects in visiting this country and I may say the intention we originally formed have been considerably modified 13 193 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND by the pressure of circumstances. Originally we proposed only to address you on behalf of our political organization, but the course of events in Ireland has culminated so rapidly — a terrible, far, and wider spread famine is so imminent — that we felt constrained to abandon our original intention, and to leave ourselves open to receive from the people of America money for the purposes of our political organization and also money for the relief of the pressing distress in Ireland. We propose, then, to form two funds — one for the relief of dis- tress and the other for the purely political purpose of forward- ing our organization. These funds will be kept entirely dis- tinct, so that the donors will be afforded the opportunity of doing as they please in the matter. It has been suggested by a very influential paper in this city that we ought to devote our attention only to the relief of distress, and that we should only join the committee which has been proposed by the New York Herald for the relief of distressed Irish landlords and the British government in general. But if we accepted the very good advice that has been so charitably extended to us in the shape of words within the last few days, I am afraid we should incur the imputation of putting the cart before the horse.'] "Newark, January 6th. — Opera-house. Escorted to the hall by three American military companies. Governor of State present. Chairman, the Rev. Dr. J. E. Forrester. '''Jersey City, January 8th. — Great meeting, Catholic Insti- tute. Escorted by a procession of Irish societies of Ancient Order of Hibernians, a detachment of the Ninth Regiment, and a platoon of police. "Stock Exchange, Wall Street, New York, January gth. — In- troduced by President Ives, and addressed an assembly of five hundred stockbrokers. " Sauie Date. — We formed Irish Famine-relief Fund — sec- retary, Mr. John E. Develin — and issued address. "Brooklyn, January gth. — Meeting, Mayor Howell in chair. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher spoke. Called at his house and had long interview with him. " Letters approving meeting read from the Rev. Dr. Talmage and others. [The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's speech at the meeting was as follows: " ' ... I am in favor of the most serious, prolonged, and ear- nest agitation of public sentiment in America for the emanci- pation of the Irish peasantry from their present condition. "'There is no other subject that is more important to the great mass of mankind than the question of land. There are a great many ways, gentlemen, by which oppression can make 194 THE AMERICAN MISSION itself felt. It may take possession of the government, and by- arms despoil the citizens — take their rights from them, im- prison them, slay them. " ' It may be that there shall arise in the midst of the state such power in wealth, such combinations of capital and mo- nopolies, that the great thoroughfare shall be choked up by the few, and prevent the passage of the million many, and so oppression may take place in the community. "'That may be more mild in its aspects, but it is, never- theless, oppression. And there is another oppression quite possible, by which the rights, happiness, and the life of the people may be sucked out, and that is the possession of land. The time is coming when the world is to have a new agitation on the subject of land. He that possesses the land possesses the people. You cannot put the land of any nation into the hands of a few men and not make them the despots over the many.'] ''Philadelphia, January loth. — Meeting held in Academy of Music — largest theatre in the world. La Scala of Milan alone excepted. "Afterwards accompanied Governor Curtin, General Pat- terson, and Colonel McClure to a reception at the Saturday Club. "Letters were received from Hon. S. Randall, United States House of Representatives, the Governor, and a check from G. W. Childs, the editor of the Public Ledge?-, for $1000. "Boston, January i2tJi. — Meeting in the Music Hall. Re- ceived by P. A. Collins, J. J. Hayes, and Judge Fallow. Es- corted to meeting by the Ninth Regiment of Massachusetts. Platform occupied by over two hundred of the leading citi- zens of Boston, together with the presidents of the various Catholic Irish societies of the city. Mayor Prince in the chair. "Mr. Wendell Phillips was among the speakers. He said: " ' I come here, as you have done, from a keen desire to see the man that has forced John Bull to listen. Half the battle is won when the victim forces his tyrant to listen, gains his attention, and concentrates on his wrongs the thought of Christendom and the civilized world. It took O'Connell a quarter of a century to gain the ear of the British people and the House of Commons. Our guest, more fortunate, after a few patient but persistent years, has brought the English nation, if not to terms, at least he has stunned her into so- briety. . . . 195 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "'Do you believe in agitation in Ireland? Do you believe it is wise and best for them to have insurrection organized and armed bodies of men? I do not propose to give any counsel on that subject. But without expressing any opinion in favor of organized opposition and insurrection, I call your attention to one fact in history, that amelioration of the condition of Ireland has followed the outbreak of violence in Ireland. It is not the business of to-night to say what I think of Great Britain, but simply to argue my views of her in connection with the Irish people. I say her government is torpid and slow, and, like many a strong horse upon the road, travels faster with spurs than without them. So that while I do not counsel bloodshed, I do say that I honor citizens that won't lie down tamely under wrong and oppression. I do not coun- sel organized insurrection or war, but I do honor the eflfort to make the government so uncomfortable that it at last consents to make the people comfortable. It is said emigration is the only cure for Irish grievances — that, so far as we are con- cerned, let them come here — we want them. And, so far as they are concerned, that a government which does not know how to manage its people, except by taking them out of the nation, is a government that ought not to stand.' "Lawrence, Massachusetts, January 75///. — Military and torchlight procession; windows illuminated and streets lined with people. Meeting, Town-hall, Mayor vSimpson presiding. ''Lynn, Massachusetts, January i6th. — Meeting, Methodist Church, Mayor Saunderson presiding. ''Providence, Rhode Island, January lyth. — Received by the mayor [Mayor Doyle], Colonel Spooner, late Governor How- ard, and other prominent citizens. "The mayor in the chair Meeting held in Music-hall. "Washi)igton, January igth. — A resolution was passed to- day by the House of Representatives of the American Con- gress, by 96 votes to 42, giving the use of the House to Mr. Parnell on February 2d to deliver an address. "Indianapolis, January 21st. — Met at railway - station by Governor Williams, the governor of the State of Indiana, and a reception committee. "Addressed meeting, Grand Opera-house, Mayor Cavan in the chair. Governor Williams also spoke. "Springfield, Ohio, Jamiary 21st and 2^d. — Two meet- ings, presided over by Mayor Wallace. " Toledo, Ohio, Jamiary 2 2d. — Addressed meeting in Opera- house. "Procession. Thousands lined the streets. Salute of twenty-one guns fired from a battery of artillery. Mayor 196 THE AMERICAN MISSION Romes presided; Bishop Gilmore and Senator Hurd wrote approving. "Cleveland, January 24th. — Great crowd at station; mili- tary procession ; fifty thousand people in streets. Ex-Mayor Rose presided at meeting in Tabernacle. "Buffalo, January 2jtJi. — Freedom of city presented. Mili- tary escort and procession to Academy of Music, where meet- ing was held. "Judge Clinton took chair, son of New York's greatest governor, DeWitt Clinton. " Albany, New York, Jantiary 26th. — Welcomed by Gov- ernor Cornell, Mayor Nolan, Speaker Sharpe, and Erastus Corning. Military companies and procession escorted us to meeting. Visit to Assembly Chamber. Introduced to House by Speaker Sharpe. "Rochester, New York, January 2/th. — Mayor presiding. Meeting City Hall. " Troy, January 28th. — Procession. Reception Committee : Mayor Murphy, General Carr, Judge Strait, Hon. Francis N. Mann, Surrogate Rogers, etc. Crowded meeting. "New Haven, January 2gth. — Meeting in Grand Opera- house. Chairman Mayor Bigelow. "Washington, February 2d. — Addressed House of Repre- sentatives." [The privilege of addressing Congress has only been con- ferred upon a few distinguished strangers. The first who was thus honored had well merited that distinction in de- voted service to the republic in its struggle for independence. General Lafayette was followed a generation later by Louis Kossuth, and the grandson of Commodore Charles Stewart, as the representative of the country which had contributed more soldiers to Washington's armies than any other European people, was a worthy successor in the exercise of this privilege to the defender of Hungarian nationality. The original motion to grant this honor to Mr. Parnell had been challenged by some pro-English Congressmen, but was overwhelmingly defeated, and the galleries of the House of Representatives were crowded early on the day when the Irish envoy was announced to speak. Slight as the opposition had been, it created much indignation among the friends of Ireland, and induced hundreds to wend their steps to the Capitol who might otherwise have remained away.] The regular session of February 2d was suspended in order that the members might hear Mr. Parnell, and on the House meeting again the speaker called the assembly to order, and introduced the envoy in these few words: 197 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "In conformity with the terms of the resolution, I have the honor and pleasure to introduce to you Charles Stewart Parnell, of Ireland, who comes among us to speak of the distress of his country." [Mr. Parnell, whose address occupied about half an hour in delivery, spoke as follows:] "Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the House of Represent- atives, I have to thank you for the distinguished honor you have conferred upon me in permitting me to address this august assembly upon the state of affairs in my unhappy country. The public opinion of the people of America will be of the utmost importance in enabling us to obtain a just and suitable settlement of the Irish question. I have seen since I have been in this country so many tokens of the good wishes of the American people towards Ireland, I feel at a loss to express my sense of the enormous advantage and service which is daily being done to the cause of my country. We do not seek to embroil your government with the govern- ment of England, but we claim that the public opinion and sentiment of a free country like America is entitled to find expression wherever it is seen that the laws of freedom are not observed. (Applause.) Mr. Speaker and gentlemen, the most pressing question in Ireland is, at the present moment, the tenure of land. That question is a very old one. It dates from the first invasions of Ireland from England. "The struggle between those who 'owned' the land on one side, and those who tilled it on the other, has been a constant one, and up to the present moment scarcely any ray of light has ever been let in upon the hard fate of the tillers of the soil in that country. "But many of us who are observing now the course of events believe that the time is fast approaching when the artificial and cruel system of land tenure prevailing in Ireland is bound to fall and be replaced by a more natural and a more just one. (Applause.) I could quote many authorities to show you what this system is. The feudal tenure has been tried in many countries, and it has been found wanting every- where, but in no country has it wrought so much destruction and proved so pernicious as in Ireland. We have, as the result of that feudal tenure, constant and chronic poverty. We have our people discontented and hopeless. Even in the best years the state of the people is one of constant poverty, and when, as on the present occasion, the crops fail and a bad year comes round, we see terrible famines sweep- ing across the face of our island, and claiming their victims 198 THE AMERICAN MISSION in hundreds and thousands. Mr. Froude, the distinguished EngHsh historian, gives his testimony with regard to this land system in the following words: "'But of all the fatal gifts which we bestowed upon our unhappy possession was the English system of owning land. Land, properly speaking, cannot be owned by any man. It belongs to all the human race. Laws have to be made to secure the profits of their industry to those who cultivate it, but the private property of this or that person, which he is entitled to deal with as he pleases, land never ought to be, and never, strictly speaking, is. In Ireland, as in all primi- tive associations, the land was divided among the tribes. Each tribe owned its own district. Under the feudal system the property was held by the Crown, as representing the nation, while the subordinate tenures were held with duties attached to them, and were liable, on non-fulfilment, to for- feiture.' "Now, I look upon this testimony of Mr. Froude's as a most important and valuable one, coming as it does from an English source, and a source which cannot be called prej- udiced in favor of Ireland. As Mr. Froude says, property has its duties under the feudal system of tenure, as well as its rights, but in Ireland those enjoying the monopoly of the land have only considered that they had rights, and have always been forgetful of their duties, so that, bad as this feudal tenure must be, it has worked in a way to intensify its evils tenfold. I find that a little farther on Mr. Froude again speaks to the following effect : "'If we had been more faithful in our stewardship, Ire- land would have been as wealthy and as prosperous as the sister island, and not at the mercy of the potato blight. We did what we could. We subscribed money, we laid a poor-law tax upon the land, but all to no purpose. The emigrants went away with rage in their hearts and a longing hope of revenge hereafter with America's help.' (Applause.) "I could multiply the testimony of distinguished sources and distinguished men to the same effect, but I shall content my- self by quoting from one more. Professor Blackie, the Pro- fessor of Greek in Edinburgh University, who, in the Con- temporary Revieiv of this month, writes as follows: "'Among the many acts of baseness branding the English character in their blundering pretence of governing Ireland, not the least was the practice of confiscating the land, which by real law belonged to the people, and giving it, not to the honest resident cultivators, which might have been a politic sort of theft, but to cliques of greedy and grasping oligarchs, 199 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND who had done nothing for the country they had appropriated but suck its blood in the name of land rent and squander its wealth under the name of fashion and pleasure in London.' "Now, we have been told by the landlord party, as their defence of this system, that the true cause of Irish poverty and discontent is the crowded state of that country ; but the fertile portions of Ireland maintain scarcely any population at all, and remain as vast hunting-grounds for the pleasure of the landlord class. Before, then, we talk of emigration as the cure for all the ills of Ireland, I should like to see the rich plains of Meath, Kildare, Limerick, and Tipperary, in- stead of being the desert wastes that they are to-day, sup- porting the teeming and prosperous population that they are so capable of maintaining. You may drive, at the present moment, ten or twenty miles through these great and rich counties without meeting a human being or seeing a single house; and it is a remarkable testimony to the horrible way in which the land system has been administered in Ireland that the fertile country has proved the destruction of the popula- tion instead of being their support. Only on the poor lands have our people been allowed to settle. "I have noticed within the last two or three days a very remarkable testimony to this question of overcrowding in one of the newspapers of this country, the New York Xatioji, a journal, I believe, distinguished in the walks of literature, and whose opinion is entitled to every weight and consideration. The Nation says that the best remedy for Irish poverty is to be found in the great multiplication of peasant properties, and not by emigration, as many suppose. There is little question that emigration is good for those who emigrate, but it leaves gaps in the home population which are soon filled up by a fresh poverty-stricken mass. " A writer in the London Times, giving an account of the island of Guernsey, shows that it supports, in marvellous prosperity, a population of eighty thousand on an area of sixteen thousand acres, while Ireland has a cultivable area of fifteen million five hundred thousand acres, and would, if as densely peopled as Guernsey, support a population of forty-five million, instead of only five million, as at present. The climate of Guernsey, too, is as moist as that of Ireland, and the island is hardly any nearer to the great markets, but nearly every man in it owns his own farm, and the law facilitates his getting a farm on easy terms. "Now, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen of the House of Rep- resentatives, the remedy that we propose for the state of affairs in Ireland is an alteration of the land tenure prevailing 200 THE AMERICAN MISSION there. We propose to imitate the example of Prussia and of other continental countries where the feudal tenure has been tried, found wanting, and abandoned; and we propose to make or give an opportunity to every tenant occupying a farm in Ireland to become the owner of his own farm. This may, perhaps, at first seem a startling proposition, and I shall be told about the rights of property and vested interests and individual ownership, but we have the high authority of Mr. Froude, the English historian, which I have just quoted to you, that land, properly speaking, cannot be owned by any man. 'It belongs to all the human race. Laws have to be made to secure the profits of their industry to those who cultivate it, but the private property of this or that person, which he is entitled to deal with as he pleases, land ought never to be, and never, strictly speaking, is.' We say that if it can be proved, as it has been abundantly proved, that terrible suffering and constant poverty are inflicted upon millions of the population of Ireland, that then we may reasonably require from the Legislature that, paying the due regard to vested interests and giving them fair compensation, they should terminate the system of ownership of the soil by the few in Ireland and replace it by one giving the owner- ship of the soil to the many. We have, as I have pointed out, historical precedents for that course. The King of Prussia in 1811, by royal edict, seeing the evils of the feudal tenure, transferred all the land of his country from the nobles to the tenants. " In a cable from London I find that, speaking at Birming- ham the other day, Mr. Bright proposes to appoint a govern- ment commission to go to Dublin with power to sell lands of landlords to tenants wishing to buy, and advance them three- fourths of the purchase money, principal and interest to be repaid in thirty-five years. Such a measure, Mr. Bright believed, would meet the desire of the Irish people. The commission should assist the tenant to purchase when the landlord was willing to sell. He recommended compulsory sale only where the land was owned by London companies, as in the case of large tracts near Londonderry. He expressed the belief that self-interest and the force of public opinion would soon compel the landlords to sell to the tenants. "Now, this proposal is undoubtedly a very great reform, and an immense advance upon the present state of affairs, and while we could not accept it as a final settlement of the land question, yet we should gladly welcome it as an ad- vance in our direction, and be willing to give it a fair trial. The radical difference between our proposition and that of 201 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Mr. Bright is that we think that the state should adopt the system of compulsory expropriation of the land, whereas Mr. Bright thinks that it may be left to self-interest and the force of public opinion to compel the landlord to sell. That is the word he uses — 'compel.' While I agree with Mr. Bright in thinking that, in all probability, if his proposal were adopted, the present land agitation in Ireland, if maintained at its present vigor, would compel the landlords to sell to the tenants at fair prices, I ask the House of Representatives of America what would they think of a statesman who, while acknowledging the justness of a principle, as Mr. Bright acknowledges the justness of our principle that the tenants in Ireland ought to own the land, shrinks at the same time from asking the Legislature of his country to sanction that principle, and leaves to an agitation such as is now going on in Ireland the duty of enforcing that which the Parliament of Great Britain should enforce. I think that you will agree with me that this attempt on the part of the British Parlia- ment to transfer its obligations and its duties to the helpless, starving peasantry of Connemara is neither a dignified nor a worthy one, and the sooner our Parliament comes to rec- ognize its duties in this respect the better it will be for all parties and the government of Great Britain. " Mr. Speaker and gentlemen, I have to apologize for having trespassed upon your attention for such a great length, and to give you my renewed and heartiest thanks for the very great attention and kindness with which you have listened to my feeble and imperfect utterances in reference to this question. I regret that this cause has not been pleaded by an abler man, but at least the cause is good, and although put before you imperfectly, it is so strong and so just that it cannot fail in obtaining recognition at your hands, and at the hands of the people of this country. It will be a proud boast for America if, after having obtained, secured, and ratified her own freedom by the force of her public opinion alone, by the respect with which all countries look upon any sentiment prevailing in America, if she were now to obtain for Ireland, without the shedding of one drop of blood, with- out the drawing of the sword, without one threatening message, the solution of this great question. For my part, I, who boast of American blood, feeling proud of the importance which has been universally attached on all sides to American opinion with regard to this matter, I feel proud in saying and believing that the time is very near at hand when you will be able to say that you have, in the way I have mentioned, and in no other way, been a most important factor in bringing 202 THE AMERICAN MISSION about a solution of the Irish land question. And then, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen, these Irish famines, now so periodical, which compel us to appear as beggars and mendicants before the world — a humiliating position for any man, but a still more humiliating position for a proud nation like ours — these Irish famines will have ceased when the cause has been removed. We shall no longer be compelled to tax your magnificent generosity, and we shall be able to promise you that, with your help, this shall be the last Irish famine." ' "Richmond, Virginia, February 6th. — The State Senate and House of Representatives of Virginia extended invitation to address the members in joint meeting. Large public meeting subsequently. " Hazelton, Pennsylvania, February 8th. — Crowded meeting. "Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania, February gth. — Crowded meet- ing. '' Scranton, Pennsylvania, February loth. — Great street pro- cession and big meeting. " Altoona, Pennsylvania, February 12th. ''Baltimore, February 14th. — Reception committee, com- posed of most of the prominent citizens, including the mayor, Ferdinand C. Latrobe, Governor William J. Hamilton. "Pittsburgh, February 15th. — Procession through city. Crowds lined streets. Meeting. Following day were enter- tained by mayor and city authorities. "Pittston, February i6th. — Military procession. Meeting Music-hall. Rev. N. G. Parks, Protestant clergyman, de- livered the address of welcome. "Wheeling, West Virginia, February lyth. — Governor Mat- thews, chairman reception committee; Mayor Sweeny and most of the prominent citizens members. Addressed meet- ing. "Next day was granted use of executive mansion by the governor, where we held reception. "Frankfort, February i8th. — Received at railway-station by his Excellency the Governor of Kentucky, Governor Black- burn, the mayor, and board of councilmen of Frankfort. "Received by the Legislature of the State of Kentucky, then in session, and addressed both Houses, and received their thanks for my address. The following joint resolution, of- fered by Mr. Allnut, of the House, was adopted: " ' That the thanks of the members of the General Assembly be tendered to Charles Stewart Parnell for the able and effec- ' Revised liy Mr. Parnell for the use of counsel at the Special Com- mission. 203 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tive address delivered before them, and that we deeply sym- pathize with and desire to encourage him in his efforts on be- half of suffering Ireland.' " Loiiisville, February igtJi. — Spoke at great meeting in Liederkranz Hall, where addresses were also delivered by General Preston and Mr. Watterson. Presented with free- dom of the city. "Cincinnati, February 20th. — Met by immense crowd at station and escorted to hotel. Introduced to the Stock Ex- change and made speech. Great meeting at Music-hall; speakers escorted from hotel by military companies. Mayor Charles Jacob in the chair. Judge Fitzgerald chairman com- mittee." [It was at this meeting Mr. Pamell delivered what was after- wards known as "the last-link speech." The words he was charged by the Times with using were these: "And let us not forget that this is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen aim. None of us — whether we are in America or in Ireland, or wherever we may be — will be satisfied until we have de- stroyed the last link which binds Ireland to England."] " On February 19th the Senate of the United States unani- mously adopted the following resolution: "' Resolved, By the Senate and House of Representatives, that the Secretary of the Navy be, and he is hereby authorized to employ any ship or vessel belonging to the navy of the United States best adapted to such service for the purpose of transporting to the famishing poor of Ireland such contri- butions as may be made for their relief; or to charter or to employ under the authority of the United States a suitable American ship or vessel for that purpose. Any sum of money necessary to carry out the provisions of this resolution is hereby appropriated.' "Chicago, February 21st. — Freedom of city presented to us by the mayor and city council. We were received by the board of trade. Escorted by numerous societies and mili- tary bodies from hotel to Exposition Building, where about ten thousand people were assembled. Governor Cullom pre- sided. Door receipts, $10,000. Largest meeting of the mission. "Detroit, February 22d. — Escorted to the Opera-house, where the meeting was held, by the National Guards, Mont- gomery Rifles, the Hibernian benevolent societies, and total abstinence societies. Governor B agley was among the speakers. "St. Paul, February 26th. — Great meeting in Opera- house. The mayor, Mr. Dawson, presided. Speech by Bishop Ireland. 204 THE AMERICAN MISSION "Dubtique, Iowa, February 28tJi. — Met at railway depot by mayor and city council. " Des Moines, March 2d. — Legislature in session. Was in- troduced to both Houses by the Hon. C. C. Cole, and addressed them. Governor Gear, of Iowa, presided at meeting. "Peoria, Illinois, March jd. "Springfield, Illinois, March 4th. — Received by the whole city government, and was tendered the freedom of the city. Addressed great meeting at Opera-house. The governor of the State of Illinois, Governor Cullom, presiding. "St. Louis, March jth. — Addresses, parades, and recep- tions. Enormous meeting in the Merchants' Exchange. Next largest success after Chicago." [Attacked by the New York Herald, Mr. Parnell replied as follows at the St. Louis meeting: '"They say there are two things which no man can forgive if he is accused of them. They say that every man objects to being told that he is not a good judge of a woman or of a horse (laughter), but I am sure that every Irishman objects to being told that he is a coward. (Applause.) A New York paper, in a recent issue, says: 'Commodore Stewart, from whom Parnell boasts his descent, was brave enough, and had the runaway demagogue been either a pure American or a pure Irishman, he might not have fled from his country when his comrades were indicted. ' Well, now, what are the facts of the case? In the middle of October I publicly announced that I would leave for America on November 20th. On November igth Michael Davitt was arrested, and, so far from running away, I remained expressly six weeks beyond my time in Ire- land in order to see if the government dared to treat me as they treated Michael Davitt. I went over to Liverpool and I repeated the speech of Michael Davitt, for which he was in- dicted for sedition, and I adopted his words as mine, and I gave that government every opportunity to arrest me. And then the Herald goes on to say that I would not dare to make my American speeches in Ireland. Well, as a matter of fact, I have spoken far more strongly in Ireland than I have ever spoken in America. As a matter of fact, it is far more neces- sary to speak strongly to the Irish people in Ireland than it is to speak strongly to them in America. In Ireland they re- quire to be encouraged and lifted up, because they are op- pressed and beaten down; in America they require to have cold water thrown upon them. (Laughter.) And as regards my being afraid ot what is worse than a government prosecu- tion for sedition, I was not afraid to go down to the Balla eviction, although I was warned by the officer in charge of the 205 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND constabulary on that occasion that the police had received secret orders to shoot me in case there was any disturbance, and if the military fired that the bullets would go to the lead- ers. (Cries of "Shame," and hisses.")] CANADA "Toronto, March yth. — Meeting in Royal Opera-house. Chairman, Hon. John O'Donoghue. "Montreal, March 8th. — Received on arrival by committee and escorted to hotel by torch-light procession. Meeting in Theatre Royal. Speech by Healy. Last meeting of mission. On following day sent this message to Mr. Patrick Ford : "' Montreal, il/arc/f 9, 1880. " 'Patrick Ford: "'Will be leaving on Thursday for Ireland in the Baltic. Shall of course return to America after the elections. The work here is vitally important and must go on. "'Tell my friends to keep the good work going and the flag flying, and we shall come back with victory shining on our banners to complete a labor in America that is yet scarcely begun. Dillon remains here on guard, and will keep the ball roll- ing till my return. "'Canada has welcomed us magnificently, and Montreal turned out in a style that shows to our enemies that Irish hearts are Irish everywhere. "'Men of America, keep on forming land leagues, and, above all, sustain the men at home in the present crisis. "'Have called by telegraph a hurried conference of Irish leaders at the New York Hotel on the morning of my depart- ure. Hope for your presence. "'Charles S. Parnell.'" The reception given to Messrs. Parnell and Dillon during their tour was all that could be desired. It only realized ex- pectations, however. Parnell's mixed American and Irish blood, and the son of John Blake Dillon, the '48 political refu- gee, rendered them ideal envoys for such a mission, even apart from their records in the movement for which they were sent to seek the material help of Irish and the moral support of American citizens. The correspondence work of the mission utterly broke down in a short time. Invitations poured in from all the States in 206 THE AMERICAN MISSION the Union for meetings and requests for dates. Dozens of telegrams from "Springfield" insisted upon a prompt visit to that city. A date was fixed for this engagement, and duly- published, with the result that cities of that name in three different States (one over a thousand miles from Springfield, Massachusetts) announced the coming visit of the envoys on the same day. To cope with this state of things, Mr. Parnell cabled to Mr. T. M. Healy, then employed as a clerk in a Lon- don warehouse, to come to the rescue; a summons which was immediately responded to, and thus began the public career of one of the many able and remarkable men whom the Land League movement recruited for the nationalist service of Ire- land. Mr. Healy was at this time younger in appearance than in years, though still actually youthful, but no youngster ever wore the marks and guarantee in temperament and manner of being father to the coming politician and parliamentarian more conspicuously than the bright and brainy young fellow who sped across the Atlantic at Mr. Parnell's call. Mr. Parnell's speeches in America differed very little in phrasing or in spirit from those he had delivered in Ireland. They were clear in language and, like all his utterances, un- ambiguous in meaning. His address to the House of Repre- sentatives at Washington was the corpus of his utterances else- where, varied occasionally by local references, and more so in St. Louis and a few other cities where he had to reply to the hostile comments of unfriendly critics. His style of speaking did not find favor with the American press or public. It lacked the declamatory power, the elocutionary polish, and search after epigram which make carefully prepared oratory in the United States more pleasing to the organs of entertain- ment than to those of the understanding — of visitors from Europe. But, on the other hand, he made the best possible general impression upon his audiences, and aroused in the memories of his listeners of Celtic birth or parentage a hopeful hatred of Irish landlordism. Socially he was not a success. He accepted an invitation to dine with a number of Catholic clergymen in New York, and turned up two hours late for dinner. His apology only added amazement to injury: Denis Kearney, the Sand Lots agitator from San Francisco, had called at his hotel that very evening, and had remained too long! America had on two occasions almost rescued Mr. Parnell from the fate which ultimately wrecked his brilliant career and inflicted a ten years' national agony on Ireland and lost us Home Rule for the time. I once heard him say that he 207 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND had, when younger, been "badly jilted." It was, I think, dur- ing his first visit to the United States. " I proposed, but she refused." Little did this young lady, whoever she was, im- agine the wrong she was thus unthinkingly committing against Ireland and its people. Again, early in 1880, after his return from the transatlan- tic mission, a young, accomplished, and very wealthy Irish- American lady came to London and Ireland, attracted by the handsome Irish leader and the romance of his public life. There could be no doubt about the trend of her wishes in re- gard to him. She and her father put up in Morrison's Hotel, where Parnell always had his quarters when in Dublin. Un- fortunately there was no response on his part to this delicate but obvious attention. Soon after other eyes only too easily conquered and led him captive into the snares of a fatal affec- tion. No man in public life could have a more complete control over temper and expression than Mr. Parnell had in those early years of his political career. He was very rarely be- trayed into the use of angry words, no matter how provoking the temptation to say "damn" might be in many a trying moment. On one occasion this self-mastery broke down, and there was a volcanic eruption and an overflow of lava-like language which swept everything before it. It happened as a result of an incident at the Chicago demon- stration. The parade through the streets of that city was a huge affair, and the procession and speakers reached the place of meeting over an hour late. There was a vast audience, restive and impatient, full of eagerness to hear the envoys. But if the organizers of receptions in the United States are loyal to any American institution more than another, it is to that of ceremony, as becomes a democratic nation. Among the items on the programme which preceded the introduction of the speakers was the recitation of a long poem of welcome written by a gifted lady. It had to be read to Messrs. Parnell and Dillon, and this task was to be performed by a dramatic artiste, a young lady of exceptional talent in that line, and who, together with other striking attractions, stood over six feet high. The envoys were compelled to stand in the front of the platform in the face of eight or ten thousand people while the handsome young giantess poured into them and over them for nearly half an hour an elocutionary torrent of praise and worship which the talented authoress had ex- pressed in resounding verse. It was an agonizing ordeal to Mr. Parnell, who on this occasion lacked the stoical philoso- phy of Mr. Dillon, upon whom the histrionic infliction had no 208 THE AMERICAN MISSION other effect than to beget a feeHng of sorrow over so much wasted talent. On returning to his hotel and finding the freedom and refuge of a locked room, which is so precious a retreat for the honored victim of popular receptions, Mr. Par- nell had much to say, in very strong language, about tall women, public reciters, and versified welcomes which cannot possibly be recorded. His speech on these topics, with Mr. Dillon as an audience, and no reporters, was quite warm enough even for the region of Chicago. In another city he attempted, for the first and last time, to call upon the poets for an adornment of speech. He was en- gaged in what is frequently the agony of winding up a speech with a suitable peroration, and essayed to lay Moore under contribution to this end: "And then, when we have abolished landlordism and struck down the evil of Castle rule, Ireland will realize the dream of the poet and become again, what she once was: " ' First flower of the earth and first jewel of the sea.' " And the orator sat down alongside of Mr. Healy. "You should have said 'gem,' Parnell, in that line of Moore's." "Yes," was the slow and dubious reply, "but then ' jewel' is a better word." The tour which was suddenly interrupted by the general election of 1880 was largely under the direction of some members of the Clan-na-Gael. It had been arranged, without Parnell's knowledge, that it was in a measure to be so, when it was first decided upon, but not in any sense compromising to him or to Mr. Dillon. Neither of them was then, or had at any time been, a member of any secret organization. They were, however, certain to be closely shadowed by secret agents of the British government while in the United States, and it was arranged that, though the Clan was to act to some extent in the capacity of a conducting agency in the getting up of meetings, it was not to be done to the exclusion of other so- cieties of a non-revolutionary character from a like function. All such bodies, religious, philanthropic, and temperance, were to be invited to participate in every city, while public men of repute, and municipal. State, and federal officers of American or Irish- American origin, irrespective of party politics, were to be invited to the receptions and meetings. It is only right to add that no attempt was made to misuse in any way the power which was thus given to the Clan. Not a cent of the moneys raised by Messrs. Parnell and Dillon was 14 209 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND either asked for or appropriated, nor was there an act done by the secret body during the sojourn of the envoys in America to which reasonable exception could be taken. Great pres- tige was undoubtedly gained by the Clan through the unique opportunity which the new-departure mission had given to it in return for the assistance of its members to the land move- ment in Ireland, but no other immediate advantage followed. The financial results of the mission totalled ;i^5o,ooo. Most of this money was expended by the Land League in the relief of distress from December, 1879, until April, 1880, including some ;^io,ooo for the purchase of new seed-potatoes for the poorest of the Western peasantry. The political value of the mission to the league movement was enormous. Active sympathy for its objects was awakened throughout America, and all the bitter memories of landlord oppression and inso- lence were revived in the hearts of our exiled people, soon to help us to enlist the active co-operation of hundreds of thou- sands of Irish- American Land-Leaguers in the combat against the landlord and Castle enemy of the old country. Mr. Parnell summoned a hurried conference in New York of those who had been identified with the reception of the envoys in that city, and submitted to the meeting the outline of an auxiliary organization. His proposals were agreed to, and, leaving Mr. Dillon behind to carry on the work, he sailed home with Mr. Healy, and landed at Queenstown on the eve of the general election of 1880. CHAPTER XVII GROWTH AND PLANS OF THE LEAGUE During the early months of the year 1880, while Messrs. Parnell and Dillon were rousing Irish-America in support of the league, its progress in Ireland was rapid and continuous. The distribution of relief and of seed-potatoes in the most distressed districts gave the organization a growing prestige, especially among the clergy. Most of the opposition from that quarter had died out in presence of the prompt and effec- tive measures which were taken by the league executive to cope with the partial famine. Where no league organization existed the parish priest, or curate, was made the medium for the distribution of grants, the result being, in most instances of this kind, the formation of a branch of the movement, so that the work of combination kept pace with the relief opera- tions among the people. The undeniable existence of distress and the daily labors of four separate relief committees — the Land League, Duchess of Marlborough, Dublin Mansion House, and New York Her- ald funds — made no appeal either to the sense of justice or to the feeling of humanity of a certain class of landlords, chiefly in the West of Ireland, to forego evictions for non-payment of rents. They clamored for their rights and for police with which to enforce them. The majority of landlords, in other parts of Ireland, had given abatements, in obedience to the necessity of the situation. No rents had been earned by land under crops, and none could be paid except out of borrowed money, and credit with the local banks in seasons of distress is not an asset in the solvency of Western tenants. Shop- keepers and dealers had, in marked contrast, acted most hu- manely. They refused to press for a payment where it was obvious no money could be obtained from people in receipt of public charity. Not so the owners of rent. The grocer who had given food on credit for six months to a tenant might go without his money, but the landlord whose land had not earned a penny of rent must be paid, even if the money was to come out of what was subscribed by the public to prevent THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND starvation. And in obedience to this unconscionable claim, so characteristic of this system under which similar callous demands were made and complied with in the great famine of '47, showers of ejectment processes for arrears of rent fell upon the homes of the poorer class of tenants in Mayo, Gal way, and other Western counties where the Land League had its strongest following — that is, the ejectments were ob- tained from the courts by the landlords, but they were not to be quite as easily and as inexpensively served as heretofore. That legal outrage upon a poverty-stricken people would no longer be tamely endured. This action of the class of landlord referred to was a direct challenge to the tenants' combination, and it was so accepted by the league. In accordance with the plan of campaign adopted at the formation of the Mayo Land League, in August, 1879, all process-serving and evictions were to be "witnessed " by gath- erings of the people organized for that purpose. These things were not to be done in the dark any more. Homes were not to be so willingly surrendered for arrears of rents as formerly. An unwritten homestead law, supported by popular combina- tion, was, as far as possible, to be insisted upon as against the legal vandalism of the landlord's right to wreck his tenants' homes for a civil debt. England might and would lend her police and authority to the landlord to obtain his pound of flesh in the shape of rent for reclaimed bog or a one-time barren mountain-side, in defiance of all the laws of political economy and of all the protests of reason and justice. On ^ the other hand, it was resolved to create a Land League court -^ of equity in defiance of the tenants' unrecognized interest in his holding just as partisan in spirit and purpose as the Castle law was for the owner of the rent, and every force and influ- ence which the public conscience would approve and support as auxiliary to the Land League were to be employed to frus- trate the authority and defeat the ends of the landlord code. The league's plan of opposition comprised: the greatest publicity possible to be given to all process-serving opera- tions and evictions; the support and sheltering of families evicted for non-payment of unjust rents; the embargo upon evicted farms; the social excommunication of land-grabbers; and the defence in the courts of such persons as should be pros- ecuted for resisting the legal agencies set in motion by the landlords against the homes of the tenantry. Early in 1880 we were already obtaining from America the monetary assistance without which this whole plan could not have been operated, and with this help at the league's dis- GROWTH AND PLANS OF THE LEAGUE posal an active campaign of resistance against evictions was begun. The Balla meeting, in November, was, as Mr. Parnell pre- dicted, a turning-point in the fortunes of the new movement. It gave the Western peasants confidence in their own organ- ized strength, and greatly weakened the prestige of the land- lords and their Castle allies. Process-serving, being the pre- liminary legal step to eviction, was necessarily obnoxious to the tenants. It was the dreaded herald of ejectment, of the driving of a family from its home and means of labor and sub- sistence, and the "process-server" has always been, next to the "informer," a detested instrument of landlord oppression and of English law in Irish peasant feeling. It required no outside influence, therefore, to rouse a village or a town-land in opposition to the mission of this hated emissary of exter- mination when the courts had granted the landlord's applica- tion for the decree. His advent was looked for by sentinels on hill-tops and other places of observation, and, when his police escort would be seen approaching, horns would be sounded or other signals be given which would summon all within hearing to repair to the scene of the process-server's work. According to the law of eviction, at this period, the process- server was required to hand the document containing the court's decree to the head of the family, or, failing this, to fasten it upon the door of the dwelling, or otherwise to deliver it inside the habitation. Little or no resistance, except on rare occasions, had hitherto been offered to this legal proceed- ing, the process-server being fully protected in the execution of his task by a constabulary guard. It was now resolved to have every opposition possible offered to this service short of an actual conflict with the police, with the double object of drawing public attention to the evils of the system and of intimidating the class of persons who volunteered to be the agents of the law in this phase of its operations. The first successful encounter of this kind occurred in a wild Connemara district called Carraroe early in January, 1880. The conflict and victory of the resisters created a wide- spread interest at the time both in Ireland and in America, and as the incidents of the "battle of Carraroe " were common to subsequent proceedings of the kind, the following account of the affair, written by me for the American press just twen- ty-four years ago, will offer my younger readers some idea of the early struggles of the Land League movement : " From commanding ledges of rock women and children, in their bawneens and red petticoats, would eagerly scan the in- 213 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND truder, and conjecture whether I was a friend or foe, and greet me by kindly glance or scowling looks, according to the impression which my appearance created. Evidence of the disturbance of the previous days began coming under my notice after passing the chapel of Knock, a few miles from Spiddal. On the Friday previous the people of the district assembled outside the little place of worship and prepared to meet the enemy. The parish priest. Father Lyons, attempted to disperse them, but found the task beyond his influence, and, headed by their leaders, they marched to meet the Carraroe boys. Midway between Knock and the head of Costello Bay the narrow mountain-road cuts in two a small sheet of water called Lough-an-Urla (the eagle's lake), and I observed the road had been dug across some six feet of its width, with the evident intention of cutting off communication between Spid- dal, the Royal Irish Constabulary base, and Carraroe. I was more than delighted to observe by this that the moun- taineers had some practical ideas of warfare, a fact which was impressed forcibly upon me when I met some of their guid- ing spirits a few hours later on. " The legal time within which the processes for the present session of Galway had to be served would expire on Tuesday, January 6th, and if the enemy could be harassed or obstructed until the evening of that day the people's battle would be won and their homesteads freed from agent or process-server for the next three months. "Hence their plans were admirably arranged for the pur- pose of creating delay, and if one or two of the priests had not interfered, not only would the road have been completely cut, but the bridge which crosses the head of Costello Bay, at the village of Derina, some two miles from Carraroe, would have been thrown down and all communication by car or wagon would be intercepted. I observed, a quarter of a mile farther on, that a huge rock had been rolled down from the precipice upon the road passing at its base, which must have given considerable annoyance to the peelers' convoys. At last, after seventeen miles of as wretched a road and desolate a country as I ever beheld had been traversed, I siglited the slated roof of the Catholic chapel of Carraroe. "On Sunday week this little chapel was the scene of an in- cident which marked the spirit in which the coming conflict was to be fought out. When mass was just over a rush was made to a seat in the chapel where sat a young man, the son of the local process-server Fenton, pale and apprehensive from the scowling looks which were cast upon him by the whole congregation. He was then and there seized and dragged to 214 GROWTH AND PLANS OF THE LEAGUE a cross, and made swear that he would serve no process during the coming week. This the half-terrified fellow willingly did, and was then compelled to swear for his father also. "The elder Fenton did not feel bound by his son's oath, as he attempted to 'do service' afterwards, until the more po- tent agency of punishment and fear compelled him to refuse performance of a task which is second only in abhorrence to that of executioner to the Irish people. "The scene from the rising ground upon which the chapel of Carraroe stands is one of 'the wildest desolation, and is re- lieved only from utter and painful dreariness by a view of the Atlantic to the right, where it runs into the land and forms an immense sheet of water called Great Man's Bay. To the left, looking down the mountain-road by which I had come, some fifty miserable hovels could be discerned scattered over a few miles of rocky ground sloping down from the mountains which divide Connemara proper from the Oughterard and Clifden road. While compelled to wonder at the tenacity with which the people clung to such homes, surrounded by nothing which was not repugnant to the eye, unrelieved by even a tree or shrub, there could be no mistaking the sense of independence which such a wild, rugged country would en- gender in the breasts of those who inhabit it, and a look at the erect and manly forms which came in view as I mounted the road to the head of the bay convinced me that the men of Carraroe were all that mountaineers are generally found to be. A little beyond the chapel, on the right, stood three houses, better looking than the hovels standing in from the highway, the first of which was the 'post-ofhce,' the next the 'Carraroe Dispensary,' and the third Mrs. Mackle's homestead, in front of which, in an effort by Fenton to 'do service' upon it, the fight proper took place on the Friday previous. A hundred yards higher up the road, and at a turn leading to the landing- place of the bay, stood a large, square house with iron-barred windows and the etceteras which make up a country con- stabulary barracks. "I pulled up my car and saluted, in Irish, about a dozen men who had been watching my progress up the steep and tortuous boreen, and I immediately found myself in the midst of the men who had been arrested as the ringleaders of the people who had thwarted Fenton and thrashed his escort of armed police, and who had, the day previous to my visit, been let out on bail after the charge had been formally preferred against them. Dismissing my car and giving my traps in charge of the men I came to see, we proceeded down the slope to the little creek which does duty as a landing-place for the 215 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND boats that ply on Great Man's Bay. Seating myself on a rock which happened to be near, I pulled out my note-book and took down the following particulars from the little group by which I was surrounded. The advent of a stranger had brought some dozen women and children from a few hovels in the neighborhood, and these, together with my dozen heroes, formed quite a picturesque group, the men with their fine, manly forms clad in 'bawneens,' and the women dressed in their red petticoats (the universal Connemara wear) and shawls twisted round the neck arid waist. Only a few of the men could converse in English, and that tongue was unknown to the women — at least as a medium of conversation. The following are the names of the men who had been arrested and by whom I was surrounded: Stephen O'Brien, Coleman Wal- lace, Donald Mullan, John Mullan, Patrick Sanly, Coleman Conneally, and Patrick Kane. "A few facts about the conduct of the landlords towards these men's families will show how much brave men can suffer ere they are driven to desperation. The landlord's name is Kirwan, who resides near Tuam, and his agent, the well-known Mr. Robinson. Berridge, a retired London brewer, who is now the owner of the great Martin estate, has some land rented in Carraroe also, and has for his agent this same Robinson. The rent upon Kirwan's and Berridge's estate is double the ordinance valuation. The tenants (in Carraroe) have to bring their turf across two lakes from the base of the moun- tain, and have to pay the bailiff a certain sum for turbary. Until recently a certain number of days' 'duty work' had to be performed — of course, for nothing — -during the year. John McDonogh's son got married a few years ago, and be- cause Robinson, the agent, was not consulted on the matter the father's rent was raised ;^5 ' as a fine.' Andrew McDonogh had two sons married, and because he allowed them to live in the outhouse attached to his home his rent was raised from £3° to ;^40. "Some twenty families in this vicinity have been 'fined' in a similar manner by the landlord's agent for marriages tak- ing place without his permission having been obtained. An- drew Connella's father had a holding for ;^5 which Berridge, through Robinson, raised to £10. Connella's brother had an adjoining holding, and, having experienced heavy loss one year, he failed to pay the rent and was evicted, when Andrew was given the alternative of paying his brother's ;;^io in addition to his own or ejectment. These facts, together with the hard- ships of this year and the more than probable starvation of the coming spring, determined the people to resist the service 216 GROWTH AND PLANS OF THE LEAGUE of ejectment processes and keep a grip of their mountain cabins. "News of the intended visit of Fenton and the constabulary- was sent from Galway to the Carraroe people the morning of the day selected for the service of the papers, and they were consequently on the alert and ready for action when the home- destroyers filed up the road to Fenton 's house to afford him guard and protection. Messages had, in the mean time, been sent to all the neighboring islands and inland to Bossmuck and the western part of the Joyce country for aid, but no re- inforcement from these quarters arrived until after the men and women of Carraroe, north and south, had dispersed the process-serving force in the first day's encounter. The first paper to be delivered was for Mrs. Mackle, whose house stood some couple of hundred yards below the constabulary bar- racks. All the available police from Galway and the sur- rounding districts were formed round the place where Fenton was to emerge from to perform his perilous task, and opposite the barracks, ranged in double lines, were some five hundred of the mountaineers, with some few hundred boys and women in the rear, all resolutely bent upon determined opposition to the work about to be attempted in the name of authority and law. The moment Fenton emerged from the barracks he was received with showers of stones and yells, under which he beat a hasty retreat, but, encouraged by the ring of bayonets out- side, he again ventured forth, and, surrounded by his guard, proceeded down the road towards the house of a man named Faherty. The opposing forces flanked the constabulary on the march, while the women and boys doubled in front in order to reach the place before the peelers. "On Fenton attempting to approach the house he was set upon by the women and the process snatched from his hand and torn to pieces. A skirmish ensued in which a few bayonet wounds were received by boys and women, but the body of men, who marched as 'lookers-on,' took no part in the first onset. "The force next marched to Mrs. Mackle's, and received such a warm reception that bayonets were freely used by the police in efforts to protect Fenton. Mrs. Mackle succeed- ed in throwing a shovelful of burning turf upon Sub-Inspector Gibbons, and thereby driving him from the house. A fierce fight now commenced, in which the constabulary used their bayonets, but not in any savage manner. "This attack upon the women roused the men to action, and in a second the police were surrounded and attacked with stout blackthorns and stones and compelled to retire from the front of the house. 217 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "They reformed again on the road and fired a volley over the heads of the people, but this, instead of having the desired effect, only excited those the more who were thought to be in- timidated, and they rushed upon the constabulary and drove them completely before them, pursuing the flying peelers and Fenton to the doors of the barracks. The victory was de- cidedly with the people, and so much determination had been shown that Sub-Inspector Gibbons and his eighty men did not venture to court defeat a second time, so no further attempt was made to ' do service ' either that or the following day. In the mean time, constabulary were being telegraphed for from various stations in the South and East, and by Monday morn- ing some two hundred and fifty had reached the scene of action. "The mountaineers were equally active, and succeeded in bringing in reinforcements from all the islands off the coast as well as from the interior of the mountains, mustering alto- gether some two thousand men in front of the constabulary barracks on Monday morning. They formed in companies and marched round the ' enemy,' shouting defiance and asking the ' woman-beaters ' to come forth. But Fenton had received quite enough of it on Friday, and refused to attempt the serv- ing of any more papers, and his guard of peelers had had quite enough also, and were no way displeased at being saved from an encounter with the men who had shown such pluck and threatened to fight to the last in resistance to the purpose which brought such a force against their homes. "The legal time for serving the processes for this sessions of Galway having expired the following day, the constabulary started for Spiddal, and the mountaineers and their island allies returned to their villages, elate with the victory they had achieved over the landlords and the power which backs them in their warfare against the peace and prosperity of the country. "During the early part of Monday, while there was uncer- tainty as to whether there was to be a fight or not, a body of select men from the Joyce country were observing the situa- tion from a height overlooking Carraroe, and I am informed that if the contest of Friday was renewed this body would have descended upon the scene and given a good account of the Connemara home-destroyers." Had the fight been renewed on the Monday, it was the in- tention of the leaders of the peasants to destroy the bridge south of the village, cut off communications between the police and their base, and overwhelm them with superior numbers. Fenton 's surrender of his post prevented what would have 218 GROWTH AND PLANS OF THE LEAGUE been the most desperate and sanguinary conflict of the whole league movement. During the stay of the police in the village no food of any kind was sujjplied to them. Nothing could be purchased by them from the poorest of the community, no matter what sum of money was offered for a cup of milk, the hire of a car, or for any other service. The law was thus completely de- feated in its attempt to assert its own and the landlord's au- thority. These tactics were not always as successfully employed as in Carraroe, and other and more legal methods had to be re- sorted to in order to carry out the same policy — namely, to make it more profitable to the landlord to give an abatement in rent than to resort to the costly process of eviction. The league singled out a few landlords for attack in this way, and succeeded in deterring many from proceeding to eviction by inflicting a heavy fine upon some of the would-be evictors. The plan resorted to for this purpose was as follows: Processes of ejectment for arrears of rent had hitherto been granted as a matter of course whenever applied for to the county court. The existence of arrears was proved ex parte, no appearance was made in behalf of the tenant for want of means to fee a solicitor, and the machinery of the law was easily and at little cost put in motion. It was decided to provide the necessary legal help for tenants in as many cases as possible, in order to put the landlord to expense, and to bring before the public the facts relating to the rents levied by him. This action on the part of the league was followed by a still more costly process of law for the would-be evictor. Under the Land Act of 1870 a tenant against whom a proc- ess of eviction had been obtained was entitled to apply to a county court judge for a stay of proceedings, in order to file a claim for compensation for disturbance under the pro- visions of a certain section of that act. The law in this sec- tion gave power to the court to award compensation to the occupier of the holding, provided a case was made out proving to the satisfaction of the judge that an exorbitant rent had been exacted by the landlord. Little or no advantage had been taken since the passing of this act of this Gladstonian protection for tenants, owing to the cost involved in feeing a lawyer. The league resolved to provide the required assist- ance now, and in several cases judgments were obtained en- titling the tenants to receive from the landlord, if he pro- ceeded to eviction, sums three or four times in excess of the total arrears of rent claimed by him. By these means a great number of owners in the West were induced to come to rea- 219 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND sonable terms with their tenantry rather than incur, not alone the popular odium caused by evictions, but the costly ex- pense of fighting the tenants' organization at each of these stages of legal procedure. Where evictions were carried out on a failure of all the ex- pedients of opposition, immediate aid was given by the league in money and in the provision of shelter where this could be obtained. If, as frequently happened, three or four families were turned out in a town-land, we paid the rent in one of these cases, and supported the others, who obtained accom- modation on the redeemed tenancy, and remained near their holdings so as to be close at hand in the event of a "grabber" casting covetous eyes upon the vacant land. The armed forces of the law and landlord in conjunction might empty a cabin home of its inmates, but the league and popular senti- ment combined would see to it that the land should earn no further rent for the owner. Speaking in Birmingham on January 26, 1880, the late Mr. John Bright made the Irish land question the subject of his address, and bore the following testimony to the progress of the social revolution which the Land League was steadily creating in Ireland at this very time: "We have on an island close to our own doors a people whose grievances are notorious and admitted, whose suffer- ings are extraordinary and not denied by any acquainted with their condition, and whose general state is one of dis- content and disloyalty, calling for the attention of the im- perial government of this kingdom a thousand times more loudly than any voice which speaks to them from Cyprus or Asia Minor. "Now, what is its position i* This, I think, will meet with no contest whatsoever. That there is in Ireland this moment an amount of discontent and suffering, and what we call dis- loyalty, such as we have not found in any other portion of the kingdom. As to the question of land — land - holding, land- occupying, and the tenure of land — the discontent may be said to be absolutely universal in the West of Ireland — that is, in the province of Connaught. You find there is something like a general social revolution; rents are refused to be paid even by tenants who could pay them, and this course is recom- mended and encouraged by multitudes. If evictions take place, if notices are given that unless the tenants pay they will be ejected, then the officers who serve the processes are met by crowds of men and women prepared to hoot them, to condemn them, and in some cases, by force, to resist them. The police are there in hundreds. You hear of their marches GROWTH AND PLANS OF THE LEAGUE throughout the country and of a commissariat, and its being necessary to transport quantities of food that the police may be able to live in the remote districts in which they are placed ; and you see in the papers that the police, in military terms, have made a splendid charge against men and women assem- bled. [Hear, hear.] The revolt is really against the proprie- tor, but acts also against the tenants — that is, the tenant pays the rent he pays under the condemnation of his fellow-tenants,' and if a tenant be evicted and a farm become vacant, and an- other farmer enters upon it, his peace and even his life is en- dangered, and farms that are em.ptied can no longer be occu- pied without the danger to which I have referred and which I have described." A few of the many great meetings held at this period were landmarks in the progress of the movement, and possessed some features which gave them an added interest. On New Year's Day Mr. Thomas Sexton opened the campaign for 1880, in a speech at a meeting held at Rathdrum, close to Avondale, Mr. Parnell's home. It was not Mr. Sexton's first Land-League meeting. He had accompanied Mr. Parnell to the famous anti-eviction demonstration at Balla, in the previous November, and had entered the fray there under the excep- tional circumstances which, as explained by Mr. Parnell at St. Louis, had rendered an attendance at that gathering a dangerous act for a speaker. Mr. Sexton had been a loyal worker in the Home-Rule movement prior to the starting of the Land League. As journalist and speaker he was promi- nently identified with the promotion of all work in Dublin which tended to advance the popular cause. He took a lead- ing part in preparing the country for the first convention, after the abolition of the law which prohibited any such as- semblage in Ireland, but as the Mayo Land-League convention in the August previous and the National Land-League conven- tion, held in April, 1880, in the Rotunda, Dublin, had occupied the ground, the special committee, of which Mr. Sexton had been secretary, was not called upon to carry out its programme. His speech at the Rathdrum meeting marked him out at once as one qualified in every way for a successful public career. Like Mr. Dillon and Mr. Healy, he became "ear- marked" in popular selection as a coming lieutenant of Mr. Parnell's, and more than one constituency claimed him as a candidate, in view of the approaching general election. Much as those who knew of his exceptional ability expected from him at this time, none of his friends anticipated the brilliant career of parliamentary success and of public eminence which lay before him in the path of service for Ireland. 221 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND A meeting which took place at the little hamlet of Straide, County Mayo, on February ist of this year has been errone- ously confounded in many journalistic references with the Irishtown meeting of far more historic interest. The gath- erings were a year apart, in point of time, and fifteen or twenty miles in the matter of distance. Straide was my birthplace, and almost my first - remembered experience of my own life and of the existence of landlordism was our eviction in 1852, when I was about five years of age. That eviction and the privations of the preceding famine years, the story of the starving peasantry of Mayo, of the deaths from hunger and the coffinless graves on the roadside — everywhere a hole could be dug for the slaves who died be- cause of "God's providence" — all this was the political food seasoned with a mother's tears over unmerited sorrows and sufferings which had fed my mind in another land, a teach- ing which lost none of its force or directness by being im- parted in the Gaelic tongue, which was almost always spoken in our Lancashire home. My first knowledge and impres- sions of landlordism were got in that school, with an assistant monitor of a father who had been the head of some agrarian secret society in Mayo in 1837, and who had to fly to England in that year to escape a threatened prosecution for Ribbon- ism. The Land-League gathering in Straide had this little dra- matic interest for me — the platform was erected over the very spot on which my father's cabin had stood thirty years previously, and in which I had been born, and these facts may, perhaps, excuse my recalling some prophetic words spoken at this meeting in 1880: "The destroying hand of rack-renting and eviction was stricken down by the influence of the agitation, and the farm- ers of Ireland were spared some two or three millions with which to meet the danger now looming over their families and country, while the roof-trees of thousands of homesteads were protected from the crowbar brigade; and the civilized world has been appealed to against the existence of a land monopoly which is responsible for a pauperized country, a starved and discontented population, and every social evil now afflicting a patient and industrious people, until a consensus of home and foreign opinion has been evoked in favor of the abolition of such a system and the substitution of a lasting and efficacious remedy for its evils. With these services rendered to Ireland, with the resolve to do the utmost possible to save our people from the danger immediately threatening them, the 'heartless agitators' will not relax a single effort or swerve one iota 222 GROWTH AND PLANS OF THE LEAGUE from their original purpose — to haul down the ensign of land monopoly and plant the banner of ' the land for the people ' upon the dismantled battlements of Irish landlordism. Against what have we declared this unceasing strife, and whence the justification for the attitude we are calling upon the people to assume ? The resolution so eloquently proposed by my friend Mr Brennan declares that the present land code had its origin in conquest and national spoliation, and has ever since been the curse of our people and the scourge of Ireland. Does not the scene of devastation now spread before this vast meeting bear testimony to the crimes with which landlordism stands charged before God and man to-day? Can a more eloquent denunciation of an accursed land code be found than what is witnessed here in this depopulated district? In the memory of many now listening to my words that peaceful little stream which meanders by the outskirts of this multitude sang back the merry voices of happy children and wended its way through a once populous and prosperous village. Now, however, the merry sounds are gone, the busy hum of hamlet life is hushed in sad desolation, for the hands of the home- destroyers have been here and performed their hellish work, leaving Straide but a name to mark the place where happy homesteads once stood, and whence an inoffensive people were driven to the four corners of the earth by the ruthless decree of Irish landlordism. How often in a strange land has my boyhood's ear drunk in the tale of outrage and wrong and infamy perpetrated here in the name of English laws and in the interest of territorial greed; in listening to the accounts of famine and sorrow of deaths by starvation, of coffinless graves, of scenes " ' On highway side, where oft was seen The wild dog and the vulture keen Ttig for the limbs and gnaw the face Of some starved child of our Irish race.' " ... It is no little consolation to know, however, that we are here to-day doing battle against a doomed monopoly, and that the power which has so long domineered over Ireland and its people is brought to its knees at last, and on the point of being crushed forever, and if I am standing to-day upon a platform erected over the ruins of my levelled home, I may yet have the satisfaction of trampling on the ruins of Irish landlord- ism." There arrived in Ireland, in this month a noted American who was to render great help to " the-land-f or-the-people " agitation. This was Mr. James Redpath. He came to rep- 223 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND resent the New York Tribune, as a result of the interest in Irish affairs awakened in the United States by the Parnell- Dillon mission. Mr. Redpath was a man with a romantic history. He had, in his time, been an agitator in a great cause, and had risked Hfe and Hberty in its service. In company with Colonel Hinton, who has only recently died, he joined the small band of heroes who aided the great anti-slavery reformer John Brown, and shared in their many thrilling ad- ventures before the tragedy of Harper's Ferry. Redpath and Hinton had gone on the track of John Brown's band of hu- manitarian outlaws as pressmen, in the interest of New York papers, but allowed their warm sympathies for a noble cause to enlist them on its side as active adherents. The two friends escaped the fate of the armed apostle of abolition and lived to champion other good causes in later times. Redpath was an intensely interesting personality. He was under medium height, with a face full of character, from which two large, gray eyes looked out at you with a deep, penetrating expression of suffering and sympathy. It was a strong but sad face — one of those faces which appear to be forever searching after a something that is not to be enjoyed in this life — a place of rest where no wrong is to be found and into which no tale of human misery could come. He had, in a marked degree, the typical American manner of independent bearing and frank speech, with a dry, caustic humor. He introduced himself at the Land-League offices one day, saying he wished to look at our books and correspondence in order to find out where "the distress, if any," was located. To his manifest surprise his request was immediately granted, and a somewhat sceptical inquirer was disarmed by this show of confidence, and was soon, as he himself expressed it, turned into a convinced Land-Leaguer. An important meeting was to be held in Queen's County on the day following Redpath 's arrival, and as its object was to denounce an eviction our visitor was induced to accompany Mr. John Ferguson, of Glasgow, Arthur O'Connor, and the writer to the Knockaroe demonstration. The memory of this meeting still lingers in the centre of the Leinster counties. It was called to focus public atten- tion upon the fate of Malachi Kelly, a respectable and indus- trious tenant, who, having in a tenancy of thirty years paid his landlord an aggregate rent of £3800 — a rent which had been raised more than once upon the value of his own im- provements — was evicted for a year and a half's arrears. The gathering was very large and enthusiastic, and as the meeting was about to begin a body of armed constabulary, 224 GROWTH AND PLANS OF THE LEAGUE escorting a government reporter, marched into the crowd and grounded their rifles. "Who are these?" asked Redpath. "Royal Irish Constabulary representing the powers that be." " Do you allow them to attend peaceful meetings like this?" "Well, tell us how we can prevent it and we will see what can be done. They have arms and we have not, and they are sent here by that England which you Americans are taught to believe, before you cross the Atlantic, gives this country as much freedom as Englishmen themselves enjoy." Redpath was furious, and wanted to make a speech to at- tack the government responsible for such an outrage, but was prevailed upon to wait to see more of the country and of the conduct of our rulers, and then to deliver his speeches to the American readers of his letters from Ireland. The meeting had one remarkable result. A speaker in closing his address used these words: " The landlord has thrown Malachi Kelly and his family out of their home and holding, but to-day you and I draw a line round this farm, and let no man dare to cross it with covetous intent if he wishes to live in peace within this county." Twenty-three years have rolled by since the day of the meeting on the hill of Knockaroe. Malachi Kelly has gone to his last account, but no man has yet been found to cross that line and rent his farm for more than a short time. Redpath was dubious about the ultimate success of a move- ment which could permit a body of forty police to insult a meeting with the presence of an armed force. He lived to change that view. With us on that platform, on February 22, 1880, was Mr. J. P. Meehan, of Maryborough, merchant,. a stanch Land-Leaguer and nationalist. He is to-day chair- man of the Queen's County county council. He and the or- ganizers of that and of subsequent meetings are now the local governors of a county which was notorious for its anti- national grand jury and rampant landlordism a quarter of a century ago. The landlords ruled the county and owned the land then. The nationalists have supplanted their enemies in county administration since 1898, and the tenants will soon replace them in the ownership of the soil. IS CHAPTER XVIII VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT The Freeman's Journal, the leading Irish daily newspaper, still held out against the league. It upheld Mr. Shaw's chair- manship of the Home-Rule party, denounced Mr. Parnell's speeches in the United States, and carried its opposition so far that the names of Mr. Patrick Egan, Mr. Thomas Brennan, and the present writer were not to be mentioned in Mr. Dwyer Gray's paper. This hostility was in some sense due to rivalry between the Mansion House Relief Fund Committee (Mr. Gray being Lord Mayor of Dublin at the time) and the Land- League executive. The rivalry had its source in political differences, however, and the distribution of assistance to the victims of distress had only the relation of accident to the real cause of antagonism. It was evident to Mr. Gray, and to all whom it might concern, that the league was preparing the country for Parnell's national leadership, and that a far more vigorous policy than that supported by the Freeman's Journal would build a platform upon which Mr. Shaw and his nominal Home-Rulers would not stand. This was the league's real quarrel with Mr. Gray, and it was on this issue that the contest was waged which soon brought both himself and his paper to terms. The opposition of Dublin's chief daily paper was a serious hinderance to the movement in the national capital, and as the league had already fought and beaten several formidable an- tagonists its leaders were not averse to trying conclusions with Mr. Gray. He had openly attacked the league's president, while on Ireland's service across the Atlantic, and this, too, at a time when prominent Land-Leaguers at home were under the legal ban of a state prosecution. So plans were carefully prepared, and the duel with our formidable newspaper an- tagonist was fought out in this way; Mr. Patrick Egan, treasurer of the Land League, was at this time the most active and able of the nationalist leaders of Dublin. He was a prominent city merchant, a man of conspicuous integrity, very popular with all who knew him, 226 VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT and as full of organizing resourcefulness as of courage and capacity in dealing with opposing forces, qualities which were conspicuously displayed in subsequent years, under most crucial conditions, when he was United States minister at Chili during the Balmaceda crisis. It was arranged by the league that a huge demonstration, ostensibly as a protest against the prosecution of Messrs. Brennan, Daly, Killeen, and the writer, should take place in Phoenix Park, Dublin, and that advantage should be taken of this great gathering to deal with the attitude of the Freeman. An eflfigy of Mr. Dwyer Gray, dressed in copies of his paper, was to be burned in a boat on the Liffey during the passage of the procession along the quays, while the crowds were to be marched back to the city from the park, after the meeting, so as to pass the Freeman office and make a hostile demonstration against it. All these plans were carefully and purposely communicated to Mr. Gray through his managing editor, who was most effu- sively assured by Mr. Egan that, "whatever might be done or said opposite the office of the paper by the mob, no notice would be taken of the Sir John Gray monument," which stood in the lower centre of O'Connell Street. These diplomatic warnings sufficed, and the day before the great Park meeting, at which fully eighty thousand persons were present, the Freeman had most complimentary references to the league and its executive, its work and power. Mr. Gray sent for the writer subsequently, and told him frankly that the Freeman was beaten, that the country was in full sympathy with the programme and policy of the new movement, and that consequently his paper would henceforth give the league a fair support. This it continued to do from the period of the league convention until the catastrophe of 1890, when it did more than all other agencies of mis- chief combined to divide the national ranks. Mr. Gray had, however, died a short time previously, and this bad work of his paper must be put down to other names and influences. Flinging wide the net of the movement, the Land League of Great Britain was formed out of the organization of the Home Rule Confederation in 1880. Branches of the old body had existed in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Dundee for some few years, and these now volunteered to merge them- selves in the new organization. Mr. John Barry, a national- ist of the advanced school (subsequently member of Parlia- ment for County Wexford) was the leading spirit in the m.ove- ment in Great Britain at this period. He was a business man of conspicuous ability, open-handed and generous to a fault, 227 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND and was very popular among all sections of Irishmen in Eng- land and Scotland. Mr. Parnell had been elected president of the Home Rule Confederation mainly through Mr. Barry's exertions, and it was chiefly due to the exercise of the same influence that the branches of this organization were included in the Land-League system. Mr. Barry's efforts in this di- rection were supported by Mr. John Ferguson and Mr. Michael Clarke, of Glasgow; Mr. Barney McAnulty, of Newcastle; Mr. John Walsh, of Middlesboro'; Mr. John Denvir, of Liverpool; Mr. John Ryan, of Chelsea, and other influential nationalists who tad been identified, some with Fenianism and some with Mr. Butt's Home-Rule movement. League branches soon multiplied in Great Britain, and an auxiliary organization thus initiated has continued during the past twenty-three years to extend a powerful, generous, and most loyal service to the parent movement in Ireland. Steps were likewise taken to carry the Land-League prop- aganda into the Highlands in order to stir up a crofter revolt against Scottish landlordism. Mr. Edward McHugh, then of Glasgow, a man of remarkable ability and an ideal propagandist to any just cause that captures his adhesion, was commissioned by the league executive in Dublin to make a tour of the Island of Skye and other Highland districts as an emissary of the anti-landlord movement. Mr. McHugh, being able to converse in Gaelic, perfonned his task with marked success. In a short time the mission showed results in the formation of a Highland league, which, though inde- pendent in its organization and government from that of Ireland, was allied in a bond of sympathy and purpose to the movement in the sister Celtic country. When, in some subsequent troubles between crofters and an extensive owner of Highland grazing lands, the world of (London) sport was horrified at the slaughter of some deer by half-starving peasants, as a means of compelling public atten- tion to be given to their condition and claims, the indignant sporting brewers and lords of Cockneydom were unaware of the fact that the guns which enabled the crofters to kill some venison for their own use once in a time were bought for them out of the funds of the wicked Land League of Dublin. In this connection mention must be made of a veteran Highland anti-landlord reformer and truest of true Celts, the late John Murdoch, once editor of a now defunct paper, The Highlander, of Inverness. Murdoch had been a resident of Dublin in 1847-48, as an employe of the excise, and, being in hearty sympathy with the Young Irelanders, he attended meetings of the national confederation and imbibed the 228 VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT Fintan Lalor ideas of land reform. He remained true to these principles in after years, and expounded them in his paper during its existence. He was a stanch ally of the Irish Land League, and accompanied Messrs. Parnell and Dillon to some of the meetings addressed by them during the American mission. The late Professor John Stuart Blackie, of Edinburgh, who knew Murdoch intimately, and was, like himself, a thorough Celt, wrote these well-merited lines of praise and esteem of the stout-hearted opponent of the whole landlord system: "God bless thee, Murdoch! Thou'rt a man to stand On thine own legs — and very good legs they be! Like a strong swimmer, thou hast gained the land, When wave on wave yawn'd wide to swallow thee. Time was when only valiant men might show Their face on Highland hills; a baser brood Now to the Saxon lordling duck them low. With fashioned smiles of smooth-lipped flunkyhood. Not in this school was Murdoch bred, who wears His manhood on his front, and in his breast The memory of high-hearted fathers bears. Who never crook'd the knee or droop'd their crest; True to whose blood he battles in the van, For Truth and Right, and fears no face of man." It was in the midst of organization and propaganda work of this wide -reaching character, in March, 1880, that Lord Beaconsfield launched his historic indictment of the whole Irish movement, in his famous letter to the Duke of Marlbor- ough, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and soon after dis- solved Parliament. Mr. Parnell was instantly cabled for by the league, and he landed in Queenstown, as already mentioned, on the eve of the general election. Nothing has been more consistent in the policy of British statesmen in their rule of Ireland than their inconsistency. There has not been a prime-minister from Pitt to Arthur James Balfour who did not apply principles of government to the rule of the Irish people at complete variance with his own convictions, spoken or written, on some contingency or oc- casion. Reforms, political, social, educational, and religious, advocated in England's Parliament, press, and pulpit, in vir- tue of England's self-proclaimed prerogative as the teacher of liberty to all peoples, were expressly repudiated as being at all applicable to the case of Ireland. Not alone this, but there has scarcely been a premier of England since the Act of Union who has not, in some moment free from anti-Irish prejudice, voiced the truth about the wrong, stupidity, and failure of the English system of governing the Irish people. 229 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND The consensus of English opinion quoted in the first chapter of this book amply supports this contention. It offers an overwhelming proof of the incapacity of those who for eighty vears or more passed almost as many coercion acts through the British Parliament, in vain attempts to prevent those very reforms being conceded to our people which English statesmen in opposition, or in candid moments, admitted to be just and necessary, but which the very same statesmen, when in office, and responsible for Irish misgovernment, ig- nored or denounced when demanded by Irish leaders. It was in strict accordance with this spirit of cynical incon- sistency and persistent wilful blindness as to the causes and remedies for Ireland's discontent that the people of Great Britain were appealed to in the following electioneering mani- festo in March, 1880: " 10 Downing Street, March 8, 1880. "My Lord Duke, — The measures respecting the state of Ireland which her Majesty's government so anxiously con- sidered with your Excellency, and in which they were much aided by your advice and authority, are now about to be submitted for the ro3^al assent, and it is at length in the power of the ministers to advise the Queen to recur to the sense of her people. The arts of agitators which represented that England, instead of being the generous and sympathizing friend, was indifferent to the dangers and the sufferings of Ireland, have been defeated by the measures, at once liberal and prudent, which Parliament have almost unanimously sanctioned. "During the six years of the present administration the improvement of Ireland and the content of our fellow-country- men in that island have much occupied the care of the ministry, and they may remember with satisfaction that in this period they have solved one of the most difficult prob- lems connected with its government and its people by es- tablishing a system of public education open to all classes and all creeds. "Nevertheless a danger, in its ultimate results scarcely less disastrous than pestilence and famine, and which now engages your Excellency's anxious attention, distracts that country. A portion of its population is attempting to sever the con- stitutional tie which unites it to Great Britain in the bond which has favored the power and prosperity of both. "It is to be hoped that all men of light and leading will resist this destructive doctrine. The strength of this nation depends on the unity of feeling which should pervade the United Kingdom and its wide - spread dependencies. The 230 VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT first duty of an English minister should be to consolidate that co-operation which renders irresistible a community, educated as our own, in an equal love of liberty and law. "And yet there are some who challenge the expediency of the imperial character of this realm. Having attempted and failed to enfeeble our colonies by their policy of decom- position, they may, perhaps, nov/ recognize in the disintegra- tion of the United Kingdom a mode which will not only ac- complish but precipitate their purpose. "The immediate dissolution of Parliament will afford an opportunity to the nation to decide upon a course which will materially influence its future fortunes and shape its destiny. "Rarely in this century has there been an occasion more critical. The power of England and the peace of Europe will largely depend on the verdict of the country. Her Majesty's present ministers have hitherto been enabled to secure that peace so necessary to the welfare of all civilized countries and so peculiarly the interest of our own. But this ineffable blessing cannot be obtained by the passive principle of non- interference. Peace rests on the presence, not to say the ascendency, of England in the councils of Europe. Even at this moment the doubt supposed to be inseparable from popular election, if it does not diminish certainly arrests her influence, and is a main reason for not delaying an appeal to the national voice. "Whatever may be its consequence to her Majesty's present advisers, may it return to Westminster a Parliament not un- worthy of the power of England and resolved to maintain it. "I have the honor to be, my Lord Duke, "Your faithful servant, Beaconsfield. "His Excellency the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, K.G." Six years only previous to this insulting manifesto, the same English statesman, then in opposition, described the existing government of Ireland by England in these words: " Neither liberty of the press nor liberty of the person exists in Ireland. Arrests are at all times liable. It is a fact that at any time in Ireland the police may enter into your house, examine your papers to see if there is any resemblance be- tween the writing and that of some anonymous letter that has been sent to a third person. In Ireland, if a man writes an article in a newspaper, and it offends the government, he has a warning, and if he repeats the offence his paper may be suppressed. They say Ireland is peaceful. Yes, but is she so, not because she is contented, but because she is held un- der by coercive laws? These laws may be necessary. I am 231 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND not here objecting to them. I am a Tory, and as such I might favor severer laws myself. But I say it isn't honest in the Liberals, while denouncing us, to imitate our ways."^ This was on the eve of the defeat of Mr. Gladstone on the question of university education for Ireland. The Tories were returned to power in 1874, and Mr. Disraeli became prime- minister, in his second administration. No English states- man of his time understood the Irish question better than the extraordinary man who had first entered the House of Commons as an English Radical, virtually under the patron- age of Daniel O'Connell, to terminate his political career as the founder of imperial toryism and petted premier of Queen Victoria. As early as 1844 Disraeli had given perhaps the best exposition of the Anglo-Irish question ever spoken by an English statesman. On February i6th, in that year, he said, from his place in the House of Commons: "I want to see a public man come forward and say what the Irish question is. One says it is a physical question; another a spiritual. Now it is the absence of the aristocracy; now the absence of railways. It is the Pope one day and potatoes the next. A dense population in extreme distress inhabit an island where there is an established Church which is not their Church ; and a territorial aristocracy, the richest of whom live in a distant capital. Thus they have a starving popula- tion, an absentee aristocracy, an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world. "Well, what then would honorable gentlemen say if they were reading of a country in that position? They would say at once, 'The remedy is revolution.' But the Irish could not have a revolution, and why? Because Ireland is connected with another and a more powerful country. Then what is the consequence? The connection with England became the cause of the present state of Ireland. If the connection with England prevented a revolution, and a revolution was the only remedy, England logically is in the odious position of being the cause of all the misery of Ireland. What, then, is the duty of an English minister? To effect by his policy all those changes which a revolution would do by force. That is the Irish question in its integrity." The statesman who knew and felt all this to be true was twice in power after the horrible climax of alien and un- sympathetic English rule in the great famine, and the above letter to the Duke of Marlborough, which was an attempt to rouse English racial and political hatred against Ireland ' House of Commons, February 10, 1874. 232 VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT for party purposes, was his contribution to the solution of the problem he had so clearly understood and so sanely defined. One of the measures referred to in the letter of the Tory leader was passed in March, under the name of a relief of distress bill. It provided for the appropriation of ;^i,ooo,ooo out of the Irish Church surplus fund, which was to be loaned to Irish landlords, free of interest for two years, and to bear two per cent, interest afterwards. This was to enable landlords to provide some employment for their tenants. Numbers of these landlords reloaned some of this money to tenants for the improvement of their holdings, and charged from four to seven per cent, interest on the loans. Others employed their tenants on wages, and paid them in a reduction of their arrears of rent. The bill was more a landlords' than a tenants' relief measure. The general election of 1880 was to be fought on the Irish policy of the Beaconsfield government, and on the tinsel diplomatic triumphs which the prime - minister and Lord Salisbury had brought back with them from the Berlin Conference — the "Peace with Honor" achievement which has been directly responsible since then for Turkish atrocities in Armenia and for the infamies of the Sultan's rule in Macedonia. The insulting allusions to Ireland were a welcome stimulant to the labors of the Land League, and no time was lost after Mr. Parnell's return in preparing for the first democratic parliamentary campaign yet fought in Ireland. The most troublesome difficulty in a modern Irish election- eering contest is money A candidate's principles may be as pure as crystal, and his patriotism as undoubted as Robert Emmet's, but unless he can provide the sheriff's fees on the day of nomination he has no chance with any opponent, no matter how wanting in these qualities, who can obtain half a dozen signatures to a piece of paper and pay the cost of the election. This is the result of landlord and capitalistic sway in British public life. These classes owned the legislature in the days when the British Constitution was in the making, and care was taken that the owners of land should also own the House of Lords, while capital and land combined would monopolize the House of Commons. The cost of elections and of attendance on parliamentary duties could only be borne by men of means, thus securing the monopoly of law-making to the wealthy. These conditions applied to Ireland as well as to Great Britain. Mr. Butt had to recruit his party in the seventies chiefly out of landlord, merchant, and professional classes, who were able to defray election expenses, and most of these were so opposed to the Land-League platform that 233 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND it would be necessary to replace them with supporters of Mr. Pamell's views and leadership if the national organization was to carry out the programme of the new departure. Mr. Parnell's mission to America was primarily undertaken for the purpose of raising a political fund for the Land League, but the prevalence of distress in Ireland compelled him to make an appeal for relief the main purpose of the tour. The moneys raised for this object could not be used for other pur- poses. He had, however, succeeded in obtaining some fifteen or twenty thousand dollars for Land-League work, apart from its relief operations, and this was the only fund available for the general election. Even as to this a difficulty arose owing to the terms of the final resolution in the Land-League pro- gramme of October, 1879, which prohibited Land - League funds being used for parliamentary purposes. Mr. Parnell referred to this resolution, in his evidence before the special commission, as "the policy of starving the parliamentary party." It certainly was open to that interpretation, though, as a matter of fact, the policy itself was not resolved upon with that object in view. The explanation of it was this; It was felt by the then active organizers of the league that it would be an appropriate division of financial responsibility for the new movement to devote all funds contributed by America to the support of the combat against landlordism in Ireland, while throwing upon Ireland herself the cost of elect- ing and maintaining a parliamentary representation which was to be a nationalist and democratic delegation to the House of Commons. This policy required an electioneering fund as well as money for organizing purposes, and Mr. Parnell and the league were confronted, in April, 1880, with the expensive task of changing the political character of the parliamentary representation with a slender exchequer and a prohibitive league resolution. It was felt that the circumstances war- ranted a departure from the spirit of this resolution, and ;^2ooo were "loaned" out of the league treasury to Mr. Parnell for the expenses to be incurred in contesting seats held by landlords in constituencies which the league policy would be likely to carry. An address was issued to the farmers of Ireland calling upon them not to vote for any landlord candidate. It was pointed out how suicidal the policy would be of sending supporters of the system which was a curse to the country to make laws for the protection of rents and other landlord in- terests in Westminster. In thus making the issue of the elections an anti - landlord cry, the position in Ulster was 234 VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT considered. Home Rule would not be likely to make any impression upon the Protestant farmers of the North, while an appeal to their interests as rent-paying tenants would not fail to exercise considerable influence upon them.. In the other provinces the league candidates were accepted as supporters of Mr. Parnell, being mainly recommended or selected by him to stand for the movement against land- lordism and as supporters of the strenuous Home - Rule policy in the House of Commons. Mr. Parnell proved himself again to be a superb fighter and leader. His activity during the general election left nothing to be desired by his warmest admirer. He was nominated for three constituencies — his own (Meath), Mayo, and Cork City. In addition to addressing meetings in counties wide apart, he rushed to the assistance of candidates in other sections of the country where a formidable opponent had to be fought or where a weak standard-bearer required the support of the man whom popular feeling had designated as the coming national leader. During the elections a meeting was held in Enniscorthy. Mr. Parnell atteaided to promote the candidature of Mr. John Barry and Mr. Garret Byrne as new members for the county, a Sir George Bowyer, an Englishman and a Catholic, refusing to stand again in the hopeless prospect of being elected, and Mr. O'Clery, the other old member, being objected to by Mr. Parnell as out of sympathy with the obstructionist policy. O'Clery and his friends captured the meeting, the assailants comprising a strong body of Fenians. The active leaders of the attack were two priests, who were resolved to prevent Mr. Parnell from speaking unless he declared himself in favor of O'Clery. The anti-Parnellites seized and held the platform before Mr. Parnell's friends arrived, and then attempted to prevent these from mounting it. A desperate fight ensued as the Land-League contingent reached the place of meeting. They were assailed with sticks and other weapons, the mob being encouraged by their clerical leaders in every way and in every form of violence. Mr. Parnell showed great courage, advancing to the platform at the head of his smaller force, and climbing up the steps despite physical attempts to pull him down. These efforts failed; but no sooner had he gained the level of the structure, where a reverend gentleman command- ed, than he was seized by his opponents with the intention of flinging him off. He clung to the side railing of the platform, being struck repeatedly, while men from below seized his legs, ripping one side of his trousers open from the boot to the waist. Here his friends, led by Mr. James O'Kelly, Mr. John 235 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND E. Redmond, Mr. T. M. Healy, Dr. Cardiff, and others, suc- ceeded in forming a body-guard round him and in protecting him from further violence. Several men who had stood by Pamell in his struggle to get to the platform were struck down and disabled, the police rushing in to rescue them from further injury. One of the opposing mob, armed with a huge stick, went behind Pamell while he was in the hands of several assailants and aimed a deliberate blow at his head, which would have crushed his skull had it went home. Mr. Jack Hall, reporter for the Free- man's Journal, seeing the deadly purpose of the man, seized the stick from behind as its owner was in the act of swinging it from the shoulder, and thus saved Mr. Parnell from what was intended to be a murderous blow. All this time the rev- erend chairman, with his huge blackthorn, directed the row, and encouraged the backers of O'Clery "to put down dicta- tion." But neither blows nor insults would deter Mr. Pamell from attempting to address the meeting. He had faced as noisy but not as desperate a crowd in the House of Commons, and had compelled them to listen, and he was not going to be silenced by a mob of his own countrymen. The press report of the proceedings here records that: "Mr. Pamell then came forward. He was frequently and persistently interrupted, but maintained his position, and at every interruption simply suspended his voice. He said: 'I have travelled over twenty thousand miles by sea and land [interruption] since last I stood in this historic [renewed inter- ruption, which lasted some time] town, and I think I may say that during the whole of that time [great disorder near the platform] I have done nothing but that which merits the ap- proval of my fellow-countrymen and the people of this town. [Hearty cheers, and cries of "Hear him, hear Parnell," and "Go on, Parnell."] Now you are called upon to choose the men [renewed interruption, and cries of "We have chosen them "] to represent Wexford in Parliament. [Great disorder.] I have been invited here to-day [disorder, and cries of "We didn't invite you"] to express my opinion [renewed interrup- tion] of the men who have come before you as candidates for your suffrages. I came to support, as your representatives, Mr. John Barry and Mr. Garret Byrne. [Disorder; cries of "Cheers for Barry," "Down with Byrne." Renewed disorder, amid which several persons in the crowd attempted to pull Mr. Parnell off the platform by the legs, and large numbers shouted, "We won't hear any more from you."] "Father Murphy {to Mr. Parnell). 'Let us get on with the meeting. They won't hear you.' 236 VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT " Mr. Parnell. 'I will say a word for John Barry if I have to stand here all day.'" The meeting was finally broken up by Mr. Parnell's assail- ants, who followed him through the streets, knocking down his supporters and making repeated efforts to strike him with sticks. He had been hit with rotten eggs. His clothes were also torn, and the rough usage he had received combined to give him a most battered appearance as he reached the rail- way station to return by train to Dublin. I met him on his arrival at Morrison's Hotel that night. He was in a state of intense passion at the insults he had re- ceived, and he at once asked me to go down to Wexford and organize the whole county for a meeting in Enniscorthy to be held on the following Sunday, "strong enough and deter- mined enough to deal with O'Clery and his gang." The commission was accepted, and on the following evening I experienced for the first time in my then short public career the novelty of being hissed — an experience to which one grows familiar as he gets politically older in Irish public life. Mr. O'Clery 's friends were no more inclined to treat me with tenderness than Mr. Parnell with respect. But, after visiting various tovv^ns and villages in the county, and finding a fero- cious spirit abroad in favor of wrecking Enniscorthy — many Catholic clergymen, it is only right to say, being the most eager to volunteer to wipe out the disgrace inflicted upon the brave old '98 county by the insult to Parnell — I decided not to encourage, but in every way possible to prevent, the re- taliatory meeting being held. I was assured that revolvers would be used on the other side if there was any attempted invasion of the town, and I returned to Dublin to inform Mr. Parnell that no demonstration would take place, except on the polling day, when O'Clery would be effectively rejected. He was greatly and manifestly displeased, and for a time at- tributed my action to other motives, but after learning all the facts that were in my possession he afterwards thanked me for "havmg had the courage not to fight" against honest nationalists who were only misled into opposition for the time being. On the counting of the votes on election day the figures stood: Barry, head of the poll; Garret Byrne, 2879; Mr. O'Clery, 457. This was by far a more satisfactory reply to the rotten eggs of the Enniscorthy meeting than any revenge- seeking operations could be, no matter how many heads might have been broken in the fray. The meeting which had this sequel was, I believe, the first occasion on which Mr. John E. Redmond appeared on a na- 237 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tionalist platform. It was in every sense a warm introduc- tion into the arena of Irish pubHc Hfe. Another contest of this general election which was marked by memorable incidents was that of Cork City. Mr. Pamell was nominated for the borough, in addition to being put for- ward for the counties of Meath and Mayo. He was to run with Mr. John Daly, a very popular citizen of Cork, for that city against the late Mr. N. D. Murphy, an Irish Whig of the most reactionary kind. Mr. Murphy had the zealous support of the Catholic bishop and of the active clerical influence of the city. Having been member for Cork for a long time, his hold upon it was deemed to be impregnable. The bishop openly denounced Mr. Pamell as a stranger who was intro- ducing himself upon a constituency that knew its own busi- ness. Altars rang with warnings against Fenianism and so- cialism, and all the other wicked things which frighten the virtuous political vision of some politicians when a wealthy Catholic is being opposed for his spurious nationalism or some job-finding supporter of a ministry is fought by the peo- ple on principle. The Tories, likewise, ran a candidate, hoping to secure one of the two seats for the city in a triangular fight. They did more: they paid the expenses of Mr. Parnell's contest, so con- fident were they that he would only detach enough of votes from the Whig side to insure a Tory gain. But the league en- thusiasm and the support of the surrounding agricultural in- fluence, won for Mr. Parnell by the Cork Farmers' Club, carried Cork, and defeated both Whig and Tory, the president of the Land League polling two hundred votes more than the Tory candidate and over live hundred above the Whig nominee of the bishop, who was left at the bottom of the poll. The Land League made a clean sweep in the general election of its landlord enemies in three provinces, defeating O 'Conor Don and his clerical support in Roscommon, and Mr. Kava- nagh and Mr. Bruen, of Carlow, three of the strongest land- lord candidates in Ireland. In Wicklow, Queen's County, Kildare, Mayo, Limerick, Cavan, Monaghan, Clare, Kilkenny, Tipperary, and Louth the league also triumphed by smashing its pro-landlord opponents. It was a revolution, complete and overwhelming, in the parliamentary position of the coun- try, and resulted as well in giving Mr. Parnell a following of thirty-six nationalist members out of a total Home-Rule dele- gation of sixty -four elected by the whole country. The "new departure" had only been in operation twelve months, and upon the first anniversary of the Irishtown meeting the land- lord garrison, in its political outworks at Westminster, was 238 VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT driven from the field and replaced in the representation of the three more or less Celtic provinces by men elected on the cry of "Down with landlordism!" It was the final and successful political revolt against the land-owners by their tenants; the fall from power of a domi- neering aristocracy at the hands of the peasantry upon whose rights and homes they had trampled in the spirit of insolent power and remorseless greed. The evictors of families w^ere themselves politically evicted; the class who had driven their tenants to the polls in former days, as slaves were driven to a plantation, were chased out of Parliament, humbled in the dust of defeat, and forever politically dethroned in Ireland. Because, with a Liberal party returned to power armed with an overwhelming majority and pledged to a reform of the county franchise, the electors in Ireland would be more than doubled when next the voters would be asked to create a new Parliament at Westminster. The results of the Irish elections of 1880, therefore, wrote the political doom of Irish landlordism. The handwriting was that of the Celtic peasantry, against whose happiness and very existence this callous system had employed all the acts and agencies of oppression known in the history of a two hundred years' record of unparalleled suffering and of wrong. And on the night when the final figures flew over the wires, telling of the defeat of the enemy of Irish homes and earnings, it was arranged by the league that bonfires should fling forth their beacon-lights of triumph from hill to hill, until the island from Croagh Patrick to Howth, and from Cruaghaughrim, in Donegal, to Cape Clear, in County Cork, should be ablaze with the tidings of great joy that would tell of the birth of a new hope for Ireland in the fall of her most traitorous and most malignant foes. Among the men elected by the league movement as up- holders of Mr. Parnell's parliamentary policy were most of his subsequent and ablest lieutenants and leaders of the agitation who have figured prominently since then in Irish public life. John Dillon, in Tipperary (absent in Amer- ica at the time, engaged in organizing an auxiliary Land League); Thomas Sexton, in Sligo; James O'Kelly, in Ros- common; T. P. O'Connor, in Galway city; Justin McCarthy, in Longford; Joseph G. Biggar, in Cavan; John Barry, in Wexford; John E. Redmond, in New Ross; Arthur O'Connor and Richard Lalor, in Queen's County; Mr. T. D. Sullivan, in Westmeath; Mr. Edmund Leamy and Mr. Richard Power, in Waterford; with able and older parliamentarians, like John O'Connor Power, A. M. Sullivan, F. H. O'Donnell, E. 239 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Dwyer Gray, and a few others, who, though not strictly Land- League adherents, were warm supporters of the land-for-the- people movement, and backers of Mr. Pamell rather than supporters of Mr. Shaw. There were three prominent Land-Leaguers whom several constituencies wished to elect if they would consent to stand — Thomas Brennan and Patrick Egan, of the executive, and John Ferguson, of Glasgow, the "father of all the Irish land reformers," as he has been named by some of his legion of admirers. Messrs. Brennan and Egan would not consent to enter the British Parliament, and Mr. Ferguson's business would not permit him to make the necessary personal sacrifice. These men would have powerfully reinforced Mr. Parnell's party had circumstances permitted their entry into the House of Commons. Mr. T. M. Healy was on the eve of joining the parliamentary league contingent, while Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. T. Harrington were soon to add their special qualifica- tions to those of the able and earnest band of men who were destined under Mr. Parnell's lead to do more for Ireland than all previous Irish parliamentary parties combined had accomplished in Westminster. The power and prestige of the league were enormously enhanced by its triumph over the landlords at the polls. It was now the unquestioned, dominating influence in the political life of Ireland. It had elected Mr. Pamell for three separate constituencies, while the following which remained to Mr. Shaw, the late chairman of the Home-Rule party, was a kind of consolation contingent left to melt away as oppor- tunities should offer to replace these nominal Home-Rulers with pronounced Land-Leaguers. The league grew apace, in branches and in meetings. A larger staff had to be employed to deal with the great in- crease of correspondence. Organizers were engaged to work up branches throughout the country, while Mr. Thomas Brennan was induced to give up his business situation to take charge of the headquarters of the league as general secretary of the national organization. The executive, which had consisted up to the general election of Messrs. Parnell, Egan, Brennan, Biggar, A. J. Kettle, W. H. O'Sullivan, and the present writer, was enlarged by the addition to the governing council of the league of John Dillon, Thomas Sex- ton, T. D. SulHvan, John Ferguson, T. P. O'Connor, Mat- thew Harris, and J. J. Louden. Attention had now to be given to the work which should at once engage the efforts of the new party in Parliament, and it was decided to call a national convention for the consideration 240 VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT and adoption of a plan of legislative land reform. The con- ference was fixed to meet in the Rotunda, Dublin, on April 29th, and a committee charged with the work of preparing the programme that was to be laid before the assembly of dele- gates was formed. It consisted of Messrs. Parnell, Egan, Kettle, William Kelly, Louden, T. M. Healy (as Mr. Parnell's then secretary), and the present writer. We had an all-night sitting in Morrison's Hotel on the eve of the convention, and as a commentary upon Mr. Parnell's then unfixed ideas on land reform it may be mentioned that he had not a single suggestion to offer beyond the extraor- dinary proposal that we should recommend Mr. Butt's land bill to the convention, as the measure to be pressed for in the new Parliament by the league party ! He good-naturedly resigned himself to the utter rejection of this proposal, say- ing he would agree to anything upon which the majority would decide. The following programme was the result of our joint labors, Mr. J. J. Louden, as a barrister, and having a legal grasp of the land question, being the chief architect of the scheme, aided by Mr. Healy 's sharp in- telligence, and assisted by some suggestions on my part — the "Department of Land Administration " portion of the plan being my contribution. Leaving out the introductory part of the programme, which was historical and an adverse criticism upon Mr. Butt's measure, the proposals were as follows : " PROGRAMME FOR CONSIDERATION OF CONFERENCE "Feeling convinced that it is inexpedient to maintain and impossible to amend the present relations between landlord and tenant, the question presents itself. What measure of land reform do the exigencies of the situation demand ? The land question in Ireland is the tangled heritage of centuries of one- sided class legislation, the successful solution of which will necessitate the greatest care and investigation, together with an anxious desire to do right on the part of all who approach its consideration. Time will be needed by the present House of Commons to inform itself as to the merits of a question which is only just commencing to be understood in Ireland, and is scarcely understood at all in England. " PROVISIONAL MEASURE FOR SUSPENSION OF POWER OF EJECT- MENT, ETC., FOR TWO YEARS "We therefore recommend as an ad interim measure, in view of the desperate condition of the country, until com- 16 241 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND prehensive reforms can be perfected, that a bill should be pushed forward with all speed suspending for two years ejectments for non-payment of rent, and for overholding, in the case of all holdings valued at ;^io a year and under, and suspending for a similar period of two years in the case of any holding whatsoever the right of recovering a higher rent than the poor-law valuation. " PROPOSALS FOR PERMANENT REFORM " Next, as to the permanent reform of land tenure in Ireland, we are of the opinion that the establishment of a peasant proprietary is the only solution of the question which will be accepted as final by the country. The Land Act of 1870 created, as between landlord and tenant, an irregular part- nership in the ownership of the land, giving to the former a right to rent for his interest in the soil and to the latter a right to compensation for the loss of his property therein. Now we venture to assert that this system, whereby two op- posing classes have valuable interests in the same property, must cease to exist. The well-being of the state, the preser- vation of the people, the peace and prosperity of the country demand the dissolution of a partnership which has made finan- cial ruin and social chaos the normal condition of Ireland; and the time has arrived when Parliament must decide whether a few non-working men or the great body of industrious and wealth-producing tillers of the soil are to own the land. " CREATION OF A DEPARTMENT OF LAND ADMINISTRATION FOR IRELAND "To carry out the permanent reform of land tenure re- ferred to, we propose the creation of a department or com- mission of land administration for Ireland. This depart- ment would be invested with ample powers to deal with all questions relating to land in Ireland: "i. Where the landlord and tenant of any holding had agreed for the sale to the tenant of the said holding, the department would execute the necessary conveyance to the tenant and advance him the whole or part of the purchase money, and upon such advance being made by the depart- ment such holding would be deemed to be charged with an annuity of ;;^5 for every ;^ioo of such advance, and so in proportion for any less sums, such annuity to be limited in favor of the department, and to be declared to be repayable in the tenn of thirty-five years. 242 VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT "2. Where a tenant tendered to the landlord for the purchase of his holding a sum equal to twenty years of the poor-law valuation thereof, the department would execute the conveyance of the said holding to the tenant, and would be empowered to advance to the tenant the whole or any part of the purchase money, the repayment of which would be secured as set forth in the case of voluntary sales. "3. The department would be empowered to acquire the ownership of any estate upon tendering to the owner thereof a sum equal to twenty years of the poor-law valuation of such estate, and to let said estate to the tenants at a rent equal to three and a half per cent, of the purchase money thereof. "4. The department or the court having jurisdiction in this matter would be empowered to determine the rights and priorities of the several persons entitled to or having charges upon or otherwise interested in any holding conveyed as above mentioned, and would distribute the purchase money in accordance with such rights and priorities; and when any moneys arising from a sale were not immediately distributable, the department would have a right to invest the said moneys for the benefit of the parties entitled thereto. "Provision would be made whereby the treasury would from time to time advance to the department such sums of money as would be required for the purchases above men- tioned. EASY TRANSFER OF LAND, COMPULSORY REGISTRATION, ETC. "To render the proposed change in the tenure of land ef- fectual, it would be necessary to make provision for the cheap and simple transfer of immovable property. To effect this an organic reform of the law of real property would be requi- site. The statute of uses should be repealed, distinctions be- tween 'legal and equitable' interests abolished, and the law of entail swept away. In short, the laws relating to land should be assimilated as closely as possible to the laws relat- ing to personal property. The Landed Estates Court would be transferred to the department of land administration, its system of procedure cheapened and improved. In each county in Ireland there would be established a registry office, wherein all owners of land would be compelled to register their titles, wherein also would be registered, mortgages and all charges and interests whatsoever. Titles so registered (in accordance with rules provided for the purpose) would be made indefeasible. "With such a system of registration established, and legal 243 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND phraseology in conveyancing abolished, a holding of land might be transferred from one owner to another as cheaply as a share in a ship or money in the funds, and thus no apparent obstacle would stand in the way of the department of land administration from carrying out the reforms which we have suggested — reforms which, it may be hoped, will bring pros- perity and contentment to an impoverished and distracted coimtry. "(Signed) " Charles S. Parnell, " J. J. Louden, " A. J. Kettle, " William Kelly, " Patrick Egan." This programme of the Land League, adopted at the first national convention held in Ireland after the abolition of the law prohibiting such assemblies, has been, more or less, the foundation for the subsequent land-purchase schemes pro- moted by English statesmen and parties for Ireland. These imitation schemes, however, lacked the one league proposal that could have settled the Irish agrarian war twenty years ago, and would have saved the country all it has suffered and lost since then — the element of legal compulsion. Time has surely justified the legally penalized Land League in many respects, but in none more than in the condemnation which it passed upon those who, in refusing to sanction a sane and just scheme because proposed by Irish land reformers, wilfully or stupidly prolonged a bitter social struggle. This plan would have accomplished, a score of years ago, a great pacific, in- dustrial change, which the one-time jailers of the league lead- ers and all English political parties now declare to be abso- lutely essential for the tranquillity and welfare of Ireland. I refused to sign this proposal at the time, on the ground that the price offered to the landlords was too high. It ignored the value of a tenant's improvements in his holding; the threatened fall of agricultural prices, owing to growing ex- ternal competition; and other facts which both justice and equity claimed should be taken into account in behalf of both country and tenants. But the conference to which the scheme was submitted accepted its suggestions and author- ized Mr. Parnell and his party to embody them in bills and to press their acceptance at once upon the new Parliament. A public meeting which was held in the Rotunda, Dublin, on April 30th, to ratify the programme of land reform adopted at the convention, was attacked by a section of the Dublin Fe- 244 VICTORIES FOR THE MOVEMENT nians and nearly broken up. A body of men, led by a medi- cal student named Corbett, invaded the Rotunda, demanding the right to move a resolution of protest against "ex-political prisoners and others professing a belief in extreme principles" taking part in a moral -force agitation. Much confusion was created, until Mr. Parnell allowed the hostile element to read their resolution, when they withdrew. There was very little violence on either side, owing to the forbearance of those who were in sympathy with the objects of the meeting. This at- tack, however, following so close after the Enniscorthy row, induced Mr. Parnell to believe that the whole physical-force party were hostile to the league movement. It caused him to say, subsequently, in his evidence before the special com- mission (vol. vii., p. 88, Report of Special Commission): "I believe to this day the physical-force organization has been consistently hostile to us since 1880." This was an erroneous impression. It was true only in the sense previously ex- plained: The leaders in Ireland were; those in America were not. Sections of the rank and file in Ireland manifested hostility occasionally, not always against the league, more frequently against individual leaguers. The great majority of those who believed in the final objects of the revolutionary movement were more or less in full sympathy with the league and its objects. The opposition to the new departure, on the ground of its alleged antipathy to revolutionary principles, was prompted more by jealousy than by any real anxiety for the cause of ultimate independence. In the light of the events of the past twenty-five years, it is not difficult to form a correct judgment as to which revolutionary policy — that of the Land League or that of mere conspiracy, followed by nothing — has achieved the greater results for Ireland, or done most to make the Irish question one of the best-known of in- ternational problems, and to win for it a world-wide attention and sympathy. On Sunday, May 2d, the league held an anniversary meet- ing at Irishtown, County Mayo, to commemorate the birth of the new movement. Mr. Parnell attended, and delivered a remarkable speech. He once again showed his predilection for a state ownership of the land as, at least, a part solution of the question. He said: "It would be a folly and madness for any man to recom- mend the people, as a mass, to give twenty years' purchase of the government valuation to-day for their lands [hear, hear]. Now they had recommended as one of the means to effect a gradual transfer of the land to those who tilled it, and as a further means of obtaining an abatement of rack-rent, the 245 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND appointment by the government of a commission with power to do certain things — power to improve and carry out the Bright clauses of the Land Act — power to the department to acquire the ownership of any estate upon tendering to the landlord thereof a sum equal to twenty years of the poor-law valuation, and to let said estate to the tenants at a rent equal to three and one-half per cent, of the purchase money thereof. This commission shall be empowered to purchase these estates where landlords were rack-renting their tenants — to acquire those estates at twenty years' purchase of the valuation, and to put in the tenants, either as Crown tenants, paying a rent of three and one-half per cent, per annum on the purchase money, or as peasant proprietors, paying a rent of five per cent, on the purchase money for thirty-five years. Now he claimed and felt convinced that the appointment of a com- mission composed of men who meant to do right by the people of Ireland, with twenty to thirty millions of money at their command, with power to pounce down upon any rack-renting or exterminating landlord in any part of Ireland, and to put an end to his ' rights ' over his tenants by giving him twenty years' purchase upon the valuation, was a far better means and a far more workable means for protecting the Irish tenant than the cloud of legal fiction contained in Mr. Butt's Fixity of Tenure Bill [cheers]; and as for the rest, this Irish land question had now attained such proportions that it must be settled, and it could only be settled in one way — by the trans- fer of the land to the people who occupied it." ^ The report from which this extract is taken also records that the following resolution was proposed and adopted: "That in commemorating the initiation of the national land agitation by an anniversary meeting in Irishtown we are manifesting the vitality of that movement which, during the past twelve months, has shaken the feudal system of land laws to its foundation, called forth the inherent and hitherto inert resoluteness of the people of Ireland in the assertion of their rights, and demonstrated the power of the democracy of our country by the triumphs achieved over class supremacy, and the intelligence and order exhibited by the people in over one hundred great demonstrations during the past year." ^ Freeman s Journal, May 3, 1880. CHAPTER XIX THE AMERICAN LAND LEAGUE Mr. John Dillon remained behind after Mr. Parnell re- turned from the United States to lead the country in the gen- eral election. The new member for Tipperary (the con- stituency which his father had previously represented) worked hard to establish branches of the Land League in New York. In conjunction with kindred efforts on the part of Mr. Patrick Ford, of the Irish World; Mr. Boyle O'Reilly, of the Boston Pilot; Mr. John Devoy, and others, an auxiliary organization was formed in a few cities by the month of May influential enough to warrant the calling of a convention of delegates. A call was therefore issued, and near the end of that month the following elected representatives reported themselves at Trenor Hall, New York: Dr. W. B. Wallace, M. D. Gallagher, Patrick Nutley, John F. Walsh, Alex. Patten, Patrick Donnelly, J. W. O'Brien, Wilham O'Connell, S. J. Meany, John J. Breslin, Rev. Mr. McAleer, Dr. G. D. McGauran, John Devoy, and J. M. Kin- neven, New York; J. C. Maguire, D. T. Lynch, and Judge Walsh, Brooklyn; John King, Passaic, New Jersey; Rev. Pat- rick Cronin, Buffalo; J. B. O'Reilly and P. A. Collins, Boston; James J. McCafferty, Lowell, Massachusetts; J. C. O'Sullivan, Hoboken; Rev. Lawrence Walsh, Waterbury, Connecticut; Denis R. Shells, Westchester, New York; George Cahill, Quincy, Massachusetts; Rev. M. Lawlor, Danbury, Connecti- cut; William Ivory, Providence, Rhode Island; J. B. Reddy, Richmond, Virginia; Peter Corbet, Syracuse, New York; Lawrence O'Brien, New Haven; and Thaddeus Flanagan, of San Francisco. John Boyle O'Reilly was elected temporary chairman. He delivered a brief address upon the origin and objects of the Land League, when the committee on organization reported Mr. P. A. Collins, of Boston, as president of the convention, with Father Cronin, of Buffalo, as vice-president. It had been decided by the home executive that I should proceed to America after the Dublin convention and take up 247 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the work of organizing the auxihary league in the United States and Canada. I arrived in New York on the second day of the Trenor Hall conference, and, together with Mr. Dillon, was a party to the adoption of the constitution and rules of the American branch of the league. The task of framing such rules occupied the time of the delegates during the second day's session. These regulations were the basis of subsequent legislation by far greater and more important conventions for the government of the co- operating movement in America. It is on this account they are deemed worthy of being put on record in this book, as marking the initial stage of the greatest auxiliary force ever organized among the Irish and friends of Ireland abroad to assist in effecting a great reform in Ireland. " PURPOSES FOR WHICH ASSISTANCE IS ASKED FROM AMERICA "i. To enable the league to spread its organization throughout the thirty-two counties of Ireland. "2. Pending the abolition of landlordism, to aid local branches of the Land League to defend in the courts such farmers as may be served with processes of ejectment, and thus enable them to obstruct such landlords as avail them- selves of the poverty of the tenantry and the machinery of the law to exterminate the victims of the existing system. "3. To enable the league to afford protection to those who are unjustly evicted. Already the league has been obliged to undertake the support of the families of the men who were recently sentenced to imprisonment for resisting eviction in one of the famine districts, and it is now supporting evicted families. "4. To oppose the supporters of landlordism whenever and wherever they endeavor to obtain any representative position in Ireland which would be the means of aiding them in prolonging the existence of the present land laws and perpetuating the social degradation and misery of our people. "5. As an auxiliary to the Land League of Ireland in the work it has undertaken to accomplish, the Irish National Land and Industrial League of the United States has been organized upon an appeal from the parent body. Its objects are to render moral and material assistance to the land movement in Ireland. In the conviction that the primary purpose of that movement can be furthered and the best interests of Ireland protected and advanced by an equal solicitude for manufacturing, mining, fishery, and commercial industries, now and for centuries past prostrated by de- 248 THE AMERICAN LAND LEAGUE liberate and selfishly hostile English legislation, we claim it to be a duty devolving upon all earnest Irish reformers to demand for Ireland the right to regulate and protect the various interests which build up the prosperity of an in- dustrious people upon the foundation of their country's developed resources. "We have, therefore, placed this addendum to the platform of the Land League of Ireland, and upon this programme for the social and industrial advancement of an oppressed and poverty-stricken people we rest our claim to solicit the good wishes of the American people, and to ask for the earnest and organized co-operation of the Irish race in this country. No movement for her political or social welfare has been initiated in Ireland for the past fifty years which failed to obtain the sympathy and support of her exiled children here. The chances of success were never calculated in order to regulate the measure of assistance to be given. A prompt and generous help was the answer to every appeal from the motherland, no matter what party stretched forth its hand across the Atlantic or what enterprise aroused the national spirit of a banished people. The cumulative re- sults of unrelinquished struggles at home and of sustained generosity abroad have placed the land movement in Ireland in the determined and conspicuous position it now occupies before the world. It wars only against injustice and misery and aims at accomplishing only what is in accord with justice and reason. Its objects are the uprooting, by fair and justifiable means, of the system of Irish landlordism, which inflicts famine, suffering, and discontent upon a people that are entitled to a share of that plenty, happiness, and con- tentment which every other civilized country has won and now enjoys. It is a movement which endangers no national principle nor asks its supporters to forego any reasonable or legitimate aspiration for the future of their country. It recognizes no sectarian distinctions and refuses no proffers of assistance from any class or any creed. It is a movement of Irishmen for Ireland and humanity, which endeavors to unite upon one platform men of all parties and religions, to work out the common good of Ireland and its people. It asks from the Irish race the material help which is essential to success and from the civilized world the sympathy and moral support which are necessary to secure it. " Signed by the Central Council: James J. McCafferty, Low- ell, Mass., President; William Purcell, Rochester, N. Y., Vice-President; Rev. Lawrence Walsh, Water- bury, Conn., Treasurer; Thaddeus Flanagan, San 249 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Francisco; Lawrence Harmon, Peoria, 111.; James Gibson, Paterson, N. J.; J. V. Reddy, Richmond, Va. ; P. K. Walsh, Cleveland, Ohio; M. E. Walsh, Provi- dence, R. I.; Michael Davitt, New York City and Dublin, Central Secretary. "Central Offices, University Building, Washington Square, New York." " RULES AND BY-LAWS FOR LOCAL ORGANIZATIONS "i. Name. — The name of this branch shall be The Irish National Land and Industrial League of the United States. "2. Government. — The officers of this association shall be a president, vice-president, secretary, and a treasurer, to be elected by the general body. "3. Branch Organization. — Each branch or organization, in wards or otherwise, to elect a chairman, secretary, and treasurer, also one delegate from their body to represent the branch on the executive committee, should an executive com- mittee be resolved upon. " Ward Organizers. — Two members of each branch shall be appointed as ward organizers or canvassers, whose duty shall be to organize the ward or division of such branch and can- vass for members or assistance for the Land League of Ire- land. "Ward organizers can solicit subscriptions from persons who may not desire to become members of a branch or- ganization. Such subscriptions to be entered in the treas- urer's book as donations, and forwarded, with membership fees, etc., to the central office. "4. Membership. — Any person paying the sum of $1 tow- ards the objects of the association becomes a member and is entitled to a card of membership. The dues shall not be less than f I per annum. "5. The various ward organizations shall report once every three months to the central secretary, and produce their ac- counts whenever required. "6. The treasurer of each branch shall forward to the treas- urer of the central council, for transmission to the Land League of Ireland, all moneys which may come into his hands, less necessary expenses for rent, stationery, etc. "7. The treasurer of this branch shall pay all necessary expenses for printing, postage, stationery, rent, and such other legitimate expenses as may be incurred. "8. The secretary shall keep a list of all the members of his branch, write the minutes of branch meetings, join with the 250 THE AMERICAN LAND LEAGUE treasurer in a monthly report to the central offices, and per- form the other clerical work of the branch. "9. The executive committee, wherever organized, shall hold a stated meeting at least once a month. They shall elect a chairman and secretary from their own body, and shall have the general supervision of the branches in a city or county. The officers of branches in a city or county, in- cluding branch organizers or canvassers, should form the ex- ecutive committee. " 10. Each branch shall hold stated meetings at least once a month, and annual meetings on January 2d, for the election of officers, and for the transaction of such other business as may be brought before it. "11. The officers first elected by a branch shall hold office until the second Sunday of January, 1881, or until their suc- cessors shall be elected. "12. These rules and by-laws may be amended by local branches if so required, providing such amendment shall not conflict with the constitution of the central body. "13. Special meetings of the branch may be held on a call by one-fifth of its members, or by the executive committee, and it shall be the duty of the secretary to call such meetings. Three days' notice, at least, of special meetings must be given. "14. These rules and by-laws are issued subject to the ap- proval of the central council at its next meeting. "Michael Davitt, Central Secretary." The central council elected at this convention was remark- able more for being the first governing body of the American league than for any especial service rendered by it to the home movement. It was a scattered body, in the sense of its members residing long distances from one another, while it had many other difficulties to contend with. Its authority was vested in the secretary and treasurer, and, as the only work which was required to be done for the time being fell within the scope of their respective duties (organizing league branches and forwarding subscriptions to Ireland), Father Walsh and the writer had neither ambition nor temptation to travel beyond the delegated power of their respective offices. On Mr. James Redpath's recommendations offices were engaged in University Building, Washington Square, New York. A literary friend of Redpath's, Mr. Bacon, of Boston, consented to act as assistant secretary, while Miss Anna Parnell, who then resided near New York, Mr. John Devoy, and other friends to the movement lent a helping hand whenever called upon for assistance. 251 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Leaving the central office in such efficient and friendly care, I started out on an organizing tour which, covered the following cities: New York, Brooklyn, Paterson, New- ark, Boston, Lowell, Lawrence, Worcester, Pawtucket, Providence, Stamford, Blackstone. Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Scranton, Pittston, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cin- cinnati, Chicago, Joliet, Braidwood, Terre Haute, St. Louis, Sedalia, St. Joseph, Kansas City, Omaha, Salt Lake City, Sacramento, Oakland, Stockton, Vallejo, San Jose, San Francisco. Returning East, I took in Virginia City, Lead- ville, Denver, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Toledo, Buf- falo, and Albany, reaching New York again in time to sail home for Ireland in November, after establishing branches of the Land League in the above chain of cities reaching from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The best friends of the Land League in these cities were the members of existing Irish-American organizations, like the Clan-na-Gael and the Ancient Order of Hibernians. No opposition was offered anywhere by men of extreme views, outside of New York, where some hostility was shown from time to time, which, however, did not count. The league and its mission for the overthrow of landlordism and the general advancement of the national cause were welcomed by all who had been born in Ireland and in whose memory the recollection of the evils of the system were not forgotten in the freer and happier conditions of American life. The American press too, almost without exception, lent its approval to the work, and encouraged the propaganda of the Irish leaders for free government and free land. One or two out of many interesting incidents in this second of a series of subsequent tours for the Irish movement may not be out of place in this narrative. I chanced to reach Chicago on my way West on a night when the whole city had been invaded by bodies of Free- masons from all the States of the Union. They were attend- ing a convention in the big Lake city. There were no vehicles to be found at the depot on my arrival and no rooms in the neighboring hotels. No lodgings could be got anywhere. "The city was full." I knew a few friends by name there, but had not a single address to which to direct my footsteps. Hotel after hotel was tried, but in vain. Not a bed could be got. I was tired out, and not in the best of health at the time, while the carrying of a small portmanteau from place to place rendered the experience a trying one in many ways. At last, worn out with fatigue, I could walk no more. Selecting a quiet side street and a soft-looking 252 THE AMERICAN LAND LEAGUE door-step — as soft as a plank bed in Millbank prison — I re- called the luxurious days of penal servitude, made a pillow of my bag, a bed of an inviting doorway, and was soon oblivious of Freemasons, the noise of a big city, and of the night's hopeless search for a room. I had slept about two hours when a light flashed before my eyes and a rough hand shook me back from dreamland again into consciousness and Chicago. "What are you doing there?" said a voice. "Sleeping." "But that is no place to sleep in." "You are wrong; I was sound asleep when you woke me up." "I am a policeman. You must — " " Look here, my friend, I am here because I could not get a bed in Chicago. Don't trouble yourself about me; I am all right. I am not a burglar." "What is your name?" "Well, here is my card." In an instant my bag was seized with a friendly hand, while a kindly Irish face looked all kinds of apologies for Chicago's apparent want of hospitality. I was soon on the track of a German hotel, where I was finally deposited as the fiftieth occupant of an outhouse fitted up with hammocks for the Freemason invasion. It was in Clan-na-Gael circles in Chicago, on the occasion of this visit, that I first met "Major" Henri le Caron. No one suspected, at that time, the terrible secret of his life. He was introduced to me as one of General O'Neill's officers, who had taken part in the Fenian invasion of Canada in 1867. He was a " Frenchman " — so his introducers represented him — and his manner and accent lent themselves to the disguise which was so vital to the successful concealment of his character and call- ing as a British spy. He was of small stature, slender build, gentlemanly manners, and good address. His face was a complete mask in its expression, owing, doubtless, to years of habitual deception and to the practised role of subservient complacency he had to assume in order to please his associates and offend no one by look or word that could excite suspicion. The forehead was broad, the eyes deep-set, dark, and strong, indicating great self-confidence and extreme wariness. It was not in any sense a repulsive or a disagreeable face, though it lacked regularity of features and was marked deeply with careworn lines. Altogether he struck one as a rather com- monplace and a by no means interesting personality, his chief passport to unsuspecting Irish good-nature being bis 253 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND well-played pretence to French nationality and the fact that he had accompanied O'Neill in his wild Canadian raid. Le Caron was a doctor — that is, such a doctor as passes muster among miners at Braidwood, Illinois, where the little "Major" lived. He invited me to visit the place after my meeting at Joliet, and as he held a position in the Clan I ac- cepted his offer to assist in the formation of a branch of the league in the mining-town. In due course I turned up at Braidwood, and found the doctor to be a very popular per- sonage among the Irish workers. He learned that I was suf- fering from insomnia and other ailments peculiar to the toil- some and health-wrecking work of an Irish agitator, and duly prescribed the needed remedies for the claimant upon his medical skill. We had several hours' talk together during my visit to his town, and, while I had not the remotest suspicion of the des- perate part he was playing, it is evident from the very little he knew about my visits to Clan-na-Gael camps and connec- tion with the direction of the revolutionary movement at the time, as shown in his testimony before the special com- mission eight years subsequently, that he had either not attempted to get into my confidence or had failed to do so. Two other but more personal incidents call for mere men- tion, just to remind younger workers for the Irish cause of to- day what older men had to endure in times of harder labors, more danger, and less applause. I was struck down with malarial fever in a hotel in St. Louis, and was found there by Dr. J. J. Kane of that city. He took me to his own house, and tended me so successfully^ that I recovered in a fortnight, and then went m}^ way westward, on the branch-forming pil- grimage. During a public meeting in Kansas City the illness returned, and I recollect speaking to a large audience for an hour in a high state of fever. The journey was continued to Omaha, where I was carried helpless from the train to the then Creighton House, and nursed by Mr. and Mrs. Donovan for a month, and rescued from death by their kindness joined to Dr. Kauffman's unremitting care and skill. When in Virginia City, Nevada, Mr. J. W. Mackay, "the Silver King," made me his guest in the hotel. He attended our Land League meeting, but could not be prevailed upon to make a speech. He did not believe either in the agrarian or any other Irish movem.ent. It was all a waste of individual and national energy and means. "Why not leave the whole island to England, bring your people all over here, settle them down in Nebraska or Colorado, and call the State ' New Ire- 254 THE AMERICAN LAND LEAGUE land ' or ' Home Rule,' or whatever you like, and end the whole trouble?" "And give American millionaires the chance of buying up the land of 'New Ireland,' in advance, I suppose?" He laughed at the retort, but he believed that nearly all the Irish people would ultimately find their way across the At- lantic. On leaving Virginia City "the boys" were eager to know how much Mackay had contributed to the funds of the league. "Not a cent." "Did you ask him?" "No." "But what is the blank, blank use of the league sending over a man to beg money who does not ask for it?" And, I confess, I left a very small reputation for obtaining funds behind me in the city of the bonanza mines. CHAPTER XX I. — FRIENDS AND FOES Miss Fanny Parnell, the gifted, poetic sister of Mr. Par- nell, who also resided in New York, was, Hke her sister, an enthusiastic leaguer. She contributed powerfully to enkin- dle Irish-American feeling for the land fight in Ireland by her spirited ballads in the Boston Pilot. One of these, " Coercion — Hold the Rent," which will be found reproduced in the next chapter, was widely quoted in the press on both sides of the Atlantic for its combative inspiration at a crisis in the anti- rent struggle, r Miss Parnell was a practical as well as a poetic reformer, and one of her proposals, a little varied in its plan and purpose, had probably more to do with the defeat of Mr. Forster's co- ercion policy than all the other plans put into action against it by the leaders at home. This was a proposal to form a Ladies' Land League. The object was to enlist the services of her sex in money-collecting in American cities, and to this end, aided by Miss Ellen A. Ford, of New York, an organiza- tion of women was formed in that city. The idea lent itself to further development, like many a suggestion born of quite another thought, but the story of the way in which the Ladies' Land League of Ireland, under the direction of Miss Anna Parnell, who left for Dublin in December, 1880, drove "Buck- shot" Forster out of Ireland, and out of ofhce, when all the male Land League leaders were in prison, belongs in the order of time to a succeeding chapter. While branches of the Land League were being organized in the Western States during the autumn months, Mr. Patrick Ford was busy in a like work through the medium of his paper. Irish World branches sprang into existence later in the year in numerous cities where the paper had a constituency and its editor a body of admiring supporters. Copies of the rules and constitution of the American league were circulated through the agency of this the most prominent organ of the movement in the United States. In this manner the foundation was being 256 FRIENDS AND FOES laid for the marvellous financial help which Mr. Ford's paper was enabled to render to the league in Ireland during its fight for life against the coercive forces of Mr. Gladstone's government. Some of the friction inevitable in every popular organiza- tion began to manifest itself in this early stage of the great auxiliary league in the United States. Friction is by no means an unmixed evil in political movements. It often pro- motes a healthy influence of careful management and an in- telligent vigilance on the part of members. Councils and ex- ecutives, especially in America, are liable to be machined in the interest of a domineering section or of an ambitious leader and not infrequently in behalf of a political party. Diverging views within the ambit of an agreed policy or programme are, or ought to be, a restraint upon an undue preponderance of partisan opinion. So long as a fair and intelligent oppo- sition on the part of a minority or of a section on questions of finance or administration is not carried to the extent and service of open faction, only good to an honestly governed movement can result from the friction of fair criticism and of sane inquiry. The league had a threefold backing and support in the" United States from its initiation to the date of the Kilmain- ham treaty. There was what might be called the conservative following of Messrs. Collins and Boyle O'Reilly, of Boston, and of Dr. Connaty , of Worcester, now Bishop of Los Angeles. Be- hind these and the clergy generally, who accepted their lead, were ranged those members and subscribers who wished their financial help to be sent direct to the headquarters of the league in Ireland. These were likewise strong partisan up- holders of Mr. Pamell's leadership. Next there was the wide constituency of Irish World read- ers extending through the regions covered by the then great circulation of that paper. These leaguers upheld the radical teaching of Mr. Ford's paper on the Irish land question, and selected to send their donations through the channel which gave them each week a published list of their subscriptions and a full account of how the fight " at home " was progressing. Last, there was the support offered by the Clan-na-Gael. This had been invaluable in the beginning. Without the en- couragement given by its prominent leaders to the new de- parture, that venture might have fared badly when and where friends were few. It followed from this fact, and also owing to the revolutionary antecedents of the most active leaders of the league at home, that some of the Clan leaders held with Mr. John Devoy that the revolutionary organization in Amer- 17 257 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ica had a kind of prescriptive right to control the league move- ment in the United States and to take charge of the work of remitting financial aid to the fighting forces of the home league. The rapid growth of the American league among peo- ple and societies non-revolutionary rendered this policy most difficult. In any case, the strong opposition of both the Irish World and the conservative branches to any such control made the policy impossible so long as the three sections of supporters remained in the field of friendly rivalry. Hence a friction which took this triple form of activity worked most ,/ beneficially for the financial support of the league in Ireland, but led to a development of dissension which grew stronger in every succeeding convention until one of the three contending influences succeeded in gaining for a time the complete gov- /^ernment of the American league. II.— "BUCKSHOT" FORSTER \ Mr. Parnell returned to the House of Commons after the general election as the chairman of the majority of the Irish Home-Rule delegation, and Mr. W E. Forster came to Ire- land as Mr. Gladstone's chief secretary. These changes and events marked the progress of the conflict which the Land League had carried on so far. The league's leader was now the head of a determined fighting party in Westminster. He also directed a formidable organization in Ireland, which had already smashed the political influence of the landlord-owners and directors of Dublin Castle. This state of things was not lost upon the alert attention of the great Englishman who had overthrown the Beaconsfield ministry, and in a doubtless well-meant attempt to calm things down in Ireland, and to prepare the way for some useful legislation, he chose Mr. For- ster as the ministerial ruler of the Irish people. In a period of comparative peace the selection would prob- ably have turned out to be a fortunate one for the new chief secretary. Mr. Forster was not unknown in Ireland. He had, in fact, an honorable record as one who had taken an active and humane part in the work of relieving the victims of famine in 1847-48. What he saw and learned then of the social life of the Irish peasantry under landlord power must have left impressions on his mind not overflattering to the record for humanity of Irish landlordism. It was the differ- ence between the two generations of Irishmen, in their attitude towards this system, that deceived him, and which led him, under the influences born of a fierce fight, to miscalculate the 258 FRIENDS AND FOES strength of the forces which his coercive policy arrayed against him. In 1847 he found a nation of spiritless helots willing to die of starvation because they were impiously told that Providence had sent the famine as an infliction. There was no such debasing doctrine preached by the Land League or / tolerated by the Irish of 1880. The league's " Gospel of Man- hood" had dispelled that ignoble and treacherous superstition, and the men whom Dublin Castle compelled Mr. Forster to antagonize were believed by him to be as easily put down as were the miserable beings who made a holocaust of themselves rather than fig'ht for life a generation previously. A strong Englishman, bred in the creed of English suprem- acy, has all the potential prejudices of the "conquering" race when ruling Irishmen, be he Tory, Liberal, or Radical. He feels that his first right and duty is to rule. The constitutional figment about ruling with the consent of the people is repug- nant to him, when those people are Irish. The word " Irish" itself is a challenge to the man who stands for England in the government of a country which England has so long injured and wronged in the eternally hopeless task of finally subjugat- ing the Celtic idea of nationhood to the dominance of its deadly foe. Such an Englishman as Mr. Forster was would be posi- tive, unyielding, and imperious for good or evil, just as the racial temperament was stirred or ruffled the right or wrong way by events and circumstances. Had there been no Land League with a semi -revolutionary purpose in his way to dis- pute the friendly despotism of his rule, he would probably have taken sides against the landlords, and helped the people in his own way to some ameliorative measures. His intentions on accepting the chief -secretaryship were of as sympathetic a kind towards Ireland as could influence an Englishman in that post. That is beyond all dispute. But he found himself in a situation which, in a sense, compelled him to defend an impossible system of rule and of land tenure against the lean- ings of his personal sympathies, because law and order were menaced by an organization which was avowedly bent upon a campaign for the defeat of both as the only props of land- lordism in Ireland. This was a red-rag kind of challenge to_j any Englishman's pride and stubbornness of disposition. In the instance of Mr. Forster, it was a challenge which would appeal to the tyranny of despised good intentions as well as to the dogged English sentiment which backs a good or bad policy with equal strength of will and purpose where England's supremacy is rightly or wrongly believed to be involved. No f stronger Englishman could have been sent to Ireland at this crisis, and it was a pity that a man of so many good parts, 259 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND and with a high record of public service, was destined by an unfriendly political fate to attempt the accomplishment of an impossible task at the time and to wreck his career in the en- deavor. Such was the man we had to fight in Ireland, and whom Mr. Parnell and his party had to face in the House of Commons, with Mr. Gladstone and a powerful majority at his back. The new Irish party lost no time after the opening of the new Parliament, on May 20th, in demanding remedial legisla- tion for the tenants. Mr. O'Connor Power, in behalf of the party, moved an amendment to the address declaring the urgent need which existed in the then condition of things in Ireland for a settlement of the land question. Some of the new members spoke on this motion, and gave evidence of the ability which afterwards made high parliamentary repu- tations for the Land League recruits. The government, of course, opposed and defeated the amendment. Attempts were next made to introduce the temporary measure for staying evictions which was recommended at the Dublin land conference, but owing to the nature of the machinery of the House for balloting for bills these efforts were unsuccessful. They did propaganda work, however, and were admonitions and appeals to the ministry to respond to the necessity for a radical amendment of the Land Act of 1870. Mr. O'Connor Power introduced a small measure which was named a "Compensation for Disturbance Bill," and which aimed at repealing that clause in the act of 1870 which denied compensation for disturbance where the tenant was evicted for non-payment of rent. This small bill was brought on at two o'clock in the morning in the desperate hope of its ob- taining a second reading, and the chance succeeded, to the extent of inducing the government to accept the principle and purpose of the Irish party's bill and, with modifications, to embody it in a ministerial measure. This was the thin edge of the wedge of Land League prin- ciples, and, small as the concession was, it was important in its disintegrating consequences. It was the first blow in West- minster at the sovereign right of Irish landlord property. The bill with the Irish-party parentage was duly brought forward on ministerial responsibility and passed through the House of Commons. Lord Lansdowne resigned his posi- tion in the government as a protest against such a "revolu- tionary" proposal, and it was ignominiously thrown out of the Upper House. The bill would have limited evictions only; it would not have stopped then, as its operations were to be confined to holdings under £;^o and to certain scheduled 260 FRIENDS AND FOES districts. But it was a case of no surrender by the House of ^^ Landlords, and, as the sequel will show, it was fortunate in- deed that men like Lord Lansdowne were blind enough to resist what the higher statesmanship of Mr. Gladstone saw to be a wise and expedient concession. A stubborn resist- ance to an equitable and humane proposal was to precipi- tate a conflict of savage antagonism in which landlordism would be bound to suffer for its short-sighted selfishness. Already the forces at the disposal of Dublin Castle were severely taxed to carry out evictions. Mr. Forster dwelt upon this fact in his speech on the second reading of the defeated bill. "I take the case of the West Riding of Galway," he said, "and since January ist of this year the number of con- stabulary employed in protecting process-servers has been one hundred aHd seven officers and three thousand three hun- dred men, with sixteen officers and six hundred and twenty- six men in carrying out actual evictions."^ Here we had a small army employed in a district, in one county where the Land League had started the anti-process-serving struggle. What force would be required when the supreme plan of the league — to order a general strike against rent — would be put in force? This calculation was not absent from the minds of] those who had resolved upon this plan from the very birth of the new movement as the final blow at the landlord system, if circumstances should favor the adoption of such an extreme course. The failure to obtain redress from Westminster intensified discontent in Ireland. The league fanned this feeling every- where by its meetings, resolutions, and defiant policy. Mr. Brennan was the life and soul of the fight during the summer months of 1880, and his radical utterances emphasized the lesson learned from the House of Commons that the struggle for homes and harvest must be made by the people them- selves. Evictions multiplied, but so did scenes of resistance. Persons were prosecuted for obstructing the law, but evicted families were supported, while those proceeded against for opposing process-servers were defended by the league out of resources which were coming in from America. In this man- ner the struggle went on relentlessly on both sides, the law doing the eviction work of the landlords, and the people being forced into a conflict with both in defence of their homes. Nothing could have been more promising for the ultimate aim of the national organization than the fighting spirit shown by those who had hitherto allowed themselves to be ^Report Special Commission, vol. vi., p. 469. 261 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND cowed into tame submission by a landlord's process of evic- tion or a magistrate's sentence of a month's imprisonment. This spirit greatly alarmed two sections of the landlords' allies. The English press noted it with all the astonishment which correspondents could express in their letters from the scenes of disturbance in Ireland, and pro-British clerics were scandalized at such symptoms of rebellion against lawful authority. At last there was a stinging rebuke drawn from a great prelate by this latter kind of persistent, nagging cant about communism and socialism on the part of these partisans of unscrupulous power. Writing to a meeting held at Emily, County Tipperary, about this time, the late Archbishop Croke delivered himself against these political Levites as follows: "There is no nation on the face of the globe that has suffered so much or so long as we have. We have borne so much, and borne it so meekly, that now when we are beginning to fret a little under our punishment, and cast ourselves on a small scale into the attitude of self-defence, persons are found to call us ugly names, and words of ominous signification, borrowed from the vicious vocabulary of the Continent, are used to desig- nate the efforts that are being made by well-meaning men throughout the country to prevent the Irish people from per- ishing at home or being drafted like cattle to climes beyond the sea. There can be no sin in striving to live and wishing to die in Ireland. It is neither sin nor treason to say that where a man labors he has a right to be fed, and that it is cruel to punish a person for not paying a debt which nature has ren- dered it impossible for him to satisfy." * Evictions in Mayo, Roscommon, Leitrim, Sligo, Galway, Tipperary, and other counties were necessarily enkindling human passion into a revengeful mood. It had always been so in the past. Agrarian crime increased with bad times — that is, with seasons of distress and evictions for non-payment of rent. The tenant himself might not fall back upon retalia- tion for the loss of his home and the shelterless destitution of his children. But tenants have grown-up sons sometimes, and the human nature that is capable of risking dangers and sacrifices in struggles against other forms of wrong could not tamely look on in the person of a young man while his mother is thrown out of the cabin in which she gave him birth and his sisters and brothers are refused the protection of the roof -tree erected by his father. The land war took this course always. It was the product of the system which made that war in- evitable, if men were not to allow themselves to become the ^Freeman's Journal, May 31, 1S80. 262 FRIENDS AND FOES absolute slaves of the rent power and to be trampled upon like so much human vermin. The first blood in this dreaded phase of the agitation was to the discredit of the landlord side. No agrarian murder had been committed in Ireland from the date of the Irishtown meeting to the rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill. The succor given to the evicted by the league explains this unusual freedom of the work of numerous evictions from retaliatory bloodshed. Had there been no combination be- hind the tenants to give advocacy to their cause and to de- fend them in the courts, there would have been another story to tell. For, during that period of eighteen months, which covered a winter of the severest distress felt since 1848, fully a thousand families had been turned adrift from their homes. While there is hope for an Irish peasant he does not despair, and it was the mission of the league to give him both hope and courage. In June a Leitrim landlord who had evicted a tenant named Mahon, near Ballinamore, came under police escort to see a fence put up which would give him effective possession of the land. A crowd of people gathered to hoot the evictor and his guard. Mahon was prominent among the crowd, and as he was in the act of encouraging the opposition the landlord whipped out his revolver and shot him dead. At a subsequent trial the accused was discharged by the grand jury, composed entirely of landlord adherents, refusing to find a true bill against the culprit. Both these deeds made a deep and bad impression on many minds, and it was not long before the firing began on the other side. Seeing the desperate situation created by the refusal of Parliament to try and minimize evictions, it was decided bj^ the league executive, on the advice of prominent leaguers in America, to devote a balance of some ;^io,ooo remaining from the league relief funds to the support of evicted families, j It was relief work in another and a more laudable form than that of mere charity, and though this allocation of this money was severely criticised by enemies of the league, then and afterwards, no friend or subscriber to the fund in America ever raised a word of objection to the course pursued. The first use made of the money was to help to build shelter for evicted families at Rosscahill, in Connemara, and this novel expenditure of league moneys became quite common in the fiercer phases of the anti-rent conflict in 1881-82. And now commenced the sure sign of coming state prosecu- ■ tions or coercion. Irish judges going on circuit began their political harangues from the bench under cover of addresses 263 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND to the members of grand juries. This has been a notorious practice of these ermined partisans at all times of popular excitement. It was a glaring misuse of their judicial positions in the service of the landlord class, who, of course, ruled the country and controlled the patronage of its administration. All these judges were mere promoted henchmen of the gov- erning order, and they saw with alarm the growth of an organ- ization and a parliamentary party which were a menace to the state of things it was their direct interest to uphold. And so the chorus of the Castle-hacks was voiced at every assize, and was re-echoed by the landlord grand jurors in strongly worded resolutions calling upon the government for excep- tional powers for the protection of life and property — namely, rent. Mr. Forster had not lost his head or temper as yet. He was, on the contrary, indignant at the defeat of his peace- making Compensation for Disturbance Bill by the House of Lords. His able biographer, writing of the annoyance this caused him, says: "The rejection of the bill moved him most deeply. He saw in it the beginning of the worst time the English government had ever had in Ireland; he believed firmly that the landlord interest in rejecting this measure had inflicted an irreparable wrong upon their own order, while they had at the same time afforded the opponents of Enghsh rule an excuse for a violent resistance to the law. For the rest of his life he continued to speak with mingled indignation and impatience of the conduct of the House of Lords in throwing out this bill." ^ He had, previous to this action of the Lords, succeeded in inducing Mr. Gladstone to appoint a small royal commission to inquire into the working of the Land Act of 1870, and it is more than likely that this proposal had something to do with the ignominious rejection of the chief secretary's bill by the landlord chamber. This commission consisted of Lord Bessborough, chairman, The O'Conor Don, Mr. Kavanagh, of Borris, Baron Dowse, and Mr. William Shaw, M.P. for Cork, and former leader of the Home-Rule party. The report of this body may be anticipated here in the matter of time, in order to say that it justified the existence of the Land- League movement in its facts and findings, and it was a factor along with, only very much after, the warfare of the league in forcing Mr. Gladstone to introduce the greatest measure of land reform ever proposed or passed in the Im- perial Parliament — the Land Act of 1881. ' Wemyss Reid, Life of W. E. Forster, p. 455. 264 FRIENDS AND FOES During a debate on the Irish estimates near the end of the session (1880), the conduct of the Royal Irish Constabulary at evictions and in dealing with angry crowds was severely criticised and condemned by the Irish members. The chief secretary defended the assailed military police, but he rec- ognized that a force which was compelled to perform very un- popular duties, and to protect evictions and process-servers at close quarters with excited people, should not be tempted to fire ball-cartridge. He therefore promised to have buck- shot served out to the constabulary instead of the deadlier missile in future. His Irish adversaries seized upon the word at once. It had scarcely fallen from his lips when "Buck- shot" Forster was shouted at him across the floor of the House of Commons. It was to him an unhappy epithet, and he felt its subsequent and constant application to him very keenly until the end of his career. CHAPTER XXI "HOLD THE HARVEST !" — STORY OF CAPTAIN BOYCOTT The harvest of 1880 was an excellent one. The new potato and other seed provided for the poorer class of West- ern tenants by the Land League, Marlborough, and other re- lief committees in the spring had fructified abundantly under a generous summer sun, and all looked well in August for a bountiful yield. There was, however, the perennial blight of landlordism to reckon with, no matter what gentle rains or genial skies might do to bless with plenty the labor of the land. The rent was to be paid, just as if it was the landlord and not the generous people of America and of Great Britain who had provided the means for the spring sowing. There arose a cry in the West against this; perhaps not a strictly justifiable cry, under all the circumstances, in view of the fact that whatever the Land League might say or political economy might declare the law entitled the owner of the soil to the rent. Legally this was so, but the popular feeling was that the harvest of this year in the distressed areas was an exception to the run of harvests and ought not to go in payment of rent. Fifteen meetings were held on August 15th, in various parts of the country. Right or wrong, the cry of "Hold the Harvest!" rang out at those gatherings which were held in the West, and became a counter and defiant reply to the resolutions of landlords' reunions, grand- jury petitions, and judges' harangues demanding coercive laws from the government to put down the league movement. It was a fighting cry, and in response to its spirit there came across the Atlantic from the pen of Miss Fanny Parnell the following rousing appeal to the anti-renters: "COERCION — HOLD THE RENT! "Keep the law, oh, keep it well — -keep it as your rulers do; Be not righteous overinuch — -when they break it, so can you! As they rend their pledge and bond, rend you, too, their legal thongs; When they crush your chartered rights, tread you down your chartered wrongs. 266 "HOLD THE HARVEST!" Help them on and help them aye, help them as true brethren should, boys; All that's right and good for them, sure for you it's right and good, boys. "Hold the rents and hold the crops, boys; Pass the word from town to town; Pull away the props, boys, So you'll pull Coercion down I "Ah, for you they'll tear and toss Magna Charta to the wind: Law of men, nor law of God, e'er their throttling fingers bind. Hear their ragings! as of old, when the just Judge found no flaw, 'Whom the law condemneth not, he shall perish without law!' Hold your peace and hold your hands — not a finger on them lay, boys! Let the pike and rifle stand — we have found a better way, boys. " Hold the rents and hold the crops, boys, etc. "Let them try once more the plan, erst so potent in its spells — Let them fill their prison pens, let them fill their torture cells, 'Squelch you, ay, by Heav'n, like rats, crawling in the mammoth's way!' ' Might is Right and Force is God — well the lesson they have taught, boys! Wait! you'll pay them back anon, in the coin their hands have wrought, boys. " Hold the rents and hold the crops, boys, etc. "While one brave heart gasps unheard, stifled 'neath their panther . grip. While one woman's scalding tears, vainly for the lost one drip, While one jail a victim holds, while one hearthstone mourns a gap. Up and shout the shibboleth that can make the fetters snap! Never heed the perjured Whig, never heed for cant or curse, boys; No Coercion e'er coerced better than an empty ptu-se, boys! " Hold the rents and hold the crops, boys, etc. — Fanny Parnell." Mr. James Redpath returned to Ireland from New York in September at my request. He came "to look on" in behalf of the American league. On the 14th of that month two thousand leaguers reaped the crops on two evicted farms near Claremorris, County Mayo, in defiance of police opposition, and removed the produce from reach of the landlord. Mr. Redpath was present and made the following speech : "I have lectured in the United States and raised money for the starving people of Ireland, and everywhere. I took care to mention that the English government was dastardly • Thomas Carlyle's famous saying. 267 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND enough to attempt to overawe the people, and I added that they did not overawe them. I did not come here to-day to speak, but to see after our American mortgages. We Americans are a practical people, and when we give money we like to see what is done with it. If the Irish people give that money to the landlords a blight upon the Irish crop of children would be the best thing for Ireland. I despise the Irishmen who mention fair rents and long leases. The American people will stand by you if you assert your rights. We don't think a so-called landlord has any right to hunt away men and place cattle in their stead. We were told but did not believe that the money America sent you would be paid to landlords for rent. We did not send it for that purpose. Don't hope for peace nor want it till every man is his own landlord and tenant. "If a man is evicted, don't let another man take his farm. If he is so mean as to take it in spite of your protest, don't shoot him, but don't speak to him or his children — have nothing to do with him or say to him. Don't deal with the grocery man that will sell him provisions. Keep from him as if he had the small-pox. Let him feel and know your avoidance of him, and why, and he'll have to move. If the landlord himself takes the farm, don't work for him. Don't sow it or reap it for him for any wages he may offer. Con- stables can't interfere. If you want to kill evictions don't take the land from which a tenant is evicted. Let the other tenants refuse to pay rent until he is reinstated. " If he is not sent back, then let the Land League know it. Americans don't want the money they sent to go to the land- lords. Stand together. The English government can evict one or two, but they cannot evict the whole of Ireland. Don't take another's farm when evicted — don't work for the man who does take it, and you kill landlordism. Americans want you to show that the people of Ireland own Ireland — as they do by right and can by fact. I want you to pledge yourselves to do it without compromise at all." On the 19th of the month General W. S. Rosecrans, of civil-war fame, cabled this message to the Land League, from a great gathering which was addressed by me in San Francisco : "A hundred thousand people here ask you to hold the harvest." Before these events had occurred the deed of blood in Roscommon already described had been followed by blood- shed in other places. A land-bailiff named Feerick had been shot in broad daylight, near Ballinrobe, County Mayo. A 268 "HOLD THE HARVEST!'* landlord in the same county named Lewin was fired at but not hit. Near New Ross, in the peaceful county of Wexford, a landlord named Boyd was also fired at and wounded, while his son, who was riding with him at the time, was killed. These crimes enraged the landlord press and partisans, and clamors for coercion resounded on all sides. It was the old, sad, and bad story for the thousandth time repeated — war is necessarily provocative of warfare of some kind. A war upon the homes of a people is inevitably and rightly responded to when and where there is no rational law to step in to arbitrate or to modify passion, or to protect the best interests of the state in promoting the tranquillity of the people. The shriekers for coercion forgot this lesson of human nature and of agrarian history, and lent no ears to the words of John Bright, who condemned in August the conduct of the House of Land- lords in defeating Mr. Forster's well-meant Compensation for Disturbance Bill, when he spoke these true and warning words : "It appeared that while the House of Commons was en- deavoring to conciliate Ireland the House of Lords was de- termined to make a declaration of war on the Irish people." Eviction has ever been the fruitful source of agrarian murder in Ireland, and, as the landlords were resolved to rely upon this kind of warfare rather than upon Mr. Gladstone's and Mr. Forster's suggested compromise, they were the direct insti- gators of the savage conflict which was again to mark with traces of blood the tragic pathway leading to Irish land re- form. On the close of the short and first session of the new Par- liament, Mr. Parnell and several of his new parhamentary recruits crossed at once to Ireland and flung themselves into the campaign which Mr. Thomas Brennan, Mr. Kettle, Mr. John Ferguson, Matt Harris, Boyton, and local leaders^had carried on during the summer against evictions. Mr. John_ Dillon had arrived earlier and had entered, with his intense ardor, into the fight. At a large meeting in Kildare he urged young men to come to league demonstrations "in military style," and broadly hinted at a no-rent strike all along the line if evictions were persisted in by the landlords. This speech excited great indignation among the opponents of the league, and cries for a prosecution were raised in loyalist circles. Mr. Parnell's first pronouncement in the autumn was to his constituents in Cork City. His reception exceeded in num- bers and enthusiasm any previous popular tribute to his lead- ership. Among other incidents this curious occurrence mark- 269 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ed his entry into the city: The local Fenians, jealous of the local Land-Leaguers, insisted upon being Parnell's escort into Cork, and forcibly compelled the moral-force men to stand aside. Both here and subsequently at Ennis Mr. Parnell took the line of Messrs. Dillon and Brennan, and warned the land- lords and government that a strike against rent would be a possible lex talionis to a crusade of evictions. The Ennis speech was subsequently held by his enemies to be the starting of the "boycotting" which proved to be the moral-force ar- tillery of the league warfare afterwards. This was not so. The programme adopted at the convention of the Mayo Land League, in August, 1879, reproduced in a previous chapter, clearly defined this policy of social ostracisin against grabbers and others who should help the landlords in the combat the league was to wage against their system. Dr. Croke's letter to Gavan Duffy in 1852 anticipated all later plans of the same kind. Mr. James Redpath's speech, already quoted, also ante-dated Mr. Parnell's Ennis deliverance, while, as will be shown shortly, the friend of the immortal John Brown was part inventor of the word which has since found its way from its birth in a Mayo village into every language and dictionary in the civilized world. The Ennis speech was preceded by the startling murder of Lord Montmorres near Clonbur, on the borders of Galway (^County. He was a small landlord and a local magistrate, and had not what could be termed an obnoxious reputation among his neighbors. His assassination was a very cold-blooded crime and was carried out in daylight. He had attended a meeting of landlords and magistrates at which a resolution „was passed calling on the government to resort to exceptional laws so as to cope with the anti-rent agitation. His murder created a great sensation, and, being followed by so extreme a deliverance from the Irish leader, and by a dozen great meetings on a single Sunday in October, it provoked a letter from Mr. Froude to The Times predicting civil war, and in- duced Mr. Forster to decide upon the prosecution of the whole Land-League executive for seditious conspiracy. Once again the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. McCabe, ; raised his voice in unison with the other enemies of the league in the usual warnings and censures. These attacks were no longer of any account. They neither helped the Castle nor injured the national organization. The Archbishop of Cashel had dealt with this miserable opposition in vigorous words and manly protest, while patriotic clergymen in every prov- ince and county were now rallying to the support of the movement which was rapidly creating a world-Wide combina- 270 "HOLD THE HARVEST!" tion behind a cause that was attracting an attention equally wide-spread. This impotent antagonism is only referred to again on account of its coincidence with the threatened state prosecution. As in the case of the Sligo trials, Dr. McCabe did the Catholic Church and the archbishopric of Dublin the bad service of linking them, as far as his conduct could do so, with the enemies of the national movement. Fifteen meetings were held simultaneously on Sunday, October 17th, at which Parnell, Dillon, Sexton, T. P. O'Con- nor, Brennan, T. D. Sullivan, James O'Kelly, and other lead- ing leaguers made speeches on fighting lines. The threatened prosecutions were derided, in so far as it was hoped by Mr. Forster to intimidate, in this way, his chief nationalist oppo- nents. In his Galway utterance, on October 24th, Mr. Par- nell issued a challenge to the government in the form of a threat. His words were a clarion call to the forces rapidly forming behind the league at both sides of the Atlantic. He had seen and learned what Ireland could command among those whom landlordism had driven to America, and in view of the coming storm he appealed to the auxiliaries beyond the seas as follows: " I pass from this subject of our countrymen abroad with this remark — that I feel convinced that if you ever call upon them in another field and in another way for help, and if you can show them that there is a fair and good chance of success, that you will have their assistance — their trained and organized assistance for the purpose of breaking the yoke which encir- cles you, just in the same way as you won that assistance last winter to save you from famine. We have got the Liberal government to thank for the present state of affairs. They cannot suspend the Habeas Corpus Act without an act of Par- liament, and they can't pass a coercion act without an act of Parliament, and so long as we are able to stand in Parliament I will undertake to say they will pass neither one nor the other. If they manage in any way to convict the leaders of the Irish parliamentary party, then, I say, we shall resign our seats into the hands of our constituencies, as a solemn and sacred duty, to elect men in our place who will carry on our work and who will offer just as stern a front in the House of Commons to coercion." ^ Mr. T. M. Healy, who had been a strenuous worker in the league since his return from America, had a small state prose- cution to himself in County Cork before the trial of the ma- jority of the league executive began in Dublin. He was • Freeman's Journal, October 25, 1880. 271 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND charged with intimidating a land-grabber. His plea amount- ed to a proof of "innocence," on the ground, as fearlessly urged by himself, that he was only too guilty of a meritorious action. He was admitted to bail, and before the trial took place the borough of Wexford elected him to the House of Commons without opposition. It was in this way that one of the most remarkable of the many noted parliamentary careers associated with the league movement and the Parnell leader- ship began. The indictment of the prosecuted executive members was comprised in nineteen counts, and the traversers were charged with conspiracy : To prevent the payment of rent ; to resist the serving of processes of ejectment; to prevent persons from taking farms from which others were evicted, and to excite ill-will between different classes of her Majesty's subjects in Ireland. Those included in the prosecution were: Mr. Parnell, Mr. John Dillon, Mr. Thomas Brennan, Mr. Patrick Egan, Mr. J. G. Biggar, Mr. Thomas Sexton, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, and Mr. Matt Harris, members of the league executive, with Mr. Malachi O'Sullivan, assistant league secretary; Mr. Michael Boyton, organizer; Mr. J. W. Walshe, of Balla (one of the organizers of the Irishtown meeting and subsequently league organizer in Australia); Mr. Gordon, Mr. J. W. Nally, and Mr. P. J. Sheridan, three very active workers in the Connaught branch of the league movement. The indictment, as summarized above, was true in the sense of Tim Healy's guilt in frightening the land-grabber. There could be no denying the charge. The case for the defence was that bad laws had to be broken in order that good ones should take their place, and that those who demon- strated the existence of sources of poverty, discontent, and crime, in a public and constitutional manner, were serving the best interests of society in showing the necessity for legislative remedies which alone could eradicate the evils that rendered such agitation urgent and imperious. The main object of Mr. Forster in ordering the prosecution was to convict the Land League, as an organization, of illegality, in work and object, so as to justify its suppression. To this end the charge was to be one of seditious conspiracy. Under this infamously unfair and partisan law Mr. Parnell and every member of the league executive could be held to be legally responsible for the wild and irresponsible harangues of "Scrab" Nally, and for every fooHsh expression used by any and every individual of an organization embracing tens of thousands of members. However, the trial was to be by 272 "HOLD THE HARVEST!" jury in Dublin; witnesses in any number could be sum- moned by the defence, and there was in these circumstances another opportunity, but a much greater one than that of the Sligo trials, for turning a state prosecution into a trial of landlordism before the tribunal of pubHc opinion. Mr. Brennan, the league secretary, outlined the plans of the traversers in an interview with an American reporter as follows : Correspondent. " If Mr. Parnell and the other leaders of the league are imprisoned, don't you think it will interfere with the working of the land movement?" Mr. Brennan. "Not in the least. We have already made arrangements, in case the members of the present executive committee are sent to prison, for other men to be ready to take their places, so that the movement will be carried on with even more vigor." Correspondent. "But will not convictions modify the pro- posals of Land-Leaguers?" Mr. Brennan. "On the contrary. I believe the country is far in advance of the men who have been controlling the movement, and that those whom the country will send to take our places will be more determined enemies of land- lordism than any who have yet appeared in Ireland." Correspondent. "Do you anticipate any disturbance in the country in case of convictions?" Mr. Brennan. " No, I don't anticipate any disturbance, but I know that in most of our thoroughly organized districts the people will strike against the payment of any rent." Correspondent. "Have you made any arrangements for legal defence at the trials?" Mr. Brennan. "Yes; but we found when we went to look for counsel that the Crown had nearly all the principal men of the Irish bar engaged." Correspondent. "Do you think the trials will last long?" Mr. Brennan. "We propose turning them into a vast commission to receive evidence on the land laws, and thus expose the conduct of the Irish landlords to the world. We will bring tenant-farmers from all parts of the country to Dublin as witnesses, and perhaps prolong the trials for six months." The reply of the country to the coup of the Castle was to hold thirty large public meetings within a week after the prosecutions were determined upon and to add fifty branches of the league to the organization. A defence fund was also started, and in a short time it was evident that Mr. Forster, instead of impeding in any way the work which he was eager ,8 273 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND to arrest, was unconsciously lending enormous help to the ultimate aim of his political foes. While the Castle and the league were again confronting each other for a deadly duel, the defiant organization had pro- duced a condition of things in a remote region of Mayo which was destined to add a word of wide significance to the diction- aries of the world and a weapon of defence to the moral-force armory of the laboring masses wherever organized. This was the combat with Captain Boycott at Lough Mask. THE WORD 'BOYCOTT" There has been much dispute from time to time during the past twenty years or more as to who coined the word which has achieved within that time a universal adoption and im- portance. The following facts will settle the point for good. James Redpath was the virtual but Father John O'Malley, P.P., of The Neale, County Mayo (both now dead), was the act- ual inventor of the word. Redpath relates the story as follows : "The word was invented by Father John O'Malley about three days after the decree of social excommunication was issued against Boycott. Up to that time it had been called sometimes moral and sometimes social excommunication when ostracism was applied to a land-grabber. I was dining with Father John, at the presbytery of The Neale, and he asked me why I was not eating. "I said, 'I am bothered about a word.' "'What is it?' asked Father John. "'Well,' I said, 'when the people ostracise a grabber we call it social excommunication, but we ought to have an entirely different word to signify ostracism applied to a landlord or agent like Boycott. Ostracism won't do — the peasantry would not know the meaning of the word — and I can't think of any other.' "'No,' said Father John, 'ostracism wouldn't do.' "He looked down, tapped his big forehead, and said: " ' How would it do to call it " Boycott him "?' "I was delighted, and said, 'Tell your people to call it "Boycotting," and when the reporters come down from Dublin and London they will hear the word. I am going to Dublin, and I will ask the young orators of the league to give it that name. I will use it in my correspondence with the American press, and between us we will make it as famous as the word "Lynching" is in the United States.'"* ^ Talks About Ireland (Kennedy, publisher, New York, 1881), pp. 81, 82. 274 "HOLD THE HARVEST!" The word has since been adopted in other languages. There is in French "boycotter," in Dutch "boycotten," the German "boycottiren," and the Russian "boikottirovat." Father John O'Malley was not alone the neologist of an immortal term, he was the chief organizer of the struggle that brought Captain Boycott to his knees, and which won a noted victory for the Land League. He was the parish priest of a small village called The Neale, between Ballinrobe and Cong, in the County Mayo, and deservedly enjoyed great popularity for his kindly nature, his devotion to the poor, and jovial disposition. No good cause could fail in winning his whole-hearted advocacy, while he was one with the people in all their trials and hopes, a loyal counsellor and a faithful friend. Captain Boycott, an Englishman, resided at Lough Mask House as agent for Lord Erne, a landlord who owned some of the land over which Father John's parish extended. The captain had been Lord Erne's land agent for some fifteen years, and was considered a domineering individual — very exacting in his dealings with tenants and workers, and devoid of all sympathy towards the people generally. He farmed a considerable quantity of land on the estate managed by him, and employed a number of laborers in sowing and in harvest time. With these the captain had a dispute about wages in the summer months, and discovering also that they had changed in their manner — were more independent and less obsequious, owing, of course, to the "demoralizing" Land League — they were dismissed. This began the conflict be- tween him and the surrounding community. No other la- borers would be allowed to work for him. The league and Father John secured this. It was now the captain's turn to strike back. He was a courageous and resourceful man, and fought his corner with the true spirit of a plucky Englishman. He resolved, as a land agent, to hit back at those who had interfered with his workmen. He did this by refusing to listen to demands for abatement of rents when the tenants, following the general example, put before him the claims for concession based upon the previous bad seasons. The rents must be paid when due or out the tenants should go. To this stand an equally reso- lute reply was made — without a reduction in the rent, nothing at all should be paid. And thus the issue was knit. Processes of ejectment were obtained in due course from the court, but no one could be got to serve them. The law was made powerless where agents could not be got to execute its decrees. The league now became the aggressor. It car- 275 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ried the war into the captain's own country. The local black- smith refused to shoe any of his horses ; the herds who looked after his cattle left him; the baker in the nearest town re- fused to serve Lough Mask House with bread; the postman most reluctantly delivered his letters, and, finally, all his do- mestic servants declared they could no longer stay — "the people were ag'inst it." To make matters worse, his root and other crops were ripe for gathering. The harvest had been plentiful, but there were no hands to reap it. Not a soul in the county could be got for love or money to do an hour's work for the man who had undertaken the big job of fighting the Land League. Hemmed in on all sides, protected by police day and night, in his walks and in his home (though not a soul dreamed of doing him any physical harm), the resolute old man wrote to the London press depicting his position and representing himself as being in the midst of a community of Irish rebels, a besieged, injured, and insulted Englishman. England resounded with cries of indignation. Gentle ladies of the Boycott household were represented in the picture papers of London as working in the garden under the protec- tion of armed police, while stories of visits paid to the neigh- boring cottages — those of the tenants on the estate — by these educated ladies, seeking in vain for household help, went the round of the British press, and created intense feeling against the "barbarous" Irish who had taken leave of their human- ity under the vile teachings of the Land League. The gov- ernment was denounced for not grappling with these "local tyrants," while students in English colleges sent messages of sympathy and of encouragement to Lough Mask House. But Captain Boycott, the land agent of the landlord, the Earl of Erne, and the former "master" of the tenants under his power, was reduced to a condition of absolute helplessness by the combination of the very people who had trembled before him and had dreaded his very frown only two short years before. And yet they only left him severely alone. At last outside help was forthcoming. Orange laborers in Ulster were organized to rescue the captain's crops before the December frosts should destroy them in the ground. Fifty of these volunteers, under the lead of a Mr. Goddard, were to proceed to Lough Mask farm under a powerful escort of sol- diers. It was to be an invasion of the league territory. An armed force was to save the land agent's potatoes from the perils of the approaching winter. The fifty volunteer Orange laborers from Ulster were es- corted by a force of two thousand troops to Claremorris, in Mayo, where the railway journey ended, and the tramp to 276 "HOLD THE HARVEST!" Lough Mask House, over a distance of fifteen miles, was to begin. The league resorted to wise tactics under this direct provocation to disorder. A manifesto was issued calling on the people of Mayo to follow the same course adopted towards Captain Boycott — to let the Orangemen and soldiers severely alone. They were not to be hooted or molested or — supplied with anything. Cars were not to be let or lent for their use, nor food of any kind to be given or sold to them. They were to be looked at and laughed at; that was all. This advice was implicitl}^ obeyed. "The Lough Mask Expedition," as it was called, was left to the tender mercies of a Connaught rainy season, and never in all the climatic records of that prov- ince did the Celtic Pluvius indulge more copiously in a pitiless downpour than during "the famous diggin' of Boycott's pray- ties," as the delighted peasantry named the costly and ridicu- lous proceeding. The troops and the Orangemen reached their destination drenched to the skin. Their welcome was not of the most hospitable kind, even at the hands of the man whom they had come to relieve and support. They encamped upon his grounds in tents. Soldiers have a habit of "looking round" when on expeditions, and it was soon discovered in foraging searches that chickens, ducks, geese, young pigs, and many other things tempting to a Tommy Atkins appetite were to be found in abundance in the captain's well-stocked yards. It soon became a question to him of being saved from his friends, when he saw his lawns trampled over, his ornamental grounds spoiled, and the military helping themselves to anything and everything which could militate to some extent against their doubly cold reception and the sufferings inflicted upon them by the continuous rains, not omitting the public laughter which the whole business and meaning of the expedition meant to them. Some £^3° worth of potatoes and other crops were event- ually harvested by the "volunteers" during their stay at Lough Mask. This was the captain's own estimate of their value, and according to calculations made at the time it cost the sum of £3S°° to the state and to the supporters of the expedition to have Boycott's potatoes dug. On the day when the soldiers and their Orange charges were to leave Lough Mask Father John O'Malley was astir early. He visited the houses past which the troops were to march, and he ordered the people to remain in-doors. The roads and the streets of the villages were to be deserted, while shops and business places in Ballinrobe were to be closed. These orders were loyally adhered to; Father John, with his portly form THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND and his big, kindly face, and his umbrella carried across his shoulder, marching in advance of the military column to see that the way of retreat was quite clear. At one point of the route where the troops were halted Father John's eye de- tected a poor old woman leaning against a wall, intent on gaz- ing with all the curiosity of her sex at the military. Not an- other human being except soldiers and Orangemen was in sight. Father John advanced upon her, his umbrella held in a most threatening manner, exclaiming: "Did I not warn you to let the British army alone? How dare you come out here to intimidate her Majesty's troops? For shame! Be off now, and if you dare to molest these two thousand heroes after their glorious campaign I'll make an example of you. Be off!" All this, in a loud voice, was heard by the potato warriors, while the jovial old soggarth, in mock wrath, shouldered his umbrella again and resumed his lead of the expedition until it disappeared beyond the boundary of his parish into the records of history and of ridicule. On the "retreat" of the protectors the siege of Lough Mask House was resumed just where the new league tactics were suspended on the arrival of the soldiers. It became a hopeless struggle, and on December ist Captain Boycott threw up the agency, and together with his family left Lough Mask House and retired to England. That robust sense of moral indignation which never fails to assert itself in England when wrong of any kind is done elsewhere — particularly in Ireland — was shocked and scandalized at the treatment of Captain Boycott. The vile tyranny of the Land League could not spring from Anglo-Saxon sources. Civilization and Protestantism, thank Heaven, had made that impossible. It was only among a priest-ridden and debased people where such conduct as that of the peasantry of Mayo could be found as a ready weapon for the cowardly plots of disloyal leaguers, etc., etc. In this and in similar strains of virtuous reprobation were the men and methods of the movement assailed at the time by the organs of British opinion. But this outburst was only laughed ft, just as the potato-digging expedition of a small British army had ministered to the sense of amusement of the Irish people. The meaning of it all was as clear as it was satisfactory and hopeful. For once the down-trodden peasantry of Ireland had fashioned a weapon of retaliation which was to some extent destined to equalize the combat between landlordism and its whilom serfs. The rack-renters and evictors were no longer to wage a one-sided war. Two 278 "HOLD THE HARVEST!" were henceforth to play at the game of social ostracism in the fight between the right to live on the land and the right to levy rent upon such livelihood. And as the descendants of seven generations of down-trodden Mayo tenants watched from their windows and half-opened doors on that drizzly morning in November, 1880, the retreat of two thousand British troops escorting the Orange blacklegs back to their homes of stagnant sectarian bigotry and know-nothingism, a gleam of Celtic fire and satisfaction flashed from many an eye at the thought that they had finally found a method of agrarian warfare which would end the long and agonizing struggle against the enemy of their homes and holdings. "Boycotting" had been resorted to in divers forms and in innumerable causes in all civilized countries centuries before the unwritten law of popular sanction was laid down in the Mayo Land League convention of August, 1879. A con- trary contention was only the language of ignorance and of irritation. So far back as the month of March, 1770, it was most remorselessly put in force by the people of Massachusetts in the then early stages of the movement for American inde- pendence. The Boston Gazette and Country Journal of Mon- day, March 12, 1770, contains the following reports: "THE PEOPLE OF ROXBURY "At a meeting of the Freeholders and other inhabitants of the town of Roxbury legally assembled on Monday, the 5th day of March, 1770, the inhabitants taking into consid- eration a clause in the warrant for calling said meeting, viz.: and to know the minds of the Town, whether they will do anything to strengthen the hands of the merchants in their Non-Importation Agreement. "Voted— That Captain William Heath, Col. Joseph Will- iams, Mr. Eleazor Weld, Captain Joseph Mayo, and Dr. Thomas Williams be a committee to take this matter into consideration and report to the town what they shall think proper to be done thereon. "The meeting was then adjourned to the 8th inst., 2 o'clock, afternoon, at which time the inhabitants being again assembled, the committee made the following report, viz. : "Whereas, The Merchants and Traders of the Town of Boston, and also the Maritime Towns of the Continent, from a principle truly noble and generous, and to the sacrificing of their own interests, have entered into an agreement not to import British goods (a few necessary articles excepted) until 279 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the Act of Parliament imposing certain duties on Tea, Glass, Paper, Painter's Colours, Oyl, &c., for the express purpose of raising a Revenue in America, be repealed ; which Agreement, if strictly adhered to, will not fail to produce the most salutary effects. Therefore, "Voted — That the inhabitants of this town do highly applaud the conduct and resolution of said merchants and traders, and we do take this opportunity to express our warmest gratitude to said merchants for the spirited measures which they have taken. And we do hereby declare that we will to the utmost of our power aid and assist said merchants in every constitutional way to render said agreement effect- ual. "Voted — That we do with the utmost abhorrence and detestation view the little, mean, and sordid conduct of a few traders in this Province, who have, and still do, import British goods contrary to said agreement, and have thereby discovered that they are governed by a selfish spirit, and are regardless of, and deaf to, the miseries and calamities which threaten this people. " THE BLACK LIST "Voted — That whereas John Barnard, James McMasters, John Mein, Nathaniel Rogers, William Jackson, Theophilus Leslie, John Taylor, and Anne and Elizabeth Cummings, all of Boston; Israel Williams, Esq., and son, of Hatfield, and Henry Barnes, of Marlboro, are of this number and do import contrary to said agreement. We do hereby declare that we will not buy the least article of any of the said persons ourselves, or suffer any acting for or under us to buy of them, neither will we buy of those that shall buy or exchange any articles of goods with them. THEIR NAMES TO BE READ ANNUALLY "Voted — That to the end the generations which are yet unborn may know who they were that laughed at the dis- tresses and calamities of this people; and instead of striving to save their country when in imminent danger did strive to render ineffectual a virtuous and commendable plan, the names of these importers shall be annually read at March meeting. "Voted — That we will not make use of any foreign teas in our several families until the Revenue Acts are repealed (case of sickness excepted). "Voted — That a committee of inspection be chosen to 2S0 "HOLD THE HARVEST!" make inquiry from time to time how far these votes are compHed with. "Voted — That a copy of these votes be transmitted to the committee of inspection in the town of Boston." "THE PEOPLE OF LITTLETON "At a meeting of the inhabitants of the town of Littleton, in the County of Middlesex, on Monday, March 5th, 1770, a committee was chosen to prepare certain votes to be passed by the town, relating to the importation of British goods, who, after retiring a short time into a private room, returned and reported the following, which was unani- mously voted: "The grievous impositions the inhabitants of these Colonies have long suffered from Great Britain, strongly claim their attention to every legal method for their removal. We esteem the measure already proposed, viz., the withdrawing our trade from England, both economical and effectual. We do therefore vote — "That we will not (knowingly) directly or indirectly purchase any goods which are now or hereafter may be im- ported contrary to the agreement of the merchants of the town of Boston. "That if any inhabitant of the town of Littleton shall be known to purchase any one article of any importer of goods contrary to the before-mentioned agreement, or of any one who shall buy of any such importer, he shall suffer our high displeasure and contempt. "That a committee be chosen to inspect the conduct of all buyers and sellers of goods in this town, and report the names of all (if any such there should be) who shall violate the true spirit and intention of the above-mentioned votes and res- olutions. "That we will not drink or purchase any foreign tea, how- ever imported, until a general importation of British goods shall take place." "THE PEOPLE OF ACTON "The inhabitants of the Town of Acton, at their annual Town meeting on the first Monday of March, 1770, tak- ing into consideration the distressed circumstances that this province and all North America are involved in by 281 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND reason of the acts of Parliament imposing duties and taxes upon the inhabitants of North America for the sole purpose to raise a revenue, and when the Royal Ear seems to be stopt against all our humble prayers and petitions for redress of grievances that this land is involved in, and considering the salutary measures that the body of merchants and traders in this Province have come into in order for the redress of the many troubles that we are involved in, and to support and maintain our charter Rights and Privileges, and to prevent our total ruin and destruction, making all these things into consideration, came into the following votes: "Voted — That we will use our utmost endeavors to en- courage and support the body of Merchants and Traders in their salutary endeavors to retrieve this Province out of its present distresses, to whom this Town vote their thanks for the constitutional and spirited measures pursued by them for the good of this Province. "Voted — That from this time we will have no commercial or social connection with those who at this time do refuse to contribute to the relief of this abused country, especially those that import British Goods, contrary to the agreement of the body of Merchants in Boston or elsewhere; that we will not afiford them our custom, but treat them with the utmost neglect, and all those who countenance them. "Voted — That we will use our utmost endeavors to prevent the consumption of all foreign superfluities, and that we will use our utmost endeavors to promote and encourage our own manufactures. "Voted — That the Town Clerk transmit a copy of these Votes of the Town to the Committee of Merchants of In- spection at Boston. "A true copy attested. "Francis Faulkner, Town Clerk." Coming to the records of "boycotting" in Great Britain, I may, perhaps, be pardoned for quoting the following words from a speech delivered before The 1 i)iics special commission in October, 1889: "It is of course known that institutions which may never have been intended to work individual wrong to any one do work ruin to many under the influence of unforeseen circum- stances. But that does not prove the criminal character of such institutions, or that their origin was not conceived in motives of general good rather than for purposes of personal injury. To sustain this argument, I wish to quote from a very learned article contributed to the Ninctcentli Ccnlnry in De- 282 "HOLD THE HARVEST!" cember, 1886, by Mr. Justice Stephen. While I do not, on any account, accept of this statement of facts, or the conclu- sions which he draws from facts so stated, Mr. Justice Stephen puts boycotting in a fair enough light in that part of the article where he says: " ' The mere act of shunning a man, of refusing to deal with him, of not taking his land, or the like, in no way shocks or scandalizes any one. Nothing in itself, and if it stands alone, can be more natural and harmless. Human life could not go on at all if all of us were not at liberty, in a certain sense, to boycott each other, to cease to associate with people whom we do not for any reason like, to cease to do business with people with whom for any reason, good or bad, we prefer not to do business— in a word, to regulate all the course of our lives and of our intercourse with others according to our will and pleasure. To resent what you regard as harsh conduct in a landord in evicting a tenant, or as meanness in a tenant who plays into his hand by taking the farm from which a ten- ant has been evicted, by refusing to have any dealings with either, may be wise or foolish, right or wrong, if it is a mere individual act, the bona-fidc result of the natural feelings of the person who does it. The transition from this to concerted action is not one which shocks the common and uninstructed mind, and the further and final step which leads you to help to compel others by fear to do that which you rather like to do yourself is little less natural and easy. By this plain and easy process what Bentham described as "the popular sanc- tion" may be readily and quickly applied as a sanction of unequalled efficiency by any code of unwritten laws which vaguely represents the current sentiment of the most ignorant and passionate part of the community, those who are guided almost exclusively by sentiment and passion.' "Of course, my lords, everybody who has not lived all their lives in a balloon and read nothing but the stars knows that what is known as boycotting has existed since civilized society began its career, and has been practised in a variety of ways for individual, social, religious, and political purposes. It was in vogue in Ireland before the Land League, and has never in the world's history, barring possibly the treatment of the Jews in the Middle Ages, been more remorsefully ap- plied than by England's rule of Ireland during the penal laws. Party and political boycotting have never ceased to be prac- tised by the landlords of Ireland. In fact, I have said on scores of public platforms that boycotting was a weapon which we had borrowed from the armory of the landlords to turn against themselves and their system. I find, in the read- 283 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ing that I have to undergo preparing for the task I am trying to perform before your lordships, that on the eve of the pass- age of the Reform Act of 1832 the Conservative party in this country, through one of its most respectable organs, laid down a system of boycotting which I will thank you to allow me to read (it is only very short) ; it is from Blackwood's Magazine of July, 1832, on the eve of the memorable bill of that year. It said: " ' Finally, let the Conservative party universally and firmly act upon the principle of withdrawing their business from tradesmen whom they employ who do not support the Con- servative candidate. In the manufacturing cities, which de- pend on the export sale, this measure may not have a very powerful effect, but in the metropolis, in the other great towns, and the small boroughs it would have an incalculable effect. If universally and steadily acted upon, it would be decisive of the fate of England. At least four-fifths, probably nine- tenths, of the purchase of articles of commerce come from the Conservative ranks; if this were confined to men of Conserva- tive principles there is an end of the revolutionary progress. There is nothing unjust in this; the shopkeeper claims for hims'elf the power of judging who should be his representative in Parliament. Granted, but he cannot refuse the same lib- erty of choice to his customer as to whom he is to employ as his butcher, his baker, or his clothier. There might be some reluctance in taking this step in ordinary times, when no vital part of the state is at stake, when mere family ambition divides counties, and the great interests of the state are equally secure in the hands of the one or the other party. But the case is widely different when, as at this time, the question is not be- tween rival families in counties or adverse parties in politics, but between contending principles in society; between the preservation of property and the march of revolution ; between future felicity and unutterable anguish for ourselves and our children. It may be a painful thing to part from an old tradesman because he is of revolutionary principles, but it is much more painful to see the ruin of our country, and that is the other alternative. "'Come what may, we have discharged our duty to the friends of England by showing the simple and certain means by which the progress of the revolution may be stayed ; if they are neglected, and ruin follows, the consequences be on them and their children.' "Well, this proves that fifty years before the Land League was heard of the great law-abiding- Conservative party of England could resort to systematic boycotting. Boycotting, 284 "HOLD THE HARVEST!" considered even in its worst and most objectionable form, and from the point of view of its worst results, had still, I main- tain, this comparative innocence over the practices of those agrarian societies whose crimes and outrages are set forth in Sir George Comewall Lewis's book, referred to by Sir Charles Russell in his speech, and to the same kind of crimes that are particularized in the report of the Devon Commission. In those days the man who was marked out for punishment or murder in secret conclaves was visited or waited for without any warning whatever, and outraged, as a rule, without any chance of preparing for defence, or communicating with the police. The naming of land-grabbers at a few public demon- strations during the league agitation or the passing of boy- cotting resolutions at occasional branch meetings did, at least, this service to the obnoxious person — it gave him public and timely warning of the feeling existing against him, and afforded him opportunities of seeing to his own protection. So that, assuming even The Times' s allegation about the boy- cotting by some branches of the league to be true — namely, that boycotting was meant to end in outrage or personal in- timidation — a charge which, of course, we altogether challenge and deny — I maintain that it could not, humanly speaking, be as criminal in its consequences as were previous practices of agrarian bodies which had nothing of the public character of the league about them. "Our answer to The Times' s charge on this head is that public denunciation of men who grabbed land or otherwise went contrary to popular feeling in a district acted as a kind of lightning conductor; that it brought the pressure of public opinion to bear upon those just mentioned, and that in this manner such denunciations and boycotting did actually and manifestly prevent outrages of a serious character instead of causing them. "Evidence in proof of this has been given by nearly every one of the witnesses called for the defence, and these witnesses embraced clergymen in large numbers, who are, from intimate association with the people, better qualified to speak on this matter than any other class represented in this inquiry."* ^Speech before the Special Commission by Michael Davitt (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London, 1890), pp. 286-9. CHAPTER XXII THE STATE TRIALS Having returned to Ireland from the United States in time to enjoy the discomfiture of Mayo landlordism in the costly failure of the Lough Mask expedition, it became necessary to represent to Mr. Parnell and the other league leaders what the feeling in America was about the growth of agrarian out- rages. The press generally condemned the league, on the in- spiration of cable news from London, for not denouncing crimes which were coincident with the spread of the agitation. American opinion was strongly on the side of the movement in its demands for radical reform. Landlordism had no friends in the American newspapers. The Parnell - Dillon mission and the propaganda which followed secured the moral sup- port of public feeling for the aims of the league, but there was an equally strong reprobation of methods of unnecessary vio- lence which appeared to be associated with the growth of the movement for land reform. Many of these acts were, to our knowledge, perpetrated by enemies of the league, while many more were bogus outrages. But this was not known in Amer- ica. It was felt there that an organization which wielded such power as the league could, if its leaders were so minded, restrain the passions of the people, even under some provoca- tion, and prevent reprehensible acts from doing moral injury to a cause which appealed on its merits so strongly to Amer- ican sympathies. Rightly or wrongly formed, these views obtained. Mr. Parnell saw the need for some action in response and in reference to them, but he was slow to act in any way which would create the impression that agrarian crimes were due to any other cause except the existence and evil inspiration of unjust landlordism. However, it was clear to every ob- server that outrages, no matter how provoked, played into the hands of the league's enemies. They made out a case for coercion. The non-detection of the perpetrators in numer- ous cases made it appear as if the whole community connived at the deeds done by midnight terrorists. DubHn Castle 286 THE STATE TRIALS wanted coercion, and therefore made little or no attempt to increase the vigilance of its police or to sharpen the eyes of its authority. It saw that increasing violence would force the government to ask Parliament for exceptional powers, and it wanted these powers not so much out of a desire to grapple with the authors of crime as for the wish to use them against the Land League as a political organization. It was evident to everybody that the impending state trials would fail as the Sligo prosecutions had failed. No jury fairly empanelled in Dublin would convict national leaders on an indictment by a Castle authority. An acquittal would be possible where a disagreement of the jury was almost certain, and it was felt that the legal proceedings against Mr. Parnell and his colleagues were in the nature of a demonstration of the impotency of the ordinary law to be followed by a coercion which the failure to convict would call for and justify. On the grounds of expediency alone, but in addition to the higher reasons why deeds of violence should be discouraged and condemned, it became necessary to warn the people against acts which, while being wrong in themselves, did injury alone to the cause of the league and gave strength to its otherwise baffled opponents. Boycotting, without violence, was therefore strongly advocated as the best weapon of agrarian warfare, and circulars urging self-restraint and good temper upon the adherents of the league in all the phases of the campaign were prepared and circulated among the branches of the organization. The state trials engrossed popular attention and assisted the league enormously. Meetings increased in number, from a dozen to twenty being held on some Sundays. The movement had spread into Ulster in the autumn, under local leaders like the late Mr. John Duddy, of Belfast; Mr. Michael McCartan, of County Down; Mr. Bernard O'Neill, of Armagh; Mr. Crampsey and Mr. Denis Diver, of Innishowen; Mr. Jerome Boyce, of Donegal; Mr. Jeremiah Jordan, of Enniskillen, and the Rev. Harold Rylett, of Monirea, an Englishman, resident in Ireland, who had become an ardent convert to Land- Leagueism. Mr. James O'Kelly, who had beaten The O'Conor Don in Roscommon at the general elec- tion, lent invaluable assistance to the work of spreading the movement in the North; Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and John Ferguson being in demand for meetings and powerfully aiding by their speeches and presence " The rebel invasion of Ulster," as the landlord organs described these meetings to be. This growth of power and influence also brought in a corresponding financial assistance to the league. When the 287 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND league was founded Mr. Pamell based his calculations of future revenue upon a possible income of ;^5ooo a year. Reckoning the subscriptions given to the defence fund, which had been started on the announcement of the state prosecutions, along with those coming in from league branches in Ireland, Great Britain, and America, the income of the organization near the end of 1880 was over ;£iooo a week. With this power and treasury at its back, the organization was fully prepared to meet Mr. Forster and his Dublin Castle allies, even on their own ground, where the judges would be undisguised partisans and the dice would be loaded against the traversers. Political state trials had always been "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare" in Ireland, as an honest judge declared that of O'Connell to have been. The juries were all carefully " select- ed " by Castle lawyers, and everything that could tend to deny a fair chance to a prisoner or a person accused of a political or agrarian offence was resorted to. It was, in fact, a process reversing the boasted maxim of English jurisprudence, that an accused person was deemed to be innocent in the eye of the law until his guilt was affirmed by a jury's verdict. Under Dublin Castle rule, a political offender was tried on the assumption that his guilt was established by his arrest or accusation and every obstacle known to unscrupulous legal trickery should be put in the way of establishing his innocence. This very spirit and purpose manifested themselves even on the eve of these latest state trials. A few days before the commission opened an application had to be made by counsel for the traversers before Lord Chief - Justice May to restrain an organ of Dublin Castle from publishing matter calculated to prejudice the chances of the accused of getting a fair trial. This very judge, before whom Mr. Pamell and his associates were to be arraigned in a day or two, delivered himself of a violent political harangue. He declared the league and its leaders to be responsible for outrages and for all the acts charged against them in the Crown indictment. It was, to the astonished world of outside opinion, an outrage upon all ideas of judicial decency, but it was only a revelation of what we were only too familiar with under the rule of political renegades and government hacks in Dublin Castle. Mr. John Dillon, in a speech delivered at Malahide the day following this exhibition of judicial effrontery, defined a judicial liar to be "a man who first deliberately formed a lie in his mind about another and then uttered it from the bench as if it were true, knowing it to be a falsehood at the 288 THE STATE TRIALS same time." But though this was contempt of court with a vengeance, the object of the attack had discretion enough to let it pass. No Castle judge had ever been so sternly and effectively denounced and silenced in Ireland before. Knowing what the tactics of the Castle would be, the league \ took its precautions. Mr. Patrick Egan, one of the accused, and treasurer of the league, knew Dublin well. It was also well and widely known that the league was provided with abundant funds. These facts told in our favor. Minor officials under a corrupt government are not all immaculate, and sometimes men who are driven by temptation or poverty to take a hated service under their country's alien rulers retain a sense of sympathetic loyalty to a national cause which will prompt them to render it assistance in an emer- gency if possible. The league received many valuable services of this kind in its stormy career, so on the eve of the opening of the trials Mr. Patrick Egan presented counsel for the traversers with a copy of the brief prepared for At- torney-General Law by the prosecution. We were likewise in possession of such other information as gave us a guarantee that, whatever .else might happen, a unanimous verdict of guilty was not possible. The trial opened in the Four Courts, Dublin, on December 28th. The judges were Chief -Justice May, Mr. Justice J. D. Fitzgerald, and Mr. Justice Barry. When the court assembled the chief - justice arose and read a paper which said that, owing to a "misconception" that prevailed with reference to some observations made by him on the occasion of a recent application in behalf of the traversers, he had decided not to take any further part in the proceedings. He then retired from the bench, the court now consisting of his two colleagues, one of whom (Fitzgerald) had been a tenant-right patriot and member of Parliament in the fifties. The exit of Judge May was a concession to the forces of public protest against what would have been a shameless disregard of all pretence of judicial fairness. It counted one avowed enemy of the league out of the coming encounter, and to this extent an initial victory was scored over the Castle. All the leading lawyers of Dublin were engaged in the case. On the side of the Crown there were the attorney-general, Mr. Hugh Law, Q.C.; the solicitor-general. Sergeant Heron, Messrs. John Naish, Q.C., David Ross, Q.C., James Murphy, Q.C., A. M. Porter, Q.C., and Constantine Molloy, Q.C.; the counsel for the traversers were Messrs. Francis Macdonough, Q.C., Samuel Walker, Q.C., W. McLaughlin, Q.C., and Peter O'Brien, Q.C., with Messrs. John Curran, J. Nolan, Richard 19 289 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Adams, Luke Dillon, and A. M. Sullivan, M.P., as assistant barristers, the legal direction of the case for the defendants being in the very capable hands of Mr. V. B. Dillon, so- licitor. After challenges and objections on both sides in the matter of the jury panel, twenty-four names remained, and these were put in a ballot-box. The first twelve names to be drawn by the clerk of the court were to constitute the jury to try the defendants. Nine out of the twenty-four were Cath- olics. Of these nine no fewer than eight emerged from the box in the process of balloting. The names of the jury thus formed were; William Hopkins, goldsmith; James Corcoran, corn mer- chant; Edward Hurse, grocer; Nicholas Hopkins, grocer; Thomas Dunne, grocer; John Bircury, brush manufacturer; James Tyrell, corn merchant; Thomas Crosby, rope-maker; John Mitchell, vintner; Arthur Webb, clothier; Patrick Mack- en, vintner, and Patrick Biggins, agent. Of these, Webb, William Hopkins, Nicholas Hopkins, and Hurse were Prot- estants. When these names were read out i\Ir. Patrick Egan was observed smiling "very loudly," while Mr. V. B. Dillon looked a picture of solid, angelic innocence, as became a solicitor hav- ing charge of a case which was expected to turn the tables upon the enemy at all points. It was now a question of putting Irish landlordism on trial for its life before the first jury ever empanelled in an Irish political prosecution that was not packed — by Dublin Castle. It is only just to the memory of Attorney-General Law, who conducted the Crown case, to say that he lent himself to no unfair device, nor did he countenance in any way a resort to ordinary Castle methods. He was not, of course, in sym- pathy with the Land League, its principles, or inethods, but there could be no doubt about his friendly feeling towards the cause of land reform. His duty compelled him to make a strong case against those whom Mr. Forster and his advisers resolved to put to the ordeal of a criminal trial, but it was plain that he felt, in common with the public opinion of Ireland, that the real culprit before the court was the Irish land system and not the Irish Land League. The case against the league rested entirely upon speeches delivered in various parts of the country by the traversers, and in mottoes, phrases, and legends inscribed on banners car- ried at league demonstrations. These speeches were read, their delivery being proved Vjy government shorthand writers. The history of the agitation was gone over from the Irishtown 290 THE STATE TRIALS meeting to the time when the executive government of the country was compelled to assert the authority of the law in an attempt to put down a movement which amounted to a "wicked conspiracy" against the property of a class and the personal liberty of the subject. It was all a restatement of the league accusations against landlordism, a summary of the speeches delivered at five hundred league meetings with an aggregate attendance of over two millions of people, and every day's proceedings during the trial confirmed more and more the popular view of it as being a huge inquisition into the origin of peasant poverty and discontent, and of the com- plicity of Irish landlordism in the creation of both, phis agra- rian crime. One of the proofs adduced against the league was a poem by Miss Fanny Parnell, which had been printed in papers favor- able to the league and quoted from on public platforms. At- torney-General Law's reading of the impassioned revolution- ary verses was superb. Every pulse in court beat faster and eyes glistened and hearts throbbed as, in the finest elocution- ary manner and with a feeling wliich seemed to be carried completely away in the fire and meaning of the ringing words, he read: '"HOLD THE HARVEST! "'Now, are you men, or are you kine, Ye tillers of the soil ? Would you be free, or evermore The rich man's cattle toil? The shadow on the dial hangs That points the fatal hour — Now hold your own! or, branded slaves, Forever cringe and cower. "'The serpent's curse upon you lies— Ye writhe within the dust, Ye fill your mouths with beggars' swill, Ye grovel for a crust; Your lords have set their blood-stained heels Upon your shameful heads, Yet they are kind — they leave you still Their ditches for your beds! "'Oh, by the God who made us all — The seignior and the serf — Rise up ! and swear this day to hold Your own green Irish turf; Rise up ! and plant your feet as men Where now you crawl as slaves, And make your harvest-fields your camps. Or make of them your graves. 291 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "'The birds of prey are hovering round, The vultures wheel and swoop — They come, the coroneted ghouls! With drum-beat and with troop — They come, to fatten on your flesh, Your children's and your wives'; Ye die but once — hold fast your lands, And if ye can your lives. '"Let go the trembling emigrant — Not such as he you need; Let go the lucre-loving wretch That flies his land for greed; Let not one coward stay to clog Your manhood's waking power; Let not one sordid churl pollute The Nation's natal hour. "'Yes, let them go! — the caitiff rout, That shirk the struggle now — The light that crowns your victory Shall scorch each recreant brow. And in the annals of your race. Black parallels in shame, Shall stand by traitor's and by spy's The base deserter's name. "'Three hundred years your crops have sprung. By murdered corpses fed: Your butchered sires, your famished sires, For ghastly compost spread; Their bones have fertilized your fields. Their blood has fall'n like rain; They died that ye might eat and live — God! have they died in vain? '"The hour has strvick, Fate holds the dice. We stand with bated breath; Now who shall have our harvests fair — 'Tis Life that plays with Death; Now who shall have our Motherland? — 'Tis Right that plays with Might; The peasant's arms Avere weak, indeed. In such unequal fight! " ' But God is on the peasant's side. The God that loves the poor; His angels stand with flaming swords On every mount and moor. They guard the poor man's flocks and herds. They guard his ripening grain; The robber sinks beneath their curse Beside his ill-got gain.'" It was the "Marseillaise " of the Irish peasant, the trumpet- call of the league to the Celtic people to remember the hideous 292 THE STATE TRIALS crimes of an odious system, and with trust in God's eternal justice to rise and give battle to the death against this im- ported curse of their country and their homes. The reading electrified the crowded aivdience, and applause which could not be suppressed burst forth as the last stanza, with its fine appeal to the God of the poor, gave expression to Ireland's awakened hope to wrench the soil in one supreme struggle from the hands of the heirs to confiscation. The leading counsel for the league was a veteran lawyer who had seen nearly eighty summers. Mr. Macdonough was an able and experienced pleader who adopted stately manners when addressing the judges. Sir Charles Grandison appeared to be his model in mannerism, as, with white kid gloves and an old-fashioned, courtly grace, he scored a point with an apology to his beaten opponents, or deferentiall}^ advised the judges where he desired a decision on some disputed reading of the law to be given in favor of his clients. He opened his two days' speech by reminding his hearers that just thirty years previously he had risen in that same court in defence of Daniel O'Connell. He recalled the names of the brilliant lawyers who had been associated with him in that great state trial — the names of Shiel, Whiteside, Fitzgibbon, O'Hagan, Colman O'Loghlin, Perrin, Monaghan, and others, and with a touch of sad pride, which evoked a sentiment of responsive sympathy from his hearers, the old man repeated Moore's lines : ' ' ' When I remember all The friends so linked together, I've seen around me fall, Like leaves in wintry weather, I feel like one Who treads alone Some banquet-hall deserted Whose lights are fled, Whose garland's dead. And all but me departed!'" His speech was an able vindication of the league against the imputation that deeds and occurrences which had again and again in the agrarian troubles of three centuries resulted from an unjust land system owed their origin or inspiration to any other cause. He quoted from commissions innumerable data which "condemned landlordism in the eyes of Christendom," and fortified the league's counter case by the authoritative writings of Stuart Mill and Ricardo, and from the admissions made by Gladstone, Bright, Froude, and other English wit- nesses, all advocating, in whole or in part, the reforms which the traversers pleaded for in their incriminated speeches. 293 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND The most effective argument employed in the case for the league was this: We had the right to examine almost an un- limited number of witnesses for the defence, and on the in- spiration of a friend it was resolved to bring up from a Mayo workhouse all its old inmates, men and women, who had been evicted since the clearances after the famine of 1847. One morning during the trial, as the judges, counsel, and public were wending their way to the Four Courts, about a hundred of the inmates of Castlebar workhouse were seen lined up in the yard of the court in charge of Mr. Tom Brennan, the league secretary. It was a living presentation of the case against landlordism in the objects of its victims, and not alone the judges but the counsel for the Crown were affrighted at the apparition of this pauper product of the system on trial. Tactics were immediately changed, and a count in the indict- ment which would challenge the production of this kind of testimony was openly abandoned, and another blow was given to the prosecution. Parliament had opened in its second session while the trials were proceeding, and Mr. Parnell and his parliamentary col- leagues had crossed to London to be present. This action of the prosecuted members, in absenting themselves without leave from a court where they were on trial for conspiracy, caused consternation among loyalists. It was unprecedented, but so was a leader so resolute and a combination so strong in a modern Irish movement. Having thus shown a healthy defiance of a packed bench and a contempt for an action by , one set of political opponents against another, he returned to [ Dublin in time for the verdict of the jury. All the counsel on the traversers' side made able speeches in the final addresses to the jury, the most outspoken and pro- Land-League of all being the speech of Mr. Peter O'Brien, then counsel for the Land League, and afterwards Mr. Balfour's anti-plan-of-campaign chief-justice for Ireland. The late Mr. A. M. Sullivan, M.P., who had been retained to defend Mr. Patrick Egan, made the most finished address of the whole trial. It was marked throughout by intense feeling, expressed in the highest kind of forensic eloquence, the delivery being fervid, passionate, and convincing. The judge's charge to the jury was all that could be desired by Dublin Castle. It was simply that of a Crown prosecutor with a seat on the bench. The jury were absent six hours, and on returning to court at five o'clock on Wednesday, January 26, 1881, it was an- nounced by the foreman that they could not agree on a verdict, whereupon Mr. Hopkins, one of the Protestant 294 THE STATE TRIALS jurors, declared, "There were ten of us for an acquittal" — when he was sternly silenced by Judge Fitzgerald. Cheers broke out in the court. They were taken up by an immense crowd outside, and in a few moments Dublin was ringing with the news that the Land League had once more scored against its foes. Going with Mr. Parnell to his hotel from the court, he said to me, in his impressive way: "We have beaten them again, and now they will go for you." He was right; but one or two things were to happen before then which were destined to make a mark in the history of the next fifteen months. CHAPTER XXIII THE LADIES* LAND LEAGUE Events were now to develop with startling rapidity towards a crisis. The Castle and landlords were once more beaten. Mr. Forster was checkmated in his state prosecution. The situation was becoming electrical, and the next move would be with the government, in its policy towards the league, after the failure of the ordinary law to convict it of illegality. In America opinion was keeping in sympathetic pace with the progress of the fight. Judge Fitzgerald in his accusatory charge to the jury undertook to deny that "native-born American feeling" was on the side of the league. This ill- informed assertion was promptly met and answered by a thorough American who had been in favor of the movement from the start. The day following this judicial dictum in Dublin, the Land League received this message from Chicago: "At a meeting of the Seventeenth Ward Land League of Chicago last night, the Hon. Carter H. Harrison, Mayor of Chicago, presiding, the following was cabled to the Free- man s Journal of Dublin : "'' Resolved, That we indignantly repudiate the sentiment attributed to us by Justice Fitzgerald, and as native Americans we assure the Land League in Ireland of our earnest sustain- ment until its object be realized. — Carter H. Harrison, Chairman.' "The mayor also spoke strongly — said that the judge was a calumniator of the American people, and lied to the jury and the world. " Five hundred additional new branches of the league were formed within the two months embraced between the first intimation of a government prosecution of the league execu- tive and the verdict of the Dublin jury near the end of January. An occurrence which provoked much comment and gave rise to interesting speculation about a possible union between "Orange and Green" took place at this time. I addressed a meeting in County Armagh at which a local grand master 296 THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE of an Orange lodge took the chair. The audience was all but exclusively Protestant. The Land League and its principles were cordially welcomed and endorsed by resolution and speech, and at the end of the proceedings I had to under- go the ordeal of popular approval called "chairing." In any other civilized land on earth there would be no special notice taken of a trivial incident of this kind. But Ireland under English rule — the rule of dividing the people in order the more effectively to rule them against national cohesion — was not like other lands. Consternation seized upon Dublin Castle. The landlord organs could scarcely credit the news, and it was this unheard-of incident of a Fenian, Catholic, and Land-Leaguer being thus honored by Orangemen which caused Mr. Parnell to say, two days subsequently, as already recorded, "And now they will go for you." The impression which the events in Ireland during the last week in January made in Parliament, and the measures which the ministry were contemplating in consequence of the failure of the Crown to convict the league, will be best told in the reproduction of a cable message sent to a New York newspaper by Mr. Parnell: "London, January 26, 1S81. "The Land League has scored a victory. The ten-to-two disagreement of the jury in face of the tremendous pressure of the court is everywhere accepted as having the force of an acquittal, and is a virtual protest against the government's proposed coercion bills. " Of the violent and indecent charge made by Judge Fitz- gerald I shall say nothing. The publication of the charge is its condemnation. "The Irish party are doing their work well. I am entirely satisfied with them. The debate on the address to the Queen, which was prolonged for a fortnight, proved their endurance and fidelity. No other debate in Parliament has ever before lasted more than four or five days. "Gladstone's ministry, in which the aristocratic element has gained the ascendant, are exasperated at the firmness shown by us. They had hoped to exhaust our strength long since, but Irish fertility of resource has paralyzed them, and up to the present has prevented the passage of a coercion bill. "The principal provisions of the coercion bill, as roughly thrown out, are the abolition of trial by jury and the sub- stitution in its stead of trial by two judges. "This we shall resist as long as we can hold out. "The character of Irish judges renders such a tribunal 297 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND utterly untrustworthy. Most of those Irish judges are also members of the secret Privy Council, and therefore creatures of the government. "Although arrests continue, the Irish people remain un- daunted and unintimidated. Their perfect discipline is worthy of all admiration. "Money flows into the Land League, which the people now regard as their sole resource. "The landlords, who find themselves vanquished at the bar of Christendom, now grasp at the forlorn hope that coercion will cripple the power of the Land League, and they give out, in affected bravery, that when it is passed they will shower those eviction notices down upon the helpless tenants which the Land League has hitherto staved off. But, thanks to our American countrymen, the Land League has such reserve resources that, in spite of temporary coer- cive laws, there is no fear of the future. "The government hope by pouring in troops and by their arbitrary conduct in Ireland so to exasperate the people as to provoke rebellion and then to shoot down by the thousands the unarmed people. These manoeuvres we also hope to checkmate. "As we stand at present, passive resistance to unjust laws is the stronger weapon in our hands. "Thanks to the Irish World and its readers for their con- stant co-operation and substantial support in our great cause. Let them have no fear of its ultimate success. "Charles Stewart Parnell." It now became essential to prepare for the storm ahead. The government would be armed by Parliament with powers of arbitrary arrest and of certain conviction at the hands of special magistrates who would be the deadly political ene- mies of the league. Trial by jury would be abolished. Cur- ran 's famous classic exordium upon the freedom insured in England by the genius of the British Constitution would be reduced to a mockery in Curran's own country, where the ends of English policy required the weapons of despotism against the liberty of free speech and the right and exercise of public meeting. By foul means if not by fair Mr. Forster, at the dictation of the Irish landlords and backed by the anti-Irish feeling evoked in Great Britain in a fierce press campaign against us, was resolved to crush the league. Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, Egan, Brennan, and the present writer discussed the plan of a counter campaign immediately after the state trial. We would all be arrested in due course, 298 THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE perhaps in a few weeks. So would the other leaders. Eng- land's back was up, and Mr. Forster would be driven to the adoption of the most extreme measures. All meetings would be proclaimed, the landlords would glut their vengeance in wholesale evictions, and there would either be a state of anarchy or a tame submission of the country to the forces of coercion. This was the outlook. How was it to be met? The formation of a Ladies' Land League on the plan laid down by Miss Fanny Parnell in New York was proposed as one of our measures. This suggestion was laughed at by all except Mr. Egan and myself, and vehemently opposed by Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and Brennan, who feared we would invite public ridicule in appearing to put women forward in places of danger. This was no valid ground of objection, however. Who would carry on the work of the league when we were all carefully jailed out of Mr. Forster's way? We were engaged in a virtual revolution. Our purpose should be to make confusion worse confounded in retaliation for the violation of the statutory law in arbitrary arrests on sus- picion and imprisonment without trial. No better allies than women could be found for such a task. They are, in certain emergencies, more dangerous to despotism than men. They have more courage, through having less scruples, when and where their better instincts are appealed to by a militant and just cause in a fight against a mean foe. The fight was to save the homes of Ireland — the sacred, domestic domain of woman's moral supremacy in civilized society, while the enemy was the system which had ruined tens of thousands of Irish girls, morally and otherwise, in evictions and in consequent misery and wrong. The courage and constancy of Irish women could not be better employed than in the task of carrying on this fight after the male leaders were sent to jail. "Would you have girls sent to prison, too?" was asked. "Certainly. In such a cause, why not? Moreover, what of the effect this would have on the public opinion of the United States and the world if fifty or a hundred re- spectable young women were sent to jail as 'criminals,' with- out trial or conviction, by England's rulers in Ireland? Nothing could be better for our purpose, which was to pre- pare the country for a general strike against all rents the day the coming coercion bill should obtain the royal signature." Miss Anna Parnell had been consulted about this plan. She thoroughly approved of it, and this had much to do with obtaining from Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and Brennan a passive assent to what they dreaded would be a most dangerous exper- iment. So, undoubtedly, thought Mr. Forster, too, only later. 299 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Miss Anna Parnell was a lady of remarkable ability and energy of character — fragile in form, of medium height, dark- brown hair and kindly eyes, the handsome Parnell face, with all her great brother's intense application to any one thing at a time, and with much more than even his resolute- ness of purpose in any enterprise that might enlist her interest and advocacy, together with a thorough revolutionary spirit. Having been very much blamed on the one hand for suggest- ing the plan thus agreed upon, I am vain enough to covet the honor too generously given me on the other hand by Miss Par- nell, in her own too modest account of the part she had played in creating the force which pulled coercion down.^ The plans which the Ladies' League were to put in opera- tion were these : Offices would be provided for their executive at the headquarters of the Land League proper, which had been removed in December from Middle Abbey Street to 39 Upper O'Connell Street, Dublin. Miss Parnell and her lieutenants would be supplied with duplicate addresses of league branches everywhere, at home and abroad, and would be put in communication with the local leaders of the or- ganization in every county and district in Ireland. The duty of supporting evicted tenants would fall to their work, and of encouraging resistance to land-grabbing. Wooden huts were to be provided, and if possible as near the evicted holding as ground for their erection would be found availa- ble; this for shelter, but also to enable the evicted family to keep a vigilant watch over their interests in the vacant farm. Another very important task was the support of families while members of the same would be in prison. This obliga- tion was undertaken as the general policy of the league. Men, young or old, who might be singled out by Mr. Forster for punishment were assured in advance that their families would be provided for during their incarceration, and that no material loss should be incurred by them in fighting * "The resolutions passed here to-day describe this Ladies' Land League as being jointly my work and that of Michael Davitt. Now it was wholly his work. I did not have anything to say to it until it was done. We did not put our heads together about it. Mr. Davitt settled it all in his own mind, and he then informed the world that I was going to do it, to carry his ideas out, and he never asked my consent at all. I am glad now that he did not, because I might have hesitated; but now I see that he was right, and that this Ladies' Land League was the proper thing to form in the crisis at which we have arrived. I think that certain people in Dublin Castle have the same opinion, because I observe that, of all those who have been ar- rested, it is the special friends of the Ladies' Land Leagtie who have been pounced upon. Michael Davitt was the first." — Speech by Miss Parnell, April 2, 1881. Report Special Commission, vol. ix., p. 477. 300 THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE coercion. Where trials or prosecutions in the courts had to be faced, legal assistance would be engaged and paid for, and in the event of imprisonment following, and food could be sent in from outside, this would be done at the expense of the league. Other duties would suggest themselves as circumstances arose, and as the coercion policy would develop such measures were to be taken by the expenditure of money as would give the coercionists most opposition and trouble in every corner of the country in executing a despotic law, this obstruction to be organized and offered in the spirit and meaning of the lines in Miss Fanny Parnell's poem: "Keep the law, oh, keep it well — -keep it as your rulers do; Be not righteous overmuch — when the}'' break it, so can you!" At this time the league had become the most formidable movement that had confronted the English rulers of Ireland in the century. Barring parts of Ulster, it embraced almost the whole country. Its revenues were growing by leaps and bounds, while branches were being formed almost every week in every coimtry in the world in which exiled Irish resided. The roll of branches in Ireland at this period would be about one thousand, some of them numbering one thousand members. Fully two hundred thousand members would be enrolled in the branches in Ireland. In the United States and Canada there would be as many as in Ireland, while away in Australasia branches had sprung up in all the principal cities and in several mining centres. It would be underrating the total membership of the whole league to put it down at five hundred thousand strong in February, 1881, while at the end of that year it would be nearer a million. It was felt by what could still be called the extreme wing of the league (extreme in the Land-League sense), which by this time counted Mr. John Dillon among its numbers, and almost all the organizers and most active propagandists, that a general strike against rent would be the most effective counter blow to coercion. It would be a double stroke: one at the government for suspending the ordinary law, and the other at the arch-enemy of the nation, landlordism. It would mean a kind of civil war, and might lead to bloodshed in encounters with military and police. But all modern Irish history proclaimed aloud from the records that the only way to obtain reform for Ireland was by insurrection, illegality, and the general warfare of "righteous violence," as Isaac Butt termed the sporadic revolt of the Irish peasantry against the enemy of their rights and homes. Moreover, the Boers were attacking the English at this time in their war for free- 301 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND dom, and advantage could be taken of this difficulty in . South Africa to bring Enghsh statesmen to their senses nearer home in the matter of Irish national government. All these facts being duly considered, Mr. A. J. Kettle and the present writer were deputed to cross to London on February 2d to interview Mr. Parnell and his chief parliamentary lieutenants on the following day upon the advisability of adopting this extreme plan of campaign. The interview took place in the Westminster Palace Hotel on the 3d. Mr. Parnell and six of his colleagues attended. The no - rent insurrection was proposed and discussed. It was likewise proposed that on the day when the Coercion Act should become law the whole Irish parliamentary party should rise and leave the House of Commons in a body, cross to Ireland, and carry out the no-rent campaign, each member placing himself at the head of the organization in his con- stituency and going to prison if necessary. Mr. Parnell was not averse to this extreme policy, but one or two influential colleagues were very strongly so, and no decision was ar- rived at. It was evident, however, that Parnell, if forced by circumstances, would fight it out on these or similar lines, and the gain of his lead in such a policy would be all that |_was required by the extremists. That evening I sat for two hours in the speaker's gallery in the House of Commons. Lord Beaconsfield chanced to be in the peers' gallery, nearest to the seat occupied by me. I was told in after years — when I was for a time a member of the House — that a prominent minister in the Gladstone cabinet called the attention of a colleague to my presence in the gallery in these words (the words used by the minister who afterwards told me of the incident) : "Do you see that scoundrel next to Beaconsfield in the gallery? Well, I will have that fellow back in penal servitude to-morrow." I crossed to Dublin by the mail that night. At two o'clock in the afternoon of the following day I was arrested. I was detained in the police department of Dublin Castle during the afternoon, and taken to Kingstown in a cab and put on board the mail boat for England in charge of Scotland Yard officers in the evening. On the train reaching Willesden Junction on the morning of the 5th, I was taken out, put in a cab, and driven under an escort of mounted police to Bow Street, where Sir James Ingram was in readiness at 6 a.m. for his part in the following brief interview: Mai^^istrate {to Detective Williamson). "The prisoner's name?" 302 THE LADIES' LAND LEAGUE "Michael Davitt." " He is the person of that name who was in penal servitude for treason felony?" "Yes." Magistrate {to prisoner). " You are sent back to penal servitude." Prisoner. "What for?" Magistrate. "That is no business of mine." Another cab journey to Millbank Prison, a change of attire, a location in old quarters, and the exciting world of Irish politics would know me no more for five years — if the whole unexpired original sentence was to be completed. However, that same night I was awakened from sleep to find my own clothes back again in the cell. Ordered to put them on, I was taken out of the prison about midnight and driven to a railway station by four warders. A railway journey for a few hours followed, and Weymouth was reached, when I knew that Portland Prison was to be my destinatii ii, and I felt happy to think that it was not to be Dartmoor again. CHAPTER XXIV LAND-LEAGUE PLANS Mr. Parnell cabled the following message to the American press for the information and encouragement of the auxiliary- league of the United States: "London, February 4, 1881. "The government expected that the blow struck at the Land League by Michael Davitt's arrest would be a crushing one, but, heavy as it is to us personally, we have already in- dications that it will recoil upon the forces of landlordism. The Irish people, instead of being intimidated thereby, are firmly bracing themselves for the coming struggle, and assur- ances reach me from all sides that there will be no flinching among Irishmen in the arduous times that they are destined to face. "Yesterday the howls, the cheering, the signs of uproarious joy with which the British House of Commons — the first as- sembly of gentlemen in the world — greeted the news of Dav- itt's arrest made up the most brutal and painful scene ever witnessed in that chamber. "We are doing our utmost to mitigate the horrors of Dav- itt's confinement, as he is in very delicate health, but we great- ly dread the results for him. "To-day a strong reaction set in after the first excitement attending the expulsions. The Radicals of England will yet discover the mistake they made in condoning the autocracy of the speaker of the House of Commons, and allowing liberty to be trampled on in her own temple. "Sooner or later a coalition of the Whig and Tory territori- alists must be formed to make head against the English de- mocracy, and they will then find how fatal for their own free- dom was the precedent of yesterday. "Charles Stewart Parnell."* On the news of the arrest reaching the House of Commons, Mr. Parnell questioned the home secretary, Sir William Har- ' Boston Globe, February 5, 18S1. 304 LAND-LEAGUE PLANS court, on what grounds this action was justified. The an- swer was given by the House of Commons in the "gentle- manly" manner described by the Irish leader. The result was not to the credit or advantage of that assembly. The Irish party struck back, and that night the most arbitrary and despotic act ever attempted by a speaker against the right and privilege of its members was put on record. Mr. Gladstone rose to explain the new rules which were to introduce the cloture for the first time in the debates of the House — a measure curtailing freedom of debate also forced upon the "Mother of Parliaments" by the Irish policy. This gag law was purposely proposed at this stage in view of the declared intention of the government to bring forward a measure of stringent coercion for Ireland. It was intended to limit the weapons of obstruction for Irish resistance. Mr. John Dillon rose as Mr. Gladstone began his speech and claimed a hearing. The assembly yelled in fierce anger; but the Irish blood was up, and the howling chamber was defied. Mr. Dillon was suspended and removed from the House by force. On the prime-minister rising again, Mr. Parnell rose and proposed, "I beg to move that the right honorable gen- tleman be no further heard." This was, of course, a proceed- ing of deliberate exasperation, and it was not astonishing that an indescribable scene of uproar ensued. Mr. Parnell was finally voted out of the debate and the House, but only to have his example followed by others of his party, until the speaker, usurping a power which no rules or precedent gave him, undertook to suspend twenty-eight Irish members on a single motion suggested by the ministerial whip. Among these twenty-eight was Mr. John E. Redmond, who took his seat that very afternoon as a member for New Ross, and thus had the unique distinction of being suspended a few hours after his first entry into Parliament. Finally, after hours of intense excitement and violent passions unparalleled in the history of the House of Commons, the entire Irish party under Mr. Parnell's leadership were expelled. It was a "victory" which spelled defeat for the prestige and ancient record of the centre of Britain's imperial sway. The retaliatory mission of the Irish idea was playing its part in the citadel of England's pride and power. The Land - League executive arranged to meet in Paris a few days after the events just described. This course was deemed necessary to safeguard the funds of the organization, and to enable the leaders to have the freedom and secrecy of cable communications from France with the leaders in Amer- ica, pending a decision as to new plans. All the members 2° 305 hJ THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND assembled at the appointed place except Mr. Parnell. He had left London for Paris, but no one had information of his whereabouts. Days went by, but there was no message and no tale or tidings of the absent leader. The news of his dis- appearance leaked into the press and created a painful feeling among the expectant colleagues. Finally it was proposed that the extreme step should be taken of opening the letters which awaited him in the hotel where the executive had de- cided to meet, in the hope of finding a clew. The first letter that was read revealed the secret which afterwards worked his "4 ruin. None of his most intimate associates had hitherto sus- pected the liaison in which he was found entangled. It was a painful discovery, for it was the first cloud that had fallen menacingly over what had promised to be the most successful political career that had ever been carved out of brilliant and beneficial service to the cause of Ireland. Finally Mr. Parnell appeared, and the situation in Ireland was carefully considered. The league in Dublin had passed a resolution urging him to proceed at once to America, the more effectively to appeal for aid to our people and friends there in the crisis at hand. It was decided in Paris not to accede to this view. It would wear the appearance of avoiding danger in a serious emergency, and any suspicion of that kind would ,- materially weaken the hold of an Irish leader upon the people of Ireland. The decision arrived at was that Mr. Parnell should return to Parliament, oppose the coercion measures, and then proceed to Ireland. Mr. John Dillon was to assume the position vacated by me, while Mr. Patrick Egan was to make Paris the financial headquarters of the league until the full effects of the coercion policy should develop themselves at home. In addition to this an important resolution was come to which is best explained in Mr. Parnell's own words. He had ; noted that large numbers of English and Scotch working- men had taken part, as trades unionists, in public meetings organized by the Land League of Great Britain as a protest against the cloture in Parliament and coercion in Ireland. These demonstrations took place in Hyde Park, London; Birmingham, Bradford, Leeds, Newcastle, and Glasgow, and were a hopeful sign of British working-class feeling in favor of the radical stand made by the league for land reform and by Mr. Parnell in the House of Commons. Mr. Parnell issued a manifesto to the Irish people in the form of a letter to the Land League, dated Paris, February 13, 1 881, in which he ad- vocated a policy that had been strongly pressed upon him for some time. He explained this policy as follows: 306 LAND-LEAGUE PLANS "The result of the renewed exertions of the party since the coup d'etat and the adoption of the gagging resolution has been so far most encouraging. Moreover, it would be scarcely fair of me to leave my party to face the up-hill work entailed upon them, and I think I can be of some service during the passage of the Land Bill in pointing out in what respects it may fall short of a final settlement of the land question. Should it fail to offer an adequate solution, the government of England having adopted rules of coercion and intimidation against our people at home and their representatives in Parliament, and having practically attempted to drive both one and the other outside the limits of the constitution by the use of unconstitu- tional and illegal means in Parliament and in the country, two courses appeared open to us. The first, that Irish members should retire in a body from the House of Commons and an- nounce to their constituents that the constitutional weapon of parliamentary representation had been snatched from their hands, and that nothing remained but sullen acquiescence or appeal to force in opposition to force which had been used against us. The second alternative appeared to be that we should steadfastly labor on deepening the lines and widening the area of our agitation, appealing to the great masses of population of England and Scotland, who are much less repre- sented in the House of Commons than the masses of Ireland. "Appealing, I say, against territorialism and shopocracy, which dominate in Parliament, to working-men and agricultur- al laborers of Britain, who surely have no interest in the mis- government and persecution of Ireland, I have dismissed the first of these courses from consideration, but the second alter- native presents to us many elements of hope of ultimate suc- cess. As I have said. Parliament is at present governed by landlords, manufacturers, and shopkeepers of Great Britain. At election times the springs are set in motion by wire-pullers of the two political parties, and masses of the electors are driven to the polling-booths to register the decrees of some caucus with place and power, and not the good of the people as its object. Public opinion in England is also deliberately and systematically perverted with regard to Ireland, but vig- orous agitation in England and Scotland would change all this. The near approach of household suffrage in counties is a practical certainty before the next general election. It will sound the doom of the English land system. The starting of a working-man or agricultural-laborer candidate in every Brit- ish constituency would soon bring the House of Commons and radicalism to its senses. "A junction between English democracy and Irish national- 307 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ism upon a basis of Ireland's right to make her own laws, the overthrow of territorialism in both countries, and enfranchise- ment of labor from crushing taxes for maintenance of standing armies and navies would prove irresistible. It would ter- minate the strife of centuries and secure lasting friendship, based on mutual interest and confidence, between the two nations." ^ This was a sagacious policy at this time. It had the double recommendation of aiming at a division of British political forces, in the fight against the Irish claims, while its proposed attack upon British territorialist monopoly, in the interest of the working-classes, was in line with the land-reform programme of the Irish movement, and a counter move against the backers of the Irish landlords in England. It would, in a sense, be carrying the war into Africa. O'Connell had in his time "recruited" allies for his cause among English laborers and artisans, and in return for their support had advocated their claims in Parliament. Fergus O'Connor was the founder of British radicalism as much as Hume or Cobbett. As a matter of historical fact, most English reforms in the direction of widening popular liberties were carried by means of Irish support in the House of Commons against British class influences. The Reform Bill of 1832 was saved from defeat by O'Connell, as was many a subsequent measure making for progress by him and his successors in the par- liamentary leadership of Ireland. The league and its leader had, therefore, a promising field of political strategy offered to them in the line of action which the Paris manifesto sug- gested. How it was proposed to develop these tactics into a great political "turning movement" will be told in a subsequent chapter. During his stay in Paris, Mr. Parnell and Mr. James O' Kelly visited Victor Hugo and called upon the prominent journalists of the French capital. They were cordially welcomed everywhere. The league movement was fully explained in these interviews and the true character of English coercive policy exposed, with the result that the leading journals of France were won over to the side of Ireland. From the United States the response to the attack made in Westminster on the league in Ireland was instant and assur- ing. A dozen State legislatures were induced by the polit- ical pressure of the auxiliary league to pass resolutions condemning England's declaration of war upon Ireland's ' Freeman's Journal, Dublin, February, 1881. 308 LAND- LEAGUE PLANS constitutional rights. The American press was equally out- spoken in its views. Land - League branches multiplied rapidly, no fewer than forty being organized in New York City alone and thirty in Philadelphia, and in other cities in proportion. Inside of ten days after the real fight against coercion began the Irish World, of New York, cabled $25,000 to Mr. Patrick Egan in Paris. The expelled Irish party returned to the House of Commons, and faced their enemies in a dogged resolve to fight Mr. Gladstone's two coercion measures — the Protection of Person and Property Bill and the Peace Preservation Bill — by every method and form which the now abridged liberty of debate would allow. The question has since been discussed whether it would not have been a more courageously wise policy to have launched the no - rent retaliation movement in Ireland after the ex- pulsion of the party from Parliament than to have waited until the following October. It would certainly have been far more effective "warfare." The country was in a more combative spirit in February, and was better prepared, with nothing but coercion in view, than eight months sub- sequently, when the Land Act came as a concession and a distintegrating factor, and when, in addition, all the active county and district leaders of the league — the fighting stalwarts of the movement — with fully seven hundred more "active spirits," were under lock and key in Irish prisons. Opportunity means almost everything in the fortunes of war, and the one great chance of the no - rent campaign arrived when Mr. Parnell and his men were ignominiously ejected from the British Parliament, and a despotic law was about to be enforced in Ireland in defiance of all the boasted principles of British rule. The country would have responded to the spirit of the situation, with the world's sympathy on our side, and the league would have made Ireland ab- solutely ungovernable just at the time when Joubert's handful of Boers had told all Europe and America how easily British troops are beaten by earnest men fighting for freedom against mere hirelings in uniform fighting for pay against the lib- erty of a civilized nation. A no-rent campaign coincident with Majuba Hill would in all human probability have brought Ireland a land bill on the lines of the Rotunda con- vention programme of April, 1880, instead of the one which twenty years of subsequent litigation has shown to be in- adequate, while the Home-Rule Bill of 1886 might have come four years sooner to Ireland, before a split in the Liberal ranks, while Mr. Chamberlain was still a Home-Ruler, and 309 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND before the Phoenix Park murders had added an element of ferocious bitterness to the normal antipathies of the Anglo- Irish conflict. Irish landlordism would have been easily- smashed by the league in a no - rent fight in the spring of 1881, disciplined and prepared as the country was then, and on its ruins a better and more lasting treaty of peace between the two countries would have eventuated than any since proposed. It was not Mr. Parnell's fault that this great opportunity was lost. He was favorable to such a fighting policy at the time, but he could not command the allegiance of more than half his nominal following in so extreme a course. It was not the forces in Ireland or in America that .failed, but the timid and calculating constitutionalists inside the Irish party. The Irish opposition offered to the coercion bills was continued for upward of forty days, despite the new cloture rules. Mr. Parnell did not lead in this debating tournament. He was frequently absent in Ireland, and keeping in touch with the militant elements which Mr. Tom Brennan and Mr. John Dillon were holding in hand for the expected emergency. Mr. Parnell's name scarcely appears in the " Hansard " record of the brilliant combat carried on by Sexton, T. P. O'Connor, Healy, O'Donnell, A. M. SulUvan,' T. D. SulHvan, Leamy, Justin McCarthy, Biggar, Arthur O'Connor, Gray, Dawson, Barry, and a few others. Mr. T. P. O'Connor developed great debating ability in this stormy session, and began a House of Commons career which is to-day second to that of no other private member in all that goes to the equipment of a first-class parliamentary speaker. Mr. Sexton's defence of the Land League, on the second reading of the Forster Coercion Bill, was his first great parliamentary achievement. I have heard it described by competent judges who were present as the finest piece of debating eloquence that had been heard in the House of Commons for years. The rep- utation thus made was more than upheld in after years by one of the most all-round gifted public men Ireland has sent to Westminster since the Act of Union. Mr. T. M. Healy 's great chance was to come in the promised land bill, which was to make fame and reputation for him in a single session, but he showed immense capacity for so young a man in the forty days' conflict which the new Irish party waged with pluck and resource against the massed forces of Great Britain's greatest statesmen and most trained debaters. CHAPTER XXV THE LEAGUE AT BAY The local branches of the league in Ireland were now the centres of active operations in the carrying-out of the policy of what can be called aggressive moral force. These bodies embraced almost all the ardent spirits of the locality, the district organizers or leaders, the tenants' sons whose families were liable to eviction, representatives of the laborers, and in many places the local leaders of the Fenian movement. This latter kind of adhesion to the league forces was contrary to the passive hostility of the heads of the revolutionary body in Ireland, which had been consistent in its opposition from the beginning. In some instances the open organization was completely under the control of the extremists of the district, and while the general work of the league was carried out on its merits, the branch was used as a shield for the ulterior ends of the more advanced movement. This general- ly happened where the clergy were unfriendly towards the agitation, or when, as frequently occurred, the local moderate leaders would be inclined to use the league for personal or trade purposes. The "branch" became the committee of public safety for the locality. Meetings were held at least once a fortnight, more generally every Sunday. The business would, of course, be determined by the conduct of members or by the hostile acts of landlords or land-grabbers within the district. In many instances the branch resolved itself into a "Land League Court," for the "trial" of offenders against the rules or for the investigation of cases of alleged grabbing or other misconduct. The accused would be summoned to appear and to answer the charges made against them. A refusal to come or a defiance of the authority thus sought to be asserted would call for a resolution of warning or of con- demnation involving a boycott. The ordinary law was especially outraged at the existence and activity of these "courts," and the police were doubly vigilant in their surveillance of members and meetings sus- 311 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND pected of being engaged in these usurpations of the functions of the civil authority. The local branch was entitled to the co- operation of distant bodies and of the central headquarters in Dublin when some decree against an enemy or an expelled member called for some action beyond the boundaries of rural jurisdiction. A case of this kind which attracted much atten- tion at the time will illustrate the system upon which the "local branch" operated when fighting strong opponents. Mr. Bence Jones, an English landlord, had an estate near Clonakilty, in County Cork, which he managed himself, on strictly commercial principles. He also farmed about one thousand acres of his own land. His tenants were of the small-holding class, and, like others who had suffered in the bad seasons of 1878-79, they asked for a reduction in the gale falling due at the end of 1880. This Mr. Jones firmly refused to give. The local branch took instant action. The tenants were induced and pledged to stand out for "Griffith's Valua- tion " — i.e., a rent reduced to the government or rating valua- tion of the farm. The landlord was boycotted and his la- borers were drawn off. Police came to protect him, and he had the continued service of a Scotch steward and of one or two English servants. This help, along with that of the mem- bers of his own family, enabled him to make a much better stand against his assailants than that of Captain Boycott. He had, however, to get rid of some valuable stock — about one hundred head of cattle — as these could not be looked after by his diminished labor service, and it was planned by him that they should be entrained at Bandon for Cork, and shipped thence to Bristol to be sold. A previous effort to sell a few loads of oats at Bandon Fair had failed, the Bandon branch having boycotted the grain by ordering men to stand round the carts in the market and to inform would - be pur- chasers that the Land League prohibited the buying of Jones's goods. The cattle for Bristol were driven into Bandon by night, and, by aid of the police, they were put on the rails and sent off to Cork before the Bandon league, which had been caught napping, were aware of their arrival in the town. The local branch, on learning of this mishap, wired to the league in Dublin information of what had occurred, and messages were immediately sent thence to Cork to have the cattle "watched" on their arrival. This was done. The shipping companies were at once waited upon, and so much was the displeasure of the league feared at the time that no ships leav- ing Cork for Bristol could be got to carry Jones's cows. The jobbers who were shipping their ordinary cattle were induced to inform the agents of the companies that they would with- 312 THE LEAGUE AT BAY draw tl:eir custom if boycotted animals were carried on the boats patronized by them. The Jones cattle were, there- fore, rejected. They were then driven to the station of the Great Southern and Western Railway, to be carried by rail to Dublin. A large force of police had to guard them until the freight-train started. Police were specially stationed at every stopping-place on the line until Dublin was reached, when the services of another body of police were called for. At the North Wall the league agents repeated the Cork tac- tics, and jobbers gave notice to the Glasgow company's agents that they must choose between the regular custom of old dealers and this single consignment from a boycotted land- lord. The company accepted the situation and declined to carry the cattle. Next the Liverpool boats were tried, and a threat to resort to legal proceedings and to claim damages for a refusal as public carriers to take cattle on board obtained a passage for the animals to Liverpool. Here an agent of the league from Dublin awaited their arrival. The Irish sales- men in Liverpool had been interviewed in the mean time, and they helped to boycott the cattle in the city market. Finally the animals were driven outside the city to the hospitality of some friendly paddocks, and were ultimately disposed of by private negotiations. While this and similar league exploits greatly increased the prestige of the league organization, they made out very strong reasons, from the legal and Dublin Castle point of view, for putting down the Land League " courts," and the triumphs of the organization in Ireland were so many arguments in sup- port of coercion in the House of Commons. It was in connection with the holding of one of these "courts" that Mr. Timothy Harrington, M.P., first came into public notoriety. He was president or secretary of the Tralee branch of the Land League, and this body was accused by the police of holding a "court," and thereby acting illegally. Mr. Harrington and several other suspected members of the league tribunal were prosecuted on this charge, and finally imprisoned under the Coercion Act. Mr. Harrington had previously been in charge of a national school in Kerry, and graduated from teaching boys into a public instructor, as editor of the Kerry Sentinel. He was one of the many local leaders of the Land League who proved themselves by marked ability and a courageous resistance to the local enemies of the people's cause capable of filling higher positions in the na- tional movement and in the public service in after years. Events were moving with startling rapidity towards a de- cisive clash between the powers of coercion and that of the 3U THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND league in the spring. Mr. Parnell had crossed to Ireland soon after the Paris conference, and dissipated at once the notion suggested by his enemies that he was "afraid" to continue the agitation. He addressed a huge gathering at Clara, in King's County, and, while fearless himself in his lan- guage and bearing, he warned the people not to lose patience or to be goaded into hasty or ill-considered action. Miss Anna Parnell was equally energetic in organizing the Ladies' Land League. She spoke at meetings in each of the prov- inces, and uttered the most extreme Land-League principles in admirable little addresses. Her chief lieutenants at this time were Miss Nanny Lynch, Miss Clara Stritch, Miss O'Leary, Mrs. Maloney, with several other ladies as assistants and or- ganizers. The rapid approach of coercion, on the one hand, and the measures that were being taken by the people's leaders, on the other, to carry on the menaced movement naturally ap- pealed again to Archbishop McCabe for his intervention on the side of the Castle. On this occasion the existence of the Ladies' Land League had troubled his pastoral conscience. He was greatly alarmed about the "modesty" of the women of Ireland. It was a tender concern awakened for the first time in this respect. The dens of Dublin, the conduct of British soldiers in its streets each night, outside his grace's hall door, the tens of thousands of Irish girls who had been driven to shame and ruin in foreign cities in being evicted from Irish homes by the system the Land League had re- solved to cripple or destroy, never once appealed to the moral indignation or political thoughts of this Castle bishop. He was only aroused from his peaceful pastoral slumbers on the question of modesty when ladies, belonging to families at least as respectable as his own, felt called upon to face an in- famous law and system in defence of the homes of Ireland and to run the risk of imprisonment in a struggle for righteous- ness. But the time had arrived when the pharisaical and intolerant conduct of this persistent opponent of the league was to call for a merited chastisement. Among the members of the Ladies' Land League was the gifted wife of Mr. A. M. Sullivan, M.P., an Irish-American lady of stanch Catholic fidelity akin to that of her talented and distinguished husband. Mr. Sullivan was goaded into a scorching reply to the archbishop's tirade, which was all the more effective in its castigation from the studied respect in which the office of Dr. McCabe was treated while the occupant of it was being dressed down for his insulting attacks upon the wives, sisters, and daughters of the Land -League leaders. 314 THE LEAGUE AT BAY On the appearance of Mr. Sullivan's rejoinder to the arch- bishop's insulting references, the follov/ing letter was promptly written and published: "Cashel, March 17, 1881. "Dear Mr. Sullivan, — I congratulate you very heartily on your timely and, under the peculiarly provoking cir- cumstances, very temperate and withal touching letter that appears over your name in this day's Freeman. "I adopt, unreservedly, the sentiments you have so ad- mirably expressed, and am delighted to find that some one of mark has at last stepped forward from the ranks of the laity to vindicate the character of the good Irish ladies who have become Land-Leagtiers, and to challenge publicly the monstrous imputations cast upon them by the Archbishop of Dublin. "His grace will not be allowed in future, I apprehend, to use his lance so freely as he has hitherto done, or to ventilate unquestioned the peculiar political theories which he is known to hold in opposition to the cherished convictions of a great, and indeed overwhelming, majority of the Irish priests and people. "It is a satisfaction, however, to feel that his grace's political likings and dislikings, though possibly of some consequence elsewhere, carry with them very little weight or significance, except with a select few, in Ireland. "Your very faithful servant, " + T. W. Croke, Archbishop of Cashel." This crushing and contemptuous disposal of the Dublin Castle archbishop gave great offence to England, but was popularly acclaimed all over Ireland as a courageous national service. Time was, however, to mark the far different treat- ment which Rome was to mete out to the supporter of English coercion and the champion of Irish rights and Ireland's womanhood. Dr. McCabe was to be made a cardinal within a year, as a reward for his services to Eng- land's law and authority in Ireland, and the big-hearted Irish nationalist archbishop was to be summoned soon after to Rome to be subjected to all the humiliation that Ireland's enemy could wish for his punishment. England never fails to find allies for her anti - Irish purposes where Catholic Irishmen's national cause least deserves a partisan blow on behalf of the enemy of their fatherland and faith. Forty arrests were made under the new coercion regime by the end of March, and among these were Boyton, the most active of the league organizers, and many of the best fighting 315 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND local leaders. This evidence of business on the part of Mr. Forster had no intimidatory effect on the country — quite the reverse. Twenty public meetings were held the following Sunday, at which no - rent doctrines were preached and boycotting urged against all grabbers and other opponents. A man who had grabbed a farm in Westmeath was shot about this time, and it was evident that if Mr. Forster put men in prison without trial there were those inside or outside the league branches who were resolved to take a yet wilder law into their own hands, and to give even less justice to those who went against the popular sanction which forbade the taking of evicted land. Coincident with the application of coercion against the movement, the landlords began the work of forcing the rent through the pressure of process-serving. They were uncer- tain as to the character and extent of the proposed changes in the land law which were heralded as usual as part of Eng- land's policy of "coercion and kindness," as it was once called, and were resolved to use coercion as a means of obtaining both rent and arrears before the advent of the promised land bill. There was also a policy of revenge in this action of the landlords. They were now to be rid of the "local branch " terrorism against grabbers, as they believed, and the law of eviction was, therefore, to be put in force to co-operate with the law of repression in subduing the spirit of revolt among the people in the strongholds of the league. This state of things precipitated a desperate fight with the police near Ballaghadereen, in Mayo, early in April. Proc- esses were being served at the instance of a local landlord, with the aid of an inadequate force of constabulary. The peasants of the neighborhood assembled and barred the way to the cabins threatened with the delivery of the fateful and hated documents. A woman among the excited crowd made an urgent appeal to the sergeant not to persist in his work or there would be resistance and bloodshed. His answer was to order his men to fire, when two men, named Corcoran and Flannery, fell dead before the volley of buckshot. This deed maddened the crowd. They fell upon the police and literally stoned the sergeant to death, and would have killed the others had they not fled from the scene of Armstrong's rash act. One of the constables owed his life to a young girl, who, on seeing him helpless on the ground, wounded, flung herself between him and his enraged assailants and saved him from death. It may be added here, as a romantic incident con- nected with this sanguinary fight, that the constable who was thus saved afterwards asked this protector to be his wife 316 THE LEAGUE AT BAY and was accepted, but he never served in the Royal Irish Constabulary near that locality again. Mr. John Dillon attended the funeral of the Land-League martyrs, Flannery and Corcoran, and drove home the moral of the encounter in which they had lost their lives in a trench- ant denunciation of the dual curse of an otherwise peaceful country — landlordism and coercion. This fight and the kill- ing of the police sergeant inflamed feeling on both sides. Young men in the league began to procure arms, and the mem- bers of the force, condemned by the law to protect the agents of eviction, became exposed to greater risks and began to show more animosity against the local league leaders every- where. On April 8th Mr. Gladstone introduced his remedial set-off to coercion, what is now known as his great land bill of 1881. In a time of less passion in Ireland the magnitude and im- portance of the measure would have been more fully recog- nized and acknowledged by the Irish leaders, for the bill was a legislative sentence of death by slow processes against Irish landlordism. It did not thus recommend itself to Mr. Parnell at the time. He saw a unique chance in the revolution which he had helped to bring about in Ireland for a root-and-brancli settlement of the agrarian war of ages, and his attitude tow- ards the bill was dictated more by resentment at Mr. Glad- stone's failure or refusal to embrace this chance than by any incapacity to measure the enormous advance upon all previous remedial land laws which this measure signalized. This feel- ing was reflected in Ireland. The Land League had created the conditions which made the land bill an imiperative ne- cessity for both rulers and people, and yet the men who had made the movement which called for and justified Mr. Glad- stone's proposals were imprisoned without trial by his chief secretary for Ireland. It was a "war" measure, and it made for a truce rather than for any lasting agrarian peace. The country sullenly accepted with a protest against its inadequacy what had been wrung by its own efforts from the reluctant hands of coercionist ministers. I must reserve for the next chapter a brief outline of this far-reaching measure, a work of Mr. Gladstone's genius as a statesman which made subsequent legislation on similar lines a necessary sequence to his semi- revolutionary scheme, and which struck a mortal blow at Irish landlordism and doomed it to abolition. Mr. Parnell attended specially convened meetings at Cork and Dublin after the introduction of the bill, and explained his views of its proposals. He emphasized the halting nature of the measure, while admitting the great advance made in its 317 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND provisions over those of the Land Act of 1870. He was care- ful to insist upon the truer statesmanship contained in the Land-League plan of settlement of April, 1880, and to regret that this plan had not been more courageously followed by the framers of the bill. He advised the country to continue the fight of the league, and to make the complete uprooting of landlordism the goal of Irish land reformers' efforts. A convention of the Land League was summoned to con- sider fully the attitude which the organization and the country should assume towards the bill. It assembled in the Rotunda, Dublin, on April 21st and 2 2d, and was attended by over one thousand five hundred delegates. The decision arrived at was in accord with Mr. Parnell's policy. It condemned the bill as falling short of a final solution of the question, emphasized its defects in the proposed rent-fixing provisions, in the exclusion of leaseholders, etc., and demanded a meas- ure which should give legislative effect to the Land-League programme of landlord expropriation and the creation of an i__occupying proprietary. Messrs. Brennan and Dillon, with the more radical section of the convention, favored the rejec- tion of the bill as a makeshift measure only, but the more moderate attitude of Mr. Parnell was sustained by the ma- jority of the local representatives of the organization. On April 30th John Dillon was arrested, Dublin being pro- claimed under the coercion law on the same day. The arrest was fully expected, and his place was at once taken by Thomas Sexton, Mr. Brennan being still the general secretary of the league. Mr. Dillon had been one of the league's most uncom- promising advocates of the fighting policy of the organization, and the most frequent speaker of the more prominent leaders at the meetings throughout the country. His influence was second only to that of Parnell's at this time, while he was much more in sympathy with the extreme policy upheld by Brennan and his advanced lieutenants, who still ruled the or- ganization on new-departure lines and principles. Previous to his arrest, Mr. Dillon had declared in the House of Com- mons that were he the son of a tenant about to be evicted, he would only permit the vandal forces of the law to turn his mother and sisters out of their home after he had resisted, rifle in hand, such an invasion of the domestic rights of resi- dence in the tenant's own house. The speech necessarily created a sensation inside and out of Parliament, and Mr. Forster's action, shortly afterwards, in sending him to Kil- mainham only fulfilled public expectation. The land bill came to Ireland as a peace offering by Mr. Gladstone, but no olive-branch could have been more unfort- 318 THE LEAGUE AT BAY unate in its mission on account of the manner and circum- stances of its advent. It wore the appearance of a bribe to the tenants to throw over the league, and as an effort to divide the people by means of a great concession to one class and a savage coercion act for another. It was an illustration of England's incurable blundering in dealing with Irishmen in Ireland, and the popular feeling, which might easily have been modified, if not fully appeased, for the time by releasing the league prisoners, and thus giving the land bill a fair chance, was inflamed instead by an apparent attempt to force the remedial measure on the country through the hated methods of eviction, coercion, and the prison. What happened as a result of this blind policy is only what had occurred in every previous crisis of the kind. Arrests one day were followed by evictions the next and by outrages the day after. Boycot- ting was more rigorously enforced and extended. Cattle seized for non-payment of rent could not be sold. Bands of armed men visited the houses of grabbers for purposes of in- timidation, and collision between people and police were of almost daily occurrence. Mr. Brennan, the league secretary, was arrested early in May. It was believed in Dublin Castle that his removal from the active direction of the league would paralyze the intim- idatory power of the organization. It did not. All this had been fully anticipated months before, and the arrest of one leader only made way for another to fill his place ; and when the list of available men should be exhausted. Miss A.nna Parnell and her lieutenants, who were training all this time for the duties and ordeal of the work before them, would be ready to step into the breach. At New Pallas, County Limerick, at this time a force of two hundred police failed to effect an eviction owing to the presence of a body of five thousand people, among whom two hundred young men with revolvers were prepared, if attacked, to fire and fight. At Ballylanders, in the same county, some cattle had been seized and impounded for rent. A body of one hundred armed men from Tipperary raided the pound at midnight, rescued the cattle, and politely invited the occu- pants of the nearest constabulary barracks to come out and put the animals back. The police had the good sense to ig- nore the occurrence, and not to hear the challenge. A body of four hundred tenants in Mayo held a meeting and resolved to pay no rent until the " suspects" were liberated. Process- servers were waylaid near Abbeyfeale, Loughrea, Ballina, and other places, beaten by the people, and dispossessed of their documents. In two instances a new form of punishment for 319 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND these unfortunate officers of the law was adopted. The de- tested emissary of the courts was stripped of all his clothes, which were burned along with his papers, and then allowed to go his way. During these exciting times money continued to pour into the league from America. At one meeting in Dublin a sum of ;i£29oo was acknowledged since the previous weekly gath- ering, while the Irish World had remitted, up to May ist, a total of $100,000 to the funds of the league from the auxiliary branches in the United States. Up to June, 1881 , no less than one thousand two hundred of these branches had been formed throughout America. This is only an epitome of the work that was being done in Ireland by coercion and the league, and of the support ex- tended to the movement from abroad during the time Mr. Forster was filling the Irish prisons with suspects, and Mr. Gladstone was pushing his bill for the taking away of the power of the Irish landlords to fix the rents for their land in future and conferring upon a state tribunal the duty of ar- bitrating in this matter between owner and tenant. The bill, as it ultimately became law and has been since worked by the land commission, calls for a brief explanation i and analysis at this stage of our story. CHAPTER XXVI THE LAND ACT OF 1881 The immediate necessity for Mr. Gladstone's land bill was a condition of things in Ireland which bordered on social anarchy. This was largely, if not entirely, the deliberately planned work of the Land League. It was the result of a kind of guerilla social warfare which we had waged against a system of land laws that was known and felt to be vicious in its principle, intolerable in its effects upon the lives and labor of the tenantry of an agricultural country, and hated for its origin, history, and record by a Celtic people. Nothing less than a revolution could move English opinion to deal dras- tically with this hated system, and the work of what was a revolution, in everything except in armed insurrection, was successfully achieved when the greatest of England's prem- iers undertook to strike a mortal blow at Irish landlordism in constituting a state authority to replace that of the land- lords of Ireland in the right and power to fix the rents upon their tenants' holdings. The state was virtually to supplant the landlord. He was to be reduced to the position of an annuitant, but still carrying in his maimed position as a landlord enough of the odium attaching to an evil system to keep Celtic hatred of it alive and active, and offering new incentives for continued destruc- tive agitation in a partisan administration of the new land law. For what happened was this: Mr. Gladstone gave the potential benefits of the new system to the tenants of Ireland, while Dublin Castle invested the interpretation and adminis- tration of the land act in the landlords and their nominees. It was England's traditional way of spoiling the value and of marring the efficacy of a peace-making reform. The act was moulded, to some extent, upon the recom- mendations of the Bessborough commission, and these were, in a large measure, influenced by the work of the Land-League agitation, and grounded upon the economic facts which both Mr. Isaac Butt's movement and that led by Mr. Parnell had driven into the public mind. 21 321 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND The royal commission, presided over by Lord Bessborough, an Irish landlord, reported in March, 1881, that (i) Irish ten- ants were justly entitled to proprietary rights on the grounds of outlay on improvements embodied in and inseparable from the soil and of custom surviving in spite of legal denials of it ; (2) freedom of contract did not exist between landlord and tenant; (3) improvements on and equipments of farms were usually the work of the tenants; (4) raising of rents had ab- sorbed the value of the tenants' improvements; (5) conse- quently, insecurity and discontent rightly prevailed; while (6) the Land Act of 1870 had completely failed to protect tenants' property in their improvements. The commission recommended the repeal of former acts ; the simplification of the land laws; fixity of tenure at arbitrated rents; increased facilities for the purchase of their farms by the tenants; the establishment of local land registries, and offered the weighty opinion that unless the expected land bill was full and exhaustive, going to the root of the whole matter and settling it permanently, it would be better not to interfere at all. Mr. Gladstone's bill omitted many of the most important recommendations of the commission. After passing the House of Commons it was considerably mangled by the House of Lords. In its final shape the act was a miracle of com- plexity, and, as prophesied by John Dillon in the House of Commons, it proved a milch cow for the lawyers, although one of the recommendations of the Bessborough report was that the fixing of fair rents should be delegated to laymen and not to lawyers. The principle of the Land Law Act is that a fair, judicial rent is not to include the value of improvements made by the tenant or his predecessors — i.e., houses, drains, fences, farm roads, reclamation, planting, etc., and that until the con- trary is proved all improvements are to be presumed to be the tenant's property. In practice the full letting value of the farm, including all improvements, is estimated at different rates per acre accord- ing to the different qualities of land, and then the estimated annual value of the buildings is added to the aggregate value of the several parcels of land. Buildings, fences, roads, and the like are preliminaries essential to farm-land having any value for production, and therefore the buildings are really twice valued, once in the acreable value of the land and then as an addition. In practice there is no presumption that existing improve- ments are the tenant's, for he must claim beforehand in writ- 322 THE LAND ACT OF 1881 ing such improvements as he can prove by strictly legal evi- dence — by witnesses who have seen the work performed — and only gets credit for such improvements as he does so prove. Thus death or the absence of any possible witness deprives the tenant of the improvements which the letter of the law presumes to be his, and deaths are continually removing the evidence on which his claim to the improvements rests. A new-comer who inherits or buys a farm has no means of proving the making of improvements, and, therefore, the legal rules as to presumption being abrogated by the practice of the land court, the fair rent is fixed at the full value of the farm swollen by the method of adding the annual value of the buildings to the acreable rent. Rents are further kept up by making out conditions against reductions where the farm is near the sea and the tenant can fish or get sea-weed from the foreshore or gather it from the rocks at low tide or collect it floating, or if he makes kelp on the foreshore from weed which he cuts in deep water away from the shore, often at the risk of his life; or if he is near a town and can get manure, though he gets no credit for the in- creased fertility due to heavy manuring; or if he engages in any supplementary industry to the commonest farming and puts up a small mill. If he grows fruit he is charged an extra rent for all land so used, and gets no credit for the heavy ex- pense of planting fruit-trees and loss of profit till they come to maturity. If a farmer builds himself what the judges call "too good a house," he is subjected to a special rent for that. He is first at the expense of building, and then has to pay the landlord rent for the house to which the landlord never contributed a penny. These and many other subterfuges of a similar kind were the legal machinery created and applied by landlord influence in Dublin Castle and in Irish courts to deprive the tenants of the full benefits of Mr. Gladstone's great measure. The administration of the act was placed in the hands of three commissioners: John O'Hagan, a "sound lawyer," a poet, and, as events proved, a weak and pliant judge; E. F. Litton, a landlord and barrister, and J. E. Vernon, an agent and landlord. Under these were an army of assistant com- missioners of a most miscellaneous character — small landlords, agents, valuers for landlords, retired army officers, manufact- urers, millers, publicans, and broken-down farmers. It was said at the time there was hardly a landlords' adherent in Ireland who was capable of writing a letter of application 323 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND and able to secure a recommendation from any person of in- fluence who had not applied for these posts. There was no attempt to ascertain if these officials had the most elementary knowledge of surveying, agricultural law, political economy, or even acquaintance with the conditions of Irish farming. The act purported to give all yearly agricultural tenants (i) the right to sell their tenancies for the best price that could be got; (2) the right to have a fair rent fixed by the land courts at intervals of fifteen years; (3) security of tenure, inasmuch as that, so long as the rent was paid and the con- ditions of the tenancy observed, the tenant could not be evicted. No definition of the term "fair rent" was given, but what was known as the Healy clause provided that "no rent shall be allowed or made payable in respect of improve- ments made by the tenant or his predecessors." There were numbers of exceptions from and limitations on these provisions, so that it was estimated they would not ap- ply to more than two-thirds at most of the agricultural hold- ings in Ireland, estimated to be about five hundred thousand. But as to the tenancies included in the act, the language of common-sense and the intention of the act itself could scarcely be more explicit. The term "fair rent" could be no abstruse problem for an average legal mind. Writers on agriculture, political econo- mists, and practical men were all agreed that it meant the excess of profit after repayment of the whole cost of produc- tion, or the revenue derived from a farm after making allow- ance for working expenses, interest on capital invested, and a fair return for the labor and skill of the farmer. From such an estimate of the rent the annual value attrib- utable to the tenants' improvements was to be deducted, and the result would have been the fair rent under the land law. It is a maxim of interpretation in English law that it is not the duty of a court of law to be astute to find out ways in which the object of an act of the legislature may be defeated. But this is what the administrators of the land act and the courts, under Dublin Castle influence, set themselves to do. They disclaimed the possibility of legally knowing what a fair rent meant. So late as 1898, Lord Justice Walker, in the Court of Appeal, said, "I emphatically decline to give any definition of a fair rent." Lord Justice Fitzgibbon also de- clared, "It is most undesirable that we should go into the question of the definition of a fair rent." Thus hundreds of thousands of so-called "fair" rents were fixed, but those who fixed them consistently declined to say what they meant by the term or on what principles they acted. 324 THE LAND ACT OF 1881 As to the tenants' right to have his improvements exempted from rent, the decisions of the courts and the practice of the land commission repealed or nullified this provision and frus- trated the intentions of Parliament. In the final debate on the land bill Mr. Gladstone, opposing some limiting amendment, said: "The tenant's improvements were the tenant's own property, and he would not admit the principle that the time during which he had enjoyed them was any reason for their passing away from him." An improvement was defined by the Land Act of 1870 as any suitable work which added to the letting value of a hold- ing, and the same act provided that all improvements shall be deemed to have been made by the tenant. The judicial decisions under this act remained with the force of law, and while every decision which had proved futile to protect the tenant and was in favor of the landlord was adhered to, al- most every provision in the tenants' favor was ignored. Ten- ants could not get credit for any improvements made before 1850, but from this limit of time reclamation and permanent buildings were expressly excluded. They were, according to the law, to be deemed to belong to the tenants without refer- ence to when they were made. The rules and practice of the court defeated this plain and just presumption in favor of the tenant. He was obliged to claim in writing and prove by legal evidence the execution of improvements which the law distinctly said were to be deemed his. Estates Commissioner Bailey described to a select committee of the House of Com- mons in 1894 the practice of the courts as to improvements as follows : " In the case of reclamation and buildings they are still sub- ject to the actual proof of doing." "Unless he saw reclama- tion done, we rule that out." "We only allow the improve- ments that have been put on the notice and that have been proved in court. Tenants who have recently succeeded or who cannot get any neighbor as a witness who has seen the work done are shut out from any allowance." Thus valuable improvements which there was not a shadow of reason for thinking had been made by the landlord were adjudged to be his property and taken from the tenant. If a tenant built a superior house on a small holding it was held to be "unsuitable," and a special rent assessed upon it. If he set up a shop, or engaged in any business outside that of farming — even in fruit and vegetable culture — he was sub- jected to an extra rent in the interest of the landlord and in the teeth of the land act. In 1887 a royal commission reported that one hundred and 325 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND seventy-six thousand rents fixed during the first five years of the act's operations were too high, that the increased cost of cultivation and low prices had made them practically im- possible. The land courts which Dublin Castle had set up had ignored the agricultural depression, and had included the value of the tenants' improvements in the rents. "Our valuers," said Judge O'Hagan, "valued the land as it is, supposing it were in the hands of the landlord to be let" — i.e., at its competition value. On the eve of his departure from the land commission Judge Bewley admitted that "in the early days of the land commission rents were fixed on consideration of the length- ened period of agricultural prosperity that had existed up to 1879." In 1887, coerced by events and the report of the royal commission, the Conservative government passed another land act admitting leaseholders to the land courts and em- powering the land commission to vary rents "having regard to the difference in prices affecting agriculture." This was interpreted. Judge O'Hagan dissenting, to mean a reduction of rent in direct proportion to the fall of prices, as estimated by the land commission, but without reference to the increased cost of production in labor and taxes. The general result was a very small and inadequate reduction in rents for the three following years. From the decisions of the sub-commission courts there was an appeal to the chief commission, whose decision on value was final, but questions of law might be taken to the High Court of Appeal. In 1894 a select committee of the House of Commons re- ported that the Court of Appeal's decision, "that the direction of the act not to allow any rent in respect of the tenants' im- provements must be taken to mean not what the language of the act conveys to the ordinary mind, but something differ- ent and much more complex," ^ had left the tenants' interest undefined and unprotected. There was no common under- standing of the law nor anything approaching uniformity of practice. The High Court of Appeal's judgment in favor of the landlord was improved on by the land commission courts. The select committee, summing up the matter, said: "Your committee can come to no other conclusion than that the general practice of the sub-commission courts has been, and is, to deny to the tenant that share in the value of his im- provements to which the Court of Appeal declared him to be * Morley Committee Report (vii.). 326 THE LAND ACT OF 1881 entitled, and to leave out of account that interest of the ten- ant to which the statute expressly directed the courts to have regard." ^ The tenant had no chances in the appeal court, yet he was driven by the landlord's appeals into appealing himself, for if he did not appeal the court assumed and frequently stated that the tenant was perfectly satisfied with the decision of the court below, and if he was satisfied the court inferred that the rent must be too low. The landlord's right of appeal on value deterred numbers of tenants from applying to have their rents fixed, and drove them to agree to the landlord's terms. The select committee of 1894 reported that appeals entailed grievous delays, pro- tracted uncertainty, and imposed heavy costs on a humble class of suitors. Appeals which added only £27,87, to rents amount- ing to ;^466,87i must have cost, the committee said, the state and the tenants combined at least ;^25o,ooo, or about ;^io5 for each £1 added to the rent. Even in the sub-commission courts the cost to each tenant swallowed up on an average a year of the benefit gained. Royal commissions and select committees had repeatedly recommended the consolidation of the Irish land laws, con- sisting of several complex and intricate statutes and a mass of undigested decisions, in one consistent and intelligible act drawn in such language, form, and manner that landlords and tenants should be able to discover their respective rights and duties. This has never been attempted. In 1896, coerced by the exposures of injustice made by the select committee of 1894, the Conservative government passed another act which purported to remedy the wrongs, particularly as to tenants' improvements, which the select committee had brought to light. In the hands of its administrators this act proved as futile as its predecessors. Tenants had still to claim and strictly prove by the evidence of witnesses who had seen the work done the improvements which the letter and intention of the law said were to be deemed, until the contrary was proved, to be the tenant's own property. The chief commission was the final authority on questions of value, and gave no reasons for its decisions. Encouraged by these decisions, the land- lords' appeals increased, and the last state became worse than the first for those tenants who had the temerity to appeal from the sub-commission to the higher tribunal. This brief examination of the act of 1881 is given to justify * Morley Committee Report. 327 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the action of the Land League and Mr. Parnell in refusing to support the second reading of the Gladstone bill, not with the intention of having it rejected, but as a protest against its in- complete and unsatisfactory character. Time has completely vindicated this policy. Within twelve months of the passing of this bill into law a prominent Tory leader, the late Mr. W. H. Smith, submitted a motion to the House of Commons for an Irish land-purchase scheme with which to solve completely the land problem. Inside of two years an additional act had to be passed to deal with the accumulated arrears of the pre-land-act period. In 1885 the Ashbourne Purchase Act was passed by a Tory gov- ernment. In 1887 the Unionist government passed an amending act to that of 1881, in order to admit leaseholders who were excluded from its provisions by Mr. Gladstone's measure, despite the appeals and protests of the Irish members. In 1 89 1 a further purchase bill was introduced by Mr. Arthur Balfour; in 1896 another by Mr. Gerald Balfour; until, in 1903, the Wyndham act became law, which had for its de- clared purpose the complete ending of the whole landlord system in Ireland and the creation of an occupying proprie- tary, the very proposals of reform drawn up and promulgated at the Land-League convention held in the Rotunda, Dublin, in April, 1880. The Land League's official judgment upon the bill of 1881, before it became law, was given in a report upon the meas- ure to the convention which assembled in Dublin to pro- nounce upon the merits of Mr. Gladstone's scheme. This judgment has been amply sustained by the experiences which began on the day the act became law, and culminated on November i, 1903, when the existing purchase act came into force. The report, as abridged, said: "We have pointed out some of the principal defects in the bill and have proposed amendments thereto, but no matter how amended it will be, after all, an imperfect measure. It is impossible to place the relations between landlord and ten- ant on any sound economic basis in Ireland. It is impossible to sustain it on any other basis than that of bayonets. With us landlordism means confiscation. The people of Ireland will never acknowledge any statute of limitation in a matter of injustice. Their basis is their inherent right to the land of their country. They consider the longer the injustice is con- tinued the greater is the wrong inflicted; and if they seem to admit the principle of landlord compensation they do so not as admitting the landlords' right, but because they are willing to accept a peaceful solution of the question. They are pre- 328 THE LAND ACT OF 1881 pared to make concessions to-day; to-morrow they may in- sist on rigid justice." The highest reputation made in connection with the passing of the great act of 1881, next to Mr. Gladstone's, was that of Mr. T. M. Healy. This was a general recognition by the pub- lic and not a mere comment or belief in Ireland. Mr. Glad- stone freely acknowledged the extraordinary ability shown by one of the youngest men in the then House of Commons, both in the legal grasp of all the complex details of a volumi- nous measure of reform and in the sound statesmanship which he displayed in every stage of the bill's passage through the House of Commons. "The Healy Clause," as Clause IV. came to be known, was said by some critics at the time, and subsequently, to have been, in the matter of chief inspiration, the "Russell" clause, or the work of the late lord chief - justice of England. To clear up all doubt on this point, I once asked Sir Charles Rus- sell (during The Times commission) whether there was any truth in this statement. " Not the slightest," was the instant and frank reply. "Healy was the real author of the clause. Others may have had the same idea in their minds, but the merit of putting it in the act belongs to him." CHAPTER XXVII THE NO-RENT MANIFESTO The policy of exasperation was continued in Ireland during the summer and autumn by both sides, or rather by the three forces to the continued conflict — Mr. Forster's coercion policy, the Land League, and the landlords. Arrests were made every day of persons known to be "suspected" by Mr. For- ster's landlord allies of being local leaders. The league struck back by its meetings of defiance, boycotting, denunciation of grabbers, a destructive criticism of the land bill, and by ceas- ing to reprobate outrages or to curb in any way the angry passions of the people. When to this state of things were added the employment of military forces in the carrying-out • of the hateful work of evictions, and the fact that these measures were also of frequent occurrence, it is not surprising to find the following despatch from Ireland recorded in the British press for June 7, 1881 : "The news from Ireland to-day is disquieting. The con- dition of affairs is little short of actual civil war. In County Cork the excitement is great. The roads are torn up with pickaxes and made impassable, and the telegraph wires are cut in many directions. Ballydehob and Schull are inaccessi- ble by the ordinary roads, which are broken up, and the bridges are pulled down. Five hundred foot-soldiers, twenty dragoons, and seventy service corps men, with one gun, have been sent to the scene from the West." A secret circular issued by Dublin Castle to constabulary officers about this time revealed a state of demoralization among the police which greatly disquieted Mr. Forster. The document made this confession: "It is most difficult to conceive that the police, with the local knowledge they possess of the characters and habits of the people among whom they live, are not oftener in a posi- tion to know at least some of those present at nightly out- rages; but if it is difficult to believe this, it is still more difficult to understand that they fail in so many instances to give grounds of reasonable suspicion against any one. The most 330 THE NO-RENT MANIFESTO active leaders and instigators of popular movements of every description, and their respective characters, are well known to the police ( !), and the inspector-general is, therefore, unable to understand how it so often happens that on the occasion of an outrage admittedly committed at the instigation of the orders referred to the police officers and their constables state they cannot attach any grounds of reasonable suspicion against any individual — even an inciter to outrage!" Two men, named Maloney and Gaffney,were killed in an en- counter with the police at an eviction scene near Bodyke, County Clare, in June. Reprisals were taken on grabbers and agents elsewhere, and midnight outrages commenced to grow in number, with only a passive feeling of savage indifference obtaining among the people at deeds which would otherwise occasion national regret. Liberty was struck down. Lead- ers were in jail without trial, landlords were employing sol- diers as military bailiffs, and Mr. Forster was only reaping the fruits of his great initial mistake in believing that the sons of the spiritless peasants of 1846-47 could be readily put down by a show of force and imprisonment in 1881. By this time one or two priests had been arrested and im- prisoned, Father Eugene Sheehy, of County Limerick, being the first. He was very popular among the people, an earnest Land-Leaguer, and a man of conspicuous ability. He was sent to prison as a common malefactor, and this outrage upon a clergyman added more fuel to the already inflammable ele- ments of progressive disorder, A motion was brought forward in the House of Commons by Mr. Justin McCarthy near the end of the parliamentary session denouncing these increasing imprisonments and de- manding the release of the suspects. Mr. Parnell, in support- ing this resolution, made a vehement attack upon the Glad- stone ministry, declaring them to be tyrants and oppressors in keeping men in prison who were the real authors of the land bill. He was suspended for this language on the initia- tive of the prime-minister, and left the House of Commons amid the cheers of his party. He crossed at once to Ireland and took in hand the direction of the campaign carried on by the league. The league organized a series of county conventions to con- sider a plan suggested by Mr. Parnell for the testing of the fair-rent provisions of the Gladstone act in the land courts. This plan proposed that a certain number of tenants, from selected estates, should make applications to have judicial rents fixed. The working of the new system could be tried in this manner, and the manifest defects of the act could be 33^ THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND demonstrated so as to emphasize the need for an immediate and amending measure before all the tenants should be tied down to the terms of a fifteen years' contract. This proposal enraged both Mr. Gladstone and the chief secretary. It prom- ised to prolong the agony of the existing state of things and to throw discredit upon the labors of the British Parliament during the session. The plan did not get a fair chance when the time for testing it arrived. A class of Ulster tenants who had given no help to the Land-League movement rushed into the land courts, and set an example, baited with an average twenty-per-cent. reduction of old rents, which was to prove too tempting for the mass of those who hungered for even a small abatement and for the security offered them in a ju- dicial lease of fifteen years. Those tenants, however, who acted thus precipitately and unwisely were to live to regret that they had not followed Mr. Parnell's advice. Another rebuff, also from Ulster, came as some consolation to Mr. Forster in his life-and-death fight with the league. Mr. Litton, who had represented County Tyrone in the House of Commons, was made land commissioner under the new act, and a contest for the vacated seat became inevitable. Mr, Thomas Dickson, an Ulster Liberal, came forward as the min- isterial candidate. Mr. Parnell recommended the Rev. Har- old Rylett, Unitarian minister of Moneyrea, County Down, an Englishman, but an enthusiastic Land-Leaguer, who was act- ing at the time as provincial organizer for Ulster. The elec- tion was fought with all available forces on both sides. The Protestant farmers gave their support to the Gladstonian representative, while some of the Catholic priests refused to help the league standard-bearer because he was a Protestant minister. Mr. Rylett was defeated, and the prestige of the league was much shaken in the North in consequence. A new force in popular politics came into existence at this period in the appearance of a weekly paper called United Ireland. It had been purchased under the name of The Flag of Ireland from Richard Pigott, editor and proprietor of this and another weekly paper known as TJie Irishman. These papers, as already mentioned in the chapter on " The New Departure," were thought by some to be the organs of the extreme or Fenian body on account of being more read and contributed to by advanced nationalists than any other newspapers in Ireland. Mr. Parnell had suggested their purchase earlier in the year, owing to their hostility to the Land-League move- ment, and negotiations were conducted by Mr. Patrick Egan with Pigott for their sale. He was finally bought out, and the future forger of the Parnell letters thus ended his career 332 THE NO-RENT MANIFESTO as a Dublin journalist. Mr. William O'Brien, a native of Mallow, County Cork, and known as one of the ablest of Irish journalists, was chosen editor of the new organ, and his mark- ed capacity as a vigorous writer, his great energy of character, and thorough sympathy with Mr. Parnell's views on national and land questions soon made the new paper a valiant and powerful recruit in the fight against landlordism and coercion. Mr. Parnell was now marked down for arrest. He was bid- ding defiance to the government and its coercion act in every speech, and rousing the country to a fever heat of excitement. He swept from the contest in Tyrone to County Cork, and back to Dublin, obtaining, on the occasion of a visit to the city from his home at Avondale, a reception which surpassed in numbers and enthusiasm anything that had been seen in the Irish metropolis for a generation. This was the culminating event in the electrical situation. The crisis so long anticipated was at hand. His power in Ireland was deemed to be so great that Mr. Forster resolved to grapple with both the league and its leader, and to crush both or be crushed himself in the at- tempt. Mr. Gladstone had recently spoken at Leeds on the alarm- ing state of affairs in Ireland, and in menacing words, obviously addressed to the Irish leader, declared that "the resources of civilization had not yet been exhausted " in the efforts of the government to deal effectively with Irish disorder. On the following Sunday Mr. Parnell attended a great league demonstration in Wexford, and "spoke back" at the English prime-minister in mocking and contemptuous defiance, de- claring that the Leeds threats resembled the shallow courage of a whistling but really frightened wayfarer whose way home at midnight lay through a chiirch-yard. The reply to this was the arrest of Mr. Parnell on October 13th, an unlucky day and month for the league leader. The arrest was so timed that Mr. Gladstone, who was attending a banquet in the Guildhall, London, was enabled to bring into his speech a piece of histrionic display which made a sensational impres- sion upon the festive assembly. When nearing the end of a denunciation of Mr. Parnell, his lieutenants and labors in Ireland, a telegram was handed, as prearranged, to the prime- minister. A witness of the scene which followed thus de- scribed it in the press: "The vast audience assembled in the Guildhall seemed for a moment startled and breathless. Then, with a common im- pulse, the whole audience rose and waved their handkerchiefs and sent forth a ringing cheer, which was again and again renewed. Silence having been restored, the premier proceed- 333 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ed. He said: 'Within these few moments I have been in- formed that the first step towards the vindication of law and of order and of the rights of property and of the freedom of the law — [cheers] — of the first element of political life and civiliza- tion — the first step has been taken with the arrest of the man who entirely from motives which I do not challenge, which I cannot examine, and with which I have nothing to do, who entirely has made himself beyond all others prominent in the attempt to destroy the authority of the law and to substi- tute what could end in being nothing more nor less than anarchical oppression exercised upon the people of Ireland.'" This dramatic stage-play, while it pleased the anti-Irish English mind, created a strong feeling of disgust and anger among less vindictive Englishmen. Mr. Joseph Cowen, M.P., who was one of Mr. Gladstone's countrymen and party, in- dignantly protested against England following in the footsteps _of Austria and other European powers in the arbitrary arrest and imprisonment of political leaders. His protest found expression in these eloquent editorial comments in the New- castle CJironiclc, Mr. Cowen's paper, the day following the Guildhall speech: "They have made another call upon the 'resources of civ- ilization.' ' Resources of civilization,' forsooth! If that were not a thoughtless, it was a shameless phrase. In this country we have not been accustomed to call those civilized resources which filled the Hapsburg dungeons and the Neapolitan prisons, which in the days of the Second Empire made every French jail a chamber of horrors, which charged the German strongholds with the cherished leaders of the people and God's own priests, and which are now darkening the highways that lead to the Siberian mines. Yet those examples, however much they may vary in the degree of rasping cruelty by which they have been carried out, are, in principle and spirit, exact counterparts of the repressive measures now employed to keep Ireland in order. In folly they do not differ one iota, while in ultimate failure they have been, are, will, and deserve to be all alike." The outspoken Englishman forgot his Irish history in going on the Continent for examples of political tyranny which should have stayed, in the lessons of their ugly motives and results, the hand of Mr. Gladstone. Earlier than Hapsburg infamy,^ or than Neapolitan prison tortures for opponents * " In the last volume of this calendar it was shown that Lord Burgh had entertained an offer for the killing of the Earl of Tyrone. On June 25. 1598, Fenton, writing to Cecil, hints at a like method for disposing of the rebel chief: 'For now the axe is laid to the tree, I hope 334 THE NO-RENT MANIFESTO of despotic rule, Mr. Cowen might have instanced the recorded assassinations of Irish leaders on the direct instigation of English ministers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of the killing and torturing of others in more recent times, together with the legal degradation of Irish political offences to the level of a felony in 1848, 1867, and 1870. It was no unique experience for an Irish leader to find himself a prisoner at the hands of English law in Ireland. It was not the act itself, but the inconsistent folly of it on Mr. Gladstone's part, which was the greater matter of surprise. The arrest naturally created wide-spread and intense ex- citement throughout Ireland. Mr. Forster had closed with his great adversary in this unfair way, and it was now for the league and the country to show the chief secretary how futile his most vigorous measures were in the struggle he was wag- ing against a mighty organization that had been so magnifi- cently officered by Parnell and his captains. On October i8th, five days after Mr. Parnell had been in- terned in Kilmainham, the central branch of the Land League held its meeting in Dublin. The Rev. Father Cantwell, Arch- bishop Croke's administrator, was in the chair, and from this meeting the following momentous manifesto was issued: " Fellow-countrymen ! — The hour to try your souls and to redeem your pledges has arrived. The executive of the Na- tional Land League, forced to abandon the policy of testing the land act, feels bound to advise the tenant-farmers of Ire- land from this forth to pay no rents under any circumstances some branches will be cut ofif ere it be long; and it is high time that either the corrupt trunk of the tree be cut down or some of his principal boughs be shred off.' On August 4th, in another letter to Cecil, Fenton points still more clearly to assassination : ' For the other greater matter mentioned in your honor's letter, though I know it will be difficult to draw one dog to bite of another, and more desperate to find an axe to strike down at one blow a great oak that hath grown up in many years, yet I will cause the ford to be sounded to see if there may be found a passage that way.' A Scot, writing to Cecil, tells him of a body-guard of two hundred musketeers kept by the Earl of Tyrone. The greater part of these were 'Argyle men, naturally avariciovis, bloody, and covetous, who for money will refuse to enterpi^ise or per- form no murder.' The Scot 'pauds' his head that he will get Tyrone killed by these men, if Cecil will only say Amen, fiat. Finall3% on October 2 ist, Ormonde put the matter to Cecil in plain words, thus: ' Your father, before his death, did signify to me her Majesty's pleasure to give head money to such as would cut off any of the principal traitors in action, according to the quality of the rebel to be cut off, which warrant, I pray you, may be now renewed, hoping I may find some willing to take that service in hand.'" — State Papers, 1598-99. Edited by Mr. Atkinson. 335 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND to their landlords until the government relinquishes the ex- isting system of terrorism and restores the constitutional rights of the people. Do not be daunted by the removal of your leaders. Your fathers abolished tithes by the same method without any leaders at all, and with scarcely a shadow of the magnificent organization that covers every portion of Ireland to-day. Do not suffer yourselves to be intimidated by threats of military violence. It is as lawful to refuse to pay rents as it is to receive them. Against the passive resistance of an en- tire population military power has no weapons. Do not be wheedled into compromise of any sort by the dread of evic- tion. If you only act together in the spirit to which, within the last two years, you have countless times solemnly pledged your vows, they can no more evict a whole nation than they can imprison them. The funds of the National Land League will be poured out unstintedly for the support of all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. "Our exiled brothers in America may be relied upon to contribute, if necessary, as many millions of money as they have contributed thousands to starve out landlordism and bring English tyranny to its knees. You have only to show that you are not unworthy of their boundless sacrifices in your cause. No power on earth except faint -heartedness on your own part can defeat you. Landlordism is already staggering under the blows which you have dealt it amid the applause of the world. One more crowning struggle for your land, your homes, your lives — a struggle in which you have all the mem- ories of your race, all the hopes of your children, all the sacri- fices of your imprisoned brothers, all your cravings for rent- enfranchised land, for happy homes and national freedom to inspire you — one more heroic effort to destroy landlordism at the very source and fount of its existence, and the system which was and is the curse of your race and of your existence will have disappeared forever. The world is watching to see whether all your splendid hopes and noble courage will crum- ble away at the first threat of a cowardly tyranny. You have to choose between throwing yourselves upon the mercy of England and taking your stand by the organization which has once before proved too strong for English despotism; you have to choose between all-powerful unity and impotent dis- organization; between the land for the landlords and the land for the people. We cannot doubt your choice. Every tenant-farmer of Ireland is to-day the standard-bearer of the flag unfurled at Irishtown, and can bear it to a glorious vic- tory. Stand together in the face of the brutal and cowardly enemies of your race. Pay no rents under any pretext. 336 THE NO-RENT MANIFESTO Stand passively, firmly, fearlessly by while the armies of England may be engaged in their hopeless struggle against a spirit which their weapons cannot touch. Act for yourselves if you are deprived of the counsels of those who have shown you how to act. No power of legalized violence can extort one penny from your purses against your will. If you are evicted, you shall not suffer; the landlord who evicts will be a ruined pauper, and the government which supports him with its bayonets will learn in a single winter how powerless is armed force against the will of a united, determined, and self- reliant nation. " (Signed) Charles S. Parnell, President, Kilmainham. Jail ; A.J. Kettle, Hon. Sec, Kilmainham Jail; Michael Davitt, Hon. Sec, Portland Prison; Thomas Bren- NAN, Hon. Sec, Kilmainham Jail; John Dillon, Head Organizer, Kilmainham Jail; Thomas Sexton, Head Organizer, Kilmainham Jail; Patrick Egan, Treasurer, Paris. " October i8th." This was Mr. Parnell's "retort courteous" in action to the premier's speech and Mr. Forster's despotic proceeding. Kil- mainham had struck back at Dublin Castle, and the issue was thus fiercely knit in a combat which admitted of no quarter. It was an act of desperation, prompted by the high-handed policy which had superseded the ordinary powers of the law in order to strike down an adversary. It suggested, too, a spirit of retaliation more in keeping wHh the temper of a man unfairly fought by his assailants, who strikes back blindly and passionately as best he can, than a blow of cool and cal- culating purpose. As already explained, I had urged this extreme step in February. The coercion act was not then "law." Neither was the land act. Both, however, were in the region of certain eventuality — one to imprison all the league leaders, independent of all juries or questions of guilt, so as to give the landlords a clear field, and the other to offer some kind of a concession to the tencints so as to detach them from the league to the consequent relief of the forces of law and order. The country was efficiently organized at the time, for even so revolutionary a plan and so desperate a struggle as would inevitably ensue, with at least a thousand of the truest local leaders any Irish movement of modern times ever had ready to do and dare in so promising a fight as a life-or- death combat with landlordism offered to the Irish race, with England involved in her South-African entanglements. That " 337 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND was the time and the true revolutionary opportunity for a no - rent manifesto, with every available leader at his post in Ireland. Had the blow fallen on Mr. Forster's position and policy and landlord allies at that promising period it would have crushed the rotten system of landlordism to the ground, and in all probability DubUn Castle rule along with it. In the October following, with the leader of the movement him- self as the chief secretary's prisoner and the new land system coming into operation, the no-rent shell fired from Kilmain- ham would only demoralize and could not explode. Its fuse had fallen off. Mr. Forster promptly replied to the shot from the prison by proclaiming the Land League an illegal organization and ordering its suppression. This, too, was a glaringly uncon- stitutional act. Two state trials had failed to convict the league of being a violation of any statute law, and another in- dictment and trial would have been the ordinary course of procedure against a powerful political combination. But Mr. Forster was fighting for his official life and reputation, and, as he sincerely believed, for the protection of law and order against avowed enemies. It was to be a fight to a finish, and he was prepared to use, without scruple, the strongest measures at his disposal. On October 20th, two days after the no - rent manifesto had been flung in his face by his chief prisoners, the league was "suppressed" by order of the Lord Lieutenant. The document which ordered this act was posted all over Ireland, and read as follows: "by the lord lieutenant of IRELAND "a PROCLAMATION "Whereas an association styling itself the Irish National Land League has existed for some time past, assuming to interfere with the Queen's subjects in the free exercise of their lawful rights, and especially to control the relations between landlords and tenants in Ireland. "Now we hereby wa.rn all persons that the said asso- ciation, styling itself the Irish National Land League, or by whatsoever other name it may be called or known, is an un- lawful and criminal association, and that all meetings and assemblies to carry out or promote its designs or purposes are alike unlawful and criminal, and will be prevented, and, if necessary, dispersed by force. "And we do hereby call on all loyal and well-affected sub- jects of the Crown to aid us in upholding and maintaining the 338 THE NO-RENT MANIFESTO authority of the law and the supremacy of the Queen in this her realm of Ireland. "Dated Dublin Castle, this 20th day of October, 1881. "By his Excellency's commands, "W. E. FORSTER." It was now war to the knife. The fortunes of the fight were seemingly all on the side of the man armed with the big battalions, the power of arbitrary arrest, and the keys of all the prisons of Ireland. Once again, however, Mr. Forster had wofully miscalculated the resources of Irish resistance. He had his chief antagonists under lock and key, an army of fifty thousand troops and military police at his command, and a state of siege at his disposal, only to find himself confronted by a quiet -looking, slender, and handsome young girl, but armed with a will and purpose of iron, at the head of a body of brave Irish girls and matrons who had quietly taken up the work of the "suppressed" league at the offices at 39 Upper O'Connell Street, Dublin, just where the events of the pre- vious day had left it. The crisis contemplated when the Ladies' Land League was formed eight months previously had arrived, and the force which was to pull Mr. Forster and his coercion down was now called into action. Shortly before the arrest of Parnell, the chief secretary, in a letter to Mr. Gladstone, admitted where the weak spot in his position lay. "Unless we can strike down the boycotting weapon Parnell will beat us, for men, rather than let themselves be ruined, will obey him and disobey the law. I send you a most true description of this weapon as spoken in Mr. Parnell 's presence at Maryborough. ... It would be useless and weak merely to continue arresting local Land - Leaguers and to let off the Dublin leaders, especially Sexton and Parnell. If we strike a blow at all it must be a sufficiently hard blow to paralyze the action of the league, and for this purpose I think we must make a simultaneous arrest of the central leaders and of those of local bodies who conduct the boycotting. ... I see no alternative unless we allow the Land League to govern Ire- land, to determine what rent shall be paid, what decision by the commission shall be obeyed, what farms shall be taken, what grass-lands shall be allowed. What shops shall be kept open, and what laws shall be obeyed."^ It was an instance of what may be termed exquisite dramatic irony that on the very day when Mr. Forster struck what '■ Wemyss Reid, Life of W. E. Forster, pp. 257-8. 339 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND was expected to be his "paralyzing blow" at the league, in the total "suppression" of that body by proclamation, the first ssesion of the new land commission court opened in Dublin. The court crier, in reading the ofificial notice which authorized the proceedings, blurted out the words, "This Land League court is now declared open!" to the great amusement of both officials and public alike. In one sense the blundering clerk was not far wrong. The court, with its functions and its labors, was the result of the work of the organization which was that day declared illegal by Dublin Castle. Boycotting, more systematic and relentless than had ever yet been practised, was the weapon with which the Ladies' Land League were to fight Mr. Forster, and to beat him. The responsible league leaders now in prison had to some extent checked, where that was possible, extreme boycotting. The line was drawn at violent intimidation. Outrages were never encouraged except by eccentric characters or wild men who held no responsible position and exercised no influence, while the meetings of the local branches gave some stability to the movement in rural districts, and offered opportunities for venting angry feeling by the channel of speeches and resolutions. Mr. Forster put these restraining powers and influences down in placing in prison those who wielded them, with the result that for the one thousand or more local leaders whom he had arrested as suspects, double that number of less careful and less scrupulous men volunteered, in one form or another, to carry on the fight of the league on more extreme lines, under the encouragement lent to their efforts by a body of patriotic ladies in Dublin led by the sister of the imprisoned national leader. It was neither the business nor desire of the ladies' league to inquire too closely into the motives or methods of those who, driven from open combination and public meetings, resorted to such expedients as were available in carrying on the fighting policy of the movement. That was Mr. Forster's doing, and the repression of such acts was his concern and not that of Miss Parnell. Her purpose and policy were to render Ireland ungovernable by coercion, and this she and her lieutenants succeeded completely in doing. Their system of operations was perfect in its way. Thanks to the continued generous help from America, and also from Australia, they were supplied with abundance of money by Mr. Egan from Paris. Agents passed to and fro between the treasurer of the league and the new league government. Organizers of both sexes were employed to distribute copies 340 THE NO-RENT MANIFESTO of the no -rent manifesto through Ireland, to visit the new- local leaders, to organize opposition at process-serving and evictions, and to encourage and stimulate resistance and intimidation. The evicted families were looked after, as usual, and the relatives of suspects were supported by grants from the central office. No district in which some form of opposition had not been offered to an evicting land- lord or obnoxious agent would receive grants from Dublin until the weapon of the boycott was applied. Districts were known as "courageous" and "timid" as they merited this distinction by their record. The payment of rent was made an offence against the league, and was denounced as the surest means of keeping the suspects in prison. A locality with a grabbed farm was deemed to be un- worthy of any recognition, and no matter how serious the nature of an agrarian crime was with which a person or persons stood accused, the necessary legal defence was prompt- ly provided by the ladies' league. In fact, under the very nose of Mr. Forster, and in utter defiance of his most strenuous application of the arbitrary powers at his disposal, everything recommended, attempted, or done, in the way of defeating the ordinary law and asserting the unwritten law of the league, except the holding of meetings, was more systematically carried out under the direction of the ladies' executive than by its predecessor in existence and authority. The result was more anarchy, more illegality, more outrages, until it began to dawn on some of the official minds that the imprisonment of the male leaders had only rendered con- fusion worse confounded for Dublin Castle, and made the country infinitely more ungovernable under the sway of their lady successors. All hunting was stopped. Tenants going into the land courts were denounced. Secret league meetings were en- couraged, until finally, and as heretofore, Archbishop McCabe had once again to come forward and to make the customary impotent intervention in behalf of a broken and beaten "law and order," which popular opinion had now learned to despise all the more for the character of some of its sup- porters. Mr. Forster's position became hopeless and impossible. He arrested half a dozen ladies — a Miss Hodnett, in County Kerry, for exhibiting a copy of the no-rent manifesto in her window, and Miss Hannah Reynolds, a handsome young girl and league emissary, for organizing boycotting. This action of the chief secretary's drove public opinion in Ireland into fury. Hundreds of young girls were eager for arrest 341 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND in such a cause when to be a " suspect " became the passport to a popular recognition as a heroine. Would Mr. Forster imprison Miss Parnell and her council of fair and formidable conspirators at 39 Upper O'Conneli Street, Dublin? A bare rumor to this effect resulted in forty ladies "camping" each night for a whole week on the premises, ready, anxious, eager to follow Miss Reynolds, Miss O'Connor (sister of Mr. T. P. O'Connor), and others of their friends to the prisons set apart for the sisters and daughters of Irish political ad- versaries of English coercion under the ministerial rule of England's greatest statesman and most outspoken opponent of despotic measures against the rights of combination, free speech, and public meeting — under Turkish or any other .except English government. Mr. Forster showed all the grit and resource of a brave Englishman in this emergency. Men were after him to kill him. He was in daily peril of his life, but he grimly faced all dangers, including that of ultimate defeat and disgrace, rather than give in. He asked for more arbitrary powers, and in doing so frightened Mr. Gladstone. Where was this coercion to stop? The only logical step onward would be martial law, and that was a mad development of repressive force from which he shrank. Mr. Forster's pluck and daring were to the credit of his personal courage, but it had no effect upon the steady, per- sistent, and equally grim resolve of the band of young ladies in Dublin to keep alive, encourage, and direct the agencies of boycotting, intimidation, and of disorder which operated day and night at hundreds of points throughout the land against the hapless chief secretary's blind and blundering plan of repressive coercion. Finally, Mr. Gladstone had to acknowl- edge in the House of Commons, in the hearing of the world, that the then state of Ireland had had no parallel in the history of fifty years, while on March 25, 1882, the London Times, reflecting English feeling, hung out a virtual flag of distress in making this admission of defeat for all the forces and powers behind England's beaten landlord garrison in Ireland : "The Irishman has played his cards well, and is making a golden harvest. He has beaten a legion of landlords, dowagers, and encumbrancers of all sorts out of the field, driving them into workhouses. He has baffled the greatest of legislatures and outflanked the largest of British armies in getting what he thinks his due. Had all this wonderful advance been made at the cost of some other country, Eng- land would have been the first to offer chaplets, testimonials, 342 THE NO-RENT MANIFESTO and ovations to the band of patriots who had achieved it. As the sufferers, in a material sense, are chiefly of EngHsh extraction, we cannot help a little soreness. Yet, reason compels us to admit that the Irish have dared and done as they never did before." Previous to Mr. Parnell's arrest and the proclamation of the league in October, 1881, Mr. T. P. O'Connor and Mr. T. M. Healy were deputed to proceed to the United States to assist the auxiliary league in America to collect funds. The choice of envoys was a happy one. Mr. O'Connor was then and is still one of the foremost platform speakers in public life, while his colleague had the prestige of the big reputation he had earned in Parliament during the passage of the land bill into law, along with a clear and earnest style of speaking which is agreeable to American audiences. They were sub- sequently joined in their mission by the Rev. Eugene Sheehy, after his release from a short imprisonment. The delegation visited the chief cities from New York to San Francisco and from Canada to New Orleans, and gathered in for the league funds a large sum of money before returning home. Conventions of the American league had been held in Buffalo and Chicago during 1881, to which fuller reference will be made hereafter. Canada and Australia had each contributed financial help in the interval, and branches of the league were formed in all the chief cities in these colonies and in New Zealand. This continued encouragement from the exiled Irish was an important factor in creating the condition of things in Ireland which led to the overthrow of Forster and coercion. Our people felt they were not fighting without powerful allies, while Mr. Gladstone saw clearly that this external help rendered the task of putting down the league movement more difficult of execution. But if the league could secure this assistance from abroad for a warfare against English law and authority in Ireland, might not England's prime- minister seek an ally abroad, too? He did; but this part of our story will be told in a chapter on "Rome and Ireland," when developments later in time than the intrigue with the Vatican against the Land League in the very crisis of its existence will call for examination. It will suffice to say here that it was this intrigue which procured a cardinal's hat for Archbishop McCabe and induced his Holiness Pope Leo to address to the Irish bishops a letter in January, 1882, in which the league and its policy were censured, and the people admonished "not to cast aside the obedience due to their lawful rulers," Mr. Forster being one of these. The 343 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Irish people were also told by the Pope, "We have confidence in the justice of the men who are placed at the head of the state, and who certainly, for the most part, have great prac- tical experience combined with prudence in civil affairs." The Irish hierarchy were thus induced to issue a corre- sponding manifesto, and to this extent to do Mr. Gladstone's work under cover of pastoral admonitions to their flocks not to refuse to pay "just debts," not to injure a neighbor's (i.e., a grabber's) property, "not to resist the law" — Mr. Forster's law — or otherwise to molest the agents or auxiliaries of a coercion government. Neither from Rome nor from the bishops as a body did a word of condemnation come against the despotic laws which had filled the jails of Ireland with men "reasonably suspected" only of having been ac- tive members of a great agrarian and political organization. This intervention on the part of Rome failed in its purpose. The Irish people stood by the league, and it was reserved for other agencies of a more direct kind to negotiate with the leader of the league in Kilmainham how Mr. Forster and his policy were to be disposed of — or rescued, rather — from the conquering tactics of the Ladies' Land League. Mr. Forster had imprisoned a total of eight hundred and seventy-two leaguers as "suspects," while two hundred and eleven persons were jailed on the charge or suspicion of having been engaged in "nocturnal attacks" — in all, one thousand and eighty-three of the most representative and active members or supporters of the movement were put in prison without trial. Among these Messrs. Pamell, Dillon, Sexton, and James 0' Kelly were the only members of ParHa- ment. Messrs. Brennan, A. J. Kettle, Wilham O'Brien, Matt Harris, J. P. Quinn, and Dr. Joseph Kenny were prominent lay leaders. Two or three priests represented the clergy, while the ladies' league contributed about a dozen members to the roll of league martyrs. These suspects were distributed in the prisons of Kilmain- ham, Nass, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick, Clonmel, Dundalk, Armagh, and Monaghan, with a few in Grangegorman (Dublin), Cork, and Enniskillen jails. The treatment of the "suspects" was in no sense vindictive, being that of untried prisoners, while the Ladies' Land League provided each prisoner with good food from outside and with books to read. Each prisoner's family received a weekly grant of ;^i, in addition to the keep of the "suspect," the total sum ex- pended in this manner, and in contemporary grants to evicted tenants, cost of erecting Land -League huts for 344 THE NO-RENT MANIFESTO evicted families, and in other miscellaneous ways being about ;;^7o,ooo from October, 1881, to the end of May, 1882. This was what it cost the movement to beat Mr. Forster and all the forces of England's coercion law and order in the eight months' contest between them and the Ladies' Land League. CHAPTER XXVIII THE KILMAINHAM TREATY Mr. Forster was not beaten without a struggle on his part which displayed the Englishman's best fighting qualities. Instead of avoiding risk he appeared to challenge it when, against all warnings, he journeyed in March, 1882, down to Clare, thence to Limerick, on to the most disturbed district in Galway, and back to Dublin by way of Tullamore, in King's County, where he actually addressed a meeting in the public street, almost within hearing of his imprisoned "suspects " in the prison of the town. No attempt of any kind was made to hurt or even to insult him during the whole journey. He obtained a respectful hearing even from his impromptu audience in Tullamore. His pluck as thus exhibited, rather than the armed escort of Clifford Lloyd's soldiers and police, was deservedly his best shield against attack. His ministerial fearlessness was on the same. level of in- dividual courage. He appointed a body of six special magistrates, or commissioners, on his own authority, put them in charge of the most disturbed districts, and armed them with delegated power that was most arbitrary. Mr. Clifford Lloyd was the most notorious of these deputy des- pots, and he has given the public an account of his experi- ences in his oflficial autobiography.* But the stars in their .courses were in league with Miss Parnell against the chief secretary and his policy. Opinion in England was turn- ing against him, partly through the ungrateful attacks made upon him by the miserable Irish landlords whom he had pre- served from destruction. These men, who were incapable of doing anything good for any cause, did not help him in any sense in his most diflficult days, and finally turned against him, as they always did against all their allies, because he did not go to an extreme in his fight against his and their foes which would meet with their savage approval. Other and more reputable opponents arose among even his own party and * Ireland Under the Land League. Blackwood & Sons, London. 346 THE KILMAINHAM TREATY in the Liberal press at the spectacle of prisons crammed with untried political adversaries, and of the arrest and jailing of girls and women for their active sympathy with their imprisoned brothers, friends, and Ireland's leaders. This was not only a scandal to England's name and Parliament, it was worse. It was a failure, and, what was more, it threatened the very existence of a ministerial majority in the House of Commons. Parliament had met on February 7, 1882. The Irish party was under the leadership of Mr. Sexton, who had been re- leased from Kilmainham owing to ill health after a few weeks' imprisonment. The government soon found itself in the dangerous position of being involved in the passage of new closure rules, with the prospect of a coalition between the Tories, hungering for office, and the Irishmen, thirsting for revenge, which might bring about a defeat or a greatly reduced majority of the ministerialists. There was also the necessity for renewing the coercion act which had been passed in 1881 as a sessional emergency measure, and this could not be done without a prolonged and damaging debate, in which every act of Mr. Forster's would be reviewed and assailed. The Radical section of the government supporters disliked being dubbed "coercionists," and saw no gain to cause or party in standing by a chief secretary who had not succeeded, even with almost unlimited powers, in calming Ireland or in obtaining fair play for the new land act from a people exasperated by the wholesale imprisonment of their leaders. When, therefore, on March 28th, an ex-Tory minister. Sir John Hay, gave notice of a motion against the renewal of the coercion act, Mr. Sexton saw his chance, and brought forward a demand for the release of the three members of that House, Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and O'Kelly, who were pre- vented, without trial, from attending their parliamentary duties. The motion was resisted by Mr. Forster, but in language which created an unfavorable impression all round, and confirmed the growing belief in the parliamentary mind that he had failed in Ireland and that his methods were hopelessly at fault. At this time, too, the United States government, at the in- stigation of the American Land League, made a diplomatic re- quest for the release or trial of those "suspects" who were American citizens, and this transatlantic reminder of the power of the league abroad as well as at home was not calcu- lated to help Mr. Forster's cause. Early in April, following a strong attack upon him in the Pall Mall Gazette by Mr. John Morley, its then editor, in which the chief secretary was 347 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND called upon to resign, he wrote to Mr. Gladstone and asked to be released from the duties of his post. This step, how- ever, the prime-minister was not then prepared to advise. The alternative to resignation was suggested by Mr. Forster as more coercion. Trial by jury in serious crimes was to be superseded by trial before two special magistrates, while, following the usual practice of English rulers in Ireland, the proposed blow at the liberties of the people through the jury system was to be accompanied by a concession. Provincial councils were to be offered to Ireland, endowed with powers of local self-government analogous to those subsequently given to county councils, and this dual policy of kicks and halfpence was expected to retrieve the situation. These were the plans which were under the prime-minister's consideration when a totally unexpected piece of political good-fortune came to his assistance in a proposal for terms from Mr. Parnell. The league leader had been in prison just six months at this time. He was virtually under no prison rules except a bar against his walking out of Kilmainham. No indignity be- yond detention was offered to him, and he wanted for no luxury which funds or friends could supply. He had also the association of intimates and colleagues, and could not, in addition, deny himself the keen satisfaction derived from ■ seeing the complete failure of his jailers to rule the cotmtry [ and subdue the people after locking him up. But nature and temperament did not intend Mr. Parnell ever to be a prisoner. Restraint to him was a torture and an insult. His disposition rebelled against it, and his inordinate pride caused him to feel keenly the outrage he was subjected to by a man whom he considered both an unscrupulous assailant and a social in- ferior. But it is now manifest that there were two other in- fluences of even a more stimulating character at work to induce him to seek a release from prison. One of these in- fluences can be inferred from the discovery made in Paris in February, 1881, by his colleagues on opening his letters. The other was probably the determining factor in causing him to open up negotiations with Mr. Gladstone for a treaty or understanding. It was this: Extreme men, not necessarily -4 belonging to the Fenian body, had become, in a sense, masters of the situation outside by the imprisonment of all moral- force local leaders. They struck at the law which had a doubly obnoxious character to them, in being alien and co- ercive, while the state of things that prevailed encouraged them to plot and plan measures which Mr. Parnell, as a non- revolutionist, had probably never contemplated, even as 348 THE KILMAINHAM TREATY justifiable in a strike against rent. The general state of the country under these circumstances seems to have greatly alarmed him, as leading to the likelihood of precipitating a condition of general anarchy in which the league movement would be used, not for the purposes he approved of, but for a real revolutionary end and aim. It was precisely at this time, too, that the chief secretary had to confess to Mr. Gladstone^ the urgent need for greater coercive powers. " My six special magistrates," he wrote, "all bring me very bad reports. These are confirmed by constabulary reports. The impunity from punishment is spreading like a plague. I fear it will be impossible to prevent very strong and immediate legislation." It was a dramatic coincidence that both the prisoner and his jailer were alike alarmed at a state of things which ought to have appealed to Parnell to concern himself only with scientific studies in the tranquil repose of Kilmainham, and to allow Ireland's enemies to reap the full reward of the brutal coercive and eviction policy they had so long pursued.^ It was the vital turning-point in Mr. Parnell's career, and he unfortunately turned in the wrong direction. He had hitherto been in everything but name a revolutionary re- former, and had won many triumphs at the head of the most powerful organization any Irish leader had at his back for a century. He now resolved to surrender the Land League, and to enter the new stage of his political fortunes as an opportunist statesman. He applied for a parole to attend the funeral of a nephew who had died in Paris. This was granted at once by Mr. Forster. In passing through London Mr. Parnell met Mr. Justin McCarthy, and spent an evening at his house. He ex- plained some of the plans he had formed in prison. These embraced a parliamentary demand for a bill to cancel arrears of rent in a certain class of holdings on payment of a sum to the landlord out of the Irish Church surplus fund. Other amendments of the act of 1881 were to be pressed for, and as (in his opinion) the no-rent policy had failed, the agitation could be "slowed down," the suspects released, and the Land League be thrown overboard. He also saw Captain O'Shea, M.P., who was a member of his * Lije of W. E. Forster, p. 553. 2 "With a political revolution we have ample strength to cope. There is no reason why our cheeks should grow pale or why our hearts should sink at the idea of grappling with a political revolution. . . . But a social revolution is a very different matter. . . . The seat and source of the movement was not to be found during the time the government was in power. It is to be looked for in the foundation of the Land League." — Gladstone, House of Commons, April 4, 1882. 349 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND party and a personal friend, and he repeated to him what he had communicated to Mr. McCarthy. Mr. Pamell knew, of course, that O'Shea was, in reaHty, more of an emissary of the government than a Home-Rule member, and the suggested policy of compromise, in being imparted to him, amounted to an indirect proposal to Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Pamell left Lon- don for Paris, and O'Shea communicated at once both to the prime-minister and to Mr. Chamberlain all that had tran- spired. Mr. Gladstone responded immediately in a letter to O'Shea, in which he said, "Whether there be any agreement as to the means, the end in view is of vast amount, and as- suredly no resentment, personal prejudice, or false shame, or other impediment extraneous to the matter itself, will pre- vent the government from treading in that path which may most safely lead to the pacification of Ireland." This letter was dated April 15th. Mr. Chamberlain wrote on the 17th more fully, but equally anxious to close with an offer that would, among other things, probably dispose of Mr. Forster as chief secretary, to whose policy in Ireland the mem- ber for Birmingham was as much opposed as a colleague in the same cabinet could possibly be. Mr. Gladstone made Mr. Forster acquainted with the O'Shea communications, and these, with the knowledge and assent of Mr. Parnell, who had returned to London in the mean time, were submitted to the cabinet at a meeting on the 2 2d, at which the chief secretary was present. Mr. Pamell returned to Kilmainham, and on the 25th wrote a memorandum embodying his previous proposals, which he desired Mr. Justin McCarthy "to take the earliest opportunity of showing to Mr. Chamberlain." This document gave much satisfaction to that member of the government, who wrote, in acknowledging it: "I will endeavor to make good use of it. I only wish it could be published, for the knowledge that the question still under discussion will be treated in this concilia- tory spirit would have a great effect on public opinion." ^ So far had Mr. Parnell's views been modified by the influ- ences alluded to that he wrote to O'Shea on April 28th, indi- cating a settlement of the arrears question (as already out- lined), an admission of leaseholders to the provisions of the land act, and the amendment of the purchase clauses of the same act, as the three measures for which the following price was to be given: "The accomplishment of the programme I have sketched would, in my judgment, be regarded by the country as a ' Barry O'Brien, Lije of Parnell, vol. i., p. 342. THE KILMAINHAM TREATY practical settlement of the land question, and would, I feel sure, enable us to co-operate cordially for the future with the Liberal party in forwarding Liberal principles ; so that the gov- ernment, at the end of the session, would, from the state of the country, feel themselves thoroughly justified in dispensing with further coercive measures." * O'Shea waited upon Mr. Forster and laid these proposals before him. The chief secretary has given his version of this interview, and posterity, Irish as well as English, will be more inclined to believe Mr. Forster's word than that of the other witness to what transpired. He declared, subsequently, in the House of Commons that O'Shea had represented Parnell as promising ' ' that the conspiracy which has been used to set up boycotting and outrages will now be used to put them down, and that there will be union with the Liberal party." Mr. Parnell, however, denied this alleged promise of his when he was cross-examined in The Times Commission upon the terms and conditions of the Kilmainham treaty. Mr. Forster promptly conveyed to Mr. Gladstone a copy of Parnell 's letter and an account of O' Shea's conversation, which the chief secretary had dictated to his wife immediately after the interview. The prime-minister's satisfaction was expressed in these words in his reply :^ "On the whole, Par- nell's letter is, I think, the most extraordinary I have ever read. I cannot help feeling indebted to O'Shea." This letter sealed and sanctioned the Kilmainham treaty, and as Mr. Forster refused to be a party to the compact his resignation was only a question of convenience. O'Shea visited Parnell in prison and returned again to London. The release of Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and O 'Kelly was determined upon, Mr. Chamberlain being insistent upon their liberation. He had worked for the treaty within the cabinet from the first mooting of Mr. Parnell's terms, knowing that the acceptance of these by the government would involve Mr. Forster's resignation. He frankly explained his position and policy to a number of the Irish members at an informal meeting in the House of Commons, and intimated to them a readiness, or rather a wish, to be the successor of Mr, Forster in the chief-secretaryship, the better to carry out the new policy for Ireland. Earl Cowper tendered his resignation as Lord Lieutenant rather than agree to the release of Mr. Parnell and his colleagues, and Mr. Forster followed suit, for similar and other reasons, two days after. On May 2d the prime-minister rose * Barry O'Brien, Life of Parnell, vol. i., p. 342. * Life of Forster, p. 563. THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND in his place in the House of Commons and announced the startHng change of poHcy which the treaty, then unknown to the pubhc, had induced the cabinet to adopt. Mr. Forster and his coercion were thrown over, Mr. Parnell was set at Hberty, and the pohtical fortunes of the ill-omened treaty were soon to be at the mercy of the registered decree of an inscrutable destiny. On the very eve of Parnell 's proposals to Mr. Gladstone, through O'Shea, the future Home Rule prime-minister wrote as follows to Mr. Forster, in reply to the demand for further coercive legislation: "About local government in Ireland, the ideas which more and more establish themselves in my mind are such as these: " I. Until we have seriously responsible bodies to deal with us in Ireland every plan we frame comes to Irishmen, say what we may, as an English plan. As such it is probably condemned. At best it is a one-sided bargain, which binds us, not them. " 2. If your excellent plans for obtaining local aid towards the execution of the law break down, it will be on account of this miserable and almost total want of the sense of re- sponsibility for the public good and public peace in Ireland, and this responsibility we cannot create except through local self-government . "3. If we say we must postpone the question till the state of the country is more fit for it, I should answer that the least danger is in going forward at once. It is liberty alone which fits men for liberty. This proposition, like every other in politics, has its bounds; but it is far safer than the counter doctrine — wait till they are fit. "4. In truth, I should say (differing perhaps from many) that for the Ireland of to-day the first question is the rectifica- tion of the relations between landlord and tenant, whicn happily is going on ; the next is to relieve Great Britain from the enormous weight of the government of Ireland unaided by the people, and from the hopeless contradiction in which we stand while we give a parliamentary representation, hardly effective for anything but mischief without the local institutions of self-government which it presupposes, and on which alone it can have a sound and healthy basis." ^ This letter was written on April 12, 1882. It was on the very next day, the 13th, that Mr. Gladstone received from Captain O'Shea Parnell's Kilmainham proposals. Tiiere was ' Morley's Ltfe of Gladstone, vol. iii., p. 58. 352 THE KILMAINHAM TREATY no suggestion of self-government contained in these pro- posals. It was, therefore, a treaty about arrears of rent and the release of suspects that carried with it the fall of Forster, and, as sequence, the Phoenix Park tragedy which presented itself to the prime-minister who wrote the above memoran- dum to his coercionist chief secretary. At this time Mr. Glad- stone was at the head of the strongest Liberal government in the history of England, and the man who had forced the House of Lords to accept the land bill of the year before was abundantly strong enough to compel them to pass a Home-Rule measure on the lines of the letter to Mr. Forster. During these negotiations Mr. Parnell had not imparted a word to his colleagues in Kilmainham about what was proceeding. Rumor had circulated statements while he was out on parole about some impending arrangements, and suspicion was busy in weaving conjectures which might ex- plain the release of the three members. Mr. Parnell was careful, too, in the choice of his intermediaries with the government. They were men who were in no sense extreme, O'Shea being, in fact, a hanger-on of the Liberal ministry. On the afternoon of May 4th, in a House crowded in every part and charged with the excitement peculiar in that chamber to a ministerial crisis, Mr. Forster rose from a private member's seat to explain to the Commons and the country tlie cause of his resignation and the reasons for his dissent from the policy which had occasioned it. He received a warm and marked ovation. He was in appearance and type a representative of the sturdy middle-class Englishman, big in head and body, and pugnacious in look and manner. He had had two years' of a fierce struggle against the Irish. Popular sympathy was, therefore, largely with him outside. It had been rumored that he was thrown over by his colleagues, who preferred to sacrifice nim than to give him the extra powers he had asked for as necessary to assert the dominance of England's authority over a people against whom a latent antipathy always did and always will prevail in the Anglo- Saxon mind, and he faced the Irish benches a beaten but a defiant foe, who felt that he could have crushed them had ministerial expediency not refused him the necessary weapons for the task. He spoke well, and had proceeded half-way through his speech when cheers, fierce, passionate, and trium- phant, rang through the chamber from the Irish members as, with measured step and haughty mien and a face set in expression of proud triumph Mr. Parnell, who had entered the House after release from Kilmainham, made his way to his seat, and, folding his arms, looked across the floor at the »3 353 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND man, now in ministerial disgrace, who had kept him under lock and key for the previous six months. It was one of the most intensely dramatic episodes of the great Irish struggle, which will some day inspire a painter's brush with the subject and ambition of a great historical picture. Mr. Forster's speech was to English minds a fair-enough vindica- tion of his othcial life in Ireland, and he made no disclosures which could convey to the House or the public the real reason of Mr. Pamell's apparent victory. A tragedy of un- exampled import and calamity was required to bring all the facts to light, and the fates were busy in preparing the occasion and the need for explanation. CHAPTER XXIX THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS The morning of May 6, 1882, was bright and lovely, even ; ^^ inside prison walls, and the writer, who had just completed fifteen months of a sojourn in the huge convict depot at Portland, was enjoying the sunshine in the infirmary garden, when the governor was seen approaching, wearing a smile and carrying a letter. With an extensive experience of no fewer than twelve prison governors, Mr. George Clifton was the only one I remembered who had made smiling any part of our relations. Prison is not a place for smiling, anyhow, and unfortunate governors have few incentives to the wearing of cheerful looks in the daily performance of cheerless duties. It was a hopeful sign on this occasion, and told in advance the news of a coming release. "This is a letter from Mr. Parnell, M.P.," said the governor, "who is coming down to see you to-day. You will be re- leased this afternoon." The letter read as follows: " House of Commons Library, "London, May 5, 1882. "My dear Sir, — Dillon and I propose going down to meet you at Portland prison to-morrow on your liberation and to accompany you to London. "We were ourselves released from Kilmainham only on Tuesday last, Mr. Forster having resigned, and further legisla- tion on the land question promised. We shall arrive at Port- land about two o'clock. "Yours very truly, "Chas. S. Parnell."^ _^ What was the explanation of the promiised visit and of the cold and formal "My dear Sir"? Changes significant enough were announced in this brief message, but were there others behind the lines that would tell a fuller story of some ' Report Special Commission, vol. vii., p. 48. 355 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND compromise to which I was expected to be a party? This thought marred some of the pleasure inseparable from a third release from prison, but no inkling of the full truth could be got from any further reading of the strange epis- tle or from the altogether unnecessary and un-Pamell-like visit to an "At Home" at Portland prison. Messrs. Parnell, Dillon, and O'Kelly arrived in a few hours, and after a brief inspection of the huge convict es- tablishment -we were soon en route for London. "What does it all mean?" was a natural question to put by one who had been deprived of all means of knowing what had transpired in the world of politics since February 4, 188 1. Mr. Parnell did most of the talking on the railway journey. His reply was, in substance, this: "We are on the eve of something like Home Rule. Mr. Gladstone has thrown over coercion and Mr. Forster, and the government will legislate further on the land question. The Tory party are going to advocate land purchase, almost on the lines of the Land-League programme, and I see no reason why we should not soon obtain all we are looking for in the league movement. The no-rent manifesto had failed, and was withdrawn. A frightful condition of things prevailed in Ireland during the last six months, culminating in several brutal murders, moonlighting outrages, and alarming violence generally." Such, in brief, was the explanation of the sudden anti- climax to coercion in the political situation ; but a reply to the question, "What has become of the Ladies' Land League?" let the cat out of the bag somewhat. "Oh, they have expended an enormous amount of money. They told me in Dublin, after my release, that I ought to have remained in Kilmainham. I fear they have done much harm along with some good." "The 'harm' is evident in the fall of Forster and in the dropping of coercion and in our re- lease," was the obvious retort. " It appears to me that they have given good value for the money which was contributed to give the landlords and the Castle all possible trouble." "Yes, but you don't know all. To-morrow I will go into the whole matter with you, and explain more fully than is de- sirable now what has really led the government to the change of policy which is to result in the immediate release of all the suspects and in the measures I have referred to." There was some amusing conversation on the way to Lon- don about a future " Home- Rule cabinet" in Dublin. Mr. Parnell was in a most optimistic mood, and joked about O'Kelly being a future head of a national constabulary force, 356 THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS with Sexton as chancellor of the exchequer, Dillon home sec- retary, and myself as a director of Irish prisons. Lord Frederick Cavendish, the new chief secretary, was spoken of as "one of the most modest and best men in the House, and a thorough supporter of the new policy." And in this temper of hopeful expectancy and of jubilant triumph the time sped by and the train reached London. We were i welcomed by hosts of friends, the first to greet us being Mr. A. M. Sullivan, with many of the leading leaguers of London along with him. We drove to the Westminster Palace Hotel accompanied by a score of the more intimate friends among the members of the throng, where a couple of hours were spent in general talk; "the Home-Rule Parliament of the immediate future" being toasted and drank to in the true spirit of Celtic buoy- ancy. Then the friends departed and the clouds came. Scarcely had Mr. Dillon and the writer sat down alone than f Mr. Bennet Burleigh, the since famous war correspondent, rushed into the room and spread before me without a word a telegram which read as follows: "The Depot, Phoenix Park, Dublin, 8 p.m. " Lord Frederick Cavendish and Under-Secretary Burke were assassinated with knives by a band of men about half- past six this evening opposite the Viceregal Lodge." "Oh, come, Burleigh, this is a patent bogus outrage for to- morrow's Sunday papers. Surely you are not going to lend yourself to a monstrous scare of this kind?" "I hope to God you are right, but see where the message comes from? It is from the constabulary headquarters to the Central News." "Just where a thundering sensation can be so well manu- factured," was the reply; but Burleigh shook his head and departed, leaving us disturbed in mind but absolutely incred- ulous that so dire a calamity had occurred or could thus cruelly dash the morning's cup of bright hope and promise to the ground. At five o'clock the following morning Henry George en- tered my bedroom with an open telegram in his hand and a scared look in his kindly, big, blue eyes. "Get up, old man," were his words. "One of the worst things that has ever happened for Ireland has occurred." And a message handed to me from a friend in Dublin only too literally confirmed the discredited tidings of the night before. A short time afterwards Mr. Parnell entered the room. 357 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND His face was deadly pale, with a look of alarm in the eyes which I had never seen in any expression of his before or after. He sat down on a sofa and said, slowly and deliberately: "I am going to retire at once, and for good, out of Irish public life. I shall have no more to do with Irish movements. What is the use of men striving as we have done, and calling on the country to make such sacrifices as those the people have made during the last three years, if we are to be struck at in this way by unknown men who can commit atrocious deeds of this kind.'' I shall send in my resignation to Cork to-night and retire into private life." Against any such step as this an instant protest was made. It would look like running away from danger. Other things had to be thought of before personal wishes could be consid- ered. What was to be done to mitigate the horror of the sit- uation? There might be a spirit of murderous retaliation ap- pealed to in to-morrow's British press against our people in England. Could any measures of any kind be taken which might isolate the terrible deed as far as possible in the pub- lic mind from any connection with the league movement? These and other considerations were put before Mr. Parnell, and though in no way apparently abating his resolve to act as he had threatened, he listened eagerly to every suggestion, while now and then breaking out again in the bitterest invec- tive against "irresponsible men " who could stab a great move- ment in the back in its hour of triamph. Mr. Joseph Co wen, M.P., was the first friend to call, and, to some extent, to lift every one out of the very depths of de- spair. "There is no use crying over spilled milk," was his cheery remark. " The horrible deed won't be undone by resignations or anything of that sort. Issue a manifesto condemning the crime in strong and honest language. This will appear in to- morrow morning's papers side by side with the details of the murders, and the public will see how this bad deed hits you and your cause more than even your opponents. It appears to me to have been as much the act of league enemies as that of foes to Dublin Castle." Mr. Parnell agreed to this suggestion, and left the hotel in company with Mr. Justin McCarthy who, together with a dozen other Irish M.P.'s, had called, in the mean time, to learn if any light could be thrown upon the deed in Phoenix Park. Mr. Parnell went straight to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's London residence, where Sir Charles Dilke subsequently called. Both these members of the government strongly dissuaded Mr. Parnell against any such step as resignation, 358 THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS He then (as it transpired afterwards) wrote to Mr. Glad- stone, and offered to retire from public life if the prime- minister thought that his doing so would in any way tend to appease popular or political feeling. Here, again, he was advised not to resign. In the mean time the manifesto was written by a few of us in the hotel, the last paragraph being added by Mr. A. M. Sullivan, as a declaration absolutely necessary to imparting a sentiment of unequivocal sincerity to the terms in which the crime was looked upon and condemned by the Irish people and their leaders. It was sent at once to the press agencies in Great Britain, cabled to John Boyle O'Reilly, of Boston, for the widest publication in America, and wired to Mr. Alfred Webb, of Dublin, to be printed as a placard, and despatched by Sunday night's last train to every city and town in Ireland, so as to be posted on the walls of the country on Monday m.orning. The facts relating to the murders were few, but they created a world-wide sensation. Earl Spencer, the new Lord Lieuten- ant, made his entry into Dublin on Saturday, May 6th. He was accompanied by Lord Frederick Cavendish, the successor to Mr. Forster in the chief-secretaryship. After the official ceremonies in Dublin Castle were concluded. Lord Frederick Cavendish set out to walk to his official residence in Phoenix Park, about a mile distant. On entering the park gate he was joined by Mr. Burke, the permanent under-secretary for Ireland and recognized head of "The Castle." Both men continued walking in the direction of the chief secretary's lodge. On nearing a spot on the wide roadway, almost exactly opposite the viceregal residence, and distant in a direct line about four hundred yards therefrom, four or five men sprang upon Burke and attacked him with knives. Lord Cavendish attempted to defend the assailed under- secretary, and was himself stabbed and also killed. The time was between half-past six and seven o'clock in the evening. It was still daylight, and the park had its ordinary number of visitors in the usual places of resort. The as- sailants made off in the direction of Chapelizod, mounting a car which apparently awaited them in that direction, and got clear away before any effort could be made to capture or to track them in their flight. Their subsequent arrest, six months later, their trial and execution for the crime, are now matters of common history. The motive of the attack on Mr. Burke, who alone was singled out for vengeance, was entirely political. He per- sonified the Castle system of rule, being an Irishman and 359 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Catholic who became, on both these grounds, in the view of those who conspired to kill him, the worst type of anti- national official and the strongest prop of alien power. He was credited with being the arch-coercionist of the admin- istration, the employer of informers, and active antagonist of all revolutionary movements. Those who had resolved to kill him were not animated by any purpose friendly to the Land League in their deadly design. It transpired that the chief instigators of the deed of vengeance were inimical to the league movement. But Mr. Burke typified to them the embodiment of English dominance and oppression. He had, they believed, been Mr. Forster's evil adviser, and he had imprisoned men and women of his own race and creed in a despotic manner, his coercionist policy and measures being applied against many men suspected of being Fenians as well as against Land- Leaguers and others. He alone was the object of attack on that fatal Saturday evening. Lord Cavendish's murder was accidental to his presence with and L^attempted defence of his companion. The British press acted on the whole admirably, under the great provocation of a crime so calculated to appeal to Eng- lish passion. There was no savage outcry such as was dreaded against the Irish people in England. Racial prejudices were not appealed to, nor was there any vindictive feeling evoked against the prominent Land-Leaguers, except, singular to say, in my own case. The London Standard, ordinarily a judicially minded organ of conservative opinion, which had distinguished itself a year previously by hinting that the only effective way of dealing with the leading leaguers in Ireland was the way of Loris-Melikoff — to shoot or to hang them forthwith — made a direct appeal to me to hand over to justice the men who had assassinated the two secretaries in Phoenix Park! Nothing could be more exquisitely Eng- lish in the way of judging an Irish political opponent. I had been seized, arbitrarily, fifteen months previously, hurried away from Dublin to London, remitted to penal servitude, without any charge of any kind being made against me— and without any trial — and kept in the closest confinement until the morning of May 6th, reaching London direct from Portland prison about seven o'clock that evening — half an hour after the crime had been committed in Dublin. In face of such facts, who was there, in all the wide world, more likely than the person thus kidnapped on April 4, 1881, and caged securely in an English prison until the very morn- ing of the murders, to know all about the crime and its per- petrators ? ^ 360 THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERvS My friend Henry George, who was with me when this article appeared, wrote a prompt reply. It appeared in the Standard over my name. Some expressions in this letter, which would very naturally express his un-Irish views of what should be said in retort by me, caused some pain to former associates of mine in the Fenian movement, as tending to create an impression that I had abandoned the doctrines of physical force and had made some sort of apology in this letter to English feeling for my revolutionary career. This, of course, was absurdly untrue. My name was to the Standard letter, however, and the inference thus drawn was not an unfair one in the absence of an explanation which I refused, under the circumstances, to make. The sensational anti-climax to the bright anticipations of the journey from Portland to London created by the tragedy in Dublin did not prevent Mr. Parnell fulfilling his promise on the following day to explain the policy which had led to Forster's downfall and to our release. The explanation in substance was this : The no-rent manifesto had failed. The tenants, instead of working his plan of testing the land act in the manner suggested by the Land -League convention, broke away and entered the courts. They thereby con- tracted obligations for a term of fifteen years. All other tenants not weighted down with arrears would follow suit. The ruined tenants, mostly those of small holdings, would be sacrificed unless an arrears act could be obtained which would wipe out most of their indebtedness and give them a clear road into the land court, too. To accomplish this a "parley" with the government became necessary. But the reason by which he was chiefly influenced in the negotiations through O'Shea was the growing power of "secret societies" and the alarming growth of outrages. By "secret societies" he did not necessarily mean Fenian bodies. He believed the obnoxious societies to be more or less local, like those that had sprung up in past periods of agrarian warfare in the wake of evictions and coercion. He saw in this development, and in the growtn of the revolutionary feeling inside the movement, a menace to the existence of the constitutional agitation and a peril to the country which could only be successfully resisted and arrested by the release of those who could wield a counter influence and who could calm down popular feeling. Then it was evident that Mr. Chamberlain and his friends in the ministry were equally anxious for other — that was, cabinet — reasons to abandon coercion, and to face the larger question of self-government, which could not be done while Ireland continued in a condition of semi-anarchy. 361 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND There was also a powerful personal reason which in- fluenced his action that cannot be recorded here. In this explanation he made no mention of his own letters from Kilmainham, nor of the undertaking given by him in one of those, that "the agitation would be slowed down," and that the Irish party could then see its way to co-operate with the English Liberal party in passing measures of com- mon necessity or advantage to both countries. These parts of the treaty only leaked out months afterwards. ; The situation created by the Kilmainham treaty was still ''■ further complicated by the Phoenix Park tragedy, inasmuch as coercion, instead of being modified, as agreed to by Mr. Gladstone, would probably become more stringent, while the deep anti-Irish feeling aroused in Great Britain by the killing of Lord Cavendish would render all present thought of concessions in the direction of Home Rule an impossible task for any ministry. Probably no political leader ever found himself in so dangerous a position as Mr. Parnell occupied at this time. The "treaty" had done him great harm in Ireland. Al- most all the "suspects" repudiated its rumored terms. It was "a deal" with the government, and under the circum- stances that condemned it in their eyes. In America it was -' denounced as "the sale of the Land League." On the face of it, it wore the appearance of a bargain with the defeated coercionists to get out of Kilmainham, and as a virtual [surrender of the movement to its enemies. On this state of things the park murders came as a cyclonic sensation, sweeping everything else out of the path of a tragic event fraught with disastrous consequences to a movement which had a few hours previously reached almost to the goal of success. In fact, the Phoenix Park murders saved Mr. Parnell from the perils which lurked in the terms of the compact, while both events snatched from the Land League the guerdon of triumph, and literally smote it to the death which the treaty had planned for it by other means. Apart from the effect made upon his mind by the act of the Invincibles, Mr. Parnell left prison resolved to have no more semi-revolutionary Land Leagues and no more relations with men or movements which could involve him or any party under his lead in any conflict, open or secret, with law and order in Ireland. The event of May 6th having almost driven him from public life, necessarily increased his resolve never again to engage in any fight like that of the Land League. And this resolve he never deviated from after- wards for a single hour. 362 THE PHCENIX PARK MURDERS To the compact agreed to in the treaty the advanced men in the league movement would be no parties. They gathered courage to speak in a few days' time, when the paralyzing effects of the crime of May 6th began to subside. Mr. Parnell grew very uneasy, and requested me not to address meetings in Manchester and Liverpool, to which I had been invited by the leagues of these cities. This I could not see my way to agree to. I had been no party to any arrangement with the ministry, and did not see why I should forego my right to put my own position before the public, and to do my best to carry on the Land League fight as near the old lines as possible. To this resolve he only offered a kindly remonstrance, but he was resolved to "slow things down" all the same. The motive and the making of the Kilmainham treaty ap- pealed to diverging views for support and disapproval. To conservative nationalists and to the large element of Mr. Par- , X nell's personal following the treaty was an adroit political ' '' manoeuvre and a notable triumph of party leadership. It appeared to turn the flank of his enemy's position, while it procured at the same time the fall from power of his chief ad- versary. There was also the release of all the suspects se- cured, together with the promise of a concession which would relieve :. large number of small tenants from the risk of im- mediate eviction. In addition, there was the prestige of a victorious compromise obtained out of what was felt to be a most dangerous situation, and it was reasoned that the leader who had accomplished all this, while he was still a prisoner in the hands of his enemy, had gained a tactical and decided vic- tory for himself along with very good terms for the people whom he represented. On the other hand, these concessions were obtained on the condition that the forces which compelled Mr. Gladstone to change his policy were to be disbanded, while the movement that had given Mr. Parnell his position and power was to dis- appear. This was virtually the other side of the bargain. The price was too great, and the terms were so obnoxious to the league sentiment in Ireland and America that had not the Phoenix Park catastrophe intervened as a stroke of Ireland's unfriendly destiny, Mr. Parnell's leadership would have trem- bled in the balance, even should it survive the shock of such a surrender. English rule in Ireland had never been so shaken and demoralized since 1798 as it was in 1881-82, nor had Castle rule ever been so fiercely and effectively assaulted in the century. The country was absolutely ungovernable, while an organization having nearly a million members 363 THE PALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND throughout the world stood behind Mr. Pamell's lead, with abundant friends and ample power to keep the struggle going until the whole system of anti-national administration would fall to pieces and necessitate a radical and fundamental change. The need for a decentralizing policy in the rule of Ireland had already been recognized even by Mr. Forster and suggested by Mr. Gladstone. Provincial councils were to ac- company the temporary fall of trial by jury, and a change in that direction would be a direct road to a national council as an inevitable logical sequence. In this view it must be borne in mind that the treaty led directly to the Phoenix Park trag- edy, not as an actual cause and effect, but as a result of the change which the acceptance by Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Cham- berlain of Mr. Parnell's terms necessarily made in the chief- secretaryship. Knowing, as we do now, what the fighting policy of the league movement and Mr. Parnell's leadership led to in 1885-86, in the adoption of Home Rule by the Liberal party, it is right and fair to assume that there would have been less opposition on the part of English popular opinion against Mr. Gladstone's plans in those years had the Castle system and landlordism been still more battered and broken in 1882, without the accompanying nightmare memory for England of the Phoenix Park murders. The arrears act, which followed the agreement of April, 1882, was a curse and not a blessing in disguise. The spirit and meaning of the land act condemned as legal robbery the exaction of such rents from land reclaimed entirely by the occupant's labor, and a recognition of arrears thus contracted was a surrender of the principle fought for in the Healy clause. These poor people would not have been evicted wholesale. There would be no fear of that while the league had its power still unbroken. Landlords or agents by the score would have paid the penalty of any such plan of extermination, while public opinion everywhere would condemn the system of rule in Ireland which could appoint a land court to reduce ex- cessive rents and at the same time allow landlords to turn thousands of families out of their homes because of rents which were too excessive to be paid. Looked at, therefore, from the point of view of the policy and purpose of the Land League, to destroy landlordism and to demoralize Dublin- Castle rule so as to force a settlement of the agrarian and national problems on radical but rational lines, the Kilmain- ham treaty was a victory for these menaced institutions and a political defeat of the forces led by Mr. Parnell. CHAPTER XXX THE NATIONAL LEAGUE A BRIEF resume of the work done for the league in America from the first to the fourth convention of the branches in the United States is required here by the plan of our story, and in order to place on record this account of the help thus rendered to the movement in Ireland during its combat with Mr. For- ster's coercion. The first, or Trenor Hall, New York, convention has been already described. References have also been made to the spread of league branches in 1881, and the amount of money thus raised and forwarded to Ireland has been given. On January 12th and 13th the second convention of the league assembled in Buffalo. There were two hundred and ninety-tv/o branches represented by one hundred and twenty delegates. The Irish World refused to recognize the authority of those who summoned this conference, and those branches which remitted subscriptions through Mr. Ford's paper were not represented. Mr. P. A. Collins, a prominent Boston lawyer and local lead- er of the Democratic party, was elected president, and Mr. Thomas Flatley, of Boston, secretary. Resolutions condemn- ing the state prosecutions (at that time) in Dublin, promising support to Mr. Parnell and the other leaders at home, and ap- pealing for continued financial help from the friends of Ireland in America were moved by Rev. Dr. Conaty, of Worcester, and adopted. As already recorded, Messrs. T. P. O'Connor and T. M. Healy were despatched by the league in Ireland as envoys to the United States shortly before Mr. Parnell's arrest in Oc- tober, 1 88 1. They were subsequently joined by Father Sheehy. Meetings were addressed by the envoys in all the principal centres in the republic, and a great stimulus was thus given to the work of the auxiliary organization beyond the Atlantic. The imprisonment of Mr. Parnell, the suppres- sion of the Land League, and the issuing of the no-rent mani- festo in Ireland healed for the time the differences between 365 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the American league presided over by Mr. Collins and the branches which recognized Mr. Ford, and a joint call was issued for a united convention to meet in Chicago. This con- vention held its sessions on November 30 and December i and 2, 1 88 1. One thousand delegates attended from thirty- eight States and Territories. Mr. John Finerty, of Chicago, called the convention to order, and Mr. W. J. Hynes, also of that city, was elected chairman. The resolutions declared that English rule was without any moral sanction in Ireland ; that England's government was try- ing to subjugate the Irish nation by evictions and arbitrary arrests; that the convention stood by the Irish people in re- sisting the violation of their liberties; that the no-rent mani- festo was endorsed ; and that the convention pledged its dele- gates to raise a special fund of $250,000 within twelve months for the movement in Ireland. These resolutions were put forward by Rev. Dr. Conaty, of Worcester, and were unanimously adopted. Messrs. O'Con- nor and Healy and the Rev. Eugene Sheehy attended and addressed the convention. On April 12 and 13, 1882, the fourth league convention was held in Washington, D. C. Mr. P. A. Collins, the president, occupied the chair. The Irish World branches were not rep- resented. Mr. John Boyle O'Reilly submitted the platform of resolutions, which supported the stand made by the people of Ireland against coercion, their demand for national self-gov- ernment; thanked the Ladies' Land League for upholding the flag of the Land League while its leaders were in prison, and expressed a feeling of pride at the splendid, passive resistance made by the people of Ireland to the forces of England's gov- ernment. Mr. James Mooney, of Buffalo, was elected presi- dent and Mr. John J. Hynes, secretary, for the ensuing term. The Irish envoys had returned by this date to Ireland, and the leagues throughout the States had responded to the prom- ises made in their behalf at the two last conventions. On my release from Portland prison, on May 6th, I was invited by the leagues of Boston to attend a demonstration in that city near the end of June. The invitation was accepted, and, in com- pany with Mr. William Redmond, that and a dozen other meet- ings were addressed in a brief tour which extended over a few weeks only. The Ford and Collins sections of the league were still at variance, the former being strongly opposed to the Kilmainham treaty and in favor of pushing on the Land League struggle, the latter supporting Mr. Parnell's more con- servative policy. The leaders of both sections were recon- 366 THE NATIONAL LEAGUE ciled to a common programme at a conference held in the Astor House, New York, when the following resolution was agreed to and published: ''Resolved, that for the purpose of carrying out the reso- lutions of the Irish National Convention, held at Chicago, and of the general convention of the Irish National Land League of America, held in Washington, D. C, this conference earnest- ly recommends that the executive of the Land League of Ire- land be requested to delegate Mr. Parnell and others of their number to meet with this body as soon as may be for the pur- pose of devising means and perfecting arrangements for the union or confederation of the Celtic race in America to effec- tively aid the people of Ireland in their struggle for the free- dom of the land and for self-government. ''Resolved, that, as Ireland is now passing through a crisis which strains to the utmost the moral and financial resources of the people under the merciless reign of coercion and evic- tion, we earnestly appeal to the whole race in America to steadily continue their efforts in their several organizations, and to forward ample contributions to enable the Irish people to fight to the end their great battle. M. Boland, Patrick Ford, Patrick A. Collins, W. B. Wallace, D. C. Birdsall, Alex- ander Sulhvan, A. F. Brown, Executive Committee Irish Na- tional Congress; James Mooney, Rev. Laurence V/alsh, John J. Hynes, Central Council Land League of America; Michael Davitt." ^ The object of this conference was a twofold one: First, to unite the various Land Leagues of America and co-operating bodies for a continued fighting policy on league lines; and, secondly, to bring pressure to bear on Mr. Parnell to advance again from the Kilmainham treaty compromise to the more combative line of action with which his leadership had been associated. The first of these purposes was, in a sense, se- cured, but the advocates of action had to reckon with Mr. Parnell in accomplishing the second. The names Boland and Birdsall in the above list are not identified with any notable services rendered to the American Land League. Their presence at the conference was due to the accident of having been nominated on a committee with a temporary mission at the Chicago convention. Dr. Wallace had been an ardent worker for the league in New York since its foundation in that city. Alexander Sullivan was a man of note and power in the Clan-na-Gael at the time and a strong supporter of the movement led by Parnell. Rev. ' Report Special Coiiiimssion, and Irish World, July 22, 1882. 367 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Laurence Walsh, of Waterbury, was treasurer of the American league since the Trenor Hall convention, and was a zealous upholder of the cause. A. F. Brown represented a friendly organization, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, which had helped the league very materially in almost every city in which the new movement had found a footing. Messrs. Mooney and Hynes were elected to their respective positions at the Washington convention in recognition of their services in promoting the interests of the league. Returning to London almost direct, I met Mr. Parnell by appointment to discuss the New York programme and the advisability of reorganizing the Land League under another name. He peremptorily declined to take any such action. He did not object to others taking this step, if they believed it wise to do so, which he did not. He was not prepared to fight Earl Spencer armed with coercion, or to plunge the coun- try again into the turmoil of violent agitation. He preferred waiting until more opportune circumstances might encourage such a movement in Ireland as would fall more into line with parliamentary action, in which he now thought more hopes and reliance than ever might be placed to win needed reforms for the country. To the suggestion that he should nominate representatives to meet the Astor House conference commit- tee he was emphatically opposed, and while as friendly as ever in his manner and speech, he was resolutely against any attempt to identify hi;n with any more Land Leagueism of the 1881-82 order or to have any more intimate relations with Irish-American bodies. This attitude was not an unreasonable one in view of the very little that was then known of the treaty, outside his own immediate circle, and after the event of May 6th. Prejudice against him had, if possible, grown more truculent in the anti-Irish press, and fair allowance had to be made for the difficulties which beset him. But the feeling in Ireland, es- pecially among the lately imprisoned suspects, was strongly for a renewal of the league struggle. Evictions were going on as ever. Coercion was active and unopposed. The land act had done nothing yet for hundreds of thousands of rack- rented tenants, while the land courts were engaged in whit- tling away the benefits which the legislature had tried to secure for the farmers, and it was felt that the fight for the complete abolition of landlordism should be renewed. Then there were the agricultural laborers to be considered. Nothing had been done in the land act of 188 1 for this large class, numbering (at that period) fully three hundred thousand of the working population. They had grievances 368 THE NATIONAL LEAGUE and claims for redress, too, and their discontent could not be ignored. Above all these considerations there was the para- mount claim of the country for national self-government. This was the first plank in the platform of the new depart- ure of 1878, and it was strongly felt by men who had labored and sacrificed much in the building-up of the great combina- tion which had almost paralyzed alien rule in Ireland that this organization should not be allowed to fall away without its giant strength being further utilized in the carrying for- ward of the task first resolved upon. In fact, on the admissions of the heads of the government as to the condition of the country, the waiting policy of the treaty was impossible of endurance to the tenantry, and called for a renewal of the contest against the evicting power of the landlords. Sir George Trevelyan, the new chief secretary for Ireland, speaking in the House of Commons on May 22, 1882, made this statement : "At this moment, in one part of the country, men are being turned out of their houses actually by battalions, who are no more able to pay the arrears of these bad years than they are able to pay the national debt. ... In three days one hundred and fifty families, numbering seven hundred and fifty persons, were turned out in one district alone. , . . They were not whiskey-drinkers ; they were not in terror of the Land League. ... I am told that in this district there are thousands in this position — people who have been beggared for years, people who have been utterly unable to hold up their heads since these bad years, and whose only resource from expulsion from their homes is the village money-lender." This was how the landlords were helping to "slow down the agitation." Two days subsequently Mr. Gladstone, in dealing with evictions as human incitations to outrage, said: "Eviction is the exercise of a legal right which may be to the prejudice of your neighbor, which may involve the highest responsibility, nay, even deep moral guilt. There may be outrages which — all things considered, the persons and the facts — may be less guilty in the sight of God than evictions." Archbishop Croke, who had fearlessly defended the league during the Forster regime, but who condemned the no-rent manifesto, gave voice to the national desire for a continuance of the fight about this time, in face of these and similar con- tinued legal outrages. He felt that the work of uprooting landlordism was only half done, and in a speech at Galbally, he spoke out as follows: 24 369 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "The Irish people have now paused in the fight in order to commence the struggle afresh for their rights. They want no leaders now, either lay or clerical, as they are well enough educated as to what their rights are. Landlordism has been brought to its knees by the Land League; but I do not know whether the male branch or the ladies' branch of the league deserves most thanks, for when the men were put in prison the ladies stepped into the breach and did their part nobly. I congratulate myself on having defended the ladies' league from the aspersions cast upon it at its inception, and will be always ready when called upon to take the part of the people in asserting their rights." Though Mr. Parnell was averse to reviving the league in any aggressive way, he was not inactive in relation to the trying position of the evicted tenants. He formed a committee in Dublin, in August, 1882, with the object of raising a special fund for their relief, and to keep the question of their wrongs before the public. Messrs. T. M. Healy, Arthur O'Connor, and William O'Brien were honorary secretaries of this com- mittee. It only had a brief existence, as it was, in a sense, absorbed in the National League which was shortly afterwards fotinded. About this time Mr. Parnell's gifted sister, Fanny, died after a brief illness at her home, Bordentown, New Jersey. She was deeply attached to him, and had watched the growth of his fame and prestige with admiring affection. She and T. D. Sullivan were the songsters of the Land League. Her verses had all the fire and revolutionary purpose of Speranza's poetic clarion-calls in The Nation of 1848. Intense hatred of England's sordid rule and arrogance in Ireland gave a burning fervor to her impassioned pleas for her country's freedom from so degrading a subjection. She was a rebel to her heart's core, and her songs were those of liberty only — the freedom of the peasant from the social and industrial bondage of landlordism and of her native land from foreign power. It was Fanny Parnell who first thought of and suggested the Ladies' Land League, and among those whose names may yet, in generations to come, be associated in the minds of an eman- cipated peasantry with the fight against and the fall of Eng- land's feudal land system in Ireland hers will deserve a grate- ful recollection. Mr. Barry O'Brien, in his Life of Parnell, is unintentionally in error (vol. i., pp. 375, 376) where he implies that Mr. John Dillon left Ireland for America on failing to induce Mr. Parnell to revive the league movement: "It was about this time that Mr. Dillon went to Avondale to ask him point-blank if 370 THE NATIONAL LEAGUE he meant to ' slow down ' the agitation. On receiving his chief's answer, deHvered with inexorable precision, and act- ing on the advice of his medical attendant, Mr. Dillon sailed for Colorado and troubled Parnell no more." This is wrong. Many of Pamell's supporters, including Mr. Dillon, had repeatedly tried to induce him to reconsider his decision, given in August, not to encourage the revival of the agitation. These efforts were not unavailing. Moreover, the revengeful evictions by the landlords and the savage nature of Lord Spencer's coercive measures, coupled with the growing discontent in the country over the apparent abandonment of the fighting policy of the league, told on Parnell's hesitating decision, and on learning that a movement would be set going soon, whether he liked it or not, he gave way, and sought the advice of Mr. Dillon, Mr. Brennan, and myself at his home in Avondale, as to what steps should be taken. ^ The following contemporary account of the result of this visit to Avondale deals with the facts as they occurred. It is copied from notes made at the time by me for purposes of American correspondence. "September i8, 1882. "The outcome of the consultation alluded to in my last letter will be best explained by the following circular: " ' Dublin, September 18, 1882. " ' Dear Sir, — You are hereby invited to attend a confer- ence of representative men to be held in the Antient Concert Rooms, Dublin, on Tuesday, October 17th, for the purpose of discussing a programme of reform for Ireland, which will be submitted for adoption by us. The chief feature of this pro- gramme will be the uniting together on one central platform of the various movements and interests that are now appeal- ing to the country for separate sanction and support. " ' Yours truly, "'C. S. Parnell, Michael Davitt, John Dillon, Thomas Brennan, Thomas Sexton, T. M. Healy, Arthur O'Connor.'" "... The programme which is to be submitted to the con- ference will, of course, be very closely scanned on this side, both by friends and foes, and will, no doubt, be as eagerly * "At Mr. Pamell's suggestion, Mr. Dillon, Mr. Brennan, and myself are to accompany him to Avondale this evening and deliberate upon what is best to be done, on discussing the whole situation, and how to place a full and satisfactory programme before the country." — Letter from Dublin to the New York Daily News, September 12, 1882. 371 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND waited for and as keenly criticised on yours. . . . Mr. Parnell is to define the policy to be pursued on the land question. That policy is, in his opinion, dictated by the circumstances under which we are compelled to act, and will be almost similar to the parliamentary policy pursued anterior to the suppression of the Land League. To work for the abolition of landlordism in any other way than the channels of re- duced rent and the amendment of the purchase clauses of the land act is, in Mr. Parnell's opinion, now legally im- possible, and he therefore contends that the course he proposes taking is determined by the exigencies of the situation, and is, therefore, the sine qua non of his participa- tion in another national movement (of this kind)." The result of the Avondale "treaty," as it was amusingly named by Mr. Parnell, was that he was to lay down the lines on the land question for the country, at the conference, on a strictly parliamentary basis, and on condition that I would not raise any rival land issue at such conference. These were the terms, and they were easily agreed to, because it was only on these conditions the league movement could be revived, with Mr. Parnell at its head, while the programme would be sufficiently elastic to leave room for all views to obtain expression when once the country was rallied to action again. It was also agreed that the name of the revived organization should be "The Irish National League," which would be that of the suppressed Irish National Land League with the word " land " omitted, so as to avoid an illegality. It was not, therefore, until Mr. Parnell had been, in a sense, coerced in a friendly way to consent to a renewal of the agitation, and after a policy and programme for the new league had been discussed and decided upon, that Mr. Dillon, on health grounds alone, left Ireland for an eighteen months' residence in Colorado. Mr. Parnell presided at the conference, which was rep- resentative of the old fighting forces of the league and of his parliamentary following. Most of the prominent leaguers who had been in prison were present; "ex-suspect" being a rival distinction among the delegates to the legend "M.P." For the interest attaching to a statement of the kind, and as a well-merited tribute to one who has loyally served and sacrificed greatly for Ireland, the following letter and words of Mr. Parnell are reproduced here. It is, I believe, true to say that no other treasurer of any Irish political movement ever had to acknowledge and to account for a larger fund than Mr. Patrick Egan had under his direction 372 THE NATIONAL LEAGUE during a period of three years. The conference was opened by the reading of this letter: "99 Avenue de Villiers, Paris, October 14, 1882. "Dear Mr. Parnell, — In view of the fact that a new national organization is likely to spring from the conference to be held on the 17th inst., and as it is not possible for me to longer absent myself from my business in Dublin, I must earnestly beg of you and my other friends of the Land League to make such arrangements as will relieve me from the duties of treasurership. "Since I undertook the position in October, 1879, there has passed through my hands in all a sum of ;^244,82o, made up as follows : £ s. d. Relief Fund 59.178 14 3 Land League Fund to February 3, 1881 30,825 o 7 Defence Fund, per Land League 6,563 8 5 Defence Fund, per Freeman's Journal 14,514 o o Received since my arrival in Paris, February 3, 1881, 3,280,168 francs, at 25.25 129,907 o o Amount coupons on investments, 65,396 francs, at 25.25 2,582 o o Profit realized on sale of 91,000 dols. U. S. Four-per- cent. Bonds 1.250 o o ;£244,82o 3 3 " Of this sum about ;^5o,ooo (I have not the exact figures at the moment, as the books are in Dublin) was disbursed in the relief of distress in 1879 and 1880, as per accounts already published; over ;^i5,ooo was spent on the state trials of December, 1880, and January, 1881. Nearly _;^i 48, 000 has been expended through the general Land League and the Ladies' Land League in support of evicted tenants, providing wooden houses, law costs, sheriffs' sales, defending against ejectments, various local law proceedings, and upon the general expenses of organization, and I have now on hand the balance of ;^3i,9oo to turn over to whoever shall be duly authorized to take charge of it. "For my own protection as well as for the satisfaction of the members of the league, I would ask that some two members of the executive be deputed to examine into and vouch my account. "I am prepared to find my desire to retire from the office of treasurer seized upon by our enemies for the purpose of repeating the stale falsehoods about differences and dis- sensions in our ranks. I therefore avail myself of this opportunity to say that at no time have I had greater con- 373 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND fidence in the patriotism, ability, and prudence of yourself and the other leaders of the people than now, and never since I have taken a part in politics have I felt more hopeful of the long struggle for Ireland's national rights. "As an ordinary member of the new organization I shall be always prepared to do my part in forwarding the good cause. " I remain, dear Mr. Parnell, yours very faithfully, "Patrick EGA.>r. "C. 5. Parnell, Esq., M.P." The following resolution was proposed: "That this conference, on behalf of the Irish people, tender to Patrick Egan, Esq., its warmest expression of thanks for the patriotism, self-sacrifice, and ability with which he has discharged the responsible duty of treasurer of the Land League from its inception to the present hour, and that in voluntarily exiling himself and his family during the past two years in the service of Ireland he merits the grateful admiration of his country and the highest tribute which it is in the power of his colleagues in the Land League to offer him, that of unabated confidence in his unselfish and un- swerving devotion to the cause of his country." Whereupon Mr. Parnell said: "I wish to endorse every word that has been said by Mr. Davitt and Mr. McCarthy with regard to Mr. Egan. We who have been working with him know well what his services have been, and how enormously he has suffered by the voluntary exile which he took on himself during the last eighteen months or so. I do think that no tribute we could pay to him in this conference can at all afford any criterion as to the way in which the people of Ireland regard the sacrifices and sufferings he has made for their cause. Mr. Egan has always been a silent worker in the national movement. He has been content to work and not to speak, while other men have gained the credit of much that he has been able to do in his own way; and, having worked with Mr. Egan for many years, I wish to pay my humble tribute to the un- assuming devotion which he has always exhibited in forward- ing the national cause of Ireland. I will now call on you to adopt the resolution unanimously and by acclamation."^ The programme adopted by the conference and the con- stitution of the new body followed the general outline of the Avondale "treaty," but the work of drafting both for the ' The Freeman's Journal, October i8, 1882. 374 THE NATIONAL LEAGUE consideration of the delegates was done by Messrs. Healy and Harrington, under Mr. Parnell's direction. These documents are worth reproducing. They show the wide, progressive scope of the programme discussed and approved of by this Land-League congress years before many of the political and social changes here put forward were adopted for either Great Britain or Ireland by the Imperial Parliament: "THE PROGRAMME OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE ''October 17, 1882 "Resolved, that an association be formed to attain for the Irish people the following objects: i. National self-gov- ernment. 2. Land -law reform. 3. Local self-government. 4. Extension of the parliamentary and municipal franchises. 5. The development and encouragement of the labor and in- dustrial interests of Ireland. "That this association be called ' The Irish National League.' "That the objects of the league be defined as follows: " Article i "The restitution to the Irish people of the right to manage their own affairs in a parliament elected by the people of Ireland. "Article 2 " (a) The creation of an occupying ownership or peasant proprietary by an amendment of the purchase clauses of the land act of 1881, so as to secure the advance by the state of the whole of the purchase money and the extension of the period of repayment over sixty-three years. "(6) The transfer by compulsory purchase to county boards of land not cultivated by the owners and not in the occupation of tenants, for resale or reletting to laborers and small farmers in plots or grazing commonages. "(c) The protection from the imposition of rent on im- provements made by the tenant or his predecessors in title, to be effected by an amendment of the Healy clause of the land act of 1881. " {d) The admission of leaseholders and other excluded classes to all the benefits of the land act, with the further amendments thereof included in the land-law (Ireland) act amendment bill of Mr. Redmond. " Article 3 " (a) The creation of county boards and the transfer thereto of the fiscal and administrative powers of grand juries. 375 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "(6) The abolition of the principle of nomination by government to membership of the following boards: The Local Government Board, the Board of Works, the General Valuation and Boundary Survey, the Board of National Education, the Reformatory and Industrial Schools Board, the Prisons Board, the Fishery Board, and the transfer of their powers to representatives elected by county boards. "(c) The transfer to county boards of the management of union workhouses, lunatic asylums, and other institutions supported by local rates. " (d) The substitution of local for imperial control in the appointment and management of the police. " ((?) The extension to county boards of the power to nominate county sheriffs, as at present exercised by munici- palities in the case of city sheriffs. " (/) The vesting in county boards of the right of nominat- ing magistrates now enjoyed by lord lieutenants of counties. "(g) The abolition of the office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. "Article 4 "(a) The extension and assimilation of the Irish parlia- mentary and municipal franchises to those of England. "(b) The adoption of the English system in the registra- tion of voters. " (c) The securing that any measure of popular enfranchise- ment introduced for Great Britain shall also be extended to Ireland. "Article 5 " Separate legislation to elevate the condition of agricultural laborers, to secure: " (a) The providing of laborers' dwellings with half-acre allotments in the proportion of one to every £2$ valuation in the case of all holdings, pastoral or agricultural. "(b) The abolition of payment of poor rate in respect of laborers' dwellings. "(c) The repeal of the quarter-acre clause so as to entitle laborers to out-door relief during illness. "Co-operation in the movement for fostering Irish in- dustries by the appointment, in connection with each branch of the organization, of an industrial committee, on which manufacturers, shopkeepers, artisans, and farmers shall have proportional representation, and the functions of which shall be: " (a) To encourage the use and sale of Irish products. "(b) To co-operate with the National Exhibition Com- pany in securing the genuineness of articles offered for sale 376 THE NATIONAL LEAGUE as Irish manufacture, and in the organization of local ex- hibitions from time to time. " (c) To obtain scientific reports of the industrial capacities of their various districts, and stimulate the establishment of local manufacturing and cottage industries. " Rules "The Irish National League shall consist of branches and central council. "The council shall consist of forty-eight members, thirty- two to be elected by county conventions and sixteen by the Irish parliamentary party. The branches in each county shall send delegates to an annual county convention, and each delegate shall cast his vote for the candidate nominated to the central council in manner provided by the rules. Members of Parliament shall be ineligible for election to the council by a county convention. "The branches to be organized, rules framed, and the method of nomination and election to the council settled by an organizing committee. "The organizing committee shall consist of five members of the Mansion House committee for the relief of evicted tenants, five members of the executive of the labor and industrial union, five members of the council of the Home- Rule League, and fifteen other gentlemen. "The organizing committee shall have all the powers of a central council until the council is elected, and no longer." This conference, and the transition which it marked from the Land League of pro-revolutionary origin and purpose to the dominance of a parliamentary programme and control, was a veritable new departure. It was the counter-revolu- tion or reaction which invariably follows the application of extreme principles or policies. The country had passed through a grave crisis, and the fruits of all that had been sown and suffered for were neither matured nor in evidence. On the contrary, there were a large number of "wounded sol- diers," or evicted tenants, and others who had seen the seamy side of the battle-field, and the position and claims of these were a discouraging factor and argument with those who had lost less. They were reluctant in face of these results to go on risking a similar fate. The outcome of the conference of October, 1882, was the complete eclipse, by a purely parliamentary substitute, of what had been a semi-revolutionary organization. It was, in a sense, the overthrow of a movement and the enthronement 377 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND of a nian;;thQ replacing of nationalism by Pamellism; the in- vesting of the fortunes and guidance of the agitation, both for national self-government and land reform, in a leader's nom- inal dictatorship. I do not know who first invented the term "Pamellism." It was either Mr. T. M. Healy or Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and it came significantly into vogue about this time. It triumphed completely in the constitution of the governing body of the National League. This body was made almost exclusively pro-Parnellite, as against the extreme men who had worked loyally with Mr. Parnell in the Land League, but who were not prepared to look upon the name Parnellite as a substitute for nationalist, either in practice or in principle, or to invest him, or any individual, with arbitrary power. The new blood in the public life of the country, the men who had found a field of honorable distinction under Parnell's lead in the House of Commons and in Ireland, were impatient of what had largely been a non-parliamentary control of the movement. It was a natural impulse, and not unfairly acted upon, as public men are influenced in such contingencies. Mr. Egan, Mr. Brennan, and myself had been, by circumstance, thrust into prominence in the old league, and in all political bodies the element of human rivalry and ambition, of jealousy, and of intrigue operates in the direction of "capturing the ma- chine." Mr. Egan had to exile himself, as a result of his great sacrifices for the Land League; Mr. Brennan attended the conference of October, was made an honorary secretary of the new league, but soon followed his friend over the Atlantic. Those who could remain were far too few in number to count against the successful rivalry of the young M.P.'s. It was not Mr. Parnell who built up the name and legend of "Pamellism" or claimed or declared his own dictatorship, but Mr. T. M. Healy, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. James O'Kelly, Mr. William O'Brien in United Ireland, and Mr. Thomas Sex- ton. In fact, I always found Mr. Parnell far less Parnellite, in the anti-extreme sense, and infinitely less intolerant, in matters of principle and policy, than his brilliant young lieu- tenants. He was always fair and considerate in his dealings with the non-parliamentary sentiment in the movement which he led, much more so than any of these deputy leaders, excepting Mr. Sexton, and was seldom or ever personally dic- tatorial in the use of his power or the assertion of his authority. It was, in fact, a curious instance of the irony of fate in after years that those who had preached Parnell's autocracy as a dogma of absolute political faith for nearly ten years were the chief opponents of the same leader in the crisis of 1890. It 378 THE NATIONAL LEAGUE was their previous intemperate and unwise overlaudation that had persuaded him he was absolutely indispensable to the cause of Ireland, and by right and reason possessed a dictator's claim to guide that cause. Of the many legends about Parnell which had origin in the more-Parnellite-than-Parnell feeling of these and sub- sequent years among those who ruled the party and organiza- tion in his name was that which led the public to believe he governed the party with "an iron hand" and sternly put down all disobedient members. This is, in truth, an absurd fiction. No leader was ever more indulgent in the exercise of power or interfered less with his followers or gave a wider field for discussion or criticism on platforms or policies within the ambit of the national movement. I could give fifty in- stances to support this view of his character as a leader. One significant instance in connection with this conference will suffice at this stage. It had been agreed in the consultation at Avondale that I would not raise the question of land nationalization as against Mr. Parnell's position before the delegates. This was my own proposition and not Mr. Parnell's suggestion. Mr. Parnell was, in a sense, as I shall show later, almost as much in favor of James Fintan Lalor's principles as I was myself, and he had no wish to ask me not to do what he could claim no right to compel me to forego. His lieutenants, however, were then, as later, far more dictatorial, and being resolved upon the overthrow of the extreme section, they framed their plans ac- cordingly. Mr. Parnell, thereupon, wrote me as follows from a sick-bed in Morrison's Hotel on the eve of the conference: "On further consideration I think it will be better that I should confine myself in my opening statement to an explana- tion of the constitution, and then, if you should think that it is necessary for you to make any explanation of your own position, it will, of course, be open for you to do so at any period of the proceedings that you desire." Having had to differ with him frequently on points of prin- ciple and of policy, and sometimes in a most marked manner, I never experienced any "iron" or other imaginary "disci- pline," or unjust or arbitrary action on his part, up to the eve of the calamitous split of 1890. His rule was loyally acknowl- edged by his party, because it was eminently sagacious and fair, and especially because there was no man in his following who could, without exciting ridicule, put himself in opposition as a rival claimant or pretender. In many respects he was far too indulgent as a leader in the House of Commons, and permitted a wider exercise of eccentric egoism and self-ad- 379 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND vertisement among some of his men in the most severely critical assembly in the world than was serviceable to the cause he had the guardianship of there. "Oh, you must let them show themselves off now and then a little," he once re- marked to me, in good-humor, "otherwise they might inflict the same speeches upon you in Ireland." No; Mr. Parnell's "iron dictatorship" was a carefully constructed legend. Be- hind the screen of this figment a group of his ablest followers wielded an influence and a power which the real leader's lack of attention to details and growing absence from the duties of the party and the headship of the National League from 1883 to 1889 invited them to exercise under the power of his name. Though Messrs. Brennan and Harrington were nominated joint honorary secretaries of the new league, the latter be- came the permanent secretary of the organization. He had been the most prominent of the Kerry Land-Leaguers, and was imprisoned twice for his part in the movement up to the date of the conference. He proved to be a most trusted and efficient organizing secretary, careful of the interests of the movement, steady and resourceful in dealing with the mul- titudinous characters and matters which demand a daily at- tention in a combination embracing almost every parish in Ireland. The old Land -League branches soon sprang into existence again under the new name, and though Mr. Pamell did very little to re-enlist the people in the revived organiza- tion, his prominent followers soon rallied the country again, and gave its cause the hope and protection of a powerful polit- ical influence outside and inside of Parliament. The rule of Earl Spencer and his chief secretary, Mr. George Trevelyan, was a potent recruiting influence for the league. It expressed itself in every obnoxious way possible. Jury- packing became notorious. Evictions were brutally carried out in the presence of overwhelming forces. Meetings were put down on the sworn testimony of any opponent that "he apprehended" a breach of the peace if speeches were per- mitted in certain places. All these acts exasperated popular feeling and encouraged that "divine discontent" which is the right impulse and potent leverage for reform. The new organ of the national movement. United Ire- land, under Mr. William O'Brien's direction, assailed the Spencer regime with unsparing vituperation. In a relentless spirit of hostility and with great ability every act of the executive was mercilessly criticised, every fault exposed, and every measure directed against free speech or fair trial de- nounced in a strain of invective never surpassed in passionate ferocity of expression in Ireland since John Mitchel's United 380 THE NATIONAL LEAGUE Irishman had lashed a frightened DubHn Castle into fury and prosecution. A prosecution in Mr. O'Brien's instance also bore testimony to the directness with which his barbed shafts had gone home to the executive understanding, but the jury disagreed and he was discharged. The year 1882 had been signalized by several savage mur- ders, one in the month of January being that of two bailiffs near Lough Mask, in County Mayo. These men were killed and then thrown into the lake in sacks. Their bodies were found, and search was made for the murderers without avail. In the following August, however, the country was startled by the news of a crime almost without a parallel for its atrocity in the annals of agrarian outrages. A family named Joyce, residing among the wild fastnesses of the Connemara hills, were murdered in cold blood by a band of midnight assassins. It transpired that some member of the family knew who the perpetrators of the Lough Mask murders were, and the fell purpose of the men who resolved to kill the Joyces was to save themselves by committing a yet more heinous crime. The details of this revolting deed of blood inspired wide-spread horror, and the trial of the accused persons was an event of sensational importance. Both the culprits and the witnesses against them were Irish-speaking peasants, living under conditions of poverty and squalor, and one of the accused, named Myles Joyce, who protested his innocence insistently in the only tongue he could speak, was found guilty, with three others, and hanged. Myles Joyce was undoubtedly innocent, but so eager was the Castle to obtain an adequate legal vengeance for the abominable double murders of the Huddys and the Joyces that this "judicial murder," as United Ireland rightly termed it, was carried out despite every effort that could be made to induce Lord Spencer to grant a reprieve. This Maamtrasna crime brought to Ireland as a visitor for the first time a young Englishman of fine parts and of great promise, who had passed through Oxford with distinction, the late Arnold Toynbee. I had the pleasure of meeting him in Dublin, on his return from Connemara, and the great satisfaction of hearing him say truly that such a horrible crime was due to the social and industrial condition of the peasantry he had seen down there, and also to the unnatural system of government, which concerned itself more with measures of defence for itself than with means for lifting the people it failed rightly to rule out of conditions of hardship and despair. He was of the highest type of open-minded Englishmen, and had he only lived he would have been in 381 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND every noble and just sense a credit to the England he loved so proudly. Two letters which he wrote me subsequently, and shortly before his untimely death, will show the trend of his feeling and determination to work for a better rule of Ireland: "Dear Mr. Davitt, — ... I shall criticise Henry George from the point of view of a Social Democrat, and shall try to show that his theory of economic progress is to a very large extent mistaken. At the same time, I am myself in favor of very sweeping measures of social reform; but, then, I wish to see them justified on their true grounds. "I have read your letter in the Freeman's Journal, on the distress in the West of Ireland. I am not surprised at any- thing you say against the English government, under the circumstances, but I do wish you could win the Radicals to your side by showing that it is not hatred of England that actuates you but of English misgovernment. "Yours very truly, "Arnold Toynbee. " December ^o, 1882." " Balliol College, Oxford, January 16, 1883. "Dear Mr. Davitt, — The one thing I care for in the world is to soften a little the fierce enmity between England and Ireland. I was delighted with your speech at Haslingden. If you could allow such a humble person as myself to co- operate with you I should be most grateful. I am not a politician, but a student who loves books, but I am dragged out of my seclusion by the turmoil that is going on around me. I cannot be quiet while this terrible crisis in the history of the English and Irish nations is before my eyes. On Thursday I am going to speak on Ireland. I shall strain every nerve to make the English understand what is going on. My visit to Maamtrasna this summer opened my eyes. "With best wishes for your future and the future of Ireland, I remain, "Yours sincerely, "Arnold Toynbee." CHAPTER XXXI I. — THE LEAGUE IN AUSTRALASIA The friends of Ireland in the Australasian colonies began a generous support of the Land League movement early in its existence. The first branch of the organization was founded in Gympie, Queensland, in 1880, under the presidency of the Rev. M. Horan of that gold -mining centre. This clergyman was very popular among the miners, and he soon enlisted a large number of those of Irish parentage in the premier branch of the colony. He was zealously assisted by such representative citizens as Messrs. J. A. Shanahan, J. P.; James Farrell, P. Lillis, J. P. ; J. C. Polland, J. B. Carroll, M. Cogan, M. CoUison, J. Comerford, T. McMahon, T. Mc- Sweeney, A. Crotty, and later by Mr. John Flood, of the "Chester Castle Raid" fame, who was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude in Dublin, in 1867, for his prominent position in the Fenian movement. He was transported to West Australia in company with John Boyle O'Reilly and other political prisoners in 1870. This Gympie branch attracted much public attention in Australia, in October, 1882, by having the following resolu- tion adopted at a public meeting: "Whereas the recent action of the Propaganda in regard to the great Irish land agitation is not only calculated to drive the people into unconstitutional courses for the redress of griev- ances, but is likely to be fraught with disaster to the Catholic religion and the Papal authority among the Irish people, Be it therefore resolved that an address embodying our views be forwarded to His Holiness the Pope, to the presi- dent of the Irish College at Rome, to the Irish public bodies, and the Irish newspapers throughout the world. Moved by J. Farrell, seconded by John Mahoney." In January, 1881, a public meeting was held in Melbourne, with the object of rendering assistance to the league. The then minister of lands, Mr. Francis Longmore, M.P., presided, and had the assistance of Messrs. Dow, M.P., J. J. Walsh, D. Fogarty, T. P. O'Callaghan, M.P., and J. Fitzgerald, of 383 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Ballarat, as speakers. The meeting was soon followed by- active organization, in which work Mr. Joseph Winter and Mr. M. McDonald took a leading part, assisted by the men whose names will be found in connection with the records of the first convention of Australasian leaguers held in Mel- bourne. In South Australia Messrs. P. Whelan, Hewitt, O'Loghlin, McConville, O 'Sullivan, and Dixon were pioneers in the work of auxiliary organization in that colony. Early in 1881 Mr. John W. Walshe, of Balla, County Mayo, one of the chief organizers of the Irishtown meeting, was sent to Australia by the executive of the Land League on an or- ganizing mission. This was done in response to requests from antipodean friends for some properly authorized envoy from Ireland. Mr. Walshe was received in Melbourne by Mr. Joseph Winter, who was then, and has ever since remained, the most earnest and active worker for Ireland among all the stanch volunteers in Australia who have rendered valued aid to the Irish movement continuously from 1880 to the present day. In 1882 the organization had spread into most of the Austra- lasian colonies, and it became necessary to send out some prominent leader whose representative position would appeal with greater effect to supporters and to the press. The late Rev. George W. Pepper, of Ohio, U.S.A., was recommended to Mr. Parnell by American league leaders for the mission, but a better and happier choice than even that of the eloquent Irish-American divine was made in the person of Mr. John E. Redmond, M.P. The member for New Ross had already made his mark in the House of Commons as an eloquent and able debater, and he was in every sense qualified to perform the work required. He was accompanied by his brother, Mr. W. K. Redmond. They were joined on arrival by Mr. J. W. Walshe, and forth- with undertook an organizing tour which was successful be- yond all anticipation. Mr. Redmond's advent in Australia cruelly coincided with the examination of the Invincibles who were implicated in the Phoenix Park murders. The informer Carey's evidence, hinting at a complicity in these crimes of certain prominent Land-Leaguers was cabled to the Austra- lasian press, and created such anti-Irish feeling in the news- papers and among the general public that no public halls except those owned by Irish organizations could be obtained for the meetings of the boycotted envoys. So rabid did this feeling become under the daily incitations of a bigoted press that Mr. (afterwards Sir) Henry Parkes, one of the most prom- inent New South Wales politicians, actually proposed the ex- 384 THE LEAGUE IN AUSTRALASIA pulsion of the Messrs. Redmond from the colonies. Even hotels refused to give them accommodation. In Sydney they were hospitably received by Mr. Thomas Curran, proprietor of a leading hotel, and a very generous supporter of the Irish cause. He returned to Ireland in subsequent years and was elected member of Parliament for South Sligo, retiring, how- ever, and returning to Sydney again in 1900. Stanch men of his own race stood loyally by Mr. Redmond in that and in other cities, and his own courage, tact, and ad- mirable capacity enabled him to bear down all opposition. His was one of the most difficult of the many missions un- dertaken in behalf of the movement led by Parnell, and no man ever acquitted himself more creditably and more com- pletely under the fire of a relentless, hostile press, and in face of a violent public sentiment, than the then comparatively young Irishman did in his Australian tour. A league convention was held in Melbourne on November 7, 1883, and the official report of this gathering gives an ac- count of the work done up to that date by the respective mis- sions of Mr. J. W. Walshe and of the Messrs. John and William Redmond. It likewise supplies the names of the representa- tive men of the Land Leagues of Australasia who had been most prominent in the work of the auxiliary movement under the Southern Cross from its inception. The convention was held in St. Patrick's Hall, one of the historic buildings of Melbourne. It had been used as a legis- lative chamber under the old Victorian constitution from 1851 to 1856. The new (Home-Rule) constitution was dis- cussed and adopted in the same building, where it was like- wise proclaimed by the then governor, Sir Charles Hotham, after it had been finally sanctioned by the Imperial Parlia- ment. Dr. Kevin Izod O'Doherty presided at the league conven- tion as the leading league delegate from Queensland. He had been tried in 1848, in Dublin, with John Martin and others, for seditious articles written in The Irisli Felon after the sup- pression of John Mitchel's United Inslunan, and, like the two illustrious "felons," he was sentenced to transportation and domiciled in Tasmania. After being amnestied he remained in Australia, and ultimately settled down in Brisbane with his family. The following are the names of the delegates who were present : Victoria T. Taylor, J. P., Sandhurst; D. O'Keefe, Sandhurst; J. J. Fitzgerald, J. P., Ballarat; W. O'Callaghan, Ararat; Rev. J. L ^s 385 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Hegarty, Sale; Rev. M. O'Connor, Myrtleford; Rev. M. J. Gilsenan, Sandhurst; D. Slattery, J. P., Sale; T. Cahill, Gee- long; John Barry, Kyneton; J. Minogue, Kyneton; Michael Molphy, J. P., Sale; — Carroll, Ballarat; James Burjce, Warr- nambool; E. L. Nolan, East Melbourne; P. Doheney, East Mel- bourne; — Samers, Inglewood; C. J. O'Sullivan, Beechworth; John M'Intyre, Central Branch, Melbourne; — King, Wan- garatta; James Hurley, Richmond; Andrew Byrne, Wan- garatta; P. F. Ryan, Tatura; Thomas Hogan, Tatura; Denis O'Brien, J. P., Geelong; Michael Hynes, Allandale; Michael Toohey, Allandale; P. M'Cabe, Horsham; Thomas Hodgins, Horsham; John M'Mahon, Charlton; Patrick O'Sullivan, Woornook; Thomas M'Loughlan, Woornook; R. Walshe, St. Ambrose; M. Mulcare, Nar-Nar-Goon; J. Dore, Nar-Nar-Goon; John Lee, J. P., Garvoc; P. Brodrick, Malmsbury; A. Troy, Abbotsford; A. Duff, Malmsbury; John Hyland, Garvoc; P. ]. Hoban, Donald; P. Finn, Donald; S. Fitzgerald, Seymour; J. O'Leary, St. Ambrose; — Brodie, Claremorris; P. J. Fleming, Yan Yean; J. Eveston, Sandy Creek; P. Quirk, Sandy Creek; J. Coyle, Collingwood; J. Howard, Charlton; John Butler, Sun- bury; Leslie Counsell, Sunbury; Patrick M'Mahon, Gordons; John Maher, Gordons; Patrick Hehir, Shepparton; E. J. Daly, Shepparton; Nicholas Delaney, Nagambie; George Coyne, Richmond; James Madden, Richmond; J. Gill, Bet Bet and Timor; Michael Harty, Bet Bet and Timor; P. Fennelly, Warrnambool; William Broadrock, Daylesford; C. Fitzgerald, Gordons; William Sheehan, Nagambie; John Costelloe, Gor- dons; James Ryan, North Fitzroy; P. M'Ardle, Prahran; M. Rahilly, Carlton; J. Curtain, North Fitzroy; P. Hunt, Reedy Creek; J. M'Namara, Hotham; P. D. O'Reilly, Central Branch, Melbourne; D. M'Loughlin, Collingwood; P. Hayes, Central Branch, Melbourne; D. Noonan, Central Branch, Melbourne; M. Hickey, Central Branch, Melbourne; F. M'Cann, Lands- borough; J. J. Murphy, Abbotsford; — Miller, Camperdown; P. Power, Echuca; J. Shortrill, Eltham; P. H. O'Leary, Hotham Y. M. Society; H. W. Sheridan, Warrnambool H. S. ; W. O'Dea, Ballarat C. Y. M. S.; P. O'Dowd, Ballarat C. Y. M. S.; G. Russell, St. Michael's Branch H. A. C. B. S.; —M'Cann, St. Patrick's Society; P. Campbell, Emerald Hill; P. Daly, Ballarat C. Y. M. S.; J. F. Ryan, St. Patrick's Society; W. Birmingham, St. Patrick's Society; C. H. O'Leary, St. Patrick's Society; M. Donald, St. Patrick's So- ciety; Hugh Rawson, J. P., Kyneton H. A. C. B. S. ; W. Hester, Central Branch; M. Kennedy, Dunnstown; P. Toole, J. P., Richmond H. A. C. B. S. ; R. Evans, Richmond H. A. C. B. S. ; J. Cullinan, Sale H. A. C. B. S.; L. Kenyon, St. Patrick's Society; 386 THE LEAGUE IN AUSTRALASIA M. Hood, St. Patrick's Society; J. L. Freeman, St. Patrick's Society, Melbourne District; J. Whelan, St. Patrick's Society, Melbourne District; T. P. Deegan. C. Y. M. S., Daylesford; T. Quilligan, Central Branch, Melbourne; — Henning, Abbots- ford Branch St. Patrick's Society; F. B. Keogh, Hotham C. Y. M. S. ; P. Cody, St. Patrick's Society ; James Millar, Cam- perdown; P. Fagan, Victorian Central Branch; M. M'Donald, Victorian Central Branch; J. O'Grady, Victorian Central Branch; P. M'Cann, Victorian Central Branch; M. Timmins. New South Wales T. Flannery, Vegetable Creek; P. M'Cormack, Glen Innes; J. J. Dalton, Orange; Rev. T. Hanley, Deniliquin; P. E. Fallon, AlbuT}'-; James Gallagher, Bathurst; — Kelleher, Bathurst; Patrick Murray, Temora; J. M'Grath, Prospect; E. O'Farreil, Prospect; Daniel Regan, Tamworth; George Maher, West Maitland; Michael Murray, West Maitland; Bernard Gaffney, Sydney; J. G. O'Connor, Sydney; William Walshe, Sydney; F. B. Freehill, M.A., Sydney; Rev. E. J. Fallon, Burrowa; Rev. William M'Grath, Young; Very Rev. P. Dimne, V.G., Wagga Wagga; D. Dougharty, Stanafa and Tingha; T. Curry, Sydney; — Burns, Albury. Queensland Hon. Dr. O'Doherty, M.L.C., President, Brisbane Branch and Charters Towers; P. O'SuUivan, J.P., Ipswich and War- wick; C. O'Loan, J. P., Herberton; M. Collison, Gympie; P. Lillis, J. P., Gympie; Francis M'Donnell, Brisbane; J. Sul- livan, Ipswich. Tasmania James Gray, M.L.A.; Charles Galvin, E. O'Brien, R. G. Fitzsimons, — Sheehan, — Dillon, P. Tynan, Launceston. New Zealand M. Landers, Auckland; M. Sheehan, Christchurch ; L. W. Gegan, Christchurch; P. Foley, Kumara; — Flannigan, New Zealand; — Browne, J. J. Connor, Dunedin. South Australia Messrs. Hewitt, O'Loughlin, Dixon, M'Conville, Whelan, and Laffan. Prominent public men of Irish extraction wrote approving of the objects of the movement, among them being M. H. Higgins, M.L.A., of Melbourne; Mr. John Macrossan, M.P., of Queensland; Mr. James Toohey, of Sydney; Rev. J. F. Rogers, of Ballarat, and others. 387 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Mr. Joseph Winter submitted the following report of the work done by the envoys and the league branches in obtaining monetary assistance for the movement in Ireland: "Gentlemen, — It gives me pleasure to submit a statement of the financial affairs of the league since its inception in Australia. You will perceive from the printed balance sheets that the statement has been divided into two parts. The first deals with the mission of Mr. Walshe, the pioneer of the movement, and refers to the Irish National Land League; and the other contains the result of the labors of Mr. J. E. Redmond, Mr. W. Redmond, and Mr. J. W. Walshe in connection with the Irish National League. In the first statement two items require a passing notice. The first of these is the magnificent sum of nearly ^^^looo collected by the Ladies' Land League, established by Mr. Walshe during his tour through the colonies. The next item is the return from an art union which was organized to aid the funds of the league, and from which a sum of /^io8i 45 7 J was realized. Before the arrival of the Messrs. Redmond ;^6i3o had been remitted, leaving a balance of ;^83o 165 ^d, as the nucleus of the Irish National League funds, besides some large sums in the hands of the central committees. In the second balance an item of ;^2 2 15 ^d appears as an outstanding check. This check was a remittance from the Sandhurst branch, and was either lost or stolen in transmission through the post-office. Payment of the check was stopped, and I have no doubt but that a second check for the amount will be remitted. "The total amount forwarded to Dublin since the arrival of the Messrs. Redmond, in February last, has been ;^i3,ooo, leaving a balance of ;^864 145 yd in my hands, and it is expected that this will be increased by the receipt of another ;^iooo from New Zealand. Besides these amounts some large sums have been sent to the treasurers in Ireland, which would bring the amount of money collected in Australia up to nearly ;^25,ooo. This must be a gratifying fact to all con- cerned. " In conclusion, I beg to bear testimony to the vast amoimt of energy, labor, and perseverance shown by the envoys. Thanking you, gentlemen, for the confidence reposed in me in the past, I remain yours faithfully, "Joseph Winter." Warm and generous testimony was borne by all the speakers to the brilliant work that had been done by the Messrs. 388 THE LEAGUE IN AUSTRALASIA Redmond in the various cities throughout the colonies in which they had spoken, and appropriate thanks were voted them by the assembled delegates. Mr. John Redmond spoke as follows of the labors of Mr. Walshe in preparing the way for the larger mission from Ireland : "He wished also to acknowledge the unselfish support which he and his brother received from Mr. Walshe and Mr. Winter. Probably no one would ever know the labor which Mr. Walshe had devoted to the work which brought him to Australia. He was a man of an unobtrusive, retiring dis- position, but he worked hard and quietly, and without his co-operation they would never have had the slightest chance of succeeding as they had done. Another element of success was that the great bulk of the working population of the Irish in Australia were thoroughly sound in this matter. He had received from them an enthusiastic support which he could never forget." The convention voted the following officers and regulations, and then adjourned: The delegates of the different colonies retired, and agreed to the following representatives in the federal council: Victoria, Mr. J. J. Fitzgerald, J. P., and Mr. H. Rawson, J. P.; New South Wales, Very Rev. Dr. Dunne and Messrs. F. Freehill and J. Toohey; South Australia, Messrs. William Dixon, J. A. Hewitt, and H. M'Conville; Tasmania, Messrs. Gray, M.L.A., and Fitzsimons; Queensland, Hon. J. Ma- crossan and Messrs. Lillis (Gympie) and P. O'Sullivan, J. P.; New Zealand, Messrs. Perrin, Landers, and Devereau; St. Patrick's Society, Mr. Louis Kenyon. It was resolved: "That Dr. O'Doherty (Queensland) be the first president, J. G. O'Connor (New South Wales) and the Hon. F. Longmore (Victoria) vice-presidents; Mr. M. M'Donald (Victoria), honorary secretary; and Mr. J. Winter (Victoria), honorary treasurer. "That a convention of delegates from all branches of the league be held annually ; that the next convention be held in Sydney in September, 1884, and that the federal council now elected shall till that date hold office. "That the central executive committees now existing in the colonies shall each have authority to manage all local business in connection with the league, but that in any crisis of Irish affairs calling for combined action on the part of the Irish National League of Australasia the federal council alone shall have power to direct what course should 389 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND be taken ; and if a meeting of such council be found impracti- cable, the officers shall be empowered to take the votes of its members by proxy. "That all funds shall be remitted through the various central committees to the honorary treasurer of the federal council, who shall be charged with the duty of periodically forwarding the same to the treasurer of the league in Dublin." Dr. O'Doherty, in dismissing the delegates, said: " He had never altered his views. In Queensland he gener- ally found himself in opposition to the government, which was a wholesome sign. If the people of Ireland obtained the liberty which we enjoyed here, there would be a more free, independent, and loyal people in that country. The best government which ever held office in Queensland, and, perhaps the best that ever existed in any of these colonies, was one which included three Irishmen, two of whom were Catholic gentlemen — John Macrossan from the mountains of Donegal, and another gentleman from Tipperary. There was a fifth wheel to the coach in the form of one Patrick O'Sullivan. These, with a couple of Scotchmen and an Australian native, made up a ministry of unusual ability, who worked steadily and in harmony. He would say, in con- clusion, that a more respectable assembly he had never had the honor to preside over than this convention."^ A subsequent mission to Australia by Mr. John Dillon, M.P., Sir Thomas Esmonde, M.P., and the late Mr. John Deasy, M.P., will be briefly referred to in the order of date. The Messrs. Redmond returned to Ireland by way of the United States early in 1884, and were warmly welcomed by the leagues of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, in each of which cities they delivered addresses. On arriving home they were presented with complimentary addresses by various public bodies, and eulogized by Mr. Parnell for their successful labors at the antipodes. Mr. John W. Walshe made the city of Sydney his permanent residence, where he still lives. II. — THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF AMERICA The fifth convention of the Land League and first of the National League of America took place conjointly in Phila- delphia on April 25, 26, and 27, 1883. The Land League was ^Melbourne Advocate, November, 1883. 390 THE LEAGUE IN AUSTRALASIA dissolved, in name, after the first day's session, and revived under that of the National League of America on the second. There were eight hundred and fifty-four branches of the Land League represented in the first day's proceedings, and a total of one thousand one hundred and nine delegates present at the subsequent sessions. The retiring president, Mr. James Mooney, of Buffalo, New York, voiced the feelings of the delegates in these remarks: "We are here to-day chiefly to reorganize upon the same basis as that upon which the new National League in Ireland stands. We shall have the great advantage of the advice and suggestions of one who helped to inaugurate that body, Thomas Brennan, of Ireland. In it are joined together there all who can lay any claim to patriotic feeling — priests and laymen. Catholic and Protestant. It is necessary for us to be affiliated with the new organization, that we may m^ore effectively co-operate with our brethren in Ireland. How to make the change will be for this convention to deter- mine. "In spite of England, the Irish-American will be a most important factor in her Irish question till that vexed ques- tion shall have reached solution. From sire and grandsire we have brought down to the third and fourth generation the tradition of a long score of grievances to lay at England's door some day for settlement. It has been truly said of us that we 'hate England' with an intensity of detestation un- equalled by any class of Irishmen in Ireland. Even here she still imposes burdens on us; we still pay tribute to the power which has driven us, or from which we have fled, into exile, for yearly the poorest among us pours out his mite in aid of kindred she oppresses. Civilization and progress have made brighter, happier, and better the homics of men in every land — save Ireland alone. Since first the English set foot within her border to the present time the same cruelties, the same injustices have been repeated to curse and blight her. Silenced, coerced, crushed, let her people not despair. We are untrammelled. We can speak, act, organize in their behalf. To evolve a union in their interests from all the elements that make up our race in America we are here assembled in this city. Here, whence little more than one hundred years ago went forth those glorious words, signed by our forefathers, men of our race and blood, those words that have fired the hearts and inspired the labors of freemen everywhere, we will set ourselves unselfishly and patriotically to this task of union." The delegates who took part in the convention represented 39^ THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND branches of the league in the following American States and parts of Canada: Alabama, Colorado, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Nevada, Nebraska, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Vermont, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and District of Columbia; Prince Edward Island, Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, British territory. The report read by Secretary John J. Hynes showed that a total sum of $79,197 had been received from branches and in donations since the previous convention, and that $74,123 had been remitted to Treasurer Egan, Paris, the balance remaining in the hands of the American treasurer. Rev. Laurence Walsh, of Waterbury. Messrs. Patrick Egan and Thomas Brennan, Land League treasurer and secretary, respectively, were present at the convention and addressed the assembly. On the second day of the convention the change in the name of the league was effected. The credentials of the combined delegates were duly examined by a committee, when it was reported that one thousand one Inmdred and nine were entitled to take part in the business of the united convention. The following cable message was read and loudly cheered : London, April 26, 18S3. "My presence at the opening of the most representative convention of Irish-American opinion ever assembled being impossible, owing to the necessity of my remaining here to oppose the Criminal Code Bill, which re-enacts permanently the worst provisions of coercion, and which, if passed, will leave constitutional movements at the mercy of the govern- ment, I would ask you to lay my views before the convention. I would respectfully advise that your platform be so framed as to enable us to continue to accept help from America and at the same time avoid offering a pretext to the British government for entirely suppressing the national movement in Ireland. In this way only can unity of movement be preserved both in Ireland and America. I have perfect confidence that by prudence, moderation, and firmness the cause of Ireland will continue to advance, and, though perse- cution rests heavily upon us at present, before many years have passed we shall have achieved those great objects for which through many centuries our race has struggled. "Charles Stewart Parnell." 392 THE LEAGUE IN AUSTRALASIA A series of resolutions arraigning the injustice and in- famy of England's government in Ireland in the past, and exposing its continued unconstitutional character in periodical resorts to coercion, to imprisonments without trial in political and agrarian offences, and in the abolition of trial by jury in such cases, on frequent occasions, in the present, were adopted, in conjunction with the following declaration of principles : " Be it resolved by the Irish-American people, in convention assembled, that the English government in Ireland, originating in usurpation, perpetuated by force, having failed to dis- charge any of the duties of government, never having ac- quired the consent of the governed, has no moral right what- ever to exist in Ireland, and that it is the duty of the Irish race throughout the world to sustain the Irish people in the employment of all legitimate means to substitute for it national self-government. "That we pledge our unqualified and constant support, moral and material, to our countrymen in Ireland in their efforts to recover national self-government; and, in order the more effectually to promote this object by the consolida- tion of all our resources and the creation of one responsible and authoritative body to speak for greater Ireland in America, that all the societies represented in this conven- tion, and all that may hereafter comply with the conditions of admission, be organized into the Irish National League of America, for the purpose of supporting the Irish National League of Ireland, of which Charles Stewart Parnell is president." Mr. Alexander Sullivan, of Chicago, was elected president of the renamed league, with the Rev. Dr. O'Reilly, of Detroit, as treasurer, vice Rev. L. Walsh, who resigned. The constitution discussed at the Astor House conference in 1882, as referred to in a previous chapter, was with some slight modifications adopted as that of the National League of the United States and Canada, and a council representative of each State and of British territory in America for the government of the organization was duly elected, as follov/s: California, Judge M. Cooney; Connecticut, James Reynolds; Colorado, J. J. O'Boyle; Delaware, James A. Bourke; Georgia, J. F. Armstrong; Illinois, John J. Curran; Indiana, D. J. Sullivan; Iowa, M. V. Gannon; Kentucky, William M. Collins; Louisiana, John Fitzpatrick; Maryland, Rev. M. J. Brennan; Michigan, John C. Donnelly; Massachusetts, Rev. P. A. McKenna; Minnesota, C. M. McCarthy; Missouri, Dr. Thomas O'Reilly; Maine, J. A. Gallagher; Nevada, James G. Fair; 393 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Nebraska, P. J. Smith; New Hampshire, John Hayes; New Jersey, William F. O'Leary; New York, Dr. "William B. Wal- lace; Ohio, William J. Gleason; Pennsylvania, M. F. Wilhere; Rhode Island, John McElroy ; South Carolina, M. F. Kennedy; Tennessee, C. J. McCarty; Vermont, C. J. Wheeler; Virginia, Patrick McGovern; Wisconsin, J. G. Donnelly; Arizona, Thomas Fitch; District of Columbia, Peter McCartney; Can- ada, John P. Whelan. The work, temper, and outcome of the convention were pithily recorded in the head-lines of the last day's report in the New York Herald of April 28th: UNITED HAPPi' OUTCOME OF THE GREAT IRISH CONVENTION A Celtic Federation The Irish National League of America Organized its platform and purpose Stirring Arraignment of English Misgovernment in Ireland its robberies and tyrannies All Irishmen to Unite Against Oppression — A War on English Goods parnell to be upheld Alexander Sullivan, of Chicago, President; John Byrne, of Cincinnati, Vice-President " [By telegraph to the Herald] " Philadelphia, Pa., April 27, 1883. " The great convention of the Irish race is over. Its work of organizing the new Irish National League of America and putting forth a platform is fairly accomplished. The Land League is merged in the new body, which now contains hun- dreds of societies heretofore acting on their own account for Ireland's good. The deliberations were for the most part harmonious. Dynamite was not heard of. The president of the new organization, Mr. Alexander Sullivan, and the vice-president. Major John Byrne, are from the West — 394 THE LEAGUE IN AUSTRALASIA the first from Chicago, the second from Cincinnati — and both are popular with the delegates, who seem greatly pleased with the outcome of their deliberations. The management of a convention of nearly twelve hundred members, containing, too, if in small quantity, some very fiery material, required delicate judgment, and this was certainly not wanting." The Chicago Times of the same date was equal to its New York contemporary in a spicy summary of that part of the proceedings which the London press seized upon as giving a "dynamite character" to the Philadelphia Irish-American parliament : "Then came the fight of the day. The nitro - glycerine folks wanted a chance. Rossa had a speech in his pocket; so had Sheridan. Both wanted to fire them off. A motion to adopt the resolutions as a whole brought out a dyna- mite man from Chicago, who denounced gag law and lashed the convention into a fury. There was a lively time for a few minutes. A hundred men were on their feet demand- ing to be heard, and cries of 'Question!' rang out from all parts of the hall. The chairman pounded his table, and like a whirlwind the dynamite people were swept from their feet. They were hopelessly beaten. After this scene the committee on reorganization reported, and the articles of the new league were received with loud cries of approba- tion. The platform is essentially the Dublin platform. Then came the nominations for president, and a dozen or so prominent names were brought forward. When the vote was taken. State after State wheeled into line for Alexander Sullivan. Time and time again he protested, but cheers drowned out his voice. When he had been formally de- clared elected he came forward on the stage and per- emptorily declined, but the delegates would not have it so. They tabled his declination and fairly drove him into the office. The rest of the session was harmonious and devoid of interest, and with the election of the other officers the convention adjourned." The "confederation" which Mr. Parnell had dreaded to sanction after the Phoenix Park tragedy was adopted in Philadelphia, and without any war upon his more con- stitutional policy and methods. The hitherto conservative Land-Leaguers of the United States, who looked to Mr. P. A. Collins, of Boston, and to Rev. Dr. Conat3^ of Worcester, as leaders, joined at Philadelphia with the more extreme sections in a united organization; Dr. Conaty being one of those who induced Mr. Sullivan to accept the presidency of the league. 395 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND The Irish World had abandoned the support of Mr. Parnell and of his policy after the Kihriainham treaty, and adopted a dynamite propaganda, in retaHation for continued Enghsh coercion. Its circulation had been prohibited by Dublin Castle in Ireland in consequence. Mr. Ford's followers were, therefore, not represented at the Philadelphia congress of Irish- Americans. CHAPTER XXXII ROME AND IRELAND Early in this year (1883) it seemed right to the nationalists of Ireland to present to Mr. Parnell some substantial recogni- tion of his services to the country. It was reported that his property in County Wicklow was heavily mortgaged, and that he was in danger of being financially embarrassed thereby. This state of things was believed to be in some measure due to his undivided attention to the Irish move- ment. The savage attack made upon him in the House of Commons by Mr. Forster and in the English press by the league's most malignant enemies rendered the time most opportune for a testimonial of Ireland's regard for the man so bitterly assailed by England. An appeal was therefore issued to the country for subscriptions. A fairly generous response was being made by the people when the following letter, signed by the Prefect of the Propaganda Fide, and addressed to the Irish bishops, astounded the public of Ireland and delighted that of Great Britain on its appearance in the press: "Whatever may be the case as regards Mr. Parnell himself and his objects, it is at all events proved that many of his followers have on many occasions adopted a line of conduct in open contradiction to the rules laid down by the supreme pontiff in his letter to the Cardinal Archbishop of Dublin, and contained in the instructions sent to the Irish bishops by this sacred congregation, and unanimously accepted by them at their meeting at Dublin. It is true that, according to these instructions, it is lawful for the Irish to seek redress for their grievances and to strive for their rights; but always at the same time observing the divine maxim to seek first the kingdom of God and His justice, and remembering also that it is wicked to further any cause, no matter how just, by illegal means. " It is therefore the duty of all the clergy, and especially the bishops, to curb the excited feelings of the multitude, and to take every opportunity with timely exhortation to recall 397 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND them to the justice and moderation which are necessary in all things, that so they may not be led away by greed of gain to mistake evil for good or to place their hopes of public prosperity in the shame of criminal acts. Hence it follows that it is not permitted to any of the clergy to depart from these rules themselves, or to take part in or in any way to promote movements inconsistent with prudence and with the duty of calming men's minds. It is certainly not for- bidden to collect for relief of distress in Ireland; but, at the same time, the aforesaid apostolic mandates absolutely con- demn such collections as are raised in order to inflame popular passions, and to be used as means for leading men into re- bellion against the laws. Above all things, they (the clergy) must hold themselves aloof from such subscriptions, when it is plain that hatred and dissensions are aroused by them; that distinguished persons are loaded with insults ; that never in any way are censures pronounced against the crimes and murders with which wicked men stain themselves; and especially when it is asserted that the measure of true patriot- ism is in proportion to the amount of money given or refused, so as to bring the people under the pressure of intimidation. "Quibus positis, it must be evident to your lordships that the collection called the ' Parnell Testimonial Fund ' cannot be approved by this sacred congregation, and consequently it cannot be tolerated that any ecclesiastic, much less a bishop, should take any part whatsoever in recommending or promoting it. "Meanwhile we pray God long to preserve your lordship. "Rome, May ii, 18S3." A feeling of intense indignation swept through the country at this attack upon the Protestant leader of a people whose Catholicity was being used as a cover for an unwarranted interference in their political and national concerns. It was at once, and rightly, divined that England's hand was behind this action, and that it was to subserve some ulterior purpose that Rome was thus made a cat's-paw of by a power that had been the deadly enemy alike of the fatherland and faith of the mass of the Irish people. This feeling was aggravated by the exultation and mockery of the British press at the open assumption of a high Propaganda dignitary of the right to meddle in the national affairs of Ireland. The name of the sovereign pontiff was so used as to assert a power to permit or refuse the right of the people of Ireland to seek redress for grievances or to assert their right to such reforms as their country required for its progress and prosperity. The 398 ROME AND IRELAND language of the letter was likewise insulting in its terms towards " Parnell himself and his objects," and this was hotly resented. It was bitterly remembered, too, that this was no less than the third interference of the same or similar kind made in the politics of Ireland under the guise of a moral concern for our spiritual welfare since the Land League movement began. In 1881 we were admonished "to obey the laws," while one thousand of us were in prison without trial. In 1882 in- structions from the Sacred Congregation of the Propaganda ordered the entire hierarchy of Ireland to assemble, and to issue admonitions against the Ladies' Land League and the participation of curates in meetings without due permission from their superiors, and otherwise to discourage clerical support of the agitation which had already won the Land Act of 1 88 1. The "Qualecumque de Parnellio" document was worse still, from its assumption of a sovereign right to determine what Ireland's political weapons and concerns should be, and the contemptuous allusions made therein to the leader of the Irish nation and his followers. The whole country took fire. There was a spontaneous out- burst of indignant protest from all quarters of nationalist Ireland, and the word went round, "Make Peter's pence into Parnell's pounds." Instinctively this was done. People who had subscribed already doubled their donations. Numbers who probably had not thought of aiding the testimonial came forward to do so in obedience to the national sentiment, which rebelled against England's attempt to have her purposes served in Ireland through the loyalty of the Catholic Irish to the head of the Catholic Church. The feeling that was stirred up among even the peasantry by the intrigue which had produced this letter was well illustrated in the remark made by an old Tipperary woman to Archbishop Croke: "Arrah, yer Grace," said the old lad3% "i^ it true that the English are trying to make a Protestant of the Pope?" The Parnell testimonial had reached a sum of about £1 2 ,000 when the Propaganda manifesto appeared. It looked as if the fund would barely touch the figure of £20,000, the amount which the promoters had anticipated being able to raise. The mortgage on the Avondale estate was some £1^,000, and it was expected that £7000 above that figure would make a generous presentation to Mr. Parnell for his services. Noth- ing could have been more fortunate for the languishing fund than the attack from Rome. Subscriptions rushed in from all quarters, until, finally, a sum of £'39,000 was obtained as a protest of the most emphatic kind against the Propaganda 399 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND intervention. And it Is, I believe, on record that the col- lection in Ireland for Peter's pence in the same year was the lowest that had been made during the generation. Before, however, the success of the testimonial had been so completely achieved, in a manner thus doubly creditable to a Catholic people, Archbishop Croke, who had been con- spicuous in his generous support of it, was summoned ad audicndum verbiim to Rome. The English press commented upon this summons with unctuous satisfaction. He had been "the Land - League archbishop." Miss Pamell and her courageous lady associates during the coercionist reign of terror in 1881-82 had been defended and lauded by him for their services and patriotism, while he had been in other ways a fearless, outspoken enemy of landlordism. The rumor of his intended humiliation for the part he had played in Ireland was, therefore, a promised triumph for English influence over Irish in Rome, and was gloated over by the entire British press. Dr. Croke gave me an interesting account of his experiences in Rome shortly after his arrival back in Ireland. His Holiness Pope Leo had received him in a most unfriendly manner. He examined him with reference to his advocacy of the movement led by Parnell and the attacks which he (the archbishop) had made upon Dr. McCabe after the head of the see of Dublin had censured the Ladies' Land League, winding up with the charge that he (Dr. Croke) had been complained of to his Holiness as "a kind of Irish Garibaldi against law and authority." This last shot roused the fiery Celt in the accused archbishop, who at once flung back this crushing rejoinder: "Well, Holy Father, all I need say, in that connection, is this: If Gari- baldi had the same amount of support from the priests and people of Italy behind him that I have had in the stand I have taken against landlordism and English injustice in Ireland, it no longer surprises me to find your Holiness a prisoner in the Vatican." This retort went home. Pope Leo had a real liking and admiration for the Irish people, and did not fail to recognize the honesty of character and purpose which lay behind the courage of this reply. Dr. Croke was then invited to offer his views, and to give information upon the condition of Ireland, and the interview which began in a threatened storm ended without any mark of censure or humiliation being inflicted upon the stout-hearted Irish prelate. He returned forthwith to Ireland, and took the first available opportunity after landing to declare, both to England and Rome, that he came back " imchanged 400 ROME AND IRELAND and unchangeable" in all his convictions on the Irish question. The interferences of Rome in Irish affairs of a non-religious nature have been invariably antagonistic and injurious, either in their direct motives or indirect consequences. Ireland, in fact, has been treated as if she stood in the relation of a semi - temporal fief to the holy see. The greatest of all Ireland's evils and misfortunes were due to the action of one of the popes, who commissioned King Henry II., of England, to invade and subdue the country. "The honor and glory of God" was, probably, the pretext of this commission. The results, unfortunately, would lead to the conclusion that the enemy of mankind's salvation, rather than the glory of our Redeemer, was more served in the acts of conquest and aggression which drew their justification from the bull of Pope Nicholas Brakespeare. Be that as it may, the secular or political effects upon Ireland of Roman intervention in our struggles to regain the right of nationhood of which we were thus despoiled, have generally been selfish, short-sighted, or unfair. True, one of our poets has sung: "There's wine from the royal Pope Upon the ocean green." But histor}^ teaches us that popes Paul V., Urban VIIL, and Innocent X. were friendly to the Irish rebellious chiefs, because many if not most of those were fighting for the cause of the Church in Ireland and in Great Britain as much if not more than for that of Irish freedom from England's rule. In other words, it was resistance to her own enemies which Rome encouraged in Ireland. Faith as well as fatherland was, in a sense, involved in the struggles which triumphed at Benburb and succumbed in the surrender of the treaty of Limerick — when Sarsfield took more Irish troops from Ireland to the service of a deposed Catholic English king abroad than would free his country, if he and they would only fight for her liberty. But no pope has ever lent direct aid, in wine or in weapons, or indirect encouragement of any kind, to the cause of an independent Irish nation. Edmund Burke urged Pitt to emancipate the Catholics of Ireland, otherwise they would join the Protestant United- Irishmen conspiracy hatched in Belfast. Pitt promised Archbishop Troy and the Irish bishops he would do this, and on the strength of this insidious pledge the Catholic hierarchy were parties to the sale of the Irish Parliament. Wolfe Tone and the men who could have liberated the country 26 401 r H E FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND at the time, had there been any patriotism among the bishops and priests of the period, were thrown over for English promises, and Archbishop Troy and his pro-English con- spirators got their reward in the usual English breach of faith in engagements based upon their proverbial deception and treachery. When emancipation did come it was granted through a fear of insurrection, in which the bishops would have played no part, and not in any decent desire to redeem the broken pledge of the chief architect of the Act of Union. O'Connell's immortal dictum, that while he would accept his faith from Rome he would no more take his politics from there than from Stamboul, reflected the independent character of Irish nationalism. The great tribune's defeat of the Quarantotti intrigue to place the independence of the Irish Catholic bishops at the mercy of an English govern- ment w^as a blow delivered at a direct attempt on the part of Rome to make the Church in Ireland subservient to a com- bined English and Vatican political policy. It was a blow, however, which probably served the cause of Catholicity much more than that of Irish nationalism. In more modern times Vatican policy towards Ireland has been almost entirely influenced by the intrigue of certain English ecclesiastics always resident in Rome. They are only a few, but they are able men, both in diplomacy and in linguistic accomplishments. They are constantly in touch with the English embassy in the Eternal City, and are the mediums through whom communications are made when Catholic affairs in India, or in some other part of the British Empire outside of Great Britain and Ireland, call for negotia- tion with the imperial government. They consequently wield much influence in Propaganda circles, and being English Tories they are avowed enemies of Home Rule. It was through these sources and corresponding anti - nationalist Catholic circles in Dublin that the various pronouncements and rescripts against the Land League were obtained on a onesided and prejudiced representation of the causes which led to certain events in Ireland from 1881 to the plan of campaign. For this state of things in Rome the Irish hierarchy are, by omission of duty to Ireland, entirely responsible. They never assert themselves there in any Irish national sense. There are probably not one hundred thousand Catholics of English blood in the whole Catholic population of Christen- dom. There are, on the other hand, within the British Empire, fully ten million CathoHcs, and eight out of every ten of these are of Irish blood. In the United States the 402 ROME AND IRELAND Irish are a vast majority of the Catholic citizens of the great repubHc. There must be a milHon of these to every thousand Cathohcs who are of the Anglo-Saxon race. In Australasia and in South Africa, as in England and Scotland, the Irish have been the missionary agencies for spreading the faith of Rome, and the generous creators of the countless churches, convents, and schools which have been erected there by their means during the past eighty years. But, despite all this, the representatives in Rome of the one hundred thousand English Catholics are a hundred times more politically influential than all the bishops of Irish par- entage that have to pay their periodical visits to the supreme pastor of the Catholic faith. In fact, the English resident prelates and monsignori in Rome modestly take credit to their nation and race for the phenomenal expansion of the Church on three (more or less) English-speaking continents, where (barring the French Canadians) there would not be a hundred pounds a year subscribed for Peter's pence had no Irish ever found their way to America, Australia, or South Africa. Archbishop Croke was the solitary Irish prelate who had the courage in the present generation to assert himself in Rome as an Irishman, but he never visited Rome again after his "trial" there, on an English accusation, in 1883. The Irish prelates of our time are a truly submissive and lais- sez-faire order of churchmen. A very few of them are moder- ate nationalists. The majority are, if the truth were known, more against than for Home Rule. When in Rome they are treated as ciphers. They count as nothing against the three or four able English ecclesiastics who hold the fort there for England's interests. Not a single one of Ireland's episcopate ever dreams of the racial rights or claims or dignity of the great missionary people he represents — the greatest mission- ary force of the whole Catholic Church — as against the attitude and pretensions of the few truly patriotic English churchmen, who never lose a single opportunity of furthering their country's interests and of misrepresenting the political aims and movements of the race who are striving to achieve the social welfare and political redem.ption of Ireland. And Rome treats these truly complacent Irish prelates with the indifference which their want of racial patriotism and of personal force and of capacity merits at her hands. It now" transpires that what was diplomatically asserted by the Liberal ministry from 1881 to 1885 — namely, that the Errington mission to Rome in these years was a mere in- dividual enterprise and not even indirectly official, was in reality untrue. An underhand negotiation, known to and 403 THE FALL OF FEUDALISxM IN IRELAND sanctioned by the English government against the Irish movement and leaders, was in full activity during these years. Mr. Morley, in his Life of Gladstone,^ quotes the Liberal prime-minister's letter to Cardinal Newman, with the prefatory remarks: "Executive violence (the Forster coercion act) did not seem to work, and Mr. Gladstone looked in a natural direction for help in the milder way of persuasion. He wrote (December 17, 1881) to the cardinal: " ' I will begin with defining strictly the limits of this appeal. I ask you to read the enclosed papers, and to consider whether you will write anything to Rome upon them. I do not ask you to write, nor to tell me whether you do write, nor to make any reply to this letter, beyond returning the en- closures in an envelope to me in Downing Street. I will state briefly the grounds of my request, thus limited. In 1844, when I v/as young as a cabinet minister, and the government of Sir Robert Peel was troubled with the O'Connell mani- festations, they made what I think was an appeal to Pope Gregory XVI. for his intervention to discourage agitation in Ireland. I should be very loath now to tender such a request at Rome. But now a different case arises. Some inembers of the Roman Catholic priesthood in Ireland deliver certain sermons and otherwise express themselves in the way which my enclosures exhibit. I doubt whether if they were laymen we should not have settled their cases by putting them in jail. I need not describe the sentiments uttered. Your eminence will feel them and judge them as strongly as I do. But now as to the supreme pontiff: you will hardly be surprised when I say that I regard him, if apprised of the facts, as responsible for the conduct of these priests. For I know perfectly well that he has the means of silencing them, and that if any one were in public to dispute the decrees of the council of 1870, as plainly as he has denounced law and order, he would be silenced. " 'Mr. Errington, who is at Rome, will, I believe, have seen these papers, and will, I hope, have brought them to the knowl- edge of his Holiness. But I do not know how far he is able, nor how he may use his discretion. He is not our official servant, but an independent Roman Catholic gentleman, and a volunteer.' " Mr. Morley adds: "The cardinal replied that he would gladly find himself able to be of service, however slight it might be, in a political crisis which must be felt as of a grave * Vol, ill., pp. 62, 63. 404 ROME AND IRELAND anxiety by all who understand the blessing of national unity and peace." This intrigue with the Pope, behind the backs of the Irish hierarchy and people, was altogether in keeping with Eng- land's traditional conduct towards Ireland. The Catholicity of the country was to be used as a handmaid to coercion. Rome was to act as an emergency magistrate for the punish- ment of Land -League clerics, whose sermons were reported in stealth by spies of Dublin Castle taking part in the re- ligious services of congregations. And these reports, thus secured, were to be exhibited in Rome to procure from there a verdict without trial, on ex-parte statements, corresponding to the verdicts given under the law of Edward III. in Ireland, which dispensed with the risky formality of a jury. Mr. Morley's revelation also discloses the fact that the greatest Catholic layman of his century, the emancipator of his Irish and English coreligionists, was likewise sought to be silenced by an English government through the medium of the very faith which he had freed from the shackles of England's penal laws! In fact, England has never been ashamed to invoke the assistance of a spiritual power, whom she compels her monarchs to swear represents a superstitious and idolatrous faith, to assist England's "work in Ireland; while that same spiritual power never seems to have resented being thus made use of by the most malignant of all its opponents against the most loyal and devoted of its fol- lowers and friends among the Christian nations of the world. Undeterred by the spirited rebuff given by the Catholics of Ireland to the Anglo-Roman attack upon the Parnell tes- timonial, a still greater blunder was committed a few years later in the rescript issued against "the plan of campaign." In this instance a Tory government was in power, but the politics of England's agents in Rome never change. They always remain steadfastly anti-Irish. Lord Salisbury had declared the most loyal of Catholic peoples to be on a par with African Hottentots in their unfitness for self-govern- ment. The race that had carried the creed of Rome round the world and had planted its seeds in every land was to be subjected to twenty years of resolute coercion at home by the Tory premier. But neither the spiritless chiefs of the Catholic faith in Ireland nor the head of the Church in Rome took it as an insult that this descendant of the Cecils of Queen Elizabeth's reign should request a papal rescript as a kind of postscript to Mr. Balfour's coercion. Cardinal Monaco, acting entirely on a pro-English or pro- 405 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND landlord brief, issued his responsive manifesto against an Irish method of political warfare on these four grounds: The plan of campaign * was wrong because: First. It interfered with "freedom of contract" between Irish tenant and Irish landlord. Secondly. The Irish tenants were free to enter the land courts, where rents could be adjudicated upon "fairly and justly." Thirdly. Tenants joining the plan of campaign "were forced" to pay their quota of the rent to others than the rightful parties; and Fourthly. Boycotting was a weapon of the plan of cam- paign which was contrary to Christian charity, and which prevented tenants from taking farms that were lying vacant. It was quite a secondary matter, though a very serious consideration indeed, that not in the instance of a single one of these grounds did the actual facts justify the con- clusions on which the condemnation was based. The first and essential matter, however, was what right had Cardinal Monaco or the sacred congregation in Rome to sit as a supreme judge upon Irish political modes of action in a struggle against English institutions and laws in Ireland? From whom did the authority emanate? No Pope has any such authority from the Irish people in virtue of his head- ship of the Catholic faitli. The old contention around the word "morals," and the claim thereby set up that the Cliurch has a right to determine what is right or wrong in politics, has never been admitted and never obeyed by any Catholic nation, since enfranchised peoples in constitu- tionally governed countries settle for themselves who shall and shall not make the laws of the land. Such a claim, if ever admitted by the Irish people, would necessarily have a twofold appHcation: It would judge and condemn what was "contrary to morals" in English government and in Irish landlordism equally with what was contrary to Catholic teaching in the principles of Land Leagues and in the opera- tions of plans of campaign. But no rescripts or condemna- tions are ever issued by Pope or by sacred congregations against a blasphemous oath by an English king against the faith of an Irish Catholic people; or against the packing of Irish juries by the insulting exclusion of Catholics, as such, therefrom in political or agrarian cases; or against the systematic robbery of a tenant's property in rack-renting; or against the destruction of Irish homes in wholesale evic- ' See Chapter XLII. 406 ROME AND IRELAND tion; or against the shooting down of peasants at Ballaghade- reen, women at Behniillet, and of inoffensive men at a Mitchelstown meeting — all within the Land League period — by a lawless police force. No. Crimes of this kind, against the people, would never raise in Roman censure a little finger of the watchful Propaganda. England would be offended. It is only when the Irish nation become a trouble to England and a menace to her unjust authority in Ireland, in movements which are invariably justified by their results, that Rome can be induced to utilize the prestige of the Church and the weight of her moral authority as factors in the Anglo-Irish struggle. And it always happens that this in- fluence is thrown into the scale against the movements in which the Irish people seek the redress of their social or political wrongs. The secret opposition of Rome to Home Rule is not at all appreciated in its right motives in popular British politics. The silly fiction about Home Rule meaning "Rome Rule" for Ireland has served a twofold anti-Irish end very effective- ly so far. It has inflamed extreme Protestant minds against the rational demands of the Irish people, while at the same time furthering the best interests of Vatican policy in securing the continued presence of some eighty Catholic members in the otherwise most exclusively Protestant Parliament in the world. It is known right well by EnglivSh Catholics of the Duke of Norfolk order, and in Rome, too, that the transference of the Irish representation from Westminster to Ireland would mean the exclusion of almost all Catholic power and influence from the House of Commons. On the other hand, a National Assembly in Dublin would give prominence to the existence of a strong Protestant minority in what is believed in Europe to be an exclusively Catholic country. Against this danger to Catholic interests in Eng- land even Cardinal Manning, stanch and true friend of Ireland as he was, intrigued with the worst of our English Catholic opponents in 1886. Those, in fact, who know the trend and purpose of Vatican policy in relation to the British Empire are aware that no Ulster Orangeman looks in his bigoted ignorance with more dislike on Home Rule for Ire- land than do the learned and ever-watchful members of the Sacred College of Propaganda at Rome, with their quenchless hope of seeing England won back again to the yearning folds of her ancient faith. Destiny may surely be said to have exhausted the re- sources of its malign interventions in Ireland's endless struggles and trials for the recovery of her racial nationhood, 407 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND when the creed to which she has been attached in unique and matchless loyalty, and for which she has spurned a proffered freedom at the price of faith, should be made use of by England in her insidious and stealthy relations with Rome as a last attempt to undermine the equally undying fidelity of the Celtic race to the political religion of national liberty. The results of the Persico mission and of the rescript against the plan of campaign were nil so far as Irish popular opinion went. England's hand was seen behind it all, and remarks more resentful than reverent were made in thousands of quarters where there could be no question of Catholic sincerity or of disrespect towards religion. It was felt that while the learned and pious monsignori of the Sacred College were unassailable in their own domain of dogma, they were very unsafe guides in the matter of what was a fair rent in Ireland, and very unreliable in their estimate of the amount of justice which resided in a Castle court of law for an Irish Catholic litigant. Boycotting might be an extreme pro- ceeding in a politico-social conflict, but the weapon was not first heard of, except in its new name, in Ireland. No power on earth had so remorselessly inflicted the penalty of social ostracism for resistance to the Church's decrees as the Church herself; and as the Irish landlord had the powers and prestige of England behind him, the tenant and his advisers felt justified, under all the circumstances, in resorting to a means of defence or retaliation which was in every way more pref- erable than the blunderbuss of the older agrarian organiza- tions. Whatever might be thought in London or in Rome, the nationalists of Ireland who followed Mr. Parnell believed boycotting to be infinitely less cruel, less unjust, and less sinful than the methods of Irish landlordism or the morals of Dublin Castle. And the result was that the Propaganda edict against the plan of campaign was as dead a week after its first and suggestive appearance in the London Times as the famous fulmination against Galileo. CHAPTER XXXIII SOME LEAGUE ANECDOTES Among the numerous letters of an original kind which reached the Land League offices in 1881 was this: Ballinrobe, Mayo, January 8, iSSi. "To THE Honorable Land Lague, — Gintlemin, in a momint of wakeness i pade me rint. i did not no ther was a law aginst it or i wud not do it. the peeple pass by me dure as if the smal pox was in the hous, i heer ye do be givin pardons to min that do rong, and if ye will sind me a pardon to put in the windy for every one to rede it, as God is me judge i will never komit the crime agin. Misther Scrab Nally will give me a Karacthur if ye write to him, at Bal. "Yours thruly. Another epistle arrived from a correspondent who failed to reconcile his parish priest and the bishop of the diocese to his views of the moral guilt involved in some personal transaction. He was a conscientious man, and v/as spiritual- ly concerned in the persistent refusal of his religious guides to give him absolution. He was advised to persevere, but returned to the subject in a final letter in which he freely offered to leave the alleged moral delinquency in question to the disinterested judgment of the Land League executive. Occasionally an authority was asked for which was equally embarrassing of exercise in a civic sense. The league in the latter part of 1880 and early in 1881 v/as declared by the landlord organs to be the de facto government of Ireland. Its decrees were said to be sure of obtaining obedience in the country, while those of Dublin Castle were alleged to be the object of popular contempt. There was some truth in a taunt that was meant to goad the government into a resort to coercion. Rents were being withheld where the oeople were strongly organized, and evictions had been successftdly re- sisted in several instances, league organizers being the direct 409 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND agents of this resistance to the legal rights and powers of the landlords. This evidence of a growing prestige, coupled with large and increasing remittances from Messrs. Parnell and Dillon, who were at that time (early in 1881) in the United States upon a mission from the national organization, increased the reputation of the league, and caused all kinds and conditions of persons to write their grievances or make known their suggestions, plans, and requests to the secretaries. I recollect receiving, a few days before my arrest in February, 1 88 1, a telegraphic message to this effect from the master of a workhouse in the capital of a Southern county: "Colonel Blank has applied to me for a two nights' accommodation for one hundred and fifty soldiers in the union buildings. Wire if I am to comply with his request." Anxious not to come into conflict with the authority of the Crown at the time, if it could be avoided, the Land League's permission was telegraphed back, and her Britannic Majesty's troops obtained their lodgings. Our best and most popular platform speaker in the early league years was Mr. Thomas Brennan. He had a very eloquent style, and suggested Thomas Francis Meagher in delivery and in figurative speech. He was replete with references to Stuart Mill and to the legislation of Stein and Hardenberg, and was eagerly listened to by the local aspirants to platform fame, who at subsequent and smaller gatherings would try and enlighten their audiences with the borrowed but unacknowledged economic and political erudition of Mr. Brennan. One of these talked on one occasion very learnedly about "the laws which Shteel and Harly Burke had passed for the tinnents of Prussheea." On another occasion the same speaker denounced the landlords as "the tyrant class who spint the rints of daycint people in Rotten Row and other disreputable places in London." "Our people have been exterminated by the robbers," exclaimed another, "and where have they gone? Echo an- swers, 'Some to America and some to the bottom of the say.' " "They say I am a commune," complained a Mayo orator who had been called a communist in a controversy with a local and very learned clergyman. "I don't know fot a commune is, but I'll take me oath I'm no commune." The controversy was continued, and the Latin tag about the propriety of the shoemaker sticking to his last was made use of by his reverence in a withering allusion to the platform reputation of the local Demosthenes. The next meeting in 410 SOME LEAGUE ANECDOTES the locality offered the assailed reformer a chance to reply. It was a triumphant rejoinder, judged by the applause which its eloquence provoked : "I'm attacked by a larned scribbler," exclaimed the speaker, "bekase I plade the cause of the people. The rint office and the backers of the landlords, the gintlemen who are invited to stretch their legs under the mahogany of the evicthors and exterminathors, are aginst me, and Latin has been used to squelch me. But here I am to pro- claim to the world the great truth, 'fox poply, fox day!' ^ and from this platform I fling the Frinch in his face." There was a love of practical joking characteristic of Celtic nature in many of the expedients resorted to in the new policy of opposition to evictions. An eviction is not com- plete according to the law until every inmate of a house is put outside and all living stock are removed from the farm. These conditions had to be fulfilled before full legal possession of the holding could be said to be obtained by the evictor. These legal requirements necessarily lent themselves to in- genious forms of obstruction. A farmer in one of the Western counties, with a few tall trees on his land, resorted to the following plan for defeating or delaying the work of ejecting him from his farm: The day before the sheriff and his party arrived the tenant, with some friendly help, succeeded in locating two young goats in an open wooden box on the top of one of his highest trees. Food for the animals was provided inside the box, and as the architect of this scheme descended from the elevated perch he cut off all the branches beneath those supporting the goats and liberally smeared the trunk with tar and grease. The evicting party arrived on the scene, and on reconnoitring the situation the agent of the landlord saw the meaning of the strategy and beat a retreat. No ladder would be lent by any person in the district for so odious a purpose, even if there was one long enough to enable the goats to be got at, while in any case a few days' more time would be required for the satisfaction of the law in the matter of evicting the animals, and all this would mean heavy expense. A more extraordinary and equally successful plan was resorted to by a tenant on a property in the county of Sligo. He managed to place a huge rock weighing several tons inside his cabin. A stout chain was next obtained, and on the morning of the expected eviction the chain was riveted round the leg of the tenant, as if he was a prisoner, while the other ' Vox populi, vox Dei. 411 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND end of it was embedded in a hole drilled into the bowlder and filled with lead. Not a file could be found in the whole country-side. No blacksmith would lend himself to the task of helping the agent out of the difficulty, while the police could not interfere in that part of the evil work. The eviction had to be abandoned for two or three days, and upon the landlord hearing of the trick resorted to by the tenant, a compromise was proposed and the resourceful strategist was left in possession of his cabin. A well-to-do farmer in County Down slightly improved upon this expedient without submitting himself to the chaining process. He was the owner of a complicated mow- ing-machine, and taking the implement to pieces he refitted it inside his — drawing-room! The law, in spirit, at any rate, does not lend itself to the destruction of a tenant's implements or property in carrying out the landlord's claims upon its service, and it is evident from the obvious meaning of some of the provisions of the Gladstonian Land Act of 1870 that the author's purpose was to make the vandal work of eviction a costly proceeding on the part of the landlord as some de- terrent to the labor of peasant extermination. Mr. Murray's mowing-machine was, therefore, a counter-legal impediment in the way of the eviction of its owner. As in the instances referred to, the plan prolonged the expensive and hateful process of clearing the land, and a compromise was in con- sequence ultimately effected. Clare Island, with its precipitous and picturesque head- land, and its striking position, like that of a giant sentinel guarding the hundred green islands of Clew Bay from the fury of the Atlantic, has been the home of a hardy, struggling little community from the times of the island's famous pirate queen, Grace O'Malley. They have always been a primitive and Celtic-speaking people, and have combined the fishing industry on a small scale with potato and oats cultivation under discouraging conditions. The island is bare alike of trees and turf, the soil cold and unyielding, and the general character of its resources such as would induce a visitor to conclude that the inhabitants ought to be paid to live and labor there, rather than to be highly rented for patches of wretched land and mountain grazing. The owner of the island in 1880 was one McDonnell. He was, I think, sheriff or sub-sheriff of the county at the time. His island tenants owed rents, and showed no great alacrity to pay them after three bad seasons. He therefore undertook to head his own rent-collecting expedition, and in command of a boat- load of police and bailiffs he made for the island. His 412 SOME LEAGUE ANECDOTES reception was warm, but in an unfriendly sense. The party were opposed on trying to land, but the armed policemen forced their way ashore and enabled the owner to set a footing upon his own property. He took up his quarters in an old, roofless castle above the beach and opened a rent office. There were no callers. His tenants were otherwise engaged. They hid the oars of all the boats on Clare Island, their own and those of the invading forces, while the word went round from good Father Murphy to the smallest boy on Clare that no food or drink should be served or sold under any conditions to the hostile intruders. The would-be evictors were thus imprisoned in an old ruin in the cold of a December month with neither complete shelter nor sustenance. So deeply did the situation impress the owner- sheriff that he capitulated after a three nights' experience of the right kind of Celtic hospitality for the wrong kind of visitors to Grace O'Malley's island home. Thanks to the congested-districts board, Clare Island has been free from the blight of landlordism for a number of years now, and will be owned by its hardy inhabitants when the purchase loan is liquidated. The proverbial wit and brightness of the impromptu "voice," in comment and in repartee, of an Irish audience are well-known features of meetings in Ireland. They are never absent from a gathering large or small at which speakers and hearers are in sympathy on some mutually interesting question. Canon Ulick Burke, of Claremorris, who was a little prone to the use of learned phrases, was addressing a Land-League meeting in language which was a little above the easy un- derstanding of some of his hearers, when a "voice" ex- claimed: "Musha, more power to you, canon! Begorra, if the Church had more ' artillery ' like yer riverence in Mayo we'd soon blow the landlords to blazes!" A comment from the crowd upon a figure of speech used by Mr. Parnell at a Mayo meeting was more literal than intellectual. The speaker was nearing the end of his task, and in dealing with the proposed future settlement of the land question, said: "And then the landlords, who have attacked us so fiercely, will find that much as we have opposed them we can be true to justice, and even go so far as to heap coals of fire on their heads — " "Right, sir!" shouted the voice, "burn hell out of them!" In the same county an eloquent curate, in a strong de- nunciation of the detested system, was figuratively assailing 413 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND its evils, and declared: "Landlordism is the only serpent which St. Patrick did not drive out of Ireland — " A voice: "Sure, sir, the devil hadn't yet brought it from England." Curate: "I was speaking in the abstract — " The same voice: "Faith, it's the landlords have all the 'absthraction,' for they don't lave us a pinny." A local orator in a Leinster county was lauding Mr. Parnell, and delivered himself of this biblical eulogy : " Mr. Parnell is the Moses of the lost children of Erin. He will, like Joshua, take them to the promised land of Home Rule, and then, with the Aaron's rod of peasant proprietary, he will strike the rock of landlordism, when plenty and peace will flow out of it like a shower of manna from the skies of justice." The parish priest of the town of L was a stout, broad- shouldered type of muscular Christianity and had, suitably enough, a curate of opposite physical proportions. A league meeting was held at L , and Father Blank was the chair- man. The curate remained very close to his superior on the platform, and to the amusement of the privileged few who were allowed on the small structure, produced a manu- script from his pocket which he at once placed flat against the back of the parish priest and held it there. Then in a low voice he read out, sentence by sentence, the chairman's open- ing speech. The parish priest caught the words from behind, and repeated them in a loud and eloquent delivery, the audience being unable to see the thin form of the prompting curate as screened by the ample proportions of the Demos- thenic chairman, flanked as the latter was by those standing each side of him on the platform. It was a novel use to make of a lean curate. A popular priest in Kerry was supporting a young land- lord, in the later years of the land movement, for a rural district council. It was a hard candidature to advocate against the claims of a local leaguer, but his reverence boldly faced a meeting of the rival faction and pleaded for his man. "He is a landlord, I admit," said Father Blank, "but had he been able to choose his position before he was born he might have selected another station in life. He can't help being what he is, because he inherited the name. Can any one here deny that he is not a good landlord — " A voice: "Ah, yer reverence, that may be thrue, but thin we had to shoot his father!" And the curate did not carry his candidate in this Kerry contest. 414 SOME LEAGUE ANECDOTES One of the league's chief troubles in the early days of its power was the country correspondent of English press agencies. He was ubiquitous, being in most instances, though stib rosa, either tlie secretary of "the local branch " or a national school-teacher. Every morning's paper con- tained some sensational report of "midnight meetings," "attempted outrages," "posting of threatening notices," and so on, from his pernicious activity. There was a demand from Great Britain for this kind of news, and the supply was not denied. The impending struggle between the govern- ment and the league and the calling for repressive measures by the landlord grand juries and similar bodies throughout Ireland were closely watched by the English press in a ferociously anti-league spirit. It was the anxious desire of the league executive to discourage all violence, except where an eviction for arrears of excessive rents might justify such forms of resistance as would compel the public mind to direct its attention to the facts of the case and to the social crime of blotting out a peasant's household for the recovery of a civil debt. Beyond this the purpose of the league was seriously injured and not served by serious agrarian crime. Deeds of violence, no matter how originating, would be credited by British papers to the teaching and influence of the movement, and these would offer the government an excuse for a resort to coercion, and thus render difficult if not impossible the work of thoroughly organizing the coun- try for an eventual strike against rent. For selfish as well as for better reasons both perpetrators of real crime and chroniclers of manufactured outrages were anathema at the headquarters of the league. One of the worst of these offenders was the secretary of a league branch in a town in Galway, which had even as early as January, 1881, thanks to his enterprise in con- cocting bogus outrages, earned a notorious reputation. He would forward a notice to the local police sergeant, intimating that a house in a remote district was to be fired into at mid- night, and would then send a despatch to London recording the "facts," and how the prompt action of the constabulary had frustrated the plans of the moonlighters. One of his achievements was the writing of a proclamation in which land- grabbing w^as declared to be a crime punishable by death. He first sent the police of the town on a wild-goose chase, in search of imaginary raiders, and in their absence posted his notice, signed "Captain" something or other, near the police office. In his telegraphic report of this "outrage " he gave a description of himself in the act of reading this wholesale 415 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND intimidatory placard "amid the sympathetic attention of crowds of 'no-renters.'" In one of the Unionist newspaper offices of Dublin there is an old telegram still preserved which reached the editor about this period from this correspondent. It reads as follows : "Sunday, 8 p.m. No outrages up to this hour, but keep space open as some are expected about two to-morrow morning." All these troublesome purveyors of real or bogus news were not of the inventive country type. Dublin's more expe- rienced artists occasionally displayed a rival industry. On one occasion a column of matter, descriptive of the explosion of "an infernal machine" near the centre of the city, was written for a London Sunday morning paper before the author had himself deposited a small can containing some loose powder and a lighted fuse against a dead wall on the Saturday evening, where nothing worse could follow from the act than his own graphic account of "the mysterious and shocking attempt at outrage which had startled Dublin." Dublin pressmen are among the best of good fellows, in a social sense, and are always loyal to the duties of their pro- fession. They are fair and fearless in the discharge of their tasks, and seldom or ever allow their own views to color or in- fluence the judgment they give upon men or meetings, where everything is straight and above-board. In 1879 and 1880 Dublin Castle failed to induce more than one or two of even anti-nationalist journalists to give evidence from their notes on state trials against leaguers prosecuted for seditious or other speeches. One of the two cases in question was an instance of my own appearance before the Sligo bench in 1879, the reporter who took down my speech at the Gurteen meeting having agreed, on subpoena, to give evidence for the prosecution. His testimony helped me rather than otherwise, as it was a fair report of what I had said, but the fact that he had agreed to produce his notes of the speech for the Castle displeased even pressmen who, like himself, were strongly Tory in Irish politics. He complained in a very excited manner to me the day following his appearance in the witness- box in Sligo that he had received a threatening letter, written in red ink, in which he was warned to prepare for a sudden death. On looking at the document I discovered what I believed to be the fine Roman hand of a personal friend of his own, and a stronger Tory, if possible, who had played a practical joke upon the victim of official solicitation. The "special correspondent" from England or Scotland 416 SOME LEAGUE ANECDOTES was, however, the complete artist in all the details of shocking and other crimes, real or imaginary, in those days. He was despatched, as a rule, in consequence of the state of things described as existing by the local or country correspondents already alluded to. There were, of course, noted exceptions in Englishmen who tried honorably to find the truth, and to tell it without fear or favor. No unkindness was ever ex- perienced by journalists of this class at the hands of their Dublin confreres. They were courteously treated by leaguers and nationalists generally. Not so, however, the over-zeal- ous searcher after sensational copy, who purposely distorted facts and events, and displayed an offensive partisanship in everything, with a racial snobbishness in his intercourse with Dublin men of his own profession. Such a visitor fared badly. Two instances out of many of a similar character are thus re- corded in an old diary : A young and rather bumptious cockney, who had never been in Dublin before, was sent over by one of the Lon- don dailies. He made it a point ostentatiously to conceal his lodgings and to refuse to associate with the other pressmen in their social reunions. This conduct was resented, and Fred G , who was at that time the organizer - in - chief of all tricks played upon innocent Anglo-Saxons abroad in Ireland, undertook to make things even with the superior person from Pimlico. He easily succeeded in having the cockney tracked to his quarters in Upper Gardiner Street, and having once located the victim the fate of his peace of mind was sealed. The following morning two well-dressed visitors called and asked for the lady of the house. "Did a young gentleman named occupy apartments there?" "Yes." "He had strange habits, and imagined himself to be a pressman?" "Yes. He wrote a good deal on slips of paper." " We have found him! Look here, madam, he is the son of General D , of Kingstown, and has wandered away from a private lunatic asylum. We have been searching for him for days, and will now report to the general where he is. You will be well paid by General D , when he calls at eleven to-morrow with a carriage to remove his son. But do not, on any account, allow the poor young fellow to leave his room to-morrow morning before eleven o'clock. Thank you very much, and good-day," and the "agents of General D " departed. After finishing some work the next morning the gentle- 27 417 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND man from Pimlico was desirous of going to the telegraph- office, but could not open his door. He rang his bell, and, in reply to an indignant protest against being locked in his room, was told that his father, " General D ,of Kingstown," had given strict orders that he was not to be permitted to leave the house before eleven. Blank, of Pimlico, frightened out of his wits, put his head out of the window and shouted "Police!" He was released, of course, but a crowd had gathered outside which followed him down the street be- lieving him to be insane. He took refuge for some hours in a police station, and departed for London that night. The other innocent who invited the particular care of the boys was from Glasgow. He represented an evening paper of large circulation which was, at the time, notoriously rabid in its anti-Irish reports. It depicted a condition of things in Dublin during the "Invincible" trials in 1883 that would lead a person in Scotland, unacquainted with Ireland, to think that men exchanged shots at each other across Sack- ville Street in broad daylight, and that attempted murders were almost of daily occurrence throughout the country. " The city was honeycombed with secret societies. Assassina- tion clubs existed. Crime was rampant. More coercion was imperatively demanded." And more to the same end. The source of these outrageous libels on Dublin was found to be a rather callow youth from the big city by the Clyde, who had crossed the Irish Sea also for the first time. He was marked down for "treatment," and this was what followed: The S Hotel was at that period a rendezvous for all Dublin and visiting pressmen, the proprietor being a most genial and accomplished raconteur, who cared much more for the personal pleasure of a good joke than for the profits of his bar. He was enlisted in the plot to civilize the Scotch sensation-monger, and he willingly gave the use of his prem- ises for the quarrying of the game. Mr. Blank was invited to a drink at the S bar, and was made to overhear a conversation of this kind, the persons talking having their backs turned to the listening Sandy: "Oh yes, of course. Deputy ' No. i ' will attend. He must give an account of that little affair a few weeks back, when the informer was 'removed.' The 'Conclave' will meet in full session, when we must discuss how the prison at Kilmain- ham has to be stormed—" Mr. Blank's companion hereupon invited him to move away, and attempted to engage his attention in other topics. Blank was, however, intensely interested, and asked if his companion knew these men? 418 SOME LEAGUE ANECDOTES "Oh yes," was the off-hand reply. "They are friends of mine. In fact, the active pressmen of Dubhn are members of what is called the 'Conclave,' a branch of the Invincible society. We were compelled to join the body, otherwise it would not be too safe for us to carry on our work. Moreover, our membership insures our getting on the track of good copy. I must be present at to-night's session, as very im- portant disclosures are to be made." "Could a stranger get in, by any chance?" "Well, yes, if he was a Scotchman. Bruce and Wallace were Celtic heroes, and Burns is a great favorite in Ireland. I think we can, on those grounds, admit you." That night at twelve o'clock an upper room in the S Hotel was fitted up with dark hangings. A large table covered with black cloth ran dov/n the centre, with thirteen figures in black dress, and wearing masks, sitting six at each side; the thirteenth, Fred G , occupying the chair. In front of him there was a skull. Thirteen carving-knives, borrowed from the kitchen, lay on the table, along with two revolvers. A solitary candle lit the scene with a flickering light when Mr. Blank, blindfolded, v/as led into the room. Instantly the voice of the chairman rang out: "Knives, brothers! An enemy is among us!" "No, captain," was the reply of Blank's introducer; "he comes from the land of Wallace, and is willing to join the brotherhood." "Let him, therefore, be sworn and duly initiated," came from the "captain." Blank was ordered to strip off his clothes and to turn them inside out, as a token of the re- versal of his loyalty to England and conversion to the creed of Invincibilism. This was done, whereupon knives were brandished over his head and he was assured of the protection of the "order" for life. Speeches of a most lurid character were then delivered, and the new brother was toasted in separate drinks, to each of which the "ritual" required him to reply in bibulous response. By the hour of two in the morning poor Blank had to be carefully conveyed across to the Prince of Wales (now the Metropole) Hotel and placed in the keeping of a sympathetic "boots." The following morning Fred G strolled into the Prince of Wales Hotel casually and encountered Blank. "Look here," said the now very much sobered Scot. "All that business last night must have no meaning for me. I am a loyal British subject, and I will not be bound by illegal oaths nor belong to such a treasonable body." "But you can only be permitted to withdraw at a general 419 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND meeting of the brotherhood, and that will not take place for a month. Take my advice, say nothing about the matter; otherwise you will get into serious trouble. In the mean time try and carry out any instructions which may reach you from the 'captain.'" Two hours subsequently a rough, square box was deposited in the hall of the hotel. It was addressed to Blank, and labelled "Ammunition — with care!" The boots of the hotel notified Blank of the arrival of the box. On viewing it, and reading the label, he hurriedly called for his bill, paid it, and left at once for the nearest route to Scotland. The joke did not, however, end here. The manager of the hotel reminded Blank, as he was driving oflf, that he was leaving a large box behind. Blank's expression of face sug- gested anything but gratitude for this information. He thought only of trains and flight. The manager's suspicions were aroused at this strange conduct, and on scanning the box the word "Ammunition" caught his eye. He, in turn, became alarmed, and despatched a message at once to the Lower Castle Yard for the police. In a short time two men of the G division arrived. The box was carefully reconnoitred, but not touched. More messages reached Superintendent Mallon, who finally ordered the box to be brought to the detective headquarters. A consultation was held, and as a result it was carted away under escort to the Pigeon House Fort, carefully lowered by ropes into the waters of the Liffey, and left there for an hour. It was then hoisted up, cautiously opened, and found to contain a dead cat, a dozen bricks, and some bedroom articles not so easily described. The proprietor of the S hotel was sent for by the police authorities that evening and told that if any more "jokes" of that kind occurred on his premises his license would be withdrawn. CHAPTER XXXIV THE "TRIAL" OF HENRY GEORGE AT ATH- ENRY, OR HOW THE AUTHOR OF PROGRESS AND POVERTY WENT IN SEARCH OF A COL- LAR-BUTTON AND WAS ARRESTED ON SUS- PICION "We drove into the village of Atlienry, where, finding the atmosphere close after the heat of the day, we strolled up and down in front of the hotel, and were carefully followed and watched by our old friends the police, who at once began to suspect an opportunity for distinguishing themselves. We knew, however, that telegraphic information of the circumstances of our previous arrest had already been sup- plied to them, and accordingly felt secure from a repetition of the annoyance, though it was impossible to discover the exact nature of the information, as the magistrate who had discharged us at Loughrea had expressly told us, when we asked on what grounds we had been arrested, that the police would not give any answer to this question, and that he was not even at liberty to ask it. " Next morning we breakfasted with a magistrate, who told us that he was going about the country to try cases under the coercion act. He had been a barrister, and it seems necessary that in pronouncing sentences of hard labor one of the magistrates present should have legal knowledge. He justified the wholesale arrest of respectable shopkeepers at Loughrea after the murder of Mr. Blake, although they were at mass at the time, on the somewhat unsatisfactory grounds that those who ordered their arrest knew more about the matter than we did. Our own experience of the 're- liable information ' of inspectors of the police did not lead to a similar conclusion ; and it is a well-known fact that some constables, eager for promotion, and unscrupulous in their methods of attaining it, have dictated to their private friends the reliable information with which they wish to be furnished by them. " After breakfast I went out into the town to look at its 421 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND interesting old walls and ruins, and had a talk with the head constable of the place, and it is to this conversation that I ascribed my immunity from arrest at Athenry. On returning to the hotel I found Mr. George talking to the curate, who declared that I had already been taken for a detective, and that my talk and walk with the constable would strengthen this idea and effectually prevent my obtaining information from the people. We went out together and strolled about the town, passing on our way some houses in course of erection. I had seen a great many houses in ruins, but none building as yet, so I stopped and asked the contractor for whom they were intended. He replied shortly and we passed on; but this short conversation had been carefully noted by the police, who were following us as usual at some little distance, and gathering grounds of suspicion which might be described as reasonable and culminate in an arrest. For this contractor was a man of the name of Brodrick, who had been imprisoned for some time in Gal way jail as a suspect, and lately re- leased because an influential person in Athenry wanted to get these houses built and there was no one else in the place who was competent to undertake the job. In happy ignorance that we had been speaking to a suspicious character, we went on to the house of a man named Madden, who had been boycotted by the local branch of the Land League for having taken some land from which the previous tenant had been evicted. " Having as yet seen nothing of this system of boycotting obnoxious individuals, I was glad to talk with the man, thus confirming the previous suspicions of the police; though, as no one else in the place would speak to the man at all, this conversation ought to have counted as a point in our favor; but the police are not bound to be logical. I com- pared this man's account with that of Kinneen, the former tenant, and the facts seem to have been as follows: Kinneen had held a farm for twenty-one years at £^0 rent, but the landlord now asked ;^ioo for it. This increase of rent Kinneen refused to pay, as the liigher value of the land was owing to his own improvements, and he was accordingly evicted. Upon this Madden had taken a portion of the farm, and this is just the proceeding which has so often led to the commission of outrages in Ireland before the existence of the Land League, when its powerful organization could not be brought to bear upon the offenders against its un- written laws. It is obvious that if new tenants could always be found when the old are evicted there would be no security whatever against rack-renting in its worst forms; and it seems THE "TRIAL" OF HENRY GEORGE manifest that the lesser penalty of boycotting has saved many a man from becoming the victim of an outrage. Ac- cordingly the local Land League determined to boycott the man Madden, and, as he was a blacksmith, they erected a new forge, to which all the village went to have their horses shod. He told me that he had lost ;^2oo by it, and 'had such a bother that he was afeared and applied for police protec- tion,' and after being guarded for some time was finally driven to give up the land again, and now no longer needed protection. Four young men who had been active for the league had been arrested as suspects when this new forge was put up, and were still in Galway prison. " At mid-day we retired to our inn, and were regaled by the curate on a repast of bread-and-butter and a cooling beverage compounded of innocent ingredients — soda-water and rasp- berry wine. We purposed to take the train at one o'clock to Galway, and just before we started for the station Mr. George, in want of a collar-stud, went rapidly into three shops in suc- cession to buy one, succeeding in his object at the third shop. Now these three identical shops happened to belong to three people whom the police considered suspicious characters, and this unfortunate hunt after a button added the last link to their chain of evidence, which was now complete. However, with such a notable prisoner as Mr. George things must not be done in a corner, and they decided that the greatest glory would redound to themselves and the maximum of in- convenience be inflicted on their victim if they arrested him among the crowds at the station after he had actually taken his ticket for Galway. They knew how to bide their time, and could sympathize with the feelings of a cat that plays with its mouse. So in all ignorance we drove to the station and took our tickets, though we noticed that the presence of the police seemed even more pervading than before. The train arrived, and I had already put in our luggage and taken our places, when I observed that my friend was not on the platform, and, in fact, I could see nothing but police. Just as the train was starting he reappeared, and told me that he had been again arrested, and that his captor, a youth of about twenty-one years of age, had permitted him to come and inform me of the fact. This young sub-inspector also advanced, and told me very politely that he must detain my friend, but that I was free to continue my journey, or, in case I preferred to remain, he could offer me a seat on the police car to drive back to the barracks. I accepted this kind proposal, and hurriedly saved the luggage from going on alone to Galway, and for the second time we 423 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND drove through gazing crowds guarded on all sides b}^ armed police. " On arriving at the police barracks Mr. George was shut up, while the usual search for treasonable documents began, although the inspector was well aware that this had already- been done most minutely at Loughrea less than forty-eight hours ago. However, he read all his papers and note-books, and gathered evidence from the latter which he could present with pride before any magistrate. Meanwhile, there was no magistrate to be had, for Mr. Byrne had departed to Loughrea, and telegraphed that he could not be back before seven o'clock. There was nothing to be done but to wait, my friend in the guard - room and myself at the inn. I was allowed to pay him occasional visits, and I occupied the intervals in strolling about and conversing with the people, who had immense sympathy for any one who was in difficulties with the police. Exactly in front of the barracks stands the only pump in the whole village, and to this pump the bare- footed women and girls were continually coming to fill their various pails and pans. The pump was worked by a huge wheel, which it taxed all their energies to turn, and I was rather indignant with the group of stalwart policemen, who were always lounging at the door of their station with noth- ing on earth to do, while the women and children struggled with the wheel. So thinking that example was better than precept, I offered to turn it for an old woman who was waiting with her pail; but I soon found that I was in for a harder task than I had expected, for as fast as one pail was full another was presented, and I could not refuse to fill it, and the succession of empty pails was kept up by the women until I had worked for nearly half an hour, earning showers of blessings and causing huge amusement, especially among the police. " About five o'clock the inspector announced that he would take my friend before Major Lopdell, J. P., who might, perhaps, be persuaded to hear the case, although the ordinary magis- trates generally refuse to do anything under the coercion act, from a wholesome fear of burning their fingers with it and getting into hot water either with the government or the people. Accordingly we drove off to his residence outside the town, entered some beautiful grounds, and ascertained to our annoyance that the major was out. However, just at the nick of time he was seen returning, and the inspector informed him of the state of the case. To our astonishment he declared that he had business of his own which would occupy him until seven o'clock, the precise time when he 424 THE "TRIAL" OF HENRY GEORGE knew Mr. Byrne would be back from Lough rea, a most curious coincidence. I ventured to tell him that as he was a magistrate his business was to attend to us, but without stopping to argue the point he turned and went off rapidly across his fields. There was no help for it, so we drove back again, though the inspector admitted that it was his duty to hear the case, and on arriving again at the barracks he stretched a point of discipline and allowed my friend to accompany me to the inn, under police supervision, and there partake of any refreshment he might prefer. After this interlude he was again locked up, and the time wore slowly away until past eight o'clock, when Mr. Byrne returned with his escort of police, and soon after arrived at the barracks. Preparations were made for hearing and recording evidence, but the accommodation was miserabl}^ limited, and the trial was adjourned by consent to a private room in the hotel, whither we all proceeded. "The trial was opened by Inspector Bell, who brought forward his suspicions, and confirmed them by the sworn testimony of various constables. All the proceedings were formally taken down by a policeman, and this caused con- siderable delay, for he was not a quick writer. The inspector produced a pamphlet on the land question, written by Mr. George, and containing some scandalous statements which tended to show that rent was only another form of robbery, and that the state was the true owner of the soil, which private individuals ought not to be allowed to monopolize. He had busily marked special passages in this treasonable pamphlet, which he put in evidence as a whole, although parts were particularly objectionable. Evidence was given that the prisoner had spoken to Brodrick, the builder, and Madden, the blacksmith, though neither of these facts was correct, as I was the culprit in both cases. Evidence was given that his note-book contained suspicious names and addresses, and that there was a most suspicious F. C. appended to some names not otherwise objectionable, letters which could surely mean nothing more or less than Fenian centre. Evidence was also given that he had visited the abbey graveyard, and stayed a long time there without ostensible reason in company with suspicious characters — viz.. Father MacPhilpin, the curate, and myself; and, finally, that he had entered the shops of three more suspicious persons and had entries in his note-book referring to the late murders at Loughrea. This closed the inspector's case, and it was now Mr. George's turn to reply to it as best he could. " He began by asking the magistrate to dismiss it at once as 425 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND a frivolous and foolish charge. But this he refused to do, saying that there seemed to be some ground for the in- spector's suspicions. So Mr. George made a detailed state- ment, saying that he was the correspondent of an American paper, and that the note-book was simply used to found his letters upon; that his acquaintance was wide and included men who might be called suspicious, whose names the in- spector had picked out from several hundred others ; that the suspicious letters were not F. C. but T. C, and were intended for town councillor instead of Fenian centre; that he had visited the ruined abbey for the purpose of inspecting the ruins, and without knowing that the curate was a suspicious character; that he had not spoken either to Brodrick or Madden; that he had gone into suspicious shops with the harmless intention of buying a button, which button he bought at the last of the three, and now produced for the magistrate's inspection ; that the entry in his note-book about the murders was for the same purpose as the very next entry about the bees and the vegetarians of the Carmelite convent at Loughrea; and, finally, that his pamphlet could not be judged by excerpted passages torn from their context, but that he would be happy to present every one in the room with a copy for perusal at their own leisure, which copies he accordingly handed round at once. This was his answer to the charge, and the magistrate was about to give his decision when Inspector Bell, who had been looking very much annoyed at the prospect of his prisoner's release, sug- gested that the entry in the note-book about bees, etc., might have been added after our first arrest, to give the book a more peaceable character, and that the prisoner might have known that one of the shops did not sell buttons. However, to his great chagrin the magistrate decided that, although there were grounds for his suspicion, the prisoner had cleared him- self, and was accordingly discharged, and at precisely eleven o'clock we returned to our hotel, after Mr. George had been in custody for ten hours."* * Adventures of a Tourist in Ireland, by J. L. Joynes, B.A., Assistant Master at Eton College, pp. 25-39. London, Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1882. CHAPTER XXXV DYNAMITE PLOTS. — I. "RED JIM" McDERMOTT Societies, brotherhoods, and conspiracies of various characters, but chiefly agrarian, have been briefly sketched already to denote the continuous conflict which the peasantry carried on in the defensive warfare against confiscation and landlordism. Injustices sanctioned by law were answered by outrages prompted by retaliation. The law was not a friend but an enemy, and to oppose and thwart it was to untutored minds only a form of rude justice. Where ar- gument and reason fail, in such a bitter war of class interest, the repressive action of the law's authority on one side teaches the lesson of an illegal terrorism to the wronged and disinherited on the other. The landlords resorted to the courts for ejectments and to the police for evictions. They made the agency of the law the instrument of oppression. The agrarian conspirator and moonlighter fell back upon "the wild justice of revenge," legalized wrong being as ever the nursery of agrarian and political crime in Ireland as elsewhere. The dynamite propaganda of the early eighties was in no sense agrarian in its origin or purpose. It was accidental to the Land - League movement but incidental to the Anglo- Irish conflict. It was a very extreme form of the smouldering insurrectionary protest always existing against English rule in the minds of advanced Irishmen. Nothing at the time could well be more of a political antithesis to the means by which we sought to make landlordism impossible in Ireland, and no Englishman fearing for his life in London during the dynamite scare in 1883-84 hated these attempted out- rages more than Mr. Parnell. They were, however, a form of Irish "agitation"; they threatened English life and prop- erty with injury or destruction, and though they could not possibly do more harm to any interest than to that of the league movement and Home Rule, our enemies in the press linked them in political kinship with our efforts, and held us up to public odium as the indirect if not the actual 427 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND confederates of the persons in New York and elsewhere who boasted of plotting these deeds of warfare against "the English enemy." Many of these outrages, however, were deliberately planned by agents of the English secret service. Of this there can be not a shadow of doubt. This fact does not, of course, dispose of the real outrages organized and executed by actual dynamiters, nor does it mitigate in any way the desperate and criminal character of such attempts. It is, however, of some interest to make clear the fact that the bogus dynamite plots preceded the actual ones which sought London as a field of operations in the years 1883 and 1884. This circumstance arose from the nature of the counter plan of the secret police by which the evils of the dynamite propaganda were sought to be averted. "Maturing crime" is a process of police operations well known in India. Its purpose is to bring into the open, and thereby to locate, persons suspected of plotting crime. These operations by agents provocateurs are made to wear the appearance of a rivalry in a similar line or object as that supposed to be contemplated by the plotters. Such persons are thereby tempted to precipitate their purpose, and by so doing to play into the hands of the agents employed to mature the suspected designs. In August, 1882, Mr. Jenkinson, an official who had been employed in the Indian civil service for a number of years, was appointed to the post of assistant under-secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and the information obtained by us, both before and during the Parnell Commission, con- vinced us that the bogus dynamite plots of Cork, Liverpool, and London in 1883 were mainly the work of a man named James McDermott, who was in the pay of the secret service. Indirect responsibility for these attempted crimes was sought to be fixed upon Mr. Parnell and the league leaders during the special commission by our accuser. The Times, and it was incumbent upon us to find out if possible who was at the bottom of the whole dynamite business. We searched for and secured some of McDermott's accomplices in Paris, New York, and elsewhere. Our intelligence department succeeded in obtaining all the information we required, in the anticipation that McDermott, like Le Caron, would be loaned by the government to The Times for use against us. Among our informants was an ex-member of the secret service who had been employed with McDermott in some of the less criminal enterprises in which that most expert 428 DYNAMITE PLOTS scoundrel had been engaged. Much of the following in- formation was derived from that source. McDermott was born in Dublin, and was believed to be the illegitimate son of a lawyer named O'Brien. His own contention was that the Earl of W had the honor of being his father. He was one of the volunteers who, under Major Myles O'Reilly, formed the Irish Papal Brigade in 1859. He claimed to have fought at Castelfidardo and to have been honored by Pope Pius IX. with the order of St. Sylvester for bravery. As, however, he was the chronicler of his own dis- tinction and prowess, his claim to papal knighthood was not credited by those who knew him best. The work of organizing the Fenian Brotherhood was pro- gressing in Dublin in the early sixties, and McDermott joined the ranks of the movement. He visited New York during the existence of the Hoffman-House headquarters, and by some means never clearly explained wound himself into the con- fidence of the then head centre. Colonel John O'Mahony. O'Mahony was, however, a combination of a seer and Celtic chieftain, a dreamer of lofty ideals, and as qualified to be the head of a secret conspiracy as Lamartine was to be the leader of a French revolution. He was an unsuspecting enthusiast, as transparently honest as McDermott was the reverse, and it followed, therefore, that the latter returned to Dublin in 1865 with the credentials of private secretary to Colonel O'Mahony. I obtained two reports of McDermott 's antecedents as a spy — one from an ex-official of the Canadian government, who served under Sir John Macdonald, and the other from an agent who had associated with McDermott in New York and London. This latter person dated "Red Jim's" en- listment in the secret service from January, 1883, while the former asserted he had been engaged in that capacity since 1865. His service may not have been continuous, but it is probable that this account is true, and that when he returned to Dublin from New York in that year he was then at work within the inner circle of the Fenian organization as a spy. The abortive attempt to invade Canada in 1867, following the failure of the rising in Ireland on March 5th of the same year, caused the movement in the United States to fall away, and McDermott appears to have drifted soon after into blackmailing journalism. He became prominently identified with a Brooklyn paper notorious for these practices, and in a saloon fight arising out of quarrels with kindred associates he shot one of them. He was arrested, tried, and 429 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND acquitted. He descended, if possible, to lower occupations than these, and developed into a character no reputable person would associate with. He was generally known in New York and Brooklyn as "Red Jim." Near the end of February, 1883, Mr. T. M. Healy, M.P., Mr. Joseph P. Quin, and myself were inmates of Richmond Prison, Dublin, undergoing a sentence of six months as first -class misdemeanants for violent speeches, under a coercion law. We were permitted to receive visits from almost anybody who cared to call, and among some cards brought to us one day was one which bore the name and address "James McDermott, Brooklyn, N.Y., correspondent of the ." On reading the name I expressed an opinion to Mr. Healy that "the biggest scoundrel now in Ireland" had called at the prison for some evil purpose. We, however, resolved to see what he was like. Chief Warder Murphy conducted us to the reception-room, when McDermott stepped forward and introduced himself to me. informing me that he had been present at my lecture in the Park Theatre, Brooklyn, in October, 1878, and that he was ac- quainted with several of my friends. Asking him what he wanted to see me for, he replied that he was sent to Ireland as a special commissioner for American papers. Then, turn- ing his back to the chief warder, he winked knowingly, and said, in a low voice, that he had come "on a mission from the boys." He commenced a laudation of the Phoenix Park murders, whereupon the interview was terminated. On leaving the room I requested the chief warder not to allow McDermott to come again, as he had promised to do, for further interviews. He was at that time a man of some forty-five years of age, about middle height, well built, and of respectable appear- ance in dress and bearing. There was nothing very loud or vulgar about him in manner or speech, and he might pass among strangers for what he pretended to be. The night following this call, Red Jim was arrested for being drunk and striking a car-driver, and was taken to the College Street Police Station, Dublin. A reporter from a nationalist paper, calling at the office for police news, was privately shown some papers that had been found upon the prisoner. He copied the documents and shortly afterwards placed the copies in my hands. From these I was satisfied that my suspicions were well grounded, and that McDermott was in collusion with the secret police. On sobering up after his arrest, he referred the police to Mr. Jenkinson, the assistant under-secretary, and upon this 430 DYNAMITE PLOTS official being informed of Red Jim's detention he was re- leased without being brought before any magistrate. He attempted while in Dublin to induce some men to join a pretended plot to murder Chief Inspector Mallon, but failed to recruit an accomplice for the plot. He then left for London. On March i6th two explosions occurred, one at the Local Government Board office and the other in Printing House Square, close to The Times office. No persons were ever arrested for these crimes. He returned to Ireland and proceeded to Cork. Here he introduced himself to two men named Featherstone and Deasy, presenting the originals of the documents found upon him in Dublin as introductions from one or two notorious advocates of dynamite in New York. He boasted that he had perpetrated the London outrages, and proposed a plan for the destruction of the forts which guard the entrance to Queenstown harbor. His dupes believed in his "repre- sentative" character and fell in with his schemes. He sent one of them to Liverpool with explosives and a letter to a man named Flanagan, a laborer in that city. Both were arrested. So, also, were four others who had been in Red Jim's company in Cork. Each had some instructions for making explosives found upon them, and as they had all been members of a secret society they were ultimately tried for treason felony and sentenced to penal servitude for life. Once more McDermott is found in London. A short time afterwards several men were arrested for being in possession of explosives. Each of these had been in his society. They, too, were put on trial and given life sentences. On April 3d McDermott wrote a letter from London, which was sub- sequently published in a New York paper, and in this com- munication he gave an account of "the disasters" that had happened in Cork and London, lamenting the loss to the cause of such sterling men as the dupes whom he had in- veigled into his plots. He is next heard of in Paris, but by this time a suspicion had got abroad that he was a spy, and had, in that capacity, entrapped Featherstone, Deasy, and the others into bogus dynamite conspiracies. One who narrowly escaped being numbered among his victims crossed to France to settle accounts with Red Jim, but the latter had already sailed to New York from Havre and thus escaped the promised interview. A month subsequent to these events I was released from prison, and resumed a correspondence with a Montreal evening paper which had been interrupted by the attentions 431 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND of his Majesty Edward III. While at breakfast one morning in May, in the Imperial Hotel, Dublin, I received a letter from the proprietor of the Evening Post, informing me that "one James McDermott, of Brooklyn, has been here in Montreal trying to organize dynamite clubs. He has made free use of your name, asserting that he visited you in prison and that you were fully cognizant of his revolutionary stand- ing. Write me what you think of him." That very morning a paragraph had appeared in the Dublin papers announcing that the blowing up of public buildings in Montreal had been decided upon by "the dynamite party," and that sensational revelations would shortly be made. The evi- dence of McDermott's handiwork was not conclusive, but the moral certainty of his being at the bottom of the whole business was an irresistible invitation to expose his perfidious work and calling. So I forthwith cabled the following message to the Montreal Evening Post: "I believe the reported d^-namite plot in your city to be the work of one Red Jim McDermott, who is credited by many over here with having been the organizer of the bogus dynamite out- rages in Cork, Liverpool, and London." I signed my name to the message and awaited results. I learned subsequently that Red Jim was in Montreal when the above cable appeared in the Post. He left immediately for New York. Three or four days subsequently he was seen by a man who had recently arrived from Cork to enter a saloon in company with a prominent dynamiter. The visitor from Cork was one whom McDern>ott had tried to enmesh along with Featherstone. He followed the spy into the saloon, and, whipping out a revolver, fired at him while in the act of drinking. The bullet missed its mark, and Jim darted through a door, followed by his whilom Cork dupe. He succeeded in getting away unhurt, however, and when next heard of he was arrested upon landing at Liverpool and charged with coming to England on some criminal purpose. He was brought before the Liverpool magistrates on two or three occasions on remand, with the apparent object of giving him the credentials of a suspected revolution- ist, when the farce had to be abandoned by the local Mr. Jenkinson, and Red Jim passed from public ken as an un- masked agent provocateur. Looking up his earlier record, during the proceedings of the Parnell Commission, I found that he was a prominent actor at a convention of so-called "revolutionists" which met in Philadelphia on June 28, 1880. The leading spirits in this gathering had been expelled from the Clan-na-Gael, and the 432 DYNAMITE PLOTS "convention" had been called with the object of starting a rival revolutionary body. In a lengthy report of the proceedings given in the New York Weekly Union of July lo, 1880, I find the following pronouncements : " JAMES McDERMOTT ON DYNAMITE "James McDermott, of Fenian fame, who is taking an active part in the new organization, said: 'I have been actively engaged in laboring for the liberation of Ireland for twenty years, and during that time I crossed the sea eighteen or twenty times in the interest of Fenian move- ments that amounted to nothing. I am compelled to say, however, that the present movement is a most earnest one. Our motto is: " ' Not a cent for blatherskite, But every dollar for dynamite.' "'Every delegate at the convention, be he from the Pacific coast, Maine, or Washington, comes here paying his own ex- penses; not one cent is furnished by an organization. This fact in itself demonstrates earnestness. We don't mean to meet England on the open battle-field — that would be folly; but we do intend to carry on a warfare on the principle of nihilism, and we propose to establish a fund at this con- vention for that purpose. We don't believe in communism or the equalization of property — let those who till the soil reap the benefits. What we want to do is to free Ireland from the cruel yoke of British oppression.'" The proceedings were brought to a close as follows, ac- cording to the same report: "the land league denounced "Several speakers followed, and in the course of their remarks some very forcible language was used in denunciation of Mr. Michael Davitt and his Land League. Resolutions were adopted condemning as totally inadequate to the redress of Irish grievances the Land-League and parliamen- tary agitation. "It was also resolved to form a revolutionary directory of five men, who shall nominate the executive officers of the revolutionary work, and to hold such executive to strict account in financial matters. At the same time the executive will be empowered to draw upon the general fund for ' strik- ing' purposes, and that they are to be the judges of emer- *8 433 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND gencies in which England may be attacked or harassed with advantage without being obliged to make known the ob- jective points or any part of the plans." McDermott, who was to have been produced as a witness against the Land-League executive at the Pamell Commission, was, as a matter of fact, the originator of the dynamite policy, and this, too, before a single attempt had been made to blow up any public buildings in Great Britain ; while, in addition, it would have been proved, had he followed Le Caron onto the witness stand, that he had been the sole author of the alleged plots for the exploding of dynamite in Cork, Liverpool, and London in March and April, 1883. The outrages which followed in 1884 — the attempts upon the Tower and London Bridge — were the work of real dyna- miters, men who fell victims to their own designs. It is be- lieved they were killed in the attempt upon London Bridge, and that their bodies floated down the Thames with the receding tide and were never recovered. II. — PARIS "DYNAMITERS" During the greater part of 1884-85 English press agencies, and especially certain London evening papers, gave sensa- tional prominence to reported "arrival of Fenian emissaries in Paris, " "agents of the Clan-na-Gael in the French capital, " "suspected Invincibles in Brussels," "dynamite conventions in Paris," etc., etc. Doubtless tens of thousands of news- paper readers in Great Britain believed, owing to previous dynamite explosions, that these accounts were true, and that bands of Irish-American desperadoes were planning further outrages beyond the English Channel. The actual facts are as follows: There resided in Paris in 1884-85 two " refugees," one named Kasey and the other Eugene Davis. Kasey had been suspected, some twenty years previously, of having been connected with the Fenian movement in England, and on the strength of this "achievement" became a resident in Paris. He was as free to live in Great Britain or Ireland as I was, but it pleased him inore to live in France, of which country, I believe, he became a naturalized citizen. He was, originally, a working - man, very intelligent, a casual journalist and a most accomplished farceur. When sober he talked sense ; when in the other condition he led those v/ho listened to him to believe that all the revolutionary bodies in Ireland, America, and France took their inspiration or 434 DYNAMITE PLOTS plans from this soi-disant desperado. Like the character in " King John," it might be said of him, in his cups: "What cannoneer begot this lusty blood? He speaks plain cannon, fire and smoke and bounce!" Kasey's talk, however, would put to shame the comparative modest utterances of the Shakespearian hero. Bombs, dynamite, daggers, poison were his revolutionary media whenever those who wanted this sort of talk "stood" the necessary absinthe or cognac, for which it could be pro- duced ad libitum. Davis was a "refugee" of somewhat more coherent but still more bibulous tendencies. He was a well - educated but hopelessly useless creature. Gifted as a versifier, en- dowed with some literary tastes and capacity, he was a kind of Quartier Latin cafe loafer, living from hand to mouth, and ready to fall in with anything or anybody promising to help him to make his lazy, semi-bohemian life more excitable and endurable. This precious pair might be truly called revolutionary bummers or camp-followers. They managed to see whoever passed through Paris to or from New York on missions of some risk connected with revolutionary move- ments, and they had succeeded in creating tlie impression in London, Dublin, and New York that they were indis- pensable intermediaries in all transactions which should be kept secret from the knowledge of British authority. Consequently the couple were well known — alike to agents of Scotland Yard and to emissaries of the Fenian Brotherhood — and cognac and absinthe increased or diminished in pro- portion to the amount of "revolutionary " or detective "busi- ness" which happened to be transacted in Paris. In 1883 the notorious Red Jim McDermott foregathered with Kasey and Davis during his sojourn in the gay city. He found the pair ready to fall in v/ith his plans and schemes for the redemption of Ireland. He sent Davis on "a most important mission" to Cork, where he (Red Jim) had already entrapped four or five equally unsuspecting fools by means of introductory letters which he had succeeded in obtaining from equally brilliant conspirators in New York. Davis's "important mission" did not earn for him the fate which the spy's plan to blow up Liverpool buildings obtained for Featherstone, Flanagan, and Deasy, as, doubtless, the au- thorities had by that time found out the bogus character of McDermott's "dynamite plots." But it is safe to assert that there was no lack of appreciation on the part of Red Jim of Davis's courage and diplomacy in carrying through 435 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the " risky mission " upon which the astute spy had despatched him. Both Kasey and Davis accompanied McDermott to Havre in 1883, when he embarked there on his return to "headquarters" at New York, after his exploits in Cork, Liverpool, and London. The next person to exploit the unlimited revolutionary resources of Kasey and Davis in the interests of the secret- service department of the Home Office in London was an individual whom I shall call Major Yellow. He turned up in Paris early in 1884 armed with a letter of introduction from a London Fenian to Davis. Yellow was (so he said) an intimate friend of the celebrated Captain Ay 1 ward who, it was alleged, played a most important part in the early Boer war. Yellow had been a British officer, was a native of Ireland, and he burned with a revolutionary desire to avenge the wrongs of his country, etc. He wished to form a new and more determined conspiracy than that of the Fenian Brotherhood or Clan -na- Gael. His dear friend Aylward was fully cognizant of his plans, and would soon visit Paris himself in order to discuss them with two such stanch and experienced patriots as Kasey and Davis, etc., etc. So Yellow soon became the inseparable fellow-" conspirator " of the pair. They "plotted" at a small hotel in the Rue Volney. Yellow paid for all the drink. The other two "conspired" according to order. Dynamite plots were planned at regular intervals. "Conventions" of Irish- American dynamiters were held periodically (that is. in the hotel in the Rue Volney), at which " representative Sullivan, " of New York, made certain declarations which did not al- together coincide with the more fiery views of "delegate Flanagan," of Cork; but finally an agreement would be come to whereby the "thirty or forty delegates representing the various circles of men of action" would pledge themselves to carry on the war by scientific methods until the enemy was beaten to his knees, etc. All these plots, plans, and conventions were duly commit- ted to paper by Yellow and forwarded to the intelligence de- partment of the Home Office, and in due course filtered into the London evening Tory papers, there to supply texts for anti-Irish editorials in which all concessions to -the parlia- mentary accomplices of "plotting dynamiters in Paris and New York " would be unsparingly condemned. These casual paragraphs in such papers tended to increase the revolutionary business of Kasey and Davis. Parisian correspondents of London morning papers soon found out the way to the hotel in the Rue Volney, and obtained a ready 436 DYNAMITE PLOTS access to the secret-keepers of the universal dynamite con- spiracy. Kasey and Davis did a roaring trade in "con- ventions," "mysterious arrivals" from New York, and projected attacks upon the Houses of Parliament, Windsor Castle, and the rest. There also appeared on the scene two or three other secret- service agents in British pay who, however, were unknown as such to each other, and neither of whom knew or was known by Yellow. One of these was a (sometime) famous Scotland Yard detective whom I shall call Brown; another was a spy operating chiefly in New York and Philadelphia whose real name was Hayes; while another, who was be- lieved to be one of Mr. Jenkinson's corps of female detectives or spies, gave herself out to be the illegitimate daughter of a prince (then and for a long time dead) who had been the consort of a European queen. Things now became very "mixed" in the spy business. All the agents exploited in turn Kasey and Davis. All talked dynamite and vengeance against perfidious Albion. Hayes spoke of his suspicions about the bona fides of Yellow, while Brown had the rooms of both these latter searched in order to discover who they really were. Finally Hayes opened a letter which "the princess" sent to Davis asking for his aid, and, replying in Davis's name, arranged an interview, the result of which was (according to Hayes's boast) the seduction of the female member of the quartet of agents, whose duty it was to guard the British empire from the machinations of the pre- cious pair of dipsomaniacal "dynamiters." Brown was recalled to Scotland Yard, when, it is believed, he gave a true account of the "revolutionary" drinking firm in Paris, whereupon Yellow, in order not to be thoroughly discredited, proposed an expedition to Kasey which was to be carried out as follows: A plot was to be arranged for the rescue of John Daly after his conviction at the Warwick Assizes in 1884. Yellow was the inspiration of this bogus design. He and Kasey were to proceed to London and interview Mr. Parnell or Mr. T. P. O'Connor on the subject, with the view of ob- taining ;^ioo towards the successful achievement of the contemplated rescue. The pair of plotters left for Dover. Yellow deposited an old can, wrapped as a parcel, against one of the walls of the railway station, with a fuse attached. The papers announced the following morning that "a dia- bolical plot to blow up the Dover railway station" had been frustrated by the timely discovery of an infernal machine. After this auspicious exploit Yellow and Kasey arrived in 437 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND London. Kasey attempted to interview Mr. T. P. O'Connor and one or two other Irish members in the lobby of the House of Commons, but, faihng to interest anybody in Yellow's plans for the rescue of John Daly, the agent of the intelligence department of the Home Office took Kasey to Scotland Yard, there to exhibit the friendly relations which existed between himself and "the terrible conspirator" from Paris. A "wild drive" to an address at Kensington (pursued, of course, by detectives) and "a narrow escape from arrest" (of the pair who had visited Scotland Yard!) in a flight back to Paris ended the sham plot for the rescue of Daly, and terminated, shortly after, the connection (for the time being) between Yellow and his employers at the Home Office. For while Yellow & Co. were revealing to the authorities in London all about the plots, plans, and purposes of the Clan-na-Gael and dynamiters, as disclosed by Kasey and Davis, real dynamiters had been at work in London, and had attempted to destroy the Tower and London Bridge. Mani- festly those who really meant to resort to the criminal methods of propaganda by deed meant to avoid the company of Kasey and Davis as much as that of real agents of the police. Major Yellow will be heard of aga-in in the course of our story. III.— A LADY "DYNAMITER" In the summer of 1884 there appeared in nationalist circles in Dublin a young and attractive widow from London named Mrs. T . She was under the guidance of an ex- political prisoner, and was eloquent in her admiration for extreme revolutionary movements. She was a patriot as the result of a revered racial inheritance from an Irish mother, had an independent income, and was eager to help the cause of an Irish republic. Parliamentary action interested her not. It was a waste of effort and money. Nothing ever convinced the English mind about Irish wrongs except force. "Strike sharply and strike home " was her remedy, and as far as her means would permit men of action should command her sympathy and resources. Such were the views expressed by an exceedingly pretty woman, some twenty -seven years of age, as she received in her sitting-room in the Gresham Hotel "conspirator" after "conspirator" of the standing corps of Dublin's practical jokers, who had learned of Mrs. T 's arrival, and had judged from her English accent and wild revolutionary propaganda that some mystery lay behind the part she had come to Ireland to play. 438 DYNAMITE PLOTS A plot was a^once arranged with the object of unmasking the fair but deceptive agent of Mr. Jenkinson, as she was beUeved to be. "Information" was conveyed to her that the son of a notorious New York dynamiter had just arrived in DubHn. He was on his way to London on most important and dangerous business. His confederates were terribly anxious to secure for him a safe asylum in, to him, a strange city, pending "an important visit to the House of Commons" (this with significant emphasis) which he intended making, "just to regulate the proceedings a little by moving the adjournment of the House"— this with a wink and a laugh. Mrs. T was delighted. She would put young R up in her own house. He could accompany her to London. No one would suspect him while in her company. Could she see him? Certainly. He would call at eleven that night providing the fifty sentinels that would watch the approaches to the hotel should report that no detectives were around. The required interview took place. A heavily cloaked figure arrived at the hour named. He had only three minutes to stay, but would see her again. He came to express his appreciation of Mrs. T 's splendid patriotism and to thank her for her promised assistance, and the cloaked con- spirator slid silently away again from the room. Mrs. T was anxious before conducting her protege to London to meet all the Dublin leaders of the active policy. Could she have the honor of their company at a private dinner in that room on the following night? This was a most serious proposal. What a haul it would be for the Castle if all their leaders, but especially young R , were captured! The whole movement would fall to pieces. "Oh, there is no risk in my room. It will be all right, I assure you. It would be such a great honor that I do press you to gratify me." A reluctant assent was given, as a mark of unparalleled confidence, and one of the gang was charged to bring the eight dynamite leaders of Ireland, then in Dublin, to the complimentary feast at 8.30 the following evening, young R to be the guest of distinction. Pressmen were the majority of the dinner-party, the editor of a sporting paper playing the part of the " extremist leader " then in Ireland. "Colonels" and "captains" addressed each other on revolutionary topics, to the evident pleasure of the fair hostess. Champagne was freely ordered, and her guests were warmly pressed to drink to the success of "the cause," but no suggestion or invitation on the part of any of the 439 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND company would induce Mrs. T to indulge in any beverage but water. She was anxious to serve "our common cause" to the utrnost of her means, and was prepared to advance ;^5oo out of her own means towards the delivery of a stagger- ing blow against "the enemy." The House of Commons was the centre of England's power. Why not strike at it when in session? She would aid and shelter as far as possible any one who v/ould undertake such a glorious task and take him or them to Italy for safety afterwards. Her auditors were loud in their praise of her courage and generosity, and acclaimed her again and again in more o^ her own champagne. At this point, in accordance with 8 prearranged plan, a confederate in the hotel burst open tht door and cried: "Mallon and the G men are around the hotel!" Affected consternation seized the colonels and cap- tains, while young R nished to the fireplace to examine the chimney as a possible place of concealment. Mrs. T was thrown off her guard, and loudly assured her guests that there need be no fear. She was certain there was no danger. The "chief" of the dynamite party ordered his lieutenants to be prepared to sell their lives rather than be caught. He suggested that Mrs. T might descend to the hall of the hotel and ascertain whether the enemy's myrmidons were in force or were only watching the place. This she readily consented to do and left the room. Instantly her bedroom was raided, and all letters and bits of paper that could be found in the fireplace or elsewhere were seized. She returned in a few moments, smiling, and found her guests drawn up prepared for a deadly encounter. It was a false alarm, she assured them; there were no police or detectives in the vicinity. So the dinner proceeded, the "chief" intimating to Mrs. T that her proposal about the House of Commons would be duly considered. They would not, however, accept of so large a donation as ;^5oo at present. If she would con- tribute ;^20 towards the escape of a dynamiter then in London, who had been involved in the attempt to blow up Scotland Yard, she would earn their gratitude. This sum was at once given to the " chief," and after mutual expressions of pleasure and appreciation the "conspirators" took their leave. On reaching the Imperial Hotel the papers secured in Mrs. T 's room were examined by the boys who had dined with her. Pieces of a torn telegram put together made out the words: "From the Home Office. To Mrs. T , the Gresham Hotel, Dublin." It was found also that she was 440 DYNAMITE PLOTS the daughter of a noted Scotland Yard chief inspector. That night a letter was written to the chief secretary (Sir George Trevelyan) to the House of Commons, enclosing the money contributed by Mrs. T towards enabling a dyna- miter to escape from justice, and charging the Home Office with employing agents provocateurs to promote crime. A ques- tion relating to the money and letter was addressed to Sir George a few days subsequently in the House of Commons by an Irish member, when he admitted that he had received the letter in question with the sum of money mentioned enclosed. Meanwhile the editor of the sporting paper, who had per- sonated the "dynamite chief," exposed the whole affair in his paper, naming Mrs. T , describing the champagne dinner, reproducing the fair dame's cool proposal to explode dynamite bombs inside the House of Commons, and publishing the names of his brother "conspirators." The Gresham Hotel knew its interesting guest no more, nor did any of Mr. Jenkin- son's female secret agents visit Dublin again during his connection with the secret intelligence department of the Home Office. IV.— SOME DUBLIN-CASTLE METHODS " R. I. C, Dublin Castle " Secret. " The following method of cipher is to be adopted: FIG. I. I 2 3 4 5 [ i s 9 lO 1 1 6 7 12 12 7 6 I I lO 9 8 5 4 3 2 I " A square is drawn with twenty- five divisions, numbered as in Fig. I. To this there is a key -word. All that has to be remembered is the sequence of the numbers and the key -word, which may be changed as directed. It should be some word of seven or eight letters, no one letter being repeated in it, and it will be communicated from time to time from headquarters. The key-word is written in the squares as below in Fig. 2, the remaining spaces being filled in with the letters of the alphabet in succession, ojiitt- ting any ivhich occur in the key-word. The centre square has no number, the real letter being used. 441 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND FIG. "The key -word in Fig. 2 is 'captive.' The principle is that for the real letter the one which appears under the corresponding number in the square is sub- stituted (for instance, in Fig. 2 X is substituted for P and W for T), except when the real letter is found in the centre division of the square (in this instance K), in which case that letter itself must be used. It is to be ob- served that I and J are always to be in the same square. ** The following is a sample message: " VWYEWUGGROUYWRHA " Start immediately. " It is scarcely necessary to remark that this paper is to be kept strictly secret, and under lock and key. It is never to be let out of your office. You will acknowledge receipt of this paper, and make yourself acquainted with the cipher; as soon as you have done so you will send in writing to headquarters under double cover a translation of the following message, taking as above, 'captive' for the key -word, which will be used until further orders. .. t T:^ u t /^ L. L. HiLLIER, l.G. " YEERVWUYGRVVWRXLRFV." I c 2 a 3 P 4 T I o^r J 8 V 9 E 10 B 1 1 D 6 F 7 G 12 H K 12 L 7 jVI 6 N II 10 Q q R 8 S i 4 w 3 X 2 Y I Z ,,^ ^ , . , POLICE DUTIES Conpaential. " On opposite margin are the names of constables appointed for the purpose of obtaining information and if possible informers with regard to secret societies. The constables are to understand that this duty is in addition to all other duties. They will not get any extra pay, but will be en- couraged and possibly rewarded for any special mark. These constables will carry pocket diaries, which should be very carefully kept up, entries to be made at once when the mat- ter to be noted is fresh in the mind, and any carelessness or apathy in the discharge of this duty will be promptly reported to the county inspector. A list of suspects will be supplied in due course." "In future, when recommending the emigration of Crown witnesses or other such persons, please state the colony, etc., 442 DYNAMITE PLOTS to which each person desires to go, the cost of passage, the amount of money which you consider should be given in hand, and any other particulars which you may deem necessary." Cipher message from Dublin Castle to Captain Plunkett, R.M.: "Do not interfere with Gaelic meetings^ for present. Get athletic men in the police [Royal Irish Constabulary] to mix as much as possible with the [Gaelic] athletes in the country, so as to try and get the Gaelic association antagonis- tic to the National League. Croke [Archbishop of Cashel] has gone against crowd. "W. R. [Sir West Ridgeway]." " S.W. Division, D. Magistrate's Office, "Cork, August 15, 1886. "Secret and Confidential. "Wherever resolutions are passed at any meeting of the branches of the Irish National League in your district (i) summoning any one to attend their meetings to explain their conduct; (2) condemning the conduct of any person; (3) boycotting any one, or in any way attempting to intimi- date any person, the head constable or sergeant in charge of the station, after making personal inquiry if possible from the person affected by the resolution, and otherwise satisfying himself that what he has heard is true, should immediately report all the circumstances in connection with such case to me through the usual channel, and state if in proof of what he has heard there is any evidence procurable on which reliance could be placed, and if in his opinion the parties affected by the resolutions, or any one present at the meetings when they were passed, would, if summoned and sworn, be likely to give truthful evidence. "A day patrol from the neighboring station should always be in the vicinity of the meeting to note all those who attend it, for future reference. Please issue verbally the necessary directions to the head constable or sergeant in charge of the stations where there are branches of the Irish National League, in order that these instructions will be complied with in future, as I find in many instances such reports have not been hitherto furnished to me, and take such steps as are necessary that these instructions will be teated as strictly confidential. (Signed) T. O. Plunkett, R.M. "Acknowledge by returning this paper." ' The Gaelic Athletic Association. 443 CHAPTER XXXVI A PROGRAMME SPOILED BY THE "INVIN- CIBLES" Meetings in Ireland being at this time (1883) at the mercy of DubHn Castle, to be suppressed by force or to be permitted with a government reporter present as a note- taker for possible prosecutions, just as Earl Spencer should determine, and a rigorous closure being a bar to the old- time obstruction in the House of Commons, Mr. Pamell and his forces were more or less restricted to defensive operations. This state of things, however, was not greatly deplored by the Irish leader. Work of a necessary kind was proceeding in Australia, as shown in a preceding chapter, while the league in the United States, though a source of greater anxiety to him owing to the growing influence of the extreme section in the rule of the movement there, was reminding England through the press that elements dangerous to peace on one side of the Atlantic were to be reckoned with on the other if the movement for land reform and Home Rule should be again summarily suppressed. It was a time for counting chances and for looking ahead. The franchise question was rushing to the front of English party politics with a force that could not be held back. The British agricultural laborer and country worker were outside the constitution. They were taxed without having votes, while the propertied classes, under every form and pretext that could secure a franchise, were unduly represented in the electorate. A reform was therefore imminent, and it became a question of serious concern how the approaching enfranchisement of the British industrial democracy would aflfect the fortunes of the Irish cause. Talking this subject over with Mr. Parnell, shortly before my imprisonment under the law of his late Majesty Edward III. of the fourteenth century, I strongly urged him to try this plan for one or two sessions of Parliament : . Suspend all Irish questions and business except the bill for the better housing of Irish agricultural laborers which he 444 SPOILED BY THE " I N V I N C I B L E S " was then having prepared. Press this forward, and then put into operation a programme of this kind: Prepare a dozen bills dealing with every English, Welsh, and Scotch popular question or issue, according to Irish ideas, that was on advanced, progressive lines. For instance, a bill similar to the Gladstone Land Act of 1881 for British tenant-farmers; one for taxing land monopoly by the reimposition of the old land tax of four shillings in the pound, on landlord property, on present-day valuation; a bill to insure the lives of coal- miners against accidents, the premiums to be paid out of the mineral royalties levied by landlordism on coal; the bill for the benefit of Irish rural laborers to be extended to those of Great Britain; a measure to provide a less degrading provision for infirm old age than the existing workhouse; a measure for the disestablishment and disendowment of the State Church of England and Wales ; also one for the abolition of tithes in the principality; bills for the creation of county councils in Great Britain; a measure to confer the right of manhood suffrage on the adults of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, and a demand for the abolition of the hereditary privilege of legislation vested in membership of the House of Lords, etc., etc. The carrying out of this parliamentary policy would have a threefold purpose in view. It would be, in military terms, a "turning movement" against the territorial interests and class which were the predominant influence in the Imperial Parliament and the most inveterate of Ireland's enemies therein. It would also attempt to do for the British working- classes what no party or section of their own representatives would dare to do (at that time) in the way of radical reform. It would, in addition, impress the people of England as a daring Irish policy inside the House of Commons, which, while perfectly compatible with the absurd principle of imperial legislation that compelled Irishmen to come to Westminster and to participate in the making of laws for Great Britain, while denying them the right to meet in Dublin and to meddle only in the affairs of Ireland, would also remind both Parliament and the public of the "rev- olutionary" principles and measures the aristocracy and vested interests classes of England would be constantly con- fronted with, right in the citadel of law-making power, unless Home Rule was conceded and the Irish members were packed off to a domestic legislature of their own in Ireland. This was not put forward as a mere Utopian plan. Nothing of the kind. It was prompted b}^ the signs of the time, when symptoms of a social-democratic revival in the popular mind 445 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND of Ireland and England were struggling for expression in the House of Commons. Moreover, Ireland had almost always been the nursery of missionary ideas and ideals, when she was not being dragooned or otherwise persecuted by England. The Celt is by nature a restless, discontented being under wrong or injustice, and a yearning aspirant for better things when he obtains the right or the opportunity of advocating them. No student of the Brehon laws and of the manners and customs of ancient Ireland can fail to be convinced of the great regard for the educational, social, and industrial interests and regulations which obtained in those times. O'Connell was a greater reforming influence in England in the thirties than any then living English statesman, in the opinion of the Duke of Wellington. It was his Irish contingent which alone saved the great reform bill of 1832 from defeat at the hands of the Tories. In 1834 Sir Robert Peel ^ accused him of being a Radical, trades- unionist, and an advocate of an extension of the franchise to working-men. Isaac Butt, and later still Mr. Parnell himself, had been the supporter of every measure brought forward in the House of Commons for the benefit of the British working - class or for a widening of their liberties. The abominable English practice of flogging in the army and navy had been attacked, exposed, and abolished by the action of Parnell, Biggar, O'Donnell, and other Irishmen in 1877-78. There would, therefore, be nothing inconsistent, though there might be something startling, in Mr. Parnell * "On the occasion to which he had referred, the right honorable and learned gentleman (Daniel O'Connell) had stated that he had been waited upon by a deputation of trades -unions; that 'their object was to call back the Dorsetshire laborers, and he advised them to send such a petition to his Majesty to effect that object as would take a cart and six horses to convey it to the palace. No man had a right to condemn trades-unions who was not prepared at the same time to give to the people the right of voting for their members of Parliament. The first step which they ought to take was to obtain that right. He (Mr. O'Connell) was an apostle of the movement, and a greater Radical could not exist than the man before them. He advised those wh(jm he addressed not to mistake their power or to misdirect it. Let them keep their tempers and wait their time. Let them act peaceably, legally, and constitutionally, but niultitudi- nously, and by prudence, caution, energy, and unremitting exertions they would effect their object.' Was it not probable [added Sir Robert Peel] that the same honorable gentleman who so offered his services in this country [England] would, in his own, on questions of greater excitement, endeavor to control the deliberations of the Irish legislature by a similar display of physical force?"— Sir Robert Peel in reply to O'Connell's motion for Repeal. House of Commons, April 25, 1834. 446 SPOILED BY THE "INVINCIBLES" and his chief lieutenants rising in their places at the opening of the session of 1883 or 1884 and giving notice, one after the other, of bills to be introduced by them on the lines indicated in the suggested plan of parliatnentary retaliation against the government policy of closure and coercion. True, the bills might not be favored in the ballot for places. Chance would determine that. Some of them might never be subjected to discussion, but that in no way told against the chief reasons why such a plan of operations should not be resorted to in view of the circumstances of the time and of the promised enfranchisement of British workers. It was also suggested that a seat might be found in Ireland for Mr. Dadabhai Naoroje, a thoroughly representative Indian gentleman residing in London, and well known to Mr. Parnell and others of us. Ireland would thus have the honor of giving a direct voice in the House of Commons to countless millions of British subjects who were ruled des- potically and taxed without votes. Mr. F. H. O'Donnell's plan of making the affairs and government of India an Irish concern — after the manner of the attack upon the flogging of British soldiers and sailors — could be made a business of the Irish party when no Irish questions demanded their consideration, and in this way the enemies of Home Rule would gain nothing by the gag in Westminster and the despotism of Lord Spencer in Ireland. Mr. Parnell was very much "taken" at first by this pro- posal. He saw clearly its tactical merits, even where he did not approve of some of the advanced ideas suggested as the basis of one or two bills ^ and he asked for a fortnight to con- sidet fully the whole scheme. Within that fortnight the ar- rest of the " Invincibles " took place in Dublin. Inside of an- other two weeks he was assailed by Mr. Forster, and was put on his defence before the House of Commons, which was to have been the theatre of other operations had events, as usual, not decided otherwise. On my release from Rich- mond Bridewell, in June, 1883, Mr. Parnell told me he liked the plan very much, but he feared it would not be clearly understood in Ireland and might lead to trouble within the party. Mr. Parnell was by no means as insensible to English popu- lar feeling and possible support in the early stages of the Land-League movement as has been represented. His viewti changed between 1882 and 1885, but that was due mainly to the outburst of public prejudice following the Phoenix Park tragedy and to the brutal attacks that had been made Upon him in the press. His opinions came round again in the 447 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND alliance with Mr. Gladstone, and only changed back into an irreconcilable personal sentiment after the unhappy divorce proceedings, and the split which they occasioned. In April, 1881, addressing a meeting in the Westminster Palace Hotel, he spoke on this subject in a very pronounced manner, and I only reproduce the extract to fortify the opinion I have held, and still hold — namely, that had the crime of May 6, 1882, not thwarted all the Land -League plans at the time, the programme which Mr. Parnell considered, as related above, in 1883, would, in this or in some other equally progressive form, have been tried by him in Parliament and on the platform in the event of English parties continuing to deny some form of Home Rule to Ireland. The occasion of the speech was a Land-League meeting, with Mr. Justin McCarthy, M.P., in the chair. Mr. Parnell said: "The English land question is not at present ripe for settlement, and it would be better to push on with the Irish land question and gain as many successes and ameliorations as we can, and invite the co-operation of the English work- ing-classes — the English labor classes — in this movement. We feel sure that anything that will be done in Ireland will also react upon the English question when it comes up for its settlement. And now I should recommend that our organi- zation should be simply a sister organization to the Irish Land League, acting independently, self -governed, with its own code of rules and regulations. . . . "You can educate the English people and public opinion; and in speaking of English public opinion I wish to recant some expressions which I used in reference to it. Before the commencement of this land movement I said that Irish politicians ought not to take into any account English public opinion, because it was so difficult to reach. I was appre- hensive that we should not entertain any hope of cultivating English public opinion and instructing English public opinion in such a way as to enable us to counteract the efforts of the interested classes in Ireland and England who used such strenuous exertions to spread false ideas. But what I meant then by English public opinion was the sort you see in social circles in London, the club public opinion, the opinion which is reflected by metropolitan newspapers and by a great many of the provincial newspapers, and I confess that my views have changed very much during the year or two which have gone by. . . . " At that time we were endeavoring to cut our coat accord- ing to our cloth. We had not then the very large resources which we are in possession of now for the purpose of originating 448 SPOILED BY THE "INVINCIBLES" a campaign in England. We could not go then into the provinces as we did lately during the passage of the coercion bill, and hold a half-dozen or a dozen public meetings in manufacturing centres throughout Great Britain, and we were not able to do this then. In the first place, our party was very small in the House of Commons — it consisted of the mystic number of seven. We have now something like forty. We had then no valuable resources; we have now our friends in America, who are pouring in money at the rate of ;iriooo a week. All these figures point to a very great difference in the prospects of Irish agitation in England and the successful prosecution of our cause. The great mass of the English people, I feel convinced, do not desire to do any injustice to Ireland. "Then, again, I was very much influenced by the advice and very strong recommendations which were given to me by my friend Mr. Michael Davitt. I can recollect the day before he was arrested and sent back to penal servitude a conversation which he held with me. He said to me, ' I think we have made a great mistake in not cultivating the public opinion of the English working-classes, and I hope you will take steps in England ' — he was then returning to Ireland — 'to hold meetings in the large English towns, and to in- struct the working-classes with regard to the merits of this land question.' He was arrested the next day, and I have recollected that he told me that then, and kept it in my mind, and I think it was very important and very valuable advice. Now, the English land question, as I said, is not ripe for settlement at present, but if we can instruct English working-classes with regard to this question, we can show them that they are being made the tools of the territorial party in this country and also in Ireland for the purpose of collecting these seventeen millions a year in the shape of rents from Ireland. If we can show them that these opera- tions and the collecting of unjust rents necessitate an annual payment from them of four millions of money at least for the purpose of maintaining forty thousand soldiers in Ireland; if we can show them that this is keeping the two countries permanently estranged — that it makes the Irishmen hate the Englishmen, and that it makes the Englishmen almost hate the Irishmen no matter in what part of the world they meet; and if we can show them that the maintenance of such a system is a permanent disadvantage to the interests of the whole country, I believe that the present Irish land system will be swept away before four or five years have gone by. Gentlemen, I have invited your attendance here 29 449 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND to-night in order that we might strike out a practical scheme of organization which will be forwarded in the first case by the help of our own people in this country, but in which after a time we hope to embrace the English working-classes, and I feel sure that when we are able to put our case in its verity before them, they will flock to our assistance in very large numbers." * The fierce passions enkindled during the warfare of 1881-82 were smouldering in sullen discontent on both sides under the Spencer government in 1883-84. The landlords had got the worst of the encounter, but neither side had conquered. Landlordism, backed by coercion, fought for its hand in a vengeful spirit, and put the law as often as possible to the odious task of eviction. Distress was again looming over some of the poorer districts of the West and South, where the accursed potato (in an economic sense), the enemy of the poorer Irish peasantry — the source of their minimum in- dustry and the cause of the low wages of Irish agricultural laborers — was the chief sustenance of the people. This state of things necessarily aroused anxiety and anger, and Mr. T. M. Healy and myself gave simultaneous expression to the prevalent feeling in speeches which left nothing to be desired in the way of strong language, however one of them might be lacking in cogency of argument and political wisdom. We were forthwith prosecuted. The law had been broken in the view of Earl Spencer and his advisers, but it was not the ordinary nor yet the extraordinary law of the land under the coercionist state of siege — it was the law of their combined Majesties Edward III., James I., and Charles I., of ancient and not of blessed memory in Ireland. Never before in either England or Ireland had this law been put in force by an English government in a political case, and it is on that account that the prosecution in question calls for some brief comment here as one of the innumerable blunder- ing measures of Dublin-Castle rule. The substantive law of King Edward III., passed in 1361, was enacted to deal with a condition of society in England before the organization of any police force. Its purpose was, in the legal phraseology of the time, "to repair the breaches made in the preservation of the peace by the decay of frank- pledge." It operated through special justices of the peace, who were appointed to prevent as well as to punish crime. "Articles of the peace" were to be "exhibited" against an accused or suspected individual, whereupon this person ' The Irish World, April 22, 1881. Reprinted from the Dublin Freeman's Journal. 45° SPOILED BY THE "INVINCIBLES" would be called upon to enter into recognizance to be of good behavior for some stated period, or otherwise go to prison as "a rogue or vagabond" for what term the court should decide. It was part of the star-chamber law of the Middle Ages in England. In subsequent times its application against persons suspected of vagrancy and crimes of that kind led to such acts of injustice that the statutes of 21 James and 10 Charles were passed as a check upon these un- warranted abuses of the liberty of the subject in the name of this law of Edward III. The purpose of Dublin Castle in resorting in the year 1883 to this statute of medieval times was to dispense with: 1. The production, as accuser, of any person threatened or injured by the accused; 2. To have a "trial" without a jury; and, 3. To institute these proceedings before the court of Queen's Bench, from whose decision there could be no appeal. A police officer "exhibited articles" against a member of Parliament and two other citizens for political speeches, and we were either to acknowledge ourselves guilty of some alleged crime against some persons unknown or go to jail! Mr. Heaty, Mr. J. P. Quin, and myself selected to retire to Richmond Bridewell, Dublin, for six months as an alternative to such an impossible act of self -accusation. And it was by star-chamber resources of this character, under a Gladstonian administration, that Mr. Trevelyan and Earl Spencer began their desperate combat with the National League.^ ' "The Act 34 Edward III., passed at a 'Parliament held at West- minster on the Sunday next before the Feast of the Conversion of St. Pai:l, A.D. 1360-61,' obsolete in Great Britain, is constantly applied in Ireland. Under this act magistrates can 'take and arrest all those that they may find by indictment, or by suspicion, and to put them in prison ; and to take all of them that be not of good fame, where they shall be found, sufficient surety and mainprise for their good behavior towards the King and his people, and others duly to punish.' Under this act magistrates can and do practically arrest and punish any one who, in their estimation, is not of good character. Curiously enough, in the original Anglo-Norman verbiage of this act the word not is omitted. It reads 'ioitz ceux qi sont de bone fame.' To make the act applicable when it used to be applied in England, the word 'not' was read in. In Ireland the magistrates more properly adhere to the original and apply the act to those 'that be of good fame.' — (See Revised Statutes, vol. i., p. 201.)" — Humors of Law and Order in Ireland, Alfred Webb, p. 6. Dublin, 1902. CHAPTER XXXVII I. — THE "INVINCIBLE" CONSPIRACY The arrest in Dublin near the end of January and early in February, 1883, of a number of men charged with having been concerned in the Phoenix Park murders revived again the spectre of that ghastly tragedy. It transpired that the chief actors in the crime had remained in Dublin since the fatal May 6th previously. In fact, rumor had circulated the amazing story that Carey and others of the " Invincibles," as they termed themselves, had actually boasted in their cups and conversations of the part they had played in the killing of the two secretaries. Their ultimate discovery and arrest appeared to be due more to their own reckless conduct than to any effort of police vigilance. An attack in broad daylight, upon a citizen named Field, who had been on a jury which had tried and convicted a young lad named Walsh for an alleged murder, seemed to offer the Dublin detectives a direct clew to the perpetrators of the May murders. One Delaney, who had already been tried and sentenced for an attempt upon Judge Lawson, belonged to the Invincible body, and it is highly probable that he gave information which led to the arrest of Carey and his confederates, as he, Delaney, subsequently became an informer in other cases also. All except Carey were men of the artisan class, and, considering that a reward of £10,000 had been offered by the government for information, and had remained for the previous six months as a terribly tempting inducement to poor human nature, it spoke much for the integrity of these working-men, one towards the other, that none of them be- trayed his comrades until the possible penalty of death in- duced fear to do what no sordid desire had prompted one of them to perform. Two of those arrested, Robert Farrell and Michael Kav- anagh, turned informers at the preliminary examination of the prisoners before the magistrate, Kavanagh having been the driver of one of the cars which conveyed those to the park who actually committed the murders. From 452 THE "INVINCIBLE" CONSPIRACY Kavanagh's evidence it would appear that Carey and Delaney, two of the subsequent chief informers, were the men under whose direction the assassinations were carried out. Carey's testimony at the trials disclosed these facts: The Invincible Society was formed in December, 1881. He was one of the founders, and the object was "to remove all the principal tyrants of the country." Disobedience to orders was to be punishable with death. A man named Walsh had organized the society, and had given ;^5o towards defraying its expenses. There was another man "who superintended the organization of the society; he was known as Father Murphy." "Number One" was present at several meetings. This man was not named by Carey. One Captain McCaffrey was also a prominent member. He (Carey), Joe Brady, Daniel Curley, and Edward McCaffrey, all of Dublin, were leaders for that city, Walsh, Captain McCaffrey, and "Number One" being visitors from abroad. This last person had given Carey sums of ;£2o, £^0, and ;;^4o for the purposes of the society. Some arms were also sent "from across the water." They consisted of "Winchester rifles, four revolvers, and ten daggers, or knives." A meeting was held on May 5, 1882, "about Mr. Burke" (under-secretary of Dublin Castle). "Number One," Carey, Brady, Curley, Tim Kelly, Delaney, Thomas Caffrey, and a Joe Smith went to the Phoenix Park on that Friday to look the ground over. At another gathering that evening, called by "Number One," they assembled to make arrangements "to meet" Mr. Burke the following day. Carey and Curley watched the procession (the state entry of Lord Spencer, the new Lord Lieutenant) on the Saturday and entered the Castle Yard. They then proceeded to a public-house, where they met their confederates, when all started for the park on two cars, one driven by Kavanagh (the informer) and the other by a man named Fitzharris, otherwise "Skin the Goat," as he was called by his fellow-drivers of the city. Carey and Smith sat on a park seat, near the Gough statue, to watch for the approach of the victim, and to give the signal to the men higher up the road on the way to the chief secretary's lodge, who were to commit the deed. Smith saw Mr. Burke coming, whereupon he and Carey mounted a car and drove towards the spot where Brady, Kelly, and others were lying on the grass awaiting the signal. Smith had been enlisted in the plot only as a man who knew Mr. Burke personally, through having been employed as an artisan occasionally in Dublin Castle. On telling Brady and the others that Mr. Burke was the man in gray coming 453 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND up the path, he (Smith) was told he might go home, and he went. The men who were then on the ground were Carey, Brady, Kelly, Fagan, Joe Hanlon, Tom Caffrey, and Delaney. Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish came up, and the Invincibles opened out to let them pass through their ranks, when the two men were killed with knives; Lord Cavendish, who was unknown to his assailants, being struck down in the act of defending his companion. This was the informer's story, confirmed in most of its details by three or four other informers, though denied in some essential points in behalf of three or four of the prisoners. The result of the trials was that five of the accused — Brady, Kelly, Fagan, Caffrey, andCurley — were executed in Kilmain- ham, one or two more got life sentences, three or four pleaded guilty and were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment, and the curtain for a short time dropped its folds upon the hideous tragedy that had worked such injury to the Irish cause. A few short weeks after the law had thus amply avenged the murder of the secretaries, the cable flashed the news from Cape Town that James Carey had been assassinated by a fellow-passenger named O'Donnell, on board the Melrose Castle, after being transferred from the Kijifauits Castle, of the Currie steamships, bound from Southampton to Port Elizabeth. It appears the informer, with his wife and family, was taken from Dublin to Southampton in July, and was booked by the police under the name of Power for a passage to Natal. On the voyage out Carey's son seems to have revealed, in some way, the identity of his precious father to a fellow-passenger, an Irish-American named O'Donnell. On learning this fact O'Donnell resolved to pick a quarrel with Carey and to shoot him. This he did as the Melrose Castle was nearing Port Elizabeth, and the chief manager of the Phoenix Park crime was himself ruthlessly shot down and taken ashore to find a grave in South Africa. O'Donnell was arrested and sent to London for trial. The killing of Carey had evoked no feeling of pity anywhere. The popular conscience voiced a unanimous verdict of "Serve him right." But the fact that he was thus killed, while virtually under the protection of the law he had served in order to save his own neck, created a profound sensation, and begot the impression that he had been deliberately tracked by an avenging executioner so as to carry out the decree of some branch of the Invincible body. This was a wholly wrong conclusion, but based upon strong circum- stantial evidence. Color was lent to this wrong inference by 454 THE "INVINCIBLE" CONSPIRACY some cruelly insensate speeches delivered in America by one or two notoriety-hunting individuals, who declared, most conveniently for the Crown prosecution at Bow Street, Lon- don, that O'Donnell had been expressly commissioned to do the deed. Feeling in London was, otherwise, in sympathy with Carey's slayer, not on account of the crime, but in detestation of the loathsome creature who had himself doomed English officials to death. When, however, it was stated in the United States, and repeated in the London press, that O'Donnell was the avenging agent of some anti-English secret conclave his fate was sealed. He was in due course tried, found guilty, and executed in Newgate on December i8, 1883. The late Mr. A. M. Sullivan, a man of high character and of strong religious feeling, was one of the lawyers retained for the defence of O'Donnell. He had more than one private inter- view with him while the prisoner was awaiting death. O'Donnell was a Catholic, and Mr. Sullivan spoke feelingly but firmly to the unfortunate man, and urged him for his soul's sake to speak the truth. Mr. Sullivan told me more than once afterwards that he was absolutely convinced by O'Donnell's words, expressions, and whole demeanor that he was com- pletely ignorant of Carey's presence on board the ship when leaving England; that he (O'Donnell) was going as a miner to seek employment in South Africa; that he was never com- missioned, directly or indirectly, by any body of men or by any human being to pursue the informer. His story was this: "When I learned who he was, I resolved to pick a quarrel with him, to give him a chance of defending himself, and to shoot him if I could. I did so, and I don't regret it." II. — FORSTER AND PARNELL In the brief chapter summarizing the story of the Invin- cibles, I had to omit details of the arrests, evidence, trials, and convictions of the chief actors in the deadly drama, which would fill a volume if given in full. Carey's evidence revealed that several attempts had been made by himself and con- federates to murder, or "remove," Chief Secretary Forster. His official residence in the park was actually visited by Carey and an accomplice, on one occasion, in pursuit of their fell purpose. On another they had watched and waited outside the Phoenix Park gates for his coming, ready to kill him. While on a third occasion, learning from the press that he was to depart that evening from Westland Row for Kingstown, en route for London, they resolved to attack him 455 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND in the railway carriage. Fortunately he was induced by his private secretary^ to start by an earlier train for Kings- town and dine there at a club. It was by this happy chance alone that he escaped. Carey and others waited on the rail- way platform for his arrival there and his departure by the mail train, and actually peered into the carriage where the chief secretary's daughter was seated. These facts were sworn to by the arch-informer, while he also mentioned the names of men who had been members of the Land League in a way that w^ould lead the public to believe there had been some direct, or at least indirect, con- nection between the Invincibles and the movement led by Mr. Parnell. This secret society had come into being in December, 1881. At that time all the Land-League leaders were secure under lock and key in various prisons from Kilmainham to Portland. Mr. Forster had struck at all those who commanded the popular organization, this body itself being suppressed as an illegal combination. It was pure despotism, and rule of that iron character, no matter where it is found or what may be its motive or justification, will inevitably incite some men to methods of retaliation more wicked in purpose, perhaps, but not one jot more lawless than the acts of those who make law an instrument of vengeance against their political opponents. The Invincibles, from their own accounts, had all been Fenians. Most of them, it appears, had also belonged to Dublin city branches of the Land League. The Fenian organization, as such, had no more to do with the acts of "Number One" and company than the Carlton Club would have with the doings of a member who might be concerned in some city swindle or other crime. The same applies to Carey and the Land League, but when the informers' testi- mony was published it opened up again all the sores associated with the act of May 6, 1882, and in addition it recalled the resignation of Mr. Forster, and what appeared to his friends and a large section of the public to have been his unmerited fall from power through the means of the Kilmainham treaty. Once again the fires of parliamentary passion were fanned into a fierce heat, and as the House of Commons was in session on February 23d the late chief secretary saw a long-deferred chance of squaring accounts, both with Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell, and he resolved to launch an equally long-cherished assault upon the chief author of his fall, the Irish leader. ' Wemyss Reid, Life of W. E. Forster. 456 THE "INVINCIBLE" CONSPIRACY The occasion was a motion to amend the Queen's speech deprecating concessions to Irish agitation. Carey's recent evidence, with its insinuations and innuendoes, had created a congenial atmosphere of suspicion for the contemplated attack. Under cover of this feeling, Mr. Forster struck home with all the force of a baffled foe who had convinced himself that his career as a statesman had suffered irreparable injury at unworthy hands. He began his speech by an ex- traordinary admission: "We wanted fresh powers," he de- clared, in referring to his request for these powers to the prime-minister in the winter of 1881, as already related, "for the secret societies' act gave us very little power to act against these societies. I believe that if there had been no more immediate outbreak, somewhat similar to those murders, Ireland would have speedily become almost un- governable. The people of Ireland would have thought that, in fact, the honorable member for Cork was governing the country." He then proceeded to accuse his adversary of at least an indirect responsibility for outrage in these trenchant words: "With this I do charge the honorable member and his friends, that he and they allowed themselves to continue the leaders — he the avowed chief — of an organization that not merely ostensibly devised and organized the ruin of those who opposed them by such systems as boycotting and others, which tended to make life more miserable than death, but it had the effect of setting on foot an organization which promoted crime and outrage and incited to murder. At any rate, the outcome was murder. The honorable member ought to have known that it would be the natural outcome, and it is very hard for me to understand how he did not know it, and why he did not separate himself from it altogether, and disavow and denounce it." Every eye in a crowded House was turned to Mr. Parnell while this deadly bolt was shot across the floor of the chamber by the now savagely animated Englishman, who was en- couraged by the cheering of his friends to press the attack. But there was no quailing or fierce outburst or even protest in retort. A smile of contemptuous defiance, a haughty look at his enraged assailant was the only evidence given of the effect produced on the man who was thus assailed. Mr. Forster proceeded. He quoted from United Ireland and the Irish World extracts from speeches and articles which sounded, without the context, highly accusatory, and rendered Mr. Parnell and his lieutenants culpable of many crimes, by way of omission in preventing their per- 457 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND petration; their power to do this being assumed by the accuser and beHeved by his audience. He gave the member for Cork "full credit for inventing a system of agitation which sought to reach its ends by methods of inflicting injury upon individuals," hinting, too, that the dreadful deed of May 6, 1882, was one of the frightful fruits of this movement. And at the end of what had all the appearance of a carefully prepared indictment, he shot this final bolt: "There are many causes of discouragement in the state of Ireland. It is not for a man who has been connected with its government to deny them or to be too sanguine. Many an illusion has been dispelled, but there is one ground for hope — nay, there are two grounds for hope and encouragement. One of these is that the Irish government has now the power to uphold the law and will use it. And the other ground is that the honorable member for Cork and his fellow-chiefs in this so-called agitation have been found out. The cruelty and wickedness of this agitation have been unveiled, have been exposed. I have only one more remark to make. I have so framed my question that the honorable member can- not plead his residence in Kilmainham as a reason for re- fusing to give an answer."^ Again, but now more pointedly than before, the eyes of the chamber sought the figure of the Irish leader, fully ex- pecting him to spring to his feet in the acceptance of the challenge thus hurled at him. Not a movement did Mr. Parnell make. There he sat, cold and proudly indifferent, in glance and demeanor, at the whole performance of his foe and the impression he had created. Men of his own party gasped with painful disappointment. The jury had been addressed by the accuser. He had made a direct and seem- ingly triumphant appeal for a reply to his charges, and there the challenged and indicted leader sat, unmoved, unmindful, silent. No Irish leader who had ever sat in that House would have acted thus. But that was the unique feature of Mr. Parn ell's character and force. He was as unlike O'Connell and Butt in these respects as Forster was unlike him. He would reply in his own time, not in that of his foe. The House of Commons was not a tribunal selected by him but by his adversary, and this greatest of the world's assem- blies in age and in record must bide his time, and hear him when he thinks it right to himself to reply, not before. In face of these depressing facts there were very few mem- bers, Irish or English, who bent their steps homeward from ' Parliamentary Debates, February 22, 1SS3. 458 THE "INVINCIBLE" CONSPIRACY St. Stephen's that night who did not feel that the Irish cause and its silent champion had fared badly at the hands of Forster and of fate. On the following day the House of Commons was crowded in every part. There was the keenest expectancy for a sensational sitting. Mr. Parnell was found in his place, calm and impassive, as the order of the day was reached. He had the future King of England among his auditors, along with galleries filled to the last available seat. His own chosen opportunity had come, and he was ready to meet his enemy and his allegations. The following quotations from this historic speech will give an indication of its power, spirit, and purpose: "Mr. Speaker, if I intervene in this debate for a very short while and to a very limited extent I can assure the House — and I venture to make that assurance with the greatest respect, although some people may not think it a very respect- ful assurance to give to this House, still, I make it with the greatest respect — I can assure the House that it is not from the belief that anything I can say or shall say will have the slightest effect upon the public opinion of this House or upon the public opinion of this country. I have been ac- customed during my political life to rely upon the public opinion of those whom I have desired to help, and with whose aid I have worked for the prosperity and freedom of Ireland. At the utmost, what I desire to do in the very few words which I shall address to this House is to make my position clear to the Irish people at home and abroad, from the most unjust aspersions which have been cast upon it by men — by the man who ought to have been ashamed to have devoted his high ability to the task of traducing me. I don't wish to reply to the questions of the right honorable gentle- man the late chief secretary to the Lord Lieutenant. I consider that he has no right to question me, standing as he does in a position very little better than an informer with regard to the secrets of the men with whom he was associated, and he has not even the pretext of that remarkable informer whose proceedings we have lately heard of. He has not even the pretext, the miserable pretext, that he was attempting to save his own life. No, sir; some other motive of less im- portance seems to have weighed upon the right honorable gentleman in the extraordinary course he has adopted on the present occasion of going out of his way to collect a series of extracts, perhaps nine or ten in number, out of many hun- dreds, perhaps thousands, of speeches delivered during the land movement by other people, not by myself, on which to 459 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND found an accusation against me for what has been said and done by others. If the right honorable gentleman had been accurate in his quotations, there might have been some excuse for him. Unfortunately, upon this occasion, he has dis- played the same remarkable ignorance of matters of fact in connection with Irish affairs as he displayed during his tenure of office as chief secretary of that country. . . . "He boasted last night that he deposed me from some imaginar}' position he is pleased to assign to me. But I have this consolation, that we both fell into the ditch. I do not think that in the business of pulling ourselves out I have suffered so much in the opinion of my countrymen as the right honorable gentleman has suffered in the opinion of his. Yes, the right honorable gentleman has deposed me from my position as a prominent Irish politician. I admit that he has been very successful in that. I have taken very little pains in Irish politics since my release. I expressed my reason for that after the crimes act. I said that in my judgment the crimes act would result in such a state of affairs between the government and the criminals that it would be impossible to find a place for constitutional agi- tation. I believe so still. Here is the last item of news which was published in the journals of yesterday. It is that Mr. P. Ford, of the Irish World, who used to collect money to send to the Land League, is now collecting for a very different purpose. The right honorable gentleman may be proud of his work. I regret it. I look with appre- hension to the future relations between England and Ireland. I see that it is impossible to stem the torrent of prejudice which has arisen during the last few days. I regret that the officials charged with the administration of the crimes act are unfit for their posts. . . . "It would have been better, if you were going to pass an act of this kind, to have had it administered by the seasoned politician now in disgrace. Call him back to his post; send him to help Lord Spencer in the congenial work of the gallows in Ireland, send him to look after the secret negotiations of Dublin Castle; send him to superintend the payment of blood money; send him to distribute the taxes which an unfortunate and starving peasantry have to pay for crimes not committed by them. All this would be congenial work to the right honorable gentleman. We invite you to man your ranks, to send your ablest and best men to push forward the task of misgoverning and oppressing Ireland. For my own part, I am confident as to the future of Ireland. Though the horizon may now seem cloudy, I believe her people 460 THE "INVINCIBLE" CONSPIRACY will survive the present oppression as they have survived many worse ones. Although our progress may be slow it will be sure. The time will come when the people of this country will admit once again that they have been mistaken and have been deceived ; that they have been led astray as to the right way of governing a noble, a brave, and an impulsive people, and that they will reject their present guides and leaders with just as much determination as they rejected the services of the right honorable gentleman the member for Bradford."^ This rather brief utterance was, everything considered, the best and noblest speech an Irish leader ever spoke in an English Parliament. It was not brilliant in any sense. There was not a studied expression or sentiment in its com- position. But it was superbly dignified and splendidly defiant in its assertion of Irish independence in political thought and action. It struck a note which reverberated through every Irish nationalist heart everywhere; a note of Irish self-reliance; a key-note of nationhood, in a scornful repudiation of his accuser's assumption that the British House of Commons was an international tribunal before which the accredited leader of the Irish race must explain his words and vindicate his actions, and justify a movement that had already convicted that very assembly of long years of criminal neglect in the work of ruling his country for the welfare of its people. There was likewise a scornful counter attack in the con- cluding words of the man who was deemed to be a defeated and disgraced leader the day before. The elaborate indict- ment of Mr. Forster crumbled to fragments under the crushing comments of Mr. Parnell. He complimented the late ruler of Ireland upon having imprisoned agitators and created dynamiters; in putting his political opponents in jail without trial, and thereby breeding Invincibles outside who had sought his own life. And this defeated policy of despotism and rage was directly responsible for the present condition of the country Mr. Forster had attempted, and failed, to sub- due. Nor was the final sentence of this memorable reply unworthy of the spirit which had inspired the entire speech. It was a compound of power and of prophecy ; the expression of the speaker's own consciousness of the strength behind him in a world-wide combination, and of the sanguine hope that the inherent justice of the cause he upheld would some day penetrate even to the minds of its present English foes. Mr. ' Parliamentary Debates, February 26, 1883. 461 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Parnell resumed his seat, the conqueror, not the conquered, in a combat forced upon him in a prejudiced arena. One of the gladiators survived, pohtically. Mr. Forster's career as a great Liberal force and leader would never again challenge an encounter with the Irishman he had vauntingly declared he would humble and destroy. So bent upon political warfare with the revived league movement was Dublin Castle that even the genial member for Cavan, Mr. J. G. Biggar, M.P., was prosecuted, early in January, for a seditious speech. This proceeding invited ridicule, and a deadly weapon of this kind is fatal to any policy, personal or governmental, that has few friends and no supporters on its merits. The prosecution was ultimately dropped. A vacancy having occurred in the parliamentary representa- tion of Mallow, which was then a separate constituency, Mr. William O'Brien, editor of United Ireland, was induced to contest the seat against a Castle law^^^er. The contest ended in a smashing defeat of the government place-hunter. The election revealed in Mr. O'Brien unsuspected powers of platform oratory, hitherto dormant, which were destined to enable him to play a conspicuous and historic part in the future movement for Home Rule and land reform. His editorship of the National-League organ had been a striking success, and had made that paper the most formidable opponent in the path of the Spencer coercionist regime. Week after week it poured broadsides of scathing criticism into the Castle camp, reviewing with remorseless pungency the doings of the coercionist courts, the blundering of incompetent magistrates, the packing of juries, and the occasional brutality of the Castle police. Every resource of an aggressive journal- ism and of a widely informed political knowledge was drawn upon in a relentless war to the knife against the successors to the Forster policy, of baffled English power in conflict with a sleepless Celtic resistance to a domineering and insulting administration. In this task Mr. O'Brien was powerfully aided by Mr. T. M. Healy, who contributed probably most of the scathing onslaughts on Mr. Trevelyan, which were after- wards said to have helped to whiten the hair of a thoroughly honest but unfortunate Englishman who in an evil hour for himself had consented to face the impossible task of cleaning the Augean stables of Dublin -Castle government. The deadly duel between United Ireland and the Spencer administration may be said to have culminated in a pitiless exposure of some horrible crimes that had been brought home to certain officials, including the head of the C?.st\z 462 THE "INVINCIBLE" CONSPIRACY constabulary detective department, by the paper's agency. It was a revolting business, and required the strength of a born fighter to face the ordeal of so loathsome a task. The result, however, gave both justification and generous recom- pense in the clearing out from Dublin society of the genteel beasts who had infested it, and in delivering a merciless blow at the prestige and authority of "The Castle." While prosecutions, evictions, suppression of meetings, and other acts of Castle violence were rousing the country into active political life again, Mr. Parnell remained quiescent, as described by himself in his reply to Forster. He refused to fight coercion, but he gave his opponents rope enough of their own twisting. They had conjured into being other than agitating agencies of political warfare by forcibly resisting the methods of the league in Ireland, and these unknown workers brought their rival methods and designs unpleasantly near to London. In the early months of the year a dynamite explosion occurred at the Local Government Board offices, while similar outrages were repeated elsewhere. Several prominent members of the ministry were reported to be under police protection, while government buildings had to be guarded day and night against possible attack. The day before being lodged in Richmond Bridewell, as al- ready recorded, Mr. T. M. Healy outlined a scheme of elective county councils for Ireland, at a meeting of the National League in Dublin. It was introduced in the form of a bill by Mr. John Barry, M.P., in April, while the author was in prison, and rejected by a vote of two hundred and thirty-one to fifty-eight. It is instructive, as illustrating the blindness of English statesmanship to the value of opportunities in Ireland, to point out that Mr. Gerald Balfour, as Tory Irish chief secretary, introduced and carried a measure having a similar object in view in 1898, or just fifteen years after the House of Commons had rejected the Healy bill. On March 15th Mr. Parnell introduced a land bill to amend the known defects of the measure of 188 1. It proposed to admit leaseholders to the benefits of the existing land law, and to remedy such other defects and omissions as had been made clear in the working of the land commission. Mr. Gladstone opposed the bill, declaring that he refused "to reopen the question." The House of Commons backed this view by two hundred and fifty to sixty-three votes. Four years subsequently, as a result of the "plan of cam- paign" convulsion, Lord Salisbury's ministry, after swearing they would never consent, consented to legislate largely on the lines of the rejected Irish demand of 1883. 463 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND There was one Irish bill that escaped this general and systematic boycott of Irish proposals for Ireland in West- minster which has conferred a great benefit upon thousands of Irish families. This was the agricultural laborers (Ireland) dwellings act, which was introduced, in behalf of the Irish party, by Mr. T. P. O'Connor, and read a second time on May 31st. The purpose of the measure was to enable the local sanitary authorities in Ireland to build decent and sanitary dwellings for agricultural laborers out of moneys borrowed from the state on the security of the district rates. The homes of the poorest of Ireland's rural workers were notoriously of the most wretched character — hovels, in fact, in which some English farmers would not lodge their pigs. They were, in most instances, without any domestic ac- commodation except of the most primitive kind, without sufficient light, badly built, and poorly thatched. Travellers from England and elsewhere had declared them to be unfit for the abode of a civilized section of any industrial com- munity, and an overwhelming case was made out for such a resort to the principle of state socialism as would tend to minimize this social blot upon both the laboring life and the landscape of Ireland by enabling the community, in its organized capacity, to do a work of humanity for workers unable to secure better homes for themselves. The bill became law, but was modified from original proposals which sought to reinforce the scanty resources of the local rates by help from a national rate-in-aid . The act (subsequently amended so as to abolish the limit of a plot of land to half an acre and extending it to one acre) has worked in this way. Applications for cottages have to be made by bona-fide agricultural laborers, in a prescribed manner, and supported by ratepayers. The sanitary authority then considers the demand on its merits. A sanitary inspector has to see and report upon the present habitations of the applicants, and in the event of this report condemning these dwellings as being unfit for a healthy existence, the local council (in 1883 the local board of guardians) may then take the necessary steps for the erection of suitable houses, with a plot of land attached to answer the purpose of a garden. The rent for dwelling and plot must not in any sense be a profit-rent. It must be measured by the annual interest chargeable against the rates for the money borrowed to build the house and buy the land, and it has not, I believe, averaged more than a shilling per week upon the slender wages of the laborers who have secured these new homes and gardens. The cottages and land are to remain the property of the 464 THE "INVINCIBLE" CONSPIRACY community, the rent being paid by the occupants to the local rate collectors. Since the act came into operation from sixteen to eighteen thousand of these cottages have been erected in the two Southern provinces; Ulster being conspicuous for its neglect, or refusal, to operate this humane law for the betterment of its rural laborers, while Connaught, being largely a cottier province, has comparatively few of the laborers for whom this act was passed. The late Dr. Charles Tanner, member of Parliament for Mid-Cork, took a special and continuous interest in the working of this act. It was to his loyal and persistent efforts in behalf of the laborers in the House of Commons that the original allowance of half an acre of land was ex- tended to an acre, and one or two other amendments were also made in facilitating the working of this excellent measure. It still remains a complicated law, however, and has proved to be ridiculously expensive in all the initial stages of its operation. A national rate-in-aid, as an encouragement to local initiative, a less costly method of procedure, a semi- compulsory power for putting the act in operation where selfish or class interests are an obstructive element, together with an extension to Ireland of the allotments provisions of the local government (England) act of 1894, would come near a reasonr.ble solution of the Irish rural laborer's problem. In February Mr. T. Harrington, the energetic secretary of the National League, was prosecuted for "intimidating" certain persons, land-grabbers, in Westmeath, in a speech. He was sent to prison for two months. Nine days after entering Mullingar jail he was elected member of Parliament, without opposition, for the county in which the "crime" had been committed. CHAPTER XXXVIII DANGERS OF "UNCROWNED KINGS" The question of local leadership occasioned much contro- versy and friction in 1883 and 1884, and gave frequent exercise to Mr. Harrington's faculties for conciliation. As secretary of the National League he was in touch with the whole organization, and upheld Mr. Parnell's supreme au- thority with undeviating resolve. Previous to the Land League the Catholic clergy were the recognized local leaders in all movements except the Fenian organization. Outside revolutionary circles the "P.P.," or his curate, bossed the political situation in his district, as a rule. The fine record of the clergy in their devotion to the people in times of trial, their superior education and intelligence, gave them this position as a matter of obvious fitness. The teaching of the Fenian movement, however, and the spirit of independence which was inherent in the revolt of the Land League against the power of the landlord and the law of Dublin Castle de- veloped a new spirit among the sons of farmers and country traders which evolved local lay leaders who became in many districts rivals to the parish priest or curate for the headship of a league branch. Some of the clergy were justly open to the suspicion of being too conservative in their views and of holding the sin of grabbing in too charitable a light, especially where a relative or a neighbor happened to be the sinner. But the great majority of the priests were sound and earnest leaguers in 1884. They naturally held in almost all emergencies by Mr. Parnell's authority, and were, in turn, upheld in its name when any rival influence sought to assert a stronger or more popular opinion upon some local issue. The question of selecting and of nominating candidates for parliamentary constituencies cropped up very prominently in 1884 and in 1885, in view of the extension of the franchise and the approaching general election. Hitherto this power was virtually claimed for Mr. Parnell by his stalwart lieuten- ants as a matter of right. With them and their organ. United Ireland, Mr. Parnell was the absolute kader of the 466 DANGERS OF "UNCROWNED KINGS" movement ; and as he was the chairman of the Irish parlia- mentary party also, it was his sole concern as to who should be added to its ranks and his the right to "suggest" a suit- able man to a constituency. In reality, this claim was put forward more in behalf of the self-asserting authority of the stalwart lieutenants themselves than in that of Mr. Parnell, who, to do him justice, up to this time was always willing to act in conjunction with local feeling and desire in these matters. Mr. T. M. Healy gave eloquent expression, in a speech in Liverpool, some time after this controversy, to this parliamentary right divine in these words: "What they had wanted for two hundred years in Ireland was an honest dictator, and they had at last got one in the person of Mr. Parnell. . . . Men with only tin-pot intelligence should not be allowed to chime a discordant note against the great national tocsin which Mr. Parnell was clanging to the national ear." And in an article by the same authority, which ap- peared in the Pall Mall Gazette about this period, this position was maintained: "What does it matter to the constituencies in Ireland who represents them if Mr. Parnell can produce adequate results for the country?" All this read very nicely at the time, and had its effect in clothing Mr. Parnell's leadership with the ukase of ab- solutism. To question any proposal or policy put forward in his name by his lieutenants was to create dissension and to threaten disaster. He was the Moses of the Irish race, and had brought them out of bondage. Those who ventured to express views not quite so high-flown, or who attempted to put the popular leader on a less infallible but a far more solid and secure pedestal of delegated power and authority, were hounded down by the lieutenants in the most peremptory fashion. They were factionists or cranks, and that ended the dispute. It was a dangerous doctrine to preach, and dire results were destined to follow from what was in all probability a well-meant and zealous regard for discipline and unity. Intense loyalty to the person of a leader is an amiable quality in any public man, when it has the virtue of consistency and persistency. Honest Tom Steel never deviated in his cult of personal worship to O'Connell, and the ridiculous lengths to which he sometimes carried his idolatry did not invite the suspicion of interested motives. In later times Mr. Jesse Collings's invincible henchmanship of Mr. Chamberlain is an instance of sincere and doubtless of lasting personal loyalty. This was not so true of several of Mr. Parnell's lieutenants, who were more Parnellite than himself in 1884-85. In any 467 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND case, there is no denial now of the bad effects which these inconsiderate claims of dictatorship put forward in his name had upon Mr. Parnell's own disposition and acts afterwards, and upon the cause which he had so magnificently led up to the great events of 1886. No man who is strongly human, as every political leader must be, can remain always insensible to constant praise and laudation. When he is told that all his words are pearls of wisdom, that all his acts are incontestable in their true statesmanship and importance, and that he is absolutely indispensable to the people and cause and the party he leads ; when this is spoken or written by able and responsible men, who are his lieutenants, and the country's popular representa- tives also, he must feel that it is all sincere and true, and that his will and purpose and policy with them have the force of an unquestioned authority. When, as a consequence of this dangerous adulation, Mr. Parnell crossed from London to Tipperary, in 1884, and imposed a candidate of his own and of the local clergy upon a parliamentary constituency, against the nominee of a popular convention, his action was duly and loudly applauded as that of a strong leader. A few humble people murmured in opposition. They had not long to wait for another exercise of this power of dictatorship in a Galway contest, which commenced to bring home to even the intolerant lieutenants what their advocacy of Mr. Par- nell's pontifical power was leading to. Nor did many of them recall in the dire results of the split of 1890 how much of the wreckage of the man and the movement in that catastrophe was due to their own very well-meant but very short-sighted action in the years when Mr. Parnell was a statesman in the process of evolution from a semi-revolution- 'ary agitator. The fear of the consequences of disunion is a morbid fear in Ireland. Like many other Celtic weaknesses, it is often the parent of the very evil it tries by unreasonable means to prevent. Intolerance of discussion is never a sign of true strength nor a rational way of winning respect for right authority. Men who believe in principles as guides to public action, rather than in the views or declarations of other men, and who base their political creed upon their own conviction as to the right or wrong purpose or necessity of public move- ments and proposals, are not made more amenable to others' wisdom by the use of a majority blackthorn which far more frequently represents the engineered decision of a clique than the result of the majority's careful and mature de- liberations. These and other equally human considerations 468 DANGERS OF "UNCROWNED KINGS" are not always present to the minds of political leaders, and hence arise not infrequently the very dissensions which their true causes wrong-headedly insisted upon tried to prevent. Mr. Parnell took full advantage in 1884 of the plenary power which was placed in his hands by those who afterwards had cause to wince under its stern application to themselves. He created all clergymen ex-officio delegates to all conventions which should meet for the selection of parliamentary can- didates. This action was prompted by a desire to have a strong conservative nationalist influence on his side against any possible radical opposition. Mr. Parnell had no political love for clerical politicians. He paid no court to prelates, and was sometimes wanting in ordinary courtesy to one or two of them who had greatly aided him in his work. But he knew they stood as a whole for a moderate nationalism _ like his own, and, as some two hundred thousand laborers and artisans were about to be added by the franchise bill to the electoral forces of Ireland, he wisely for his own present purposes, but unwisely for his future political fortunes, dis- pensed with the form of election in the case of all clergymen, and threw open the doors of every convention to the ablest and most influential body of men in the country. This was undemocratic and opposed to those principles which ought to be rigidly adhered to in the constitution of political assemblies. It was creating a class or privileged / franchise, and was on that ground wrong, and very repre-^- hensible in a movement which had for its main purpose the freedom of the country from the rule of a privileged minority. There was no real necessity for this ex-o-fficio privilege in any case. No man would be more freely del- egated by a parish branch of a national organization to a convention than a nationalist priest or curate. He would have five chances to one in half the parishes of Ireland against a lay opponent, and in face of the claims which a well-merited popularity thus gave to the clergy it was a needless violence to the law of principle to make this invidious distinction between men who can only claim an equality of right in all questions of franchise and of popular representation where votes are concerned. But Mr. Parnell had his own way, and said, laughingly, to me, on one occasion, "You know the clergy are very useful against extremists like yourself when we are away in London!" Events in this year were responding as an approval of Mr. Parnell 's cautious policy. He had lent no personal help to the work of rebuilding the league organization throughout the country, but he wisely refrained from interfering, except 469 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND in one prominent instance where he was persuaded by his stalwarts to make a rather pointed attack upon myself in Drogheda for extreme utterances on the land question. The speech in question was largely composed and written for him by one of his ablest lieutenants, and was unnecessarily emphatic on the obvious proposition that the land of Ireland must be fought for or paid for. A proposition that two and two made four could not be more self-evident. But as a policy of "fighting for the land" had been the life and the success of the Land League, and had made its purchase by tenants possible, it appeared to some people as fair and as reasonable to "fight" for greater facilities still, and even for better terms than those prevailing, as it was for the previous advocates of prairie value to adopt a policy of» "bulling" the landlords' share of the dual ownership of the soil as a means of procuring a satisfactory settlement of the whole question. The landlords had met in Dublin in May to call the attention of the government to the deadlock in the land market and to ask for an amendment of the purchase provisions in the Land Act of 1881. The meeting was a signal of distress from the ex-rack-renters. They had found that the proclamations of league meetings, trials by packed juries, evictions, and the other media of landlord rule had not increased their revenues nor enhanced the borrowing power of their estates. Mr. Trevelyan was, therefore, induced to frame a bill to carry out the desire on both sides to widen the avenues of purchase, but his tenure of the chief-secretaryship had been made a living purgatory by attacks from front and rear, and he resigned in October without pushing his measure to fruition. He was succeeded in the chief-secretaryship by Mr. (since Sir Henry) Campbell-Bannerman. Mr. Pamell proclaimed at Drogheda that the land question must be settled before the problem of Home Rtile could be dealt with. He abandoned this attitude later in the year, and declared that the one question which must be put to the forefront and kept there was Home Rule. This change in policy was not an act of vacillation, but a matter of tactics. He had reason to believe about this time that Mr. Chamberlain was in favor of a scheme of modified local government for Ireland which would give to a "central board" in Dublin power to legislate on the land and education questions, and with nothing better within sight Mr. Parnell was angling for concessions in this direction. Nearly the whole of the session of 1884 was taken up with the discussion of the franchise bill which was to extend 470 DANGERS OF "UNCROWNED KINGS" household suffrage to the counties. The Tories strongly opposed the application of this measure to Ireland. "Rebels in hovels" would swamp the better class of farmers and the loyalist classes at the polls, and give the country over to the political mercies of the league. But Mr. Gladstone remained firm in his resolve to draw no invidious line between Ireland and Great Britain in the matter of voting equality, and when once the true meaning of this coming increase of electors in Ireland was grasped in its certain influence upon the future representation of the country, the Tory advocates of coercion became less strident in their cries for repression. The party managers in Westminster commenced instead to calculate the number of men Mr. Parnell would return with in 1886, and how his certain increased following would affect the respective ministerial fortunes of Liberals and Tories. This change of feeling was a justification of Mr. Parnell 's cautious policy, and once again the varying fortunes of the movement associated with his name began to assume the garb of hopeful prospects. What was known as the Mayo conspiracy case attracted much public attention in 1884. It was an alleged plot to kill some landlord or land agent in that county. A series of trials, culminating in one before a packed jury in Cork, resulted in the conviction and imprisonment of Mr. P. W. Nally, one of the chief organizers of the Irishtown meeting. No one who knew him believed for a moment that he could be a party to the crime attributed to him by a wretched in- former named Coleman, a creature whose character and antecedents were as sullied as those of his young victim were the reverse. Nally fell a prey to one of the many sordid plots which were organized by men of the Coleman stamp for their own infamous ends. Being a prominent member of the Fenian organization, the Castle prosecutors pursued him for his revolutionary principles through the medium of this Coleman trap. He was an upright, manly young fellow, the champion athlete of Mayo, and a general favorite with the people of his native county, who knew him to be incapable of any dishonorable action. He died in prison when nearing the end of his sentence. The second convention of the National League of America was held in Boston in August of this year, Mr. Thomas Sexton, M.P., and Mr. W. K. Redmond, M.P., attending as envoys from the home movement. Mr. Alexander Sullivan resigned his position of president of the league, when Mr. Patrick Egan, former treasurer of the Land League of Ireland, was unanimously elected to succeed him. The progress 471 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND reported at the convention was eminently satisfactory, though there had been a sHght falhng-off in the number of affiHated branches. Mr. Parnell's declarations in Ireland to push the Home - Rule issue to the front gave complete satisfaction to his followers in America, and steps were taken to help to sustain him financially in the support of the stronger parlia- mentary party which was expected to follow the increase of electors in Ireland. Dynamite had played, even more so than in 1S83, a prom- inent part in keeping the Irish question unpleasantly before England's lawmakers in 1884. Bombs had been exploded actually within the precincts of Scotland Yard, following a previous attempt to blow up the Local Government Board offices. Similar outrages were perpetrated at three of the chief railway termini in London, while later still in the same year infernal machines with clock-work fuses were deposited in Westminster Hall and the Tower of London; the year's operations in this line winding up with a desperate attempt to destroy London Bridge. Ic was deadly bad work from Mr. Parnell's point of view. Not even his worst enemies suggested that the authors of these acts were friendly to his parliamentary policy, but no Englishman with intelligence could shut his eyes to the fact that the men who planned these deeds of desperation would not resort to such acts and run the risks involved in their criminal designs unless the coercionist rule of Ireland gave them some semblance of justification for the counter-terrorism to which they resorted. CHAPTER XXXIX PARNELL'S TRIUMPH On May 20, 1885, Lord Randolph Churchill hinted in a speech at a Tory club that a new policy was required for Ire- land. Arbitrary powers were at fault and had failed, and a change was required which would have some regard for the feelings of the Irish people. This deliverance followed a statement previously made by Mr. Gladstone, that as the crimes act would expire before Parliament would adjourn in August, some of the clauses of that measure would have to be renewed. In the light of what followed — the fruitless re- sults of the Carnarvon-Parnell interview and of the Newport pro-Home-Rule speech of Lord Salisbury — it is evident that Churchill was only bidding in this and in similar speeches for Irish support as a means of ousting the Liberals from office and in making a claim for position upon his own party should they climb into power through this successful angling for Mr. Pamell and his forces. Lord Randolph was probably sincere in a desire to see coercion abandoned in return for Irish votes. There is, however, no evidence worth taking into serious account to show that he or his party contemplated offering the Irish party any form of Home Rule. Mr. Glad- stone's subsequent overtures to the Salisbury government in this connection establishes this fact conclusively. Mr. Morley records ^ that on May 6th (1885), a fortnight be- fore the Churchill speech, Mr. Gladstone had made a memoran- dum of a talk on Ireland with Lord Granville in which he ex- plained his position on the question of a new departure in the system of Irish government. He set out by saying that Mr. Chamberlain was aware of his (Mr. Gladstone's) opinions being "strongly in favor of a plan for a central board of local government in Ireland, on something of an elective basis," thus referring probably to the kind of plan Mr. Chamberlain had in view. He then proceeds to speak for his own position as follows: "My opinions, I said, were strong and inveterate. * Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., pp. 191, 192. 473 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND I did not calculate upon Parnell and his friends nor upon Manning and his bishops. Nor was I under any obligation to follow or act with Chamberiain. But independently of all questions of party, of support, and of success, I looked upon the extension of a strong measure of local government like this to Ireland, now that the question is effectively revived by the crimes act, as invaluable itself, and as the only hopeful means of securing crown and state from an ignominious surrender in the next Parliament after a mischievous and painful struggle." The reason why he did not propose a scheme of this character at this period is fully explained by Mr. Morley. His cabinet was divided, both as to the extent of the modified coercion that was to be proposed to Parliament in place of the crimes act, and on the question of the kind of local government that should accompany this repressive measure. The Whigs in the ministry were for a maximum of kicks and a minimum of halfpence, while the Radicals and the prime - minister would reverse the treatment and the extent of both, to the full measure of the "central board," which would be en- dowed with large municipal powers and some permissive local legislation. Mr. Chamberlain's position in relation to this plan was as follows: Before the introduction of Mr. Gladstone's Home- Rule bill of 1886 the political term of "Home Rule," despite Mr. Isaac Butt's clear definition of its legislative and federal meaning in the seventies, stood in the member for Birming- ham's opinion only for "a large scheme of local government which would not involve anything in the nature of a separate Parliament in Ireland." Contradictory as this seems, in the light and the wording of his much-quoted speech of June 17th, in which Ireland's rule by England was compared to that of Poland by Russia, it is claimed in behalf of Mr. Chamberlain that neither Mr. Parnell nor those through whom he negotiated with Liberal ministers could ever have been in doubt as to Mr. Chamberlain's real intentions or meaning with reference to a substitute for Dublin-Castle administration. In 1885 Mr. Parnell, through Captain O'Shea, submitted a scheme for "national councils" to Mr. Chamberlain, cor- responding with his idea of "Home Rule" as defined above. Mr. Parnell never explained the nature, extent, or limitations of this scheme to friends in Ireland or to his colleagues in London. What happened was this: The scheme thus sub- mitted to Mr. Chamberlain was, in ttirn, explained or suggested in his behalf to certain members of Mr. Parnell 's party, who were induced to believe, in this way, that it originated with 474 P A R N E L L ' S TRIUMPH the member for Birmingham, and was on his part a tentative effort to get at Home Rule by the then heir-presumptive to the Liberal leadership. Mr. Chamberlain pressed it upon the acceptance of his colleagues in the Liberal cabinet. It was approved of by Mr. Gladstone, but as the Whigs, led by Hartington, were hostile, it was rejected, several of those who opposed it be- coming a few months later supporters of the Liberal premier's greater scheme of legislative Home Rule. It was represented to the Radical ministers, in behalf of the national - councils plan, that it had been submitted to the Irish Catholic hierarchy and had obtained their approval. There is, however, no record to show that either the Irish party or the executive committee of the Irish National League were ever asked for an opinion upon a plan that was to dispose in this manner of the demand for "national self-government," which was the first article in the official programme of the national organization in Ireland. After the resignation of Mr. Gladstone, on the defeat of his government on a budget vote, Mr. Chamberlain, with Sir Charles Dilke and others of the Radical section, was prepared to put the national-councils scheme forward in England as a parliamentary policy for Ireland. In other words, it was to be one of the issues to be put before the British constituencies at the coming general election on the extended franchise; but on learning from Mr. Parnell, in answer to inquiries, that he was no longer prepared to deal with the subject on those lines, the Radical ministers dropped the question. It was in connection with this Parnell scheme of national councils that Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke had intimated a desire to visit Ireland, to inquire into local con- ditions and aspirations, the better to be able to advocate its acceptance by English opinion. Mr. Parnell was in favor of this visit, but, what was considered to be his organ. United Ireland, met the suggestion, when published in the press, with a violent outburst of opposition. The intend- ing visitors were threatened with a hostile reception and other forms of adverse hospitality should they dare to come to Ireland for the purpose of any such inquiry. Nothing could well be more foolish or inconsistent, apart from the opposition thus given to what Mr. Parnell had himself ap- proved. Hitherto one of the strongest objections made in Ireland to the halting and unsatisfactory nature of West- minster legislation for our people was the ignorance which it displayed of the conditions of life and feeling prevailing in a country which British ministers seldom or ever came to see. 475 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Now, when two men of prominent ministerial rank, who had been in a measure Mr. Parnell's alHes in the contest against Mr. Forster's coercion, indicated an intention of visiting the country for the first time, and in connection with a proposed reform suggested by the Irish leader, his reputed organ had nothing for them but the welcome of a threatened horse-pond or the argument of a bog-hole. All this read, of course, very warlike and valiant in Dublin at the time, but account was not taken by the writer of the influence it would have when quoted into the English press upon Radical voters in the coming general election. It was, in time, so quoted, and together with an equally short-sighted and offensively worded manifesto, issued on the eve of the elections in favor of the Tories by the Irish leader, just succeeded in reducing Mr. Gladstone's subsequent majority in the House of Com- mons low enough to defeat his Home-Rule bill. The differences in the cabinet over the policy to be pro- posed for Ireland were between Chamberlain and Dilke, on the one hand, and Lord Hartington and the Whigs on the other. Mr. Gladstone's task was to keep the factions together, his own views being more with the Radical section. Lord Spencer was another discordant element in the situation. He wanted a bill for land purchase as a coated-pill accom- paniment for more coercion. To this Chamberlain and Dilke objected, and, as their views and position were opposed by the majority, they tendered their resignations. Writing to Lord Hartington^ on June 4th, Mr. Gladstone again insisted that he was in advance of the Chamberlain attitude on the Irish question : "I am fully convinced that on local government for Ireland they (Chamberlain and Dilke) hold a winning position, which by resignation now they will greatly compromise. You will all, I am convinced, have to give, at least, what they recommend. There are two dif- ferences between them and me on this subject — first, as to the matter — I go further than they do, for I would undoubtedly make a beginning with the Irish police; secondly, as to the ground — here I differ seriously. I do not reckon with any confidence upon Manning or Pamell; I have never looked much in Irish matters at negotiation or the conciliation of leaders. I look at the question in itself, and I am deeply convinced that the measure in itself will be good for the country and the empire." A few days afterwards (June 8th) the Gladstone govern- ment was defeated on a budget division by two hundred * Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., p. 197. 476 PARNELL'S TRIUMPH and sixty-four to two hundred and fifty-two votes, Mr. Par- nell and his following voting with the Tories in support of Sir Michael Hicks - Beach's amendment. Lord Randolph Churchill's tactics had succeeded. By denouncing the con- tinuance of coercion and in other ways, he had persuaded Mr. Parnell that Codlin was the friend of Home Rule, not Short, and Mr. Gladstone had to make way for Lord Salis- bury. The Tories accepted office after a prolonged interregnum, but as they could only remain in power by the support of Mr. Parnell the position became irksome, especially in view of the Churchill coquetting with Home Rule and the revelations anent the Parnell interview with Lord Carnarvon. What the Churchill manoeuvres plainly intended was, not to put his party in power for a brief space only, and thus to expose it to the proof of its professions, but to obtain the Irish support at the impending general election. This plan was, in part, frustrated by the manner in which the Liberals were defeated. Mr. Gladstone resigned and did not dissolve Par- liament, and thereby compelled the Queen to send for Lord Salisbury and to request him to form a ministry. Mr. Parnell now found himself complete master of the situation within certain limits and subject to a wise exercise of available forces and tactics. He was in a most delicate but still a hopeful position for his cause. All parties and sections were committing themselves to some change in the form of Ireland's future government. Both English parties were sick of coercion. It had not succeeded in saving the landlords or in making Dublin Castle feared or respected. Chamberlain and Churchill favored the abolition of the Castle — one to have it replaced by national councils, the other by some undefined arrangement. Mr. Gladstone was for going further than either, and held to the views he had expressed to Mr. Forster in the letter of April 12, 1881. The influence which decided Mr. Parnell to take the wrong course in this crisis was that of Lord Carnarvon, and the tactics of Lord Randolph Churchill. The intervention of Lord Carnarvon was brought about by the efforts of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who saw Mr. Parnell at this period in London. He pressed upon him the wisdom of putting the SaHsbury government to the test of what they were prepared to offer to the Irish party for the support which Mr. Parnell was already inclined to give them on the strength of the hopes raised by some of the Tory leaders. Sir Gavan Duffy was intimately acquainted .with Lord Carnarvon from colonial experiences, and held him in very high esteem, both for 477 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND his personal qualities and his progressive views on some ques- tions. The veteran Tenant-League leader had already moved, himself, in this direction by writing an open appeal to the Conservatives to grapple with the problem of Home Rule, the article being sent by Lord Carnarvon to the editor of the National Review} Finally, the interview was brought about, and Mr. Pamell gave this summarized account of what transpired, after the negotiations in this way with the Tory party had resulted in nothing: "At the conclusion of the conversation, which lasted more than an hour, and to which Lord Carnarvon was very much the larger contributor, I left him, believing that I was in complete accord with him regarding the main outlines of a settlement conferring a legislature upon Ireland. In conversing with him I dealt with the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, who was respon- sible for the government of the country. I could not sup- pose that he would fail to impress the views which he had disclosed to me upon the cabinet; and I have reason to be- lieve that he did so impress them, and that they were strong- ly shared by more than one important member of the body and strongly opposed by none."- Some time after this statement was made to the public, Mr. Parnell, on his return to Ireland, invited me to Avondale for a talk over the new situation. He led me to believe that other important members of the Tory ministry had become most friendly to the idea of Irish self-government and that Lord Salisbury would bring in a Home-Rule bill. Mr. Parnell had, a few days previously, at Arklow, made a speech in which he demanded not alone an Irish legislature, equipped with adequate powers to make all necessary laws for Ireland, but "with the power to protect Irish industries against importa- tions." I. asked him if he seriously believed that any English minister would ever propose to give power to an Irish Parliament to put a tariff on England's goods coming into this country. "Yes," was the confident reply, "I am virtually assured that the Tories will do so." I was utterly incredulous, not having had a moment's misgiving as to the real purpose of the Churchill tactics, and I urged him as soon as he got an opportunity to modify as much as possible the strong protectionist language he had used the day before, pointing out that this feature of the Home-Rule question, if insisted upon, would do more to alarm the shop-keeping instincts of the English nation than a demand for an Irish republic on a free-trade basis would do. Before he obtained ^ Life of Parnell, vol. n., p. 6;^. ^ The Times, June 12, 1885. 478 PARxMELL vS TRIUMPH an opportunity of doing this Mr. Chamberlain had spoken at Warrington on September 8th. He fastened upon the protectionist plank in the Parnell declaration, and proclaimed his hostility to any fonn of Home Rule which should give power to the Irish to penalize the products of English manu- facture, and predicted the failure of such demands. During this time — that is, while the Salisbury government remained in power by leave of Mr. Parnell — Mr. Gladstone's mind was travelling in the one direction he had indicated in the letter of April, 1881. He saw no way out of the mess which the league movement and coercion had made of English rule in Ireland, and he concluded that what was inevitable anyhow ought to be boldly faced and proclaimed. It has been generally held that it was Mr. Parnell 's defeat of the Liberals in June and his support of the Tories in the general election of November which forced Mr. Gladstone's hand on Home Rule. Mr. Morley's Life of Gladstone com- pletely shatters that contention. The evidence is conclusive that he had convinced his mind that "force was no remedy," and that the Irish people must be intrusted with a form of rule that would beget national responsibility, and create a respect for law and order that Castle government would never obtain. In letters to Lord Derby, Lord Granville, and others, and in a conversation with Mr. Chamberlain at Hawarden, as recorded in the third volume of Mr. Morley's authentic work, this state of mind and intention is made clear beyond all doubt fully a month before the Irish leader had made known which English party he intended to ask the Irish in Great Britain to support at the coming elections. On the very eve of the contest the Liberal leader wrote to Mr. Childers approving of his intention to put forward, in a contemplated speech, proposals which went far beyond Mr. Chamberlain's "central board." Then came his memorable Midlothian utterances, all pointing, in their references to Ireland, to the need of a radical change in its rule, and to the powerful constitutional position the Irish party would occupy in the coming new Parliament, if, as was generally expected, Mr. Pamell's following should be considerably increased by the extended franchise. There was one declaration in one of these historic speeches (November 9th) which was held by Mr. Parnell and his lieu- tenants at the time to justify their subsequent action in opposing the great Liberal leader by the Irish vote in Great Britain. It was where Mr. Gladstone said: "Apart from the term Whig or Tory, there is one thing I will say, and will endeavor to impress upon you, and it is this: It will 479 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND be a vital danger to the country and to the empire if, at a time when a demand from Ireland for larger powers of self- government is to be dealt with, there is not in Parliament a party totally independent of the Irish vote." This was, in one sense, an utterance that might legitimately cause some Irish anger, but it could not by any possible twist of meaning be interpreted as a bid for Irish support in the approaching elections. It was a strong, diplomatic, and consistent at- titude; and when read now in the light of after events, and in that of the revelations made in Mr. Morley's work, it is clear that it was a politically wise and far-seeing declaration on the part of an English leader who was himself a Home-Ruler, and who knew the extent and the nature of British party forces that would be roused into opposition by the impending Irish demand. He saw that Mr. Parnell's boast of being in a position to act the part of an arbiter between the two great English parties, and of holding the balance of votes in the centre of English power and pride, the House of Commons, would bring much more than British party feeling into play. It was a threat and a prospect of seeing the Imperial Parliament "bossed" by nationalist Ireland. A possible contingency of this kind would arouse anti-Irish feeling, and would create a racial antipathy to what Mr. Gladstone had made up his mind to propose, and for the carrying out of which he wanted to be, in British eyes and opinion, above the suspicion of acting only in obedience to Irish votes, and for the honors and emoluments of office so obtained and held. As rival tacticians Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone were seen at this stage in the exercise of their great qualities. The Liberal leader desired to induce or force Lord Salisbury to make good in some way the innuendo of the Newport speech, the more pronounced hints of Churchill, and the acknowledged leanings of Lord Carnarvon towards Home Rule. Had this policy succeeded all would have been well for at least some measure of Irish self-government. The Tories held and hold the House of Lords, and could, under combined pressure, bring it to agree to what might have the sanction of both parties. It was a sage and unselfish policy, and it merited a success which the uncertain chances of political warfare did not vouchsafe it. Mr. Parnell was in a sense handicapped by the new power that had come to his fortune to wield. The temptation to punish still more the authors of the coercionist outrages of five years and of his own imprisonment was, humanly speaking, a strong impulse. Revenge is always a seductive 480 PARNELL'S TRIUMPH luxury to the promptings of human passion, and that the Irish leader keenly felt the Kilmainham imprisonment he never attempted to disguise. "You know he put us in prison," he observed in one of our talks after the general election, "and we were called upon to strike back so as to deter others from resorting to like methods again." But Mr. Parnell was too big a man and too true a statesman to allow this alone to influence his decision. He still believed, despite the Carnarvon experience, that the party masters of the House of Lords were the surest mark for a Home- Rule measure, and he made up his mind to hurl his power against the Gladstone following in that belief and spirit. The manifesto issued in his name on November 21st, some six weeks after Lord Salisbury's Newport speech, was a serious^ er ror i n tactics. In any case, it was a needlessly violent pronounceihent in what was now a purely parlia- mentary line of action for Mr. Parnell. It overlooked the fact that Englishmen have strong feelings of attachment to political leaders, as Irishmen have, and it gave ground for angry remonstrance on the part of Radicals and Liberals alike against language of outrageous insult towards those who had passed the land and laborers' acts in face of Tory opposition, and who were even now more friendly to Home Rule than the followers of Salisbury and Churchill. It evoked a bitter anti-Irish feeling in every constituency in Great Britain, and turned thousands of Liberal voters away from the Irish cause who have never since then supported it by a single ballot. "Some estimated the loss to the Liberal party in this island," says Mr. Morley,^ "at twenty seats, others at forty. Whether twenty or forty, these lost seats made a fatal difference in the division on the Irish bill a few months later, and when that day had come and gone, Mr. Parnell sometimes ruefully asked himself whether the tactics of the electoral manifesto were not on the whole a mistake." With the freedom which I sometimes took of differing with great men, I went strongly at the time, both in private and in public, against the line taken by Mr. Parnell in this ill- advised course, and was duly excommunicated, as usual, by some of his choleric young lieutenants for my dissent. But no unkind word was spoken by the leader himself. What Mr. Morley has only surmised in the above remark was actually confessed more than once to myself by Mr. Parnell afterwards. He was not afraid to admit he had carried the combined tactics of Irish temper and of party ^ Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., p. 244. 31 481 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND calculation a little too far by means of the manifesto in ques- tion and the policy which it stood for. The general election of November, 1885, resulted in the greatest parliamentary triumph of Mr. Parnell's political career. In Ireland the new electors admitted to the franchise by the reform bill of that year returned eighty-five Home- Rulers out of a total parliamentary roll of one hundred and two members, while the results in Great Britain guaranteed the promise of a striking change in the trend of Irish legislation in Westminster. The polls on the British side of the Irish Sea gave three hundred and thirty-three members of the House of Commons to the Liberals and two hundred and fifty-one to Lord Salisbury's leadership, or a majority of eighty-two for Mr. Gladstone. These figures represented a Liberal minority of four against Tories and Parnellites combined, Mr. T. P. O'Connor being elected for a division of Liverpool and making Mr. Parnell's party eighty-six strong. This was the result which Mr. Gladstone had spoken appre- hensively about in Midlothian. With the solicited co-opera- tion of the Tories in a joint task of framing a Home-Rule measure assured, this state of parties would be ideal, from Mr. Gladstone's stand-point. But, if otherwise, Mr. Parnell's balance of power and position in the House of Commons would be the most dangerous menace of a situation hedged all round with risks and peril. The general political result of the elections in Ireland has been referred to. It represented the highest possible nationalist achievement at the polls, having due regard to the numerical strength of the Anglo-Irish population. Ulster returned a majority of one in favor of Home Rule. Antrim was the only county which failed to elect a follower of Mr. Parnell. The landlords were turned out of every constituency in the three Southern provinces, saving such as were Home- Rulers and who accepted Mr. Parnell's leadership and programme. The former lords of political power as of Irish land were swept as if by an electoral cyclone. Where they or their noininees had ventured to contest a seat with a National-League candidate, the vote against the popular choice was so ludicrously small that it added an element of contempt to the verdict of a crushing defeat. In Kerry a pro -landlord supporter was given thirty votes in one division ; the nationalist received three thousand. In Cork county the figures in two constituencies were ten thousand for Mr. Parnell's side and three hundred for the landlords, re- spectively. Mayo gave two hundred ballots for the ad- herents of landlordism as against ten thousand for the Land- 4S2 PARNELL'S TRIUMPH Leaguers, and so on, in like proportion, in other Western and Southern constituencies. Three classes of representative, at one time dividing almost the whole of Ireland between them, were summarily evicted out of Parliament by the increased electorate of the country : the landlords in three provinces, the Liberals in Ulster, and the "nominal Home-Rulers" everywhere. Ireland was thus fairly divided, in a parliamentary sense, between eighty-five nationalists and nineteen anti-nationalists, two of the latter being elected by Trinity College and seventeen by Ulster constituencies. The signal triumph of 1880 was thus more than repeated five years later. It was confirmed and magni- fied in the most effective electioneering revolution that had taken place in Ireland since the act of union. The over- whelming argument which was thus constitutionally made and emphasized against that corrupt and infamous enactment was offered to Mr. Gladstone at a moment when the greatest of Britain's statesmen had concluded, after a prolonged and desperate struggle with Irish national combinations, that Castle rule and coercion were no remedy for the national and social discontent of the Irish people. That Mr. Gladstone was sincerely willing to help the Tories to solve the problem of Irish government, on the lines which Mr. Parnell asserted were suggested by Lord Carnarvon, and in consonance with the spirit which informed Lord Salisbury's Newport speech, is placed beyond all reasonable doubt by Mr. Morley's great book. At page 258, vol. iii., he is quoted, under date of December 10, 1885, after the elections were decided, as writing thus to Mr. Herbert Gladstone: "The nationalists have run in political alliance with the Tories for years — more especially for six months — most of all at the close during the elections, when they have made us three hundred and thirty-five (say) against two hundred and fifty (Conservatives), instead of three hundred and fifty- five against two hundred and thirty. This alliance is there- fore at its zenith. The question of Irish government ought for the highest reasons to be settled at once, and settled by the allied forces — (i) because they have the government, (2) be- cause their measure will have fair play from all, most, or many of us, which a measure of ours would not have from the Tories. As the allied forces are half the House, so that there is not a majority against them, no constitutional principle is violated by allowing the present cabinet to con- tinue undisturbed for the purpose in view. The plan for Ireland ought to be produced by the government of the day. Principles mav be laid down by others, but not the detailed 483 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND interpretation of them in a measure. I have pubHcly de- clared I produce no plan until the government has arrived at some issue with the Irish, as I hope they will. If the moment ever came when a plan had to be considered with a view to production on behalf of the Liberal part}', I do not at present see how such a question could be disassociated from another vital question — namely, who are to be the government. For a government alone can carry a measure, though some outline of essentials might be put out in a motion or resolution." CHAPTER XL HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED The new Parliament, which was to mark a momentous epoch in the long struggle of Ireland against English rule, met on January 26, 1886. The Tories were still the government, though in a minority as compared with the rival English party. The speech from the throne revealed the cloven foot of the Tory purpose in the references to Ireland. There was no Carnarvon, Churchill, or Salisbury "Home Rule" of any kind mentioned, but there was a promise to ask Parliament for "necessary powers" to strengthen Castle government should those already at the disposal of the Irish executive require supplementing in the way of more coercion. Here was the end of what Mr. Gladstone subsequently declared to be "a deliberate attempt to deceive the Irish with a view to gaining their support at the elections." Mr. Parnell's eyes were now opened wide to the extent to which Churchill & Co. had successfully played the game Codlin vs. Short. Gladstone and the Liberals were now his main hope, and the memory of the manifesto of November was of the kind which suggests a regret in moments of after-reflection that certain bitter words and phrases had not been left unsaid. One good, however, was to result to Ireland despite Tory treachery on one Irish question. Lord Ashbourne's act, in- troduced into the House of Lords in the previous session, had become law. It carried out to a considerable extent the proposals for land purchase which the Land League had demanded in 1880, and for which Mr. Pamell and his party had pressed hard while the Gladstone bill of 1881 was being debated in the House of Commons. These demands were then refused. The Tories in 1882, as already mentioned, brought forward a motion, in both Houses, favoring an ex- tensive measure of land purchase as a step towards the creation of a peasant proprietary in Ireland. Lord Ashbourne included these proposals in a comprehensive measure in the session of 1885, ^^^ under his bill, which became law, the tenants who could come to an agreement with their 485 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND landlords to buy their holdings could borrow the whole pur- chase price through the land commission, paying in return for a period of forty-nine years a yearly sum of four per cent, upon the money so advanced by the state; £2 155. of this to be interest on the same, and ^i 55. to go to a sinking-fund for the liquidation of the loan. A sum of ^5,000,000 was to be provided by the state for such loans. Subsequent amendments greatly increased this state aid. An unprecedented event in relation to the office of Irish chief secretary occurred in connection with a declaration of the new government to amend the Ashbourne act so as to enlarge the scope of its operations. Mr. W. H. Smith, head of the great newspaper-distributing firm in London, had been appointed chief secretary, owing mainly to his having been identified in 1882 with the Tory motion in favor of the creation of a peasant proprietary in Ireland. He started from London for Dublin after the leader of the House of Commons had declared that the government would in two days' time bring in two classes of measures for Ireland — one of repression against the National League, and one of con- struction in the direction of facilitating land purchase. Mr. Smith arrived in Dublin on the 24th. He left for London again on the evening of the 26th. His government had been driven from power by Mr. Pamell that very night, and upon reaching his journey's end he found himself out of office. Mr. Smith's tenure of the post of chief secretary was, therefore, the briefest in the history of that department of Irish government. The reply of the Irish phalanx of 1886 to the insolent references to coercion in the Queen's speech by the pseudo "Home-Rulers" of the previous autumn was to expel them from the treasury benches during the very debate upon the address. The immediate occasion was an amendment by Mr. Jesse CoUings demanding legislation for the English agricultural laborers. It was the reform known on the public platforms at the time as "Three acres and a cow." Mr. Parnell joined his forces to those of the Liberal opposi- tion, with the result that the comic cartoonists of the week pictorially represented Lord Salisbury and his cabinet being kicked from power by the heels of an angry cow having Mr. CoUings as a driver. Mr. Gladstone consented at once to form a ministry. He had a mandate from Ireland and, in a sense, from Great Britain too — in the meaning of the ]\Iidlothian utterances on the problem of Irish government — to deal with the great question of the Anglo - Irish conflict. His difficulties were 486 HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED enormous. The division which drove the Tories from office revealed the opposing forces that would be turned against a Home-Rule bill from within the Liberal ranks. Eighteen of Mr. Gladstone's followers had voted with the ministerialists, while over fifty more had absented themselves from the division, they knowing that the defeat of the Tory party would stand for a Liberal alliance with Pamell and a con- sequent measure of Home Rule. The skies were bright again over Ireland, but gathering clouds were also coming up from the horizon presaging storms and possible disaster once more. How many of Mr. Gladstone's lieutenants would leave him? What stand would John Bright take? Where would Cham- berlain be found? These were the anxious speculations of Mr. Pamell and his friends as days fateful for the Irish cause swept by during the reconstruction of a Gladstone cabinet. The landlord Whigs were also expected to be hostile, par- ticularly Lord Spencer. No one believed that Harcourt would be on the side of the angels. There was no hope of Lord Hartington, but nearly all of us confidently expected that Chamberlain and John Bright would be found with the veteran premier in this the last great effort of his political life to do justice to Ireland. The recollection, however, of many barbed sentences spoken against the great Radical tribune in the angry debates on coercion came back to some memories, and there was a regretful wish in a few young minds that they had not on these occasions thought of John Bright's manly stand for Ireland in the sixties, and of his brave efforts on the side of clemency in 1867 when three young Irishmen were doomed to an ignominious death for the accidental shooting of a brave policeman in Manchester. These forecasts were greatly in error. Lord Spencer and Sir William Harcourt were faithful to their chief. The territorial Whigs naturally enough went against the leaders of a successful Irish agrarian revolution, and John Bright and Chamberlain accompanied them to the wrong side, along with a very large section of the Liberal party. That manifesto of November was not forgotten or forgiven. Mr. John Morley became Irish secretary in the Home-Rule cabinet. He had been a consistent adversary of coercion in the press and a convert to the principle of nationalist rule in Ireland from the overwhelming constitutional strength of the country's answer to the issue upon which it returned eighty - five members for Home Rule and nineteen only against. There was not in justice or in right reason any other 487 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND answer to this than Home Rule, and upon this conclusion the new minister took a stand from which he has never since receded a single inch. A brief synopsis of Mr. Gladstone's first Home-Rule bill will indicate its scope and character. It was "a bill to make provision for the future government of Ireland." The pre- amble defined it in these terms: "Be it enacted by the Queen's most excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords spiritual and temporal and Com- mons in the present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows: "i. On and after the appointed day there shall be es- tabhshed in Ireland a legislature, consisting of her Majesty the Queen and an Irish legislative body." Here followed no fewer than twenty-five specified re- strictions upon the legislating powers of this body, covering what are known as imperial interests, and embracing also such Irish questions as the establishment or endowment of religion, abrogating the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education, interfering with the rights or privileges of existing corporations founded on royal charters, and imposing duties of customs or of excise contrary to those sanctioned by the Imperial Parliament. The legislative body was to have a parliamentary Hfe of five years, renewable by election. It was to consist of one chamber with "a first and second order." The first order was to consist of one hundred and three members, of whom seventy-five were to be elected members, and twenty-eight "peerage" members. The former were to have property qualifications either of i^2oo a year or upward, of real estate, or personal property of ;£4ooo or upwards free of all charges. The franchise for the election of the non-peerage members was : to be the owner or occupier of some land or tenement within the district of a net annual value of ;^2 5 or upward. The term of office for elective members was to be ten years. The "twenty-eight representative peers of Ireland" (those qualified to be members of the House of Lords in the Imperial Parliament) could elect themselves to be members of the first order by notifying the Lord Lieutenant of such desire. They would hold the membership for life or for thirty years. After the expiration of this last term all the members of the first order would have to be elected on the franchise specified. The second order was to consist of two hundred and four members, to be elected by the present parliamentary con- HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED stituencies on the existing franchise; two members (instead of one as at present) to be returned by each division to the legislative body. The (then) members of the British House of Commons from Ireland to become, ipso facto, members of the new Irish legislature for the period of the first term of five years. Ireland's representation in the House of Commons was to cease when the Irish legislative body came into existence; provision being made, however, for a temporary return thereto of a certain quota on occasions when Ireland's interests required their presence. The legislative body would thus number some three hun- dred and seven members, deliberating in one assembly, but voting, if necessary, on specified issues or occasions, in sepa- rate orders. A veto upon all legislation was to be vested in the Lord Lieutenant as representing the Crown. Judges and the Royal Irish Constabulary force were, for a time, to continue under imperial service, but power was to be given to the new Irish authority to organize a civil police for the country, if such a force should be deemed necessary. Subject to the specified reservations, the Irish legislative body and the executive government which would be formed out of the same would have supreme control over the domestic affairs of Ireland. The financial portion of Mr. Gladstone's scheme was ex- ceedingly unfair to Ireland when the taxable capacity and resources of the country were considered. It amounted to a proposed annual contribution from Irish taxes to the imperial exchequer of an equivalent to one-fifteenth of the total imperial expenditure. Judged in the light of a subsequent finding by a royal commission on the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland, Mr. Gladstone's finance proposals, if they had been adopted, would stand for fifty per cent, above what Ireland ought in equity and fair play to contribute towards imperial services out of her taxable resources. The night before the introduction of the bill Mr. Parnell held a meeting of the leading men of his party and explained to them the chief features and provisions of the Gladstone plan. He was severely critical of its financial proposals, and spoke strongly against them as "unjust and extortionate." We learned that he had put forth all his endeavors to obtain better terms for Ireland, but had failed to bring the premier round to his views. The bargain insisted upon by the guardian of the British treasury was a hard and unyielding one, and Mr. Parnell expressed himself very strongly in 489 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND condemnation of this attitude. He led us to think that he thought the bill scarcely worth acceptance. He favored, however, the dropping of the land - settlement part of the ministerial scheme, believing that this would be the only way in which the Home-Rule part of it would stand any chance of passing a second-reading stage. The feeling of the meeting was strongly in favor of accept- ing the bill, subject to its improvement in committee, if possible. Sentiment rather than the merits of the com- plicated and incongruous character of the proposed legislative body weighed with us. It would be something in the nature of a parliament, anyhow. Its many obvious defects would give reasonable grounds for demanding amendments in the near future. There was in it a recognition of Ireland's right to nationhood, in a cribbed, cabined, and confined kind of way, no doubt. But it would put an end to English rule in Ireland's domestic affairs. The detested Dublin - Castle system, with its "hacks," renegades, and informers, would disappear, and the substitute would offer our country a modest status of racial self-government among the nations. It would stand, too, for a victory for the Celt, after his long and agonizing struggle for national recognition, while the consideration also weighed that a native government of some kind would do more than any other change in the condition of the country to stem the fatal tide of emigration. For these and other reasons it was agreed to accept Mr. Gladstone's offer, and to stand by the bargain, bad as it was, should the bill become law. A message was cabled to Mr. Patrick Egan, president of the league of America, informing him of the decision thus arrived at. This step was deemed necessary as an intimation to the members and friends of the auxiliary movement in the United States that the measure offered by the Liberals was duly weighed and considered by Mr. Pamell and all his lieutenants, and that as they were ready to accept the bill, subject to its possible improvement in committee, the Amer- ican supporters of our cause were expected to do likewise. The message was duly published in the American press, and Mr. Parnell was enabled to declare, on the second reading of the bill, that the Irish in America, like those at home, would accept the Gladstone proposals as a final settlement of the Anglo-Irish strife. Mr. Gladstone introduced his bill on Thursday, April 8th. The event was looked forward to as unique in the history of the two countries since the act of union. The restricted accommodation of the chamber of the House of Commons 490 HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED was a serious problem for the officials, as there was not seat- ing-room for the full roll of members. As early as five o'clock in the morning an Irish member, Mr. Donal Sullivan, ap- peared on the premises so as to secure a place. No fewer than one hundred and fifty other members followed his exam- ple before breakfast. No such assemblage of its accredited delegates had been known in the history of the Commons chamber. Seats had to be provided on the floor, while every available place was occupied long before the speaker arrived. The public galleries were more congested still, hundreds being unable to gain admittance. The Prince of Wales (now King Edward VII.) was an attentive listener during the premier's long speech of three hours and twenty- five minutes. It was probably the greatest effort of Mr. Gladstone's par- liamentary career. No speech ever delivered in the House of Commons covered so completely the question at issue — the past and the proposed new government of Ireland. It was a deliverance, too, which called into play all his matchless gifts of oratory — the resonant and musical voice (though somewhat hoarse on this occasion), the expressive powers of the marked leonine face, the graceful use of the arms as aids to his style of speaking, and the elevated tone and almost reverential spirit in which a subject so vast and complicated was treated. To listening Irishmen, members and non-members, it marked a proud triumph and registered a sanguine hope. The greatest and most popular statesmen who ever wielded the power and influence of a British premier openly abandoned coercion forever as a discredited and defeated means of ruling Ireland. And the same prime- minister stood there, in the hearing of all the civilized world, confessing that the act of union had been born in corruption and in infamy, and ought to be swept away to make place for a government of Ireland by the chosen representatives of the Irish people. It was a glad moment of victory for Mr. Parnell and of compensation for those who had fought Mr. Gladstone as a coercionist, and who now witnessed his entry into the lists as a champion of Home Rule against the foes of Ireland's claims. British public opinion was sharply divided on the pro- posals laid before it by Mr. Gladstone, but the press of America and of the continent of Europe was all but unan- imously ranged on the aged statesman's side. His courage and chivalry in thus devoting the closing years of his life to the righting of an ancient and still operating wrong was generously recognized in all but narrow minds, and the good 491 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND wishes of the friends of liberty and progress everywhere encouraged him in his mighty task. There was a note of alarm in one influential quarter which soon made itself felt. Rome, according to well-informed sources, was greatly concerned at the proposed withdrawal of the Irish members from the Imperial Parliament. This note was doubtless prompted by the English Catholics, whose leaders were all hostile to Mr. Gladstone's policy. These consistent enemies of nationalist Ireland desired the Irish members, as (mostly) Catholics, to remain at Westmin- ster. In their absence few, if any. Catholics would be found there to watch over the Church's religious and educational interests in the British Empire outside of Ireland. With men like the Duke of Norfolk this was the main governing consideration, apart from their hereditary hatred of the country whose struggles for religious freedom had emanci- pated a subdued and submissive English Catholic community. Intrigue began to spring at once from this kind of opposition, and though the active hostility of Pope Leo XIII. was not manifested or, perhaps, really existent, so far as the main object of the Home-Rule measure was concerned, the English faction in Rome, which has always been able to influence the Curia on questions of mixed English and Irish concern, succeeded in creating the impression in circles hostile to Mr. Gladstone and the Irish members that the wishes and the interests of Rome lay in the defeat rather than in the success of the proposed plan of Irish government. Other far less scrupulous agencies were also at work with a similar purpose. A fortnight after the introduction of the bill The Times printed a sensational document headed "The Irish-American Extremists and the Pamellite Party," in which an attempt was made to connect the latter with plans and plots for outrage in England on the part of the dynamiters. I have already, in Chapter XXXV., exposed the manner and the means by which many if not most of these outrages were concocted. The source of the "revelations" in The Times was this: After the suicide of Richard Pigott in Madrid, following his sensational flight from London, as described in Chapter XLVII., I obtained access to a large quantity of the papers, diaries, and scrap-books belonging to the miserable forger. In one of these scrap-books the article from The Times of April 24, 1886, is carefully preserved, along with all the contemporary references to it. This article was manifestly inspired by a series of similar "revelations" which had appeared in the New York Times of April 4th, nth, and 492 HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED 1 6th of the same month and year. In fact, the article m the great London organ drew all its information, state- ments, and allegations against the American Clan-na-Gael from the New York paper ; the alleged connection between this body and Mr. Parnell's party being taken by 77^6' Times contributor from the pamphlet " Parnellism," which Pigott had written in November, 1884. The New York Times "revelations" were likewise carefully pasted into another of Pigott's scrap-books, and it is strongly probable, if not actually a fact, that the document which started the press of England on April 24th was written, or, if not written, inspired, by the hand which a short time afterwards forged Mr. Parnell's name to the now historic " Parnell letters." On the morning of the division upon the Home - Rule bill (June 7th), another dynamite "revelation" also found prominence in the pages of The Times. This second document also attempted to show a connection or co-operation of some kind between the movement led by Mr. Parnell and one which promoted a policy of terror through the use of ex- plosives. This document I also found in Pigott's scrap- book, along with a copy of an alleged "Fenian manifesto," which appeared in The Times of June 20th. Alongside of these cuttings there is placed a copy of a letter which I ad- dressed to the Press Association on June 21st, and in which these statements were made: "The author of this document is an ex-editor of a weekly Irish paper, now extinct, which pretended at one time to represent the views of extreme Irish nationalists. Failing, after repeated applications, to obtain either money or employ- ment from Mr. Parnell, he has been for some consider- able time the special dynamite-revelationist contributor to a London conservative paper, and is now, I believe, on the pamphleteering staff of the Loyal and Patriotic Union. This, sir, is the source whence the 'Fenian' manifesto has come, and the occasion of its appearance and the general text of the document prove it to be nothing else but an unscrupu- lous electioneering dodge, worthy alike of those from whom it emanates and of the party which by a resort to similar discreditable means are striving to frustrate Mr. Gladstone's efforts to effect a lasting peace between Ireland and England." Although Pigott was thus openly and plainly referred to as the author of this manifesto, and of other "revelations" of a like character which had been published in a portion of the London press, there was neither comment nor denial by him written against this accusation, which was found carefully preserved in his collection of press extracts. 493 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND The second reading of Mr. Gladstone's bill terminated early on Tuesday morning, June 8th. A larger attendance of members than even that on the night of its introduction in April marked the closing scene of the great debate. Only thirteen out of the total roll of six hundred and seventy members of the House of Commons were absent, every member of Mr. Pamell's following of eighty -six being in his place. Intense excitement prevailed, and the uncertainty of the result of the coming division added to the tension of feeling on both sides of the packed and heated House. Mr. Gladstone had been loudly cheered by a great crowd outside of Palace Yard as he drove from Downing Street to the House of Commons in the afternoon, while his appearance in the chamber shortly after five o'clock was hailed with equal enthusiasm by the Radical and Irish members. Feeling was equally strong in its expression on the other side, and the opposing hosts gave vent to the passion created by the con- flict as champions for or against the Home-Rule measure passed to take their seats on the treasury or opposition benches. Mr. Parnell rose after the speech of Mr. Goschen. No man ever had a more highly strung and expectant audience inside the historic chamber. Friend and foe alike listened with an attention absolute in its complete absorption in the speaker's words and manner. This was the man who had been the chief instrument in working the revolution which that House was to sanction or to repudiate in a few hours. It was he whom the great Englishman sitting opposite, listening to every word that fell from his lips, had put in prison five short years previously, and who now addressed the British House of Commons, crowded as it never had been before, in support of the same prime-minister now a convert to the cause of the ex-prisoner of Kilmainham, and a greater opponent to coercion. The Irish leader spoke admirably. Never an orator in the ornate or declamatory sense of style, he was on this occasion at his best, in his slow, deeply earnest, clear, and emphatic manner. His thoroughly English accent, his great coolness and apparently dispassionate temper greatly im- pressed an audience that had already learned in the many stormy scenes of the past ten years of his parliamentary life how to respect the tenacity of purpose, the fighting quali- ties, and undeviating resolve of the man v/ho now pleaded with convincing force and restrained feeling the cause of his country. The speech was dignified in tone and excellently delivered. He made effective use of the Tory overtures for 494 HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED his support twelve months previously, and rendered the anti - Home - Rule hosts uneasy in their seats as he recalled the facts of the Churchill and Carnarvon intrigue. "I have been reproached," he said, "and it has been made an argument against the honesty of my declaration regarding the final character of this settlement, that in a speech at Wicklow I proclaimed a right to protect Irish manufactures. This bill gives no such right. Undoubtedly, I did claim that right, but it was not when the Liberal party was in power. That speech about protection at Wicklow was made at a time when we had every reason to know that the Conservative party, if they should be successful at the polls, would have offered to Ireland a statutory legislature with the right to protect her own industries, and that this would have been coupled with a settlement of the land question upon a process of purchase on a larger scale than that now proposed by the prime-minister." * It was probably the best parliamentary speech the Irish leader had ever made in the House of Commons. Its manifest sincerity, and the solemn assurance which the speaker gave, in impressive words, that he would accept the bill if it became law as a binding pact of peace between the two nations, had a marked effect upon Mr. Gladstone. If, on the one hand, he was now an ally of Mr. Parnell's, in a common crusade against coercion, the foremost Irishman of his day thus pledged himself honorably to the cause of peace. There was, in a sense, a dual and mutual victory thus signalized and gained. Mr. Pamell stood to conquer, should the debated measure pass the ordeal of the division lobbies, but Mr. Glad- stone would reap a compensating triumph for England in the success of his policy of conciliation. It was doubtless this reflection which gave to the prime- minister's closing speech its tone of aggressive pleading and solemn warning. He felt, and probably knew, that the fates were leagued to defeat him and his proposals in the lobby. Mr. Chamberlain's was the main influence which made this adverse verdict probable. To this opposition, therefore, Mr. Gladstone directed his trenchant comments, and, wide as was the gap which had already divided the premier and the recent heir-presumptive to the leadership of the Liberal party, no bridge was likely ever to close that gap again after the old man's thundering assault upon his late lieu- tenant's action and inconsistency had been delivered. "No wind that blows from the political heavens," exclaimed the * Parliamentary Debates, Jime 7 and 8, 1886. 495 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND aged orator, in withering scorn, and while looking full at the bent head of the member for Birmingham, "can fail to find my right honorable friend's sails, for he trims them to catch every passing gale." And he then swept along like a mighty torrent, bearing everything before him in argument, analogy, reasoning, and persuasive pleading — but against a stone wall of immovable anti-Irish prejudice supported by Lord Hartington and Mr. Chamberlain. His peroration was incomparable in the eloquence of its diction and in the magic influence of its delivery. The whole House sat and listened, entranced, as the deep, rich voice rang through the chamber in tones of commanding yet pleading power in behalf of the cause for which he spoke. "Go into the length and breadth of the world," he declared, in impassioned words, "ransack the literature of all countries, find if you can a single voice, a single book, in which the conduct of England towards Ireland is anywhere treated except with profound and bitter condemnation. Are these the traditions by which we are exhorted to stand? No. They are, in fact, the sad ex- ception to the glory of England. They are a broad and black spot upon the pages of its history. What we want to do is to stand by the traditions of which we are the heirs in all matters except our relations with Ireland, and to make our relations with Ireland to conform to the other traditions of our country. So we hail the demand of Ireland for what I call a blessed oblivion of the past. Slie asks also a boon for the future, and that boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon to us in respect of honor, no less than a boon to her in respect of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Such is her prayer. Think, I beseech you, think well, think wisely, think not for the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject this bill."' Then the fateful division-bell rang after the echoes of thundering applause from Liberal and Irish benches which marked the close of the great speech had died away, and the pulse of hope beat fast in every Irish heart as members trooped out to record their votes. Mr. Parnell and his party waited. They watched the streams of friends and opponents go by, but when the aged premier, with his white hair and blanched face, walked towards the lobby there went up an Irish cheer loud and long, a cheer of gratitude and of admiration, which may have offered some little compensa- tion to the illustrious object of it for the defeat that was soon to be recorded by English votes against his noble appeal. ' Parliamentary Debates, June 7 and 8, 1886. 496 HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED The first to announce a victory for the enemies of the bill was the soi-disant Home-Ruler of the previous autumn, Lord Randolph Churchill. The numbers were three hundred and thirteen for the bill, and three hundred and forty-three against — a majority of thirty in a house of six hundred and fifty-six members. Then there arose from the triumphant English ranks such a shout of exultation as the blood-stained legions of a Mount joy or a Carew might have given after the butchery of some Munster village or at the sight of a bon- fire of Leinster homesteads. A yell of savage victory, with a corresponding action of young Tories leaping on the benches and frantically waving their hats at the overthrow of the Irish and their allies; Lord Randolph Churchill leading this rowdy demonstration as if his intrigue with Mr. Parnell of the previous year called for an extra show of anti-Irish animus on his part now. But shouts as wild, as loud, and as militant rang back in defiant challenge from the Irish ranks, as it was felt that it was the votes of England and not of Scotland and Wales that had turned the scale. It was the old combat of Saxon and Celt, after all, in which numbers counted for everything and justice had to kick the beam. It was, however, no ignominious or hope-killing encounter, but a moral victory for Mr. Parnell's forces which more auspicious days and chances would turn into an act of de- liverance for Ireland. And thus the first attempt of Glad- stone to undo the disastrous act of union failed. Throughout the whole discussion upon the defeated bill the Irish members had shown an ability and a resource as debaters worthy of the best traditions of Ireland in the House of Commons. Mr. Thomas Sexton's speech on the second reading was his greatest parliamentary achievement. Mr. Gladstone declared it to be the most eloquent he had heard in a generation of great speakers. Nor was this marked compliment too generous a tribute for so masterly a plea for the cause in which he spoke, and for so complete an answer to Mr. Chamberlain and the other formidable assailants of the measure. The press generally acclaimed the speech to be an effort of the very highest order of par- liamentary debating power, combined with an extraor- dinary display of argument, epigram, wit, and sarcasm. Mr. T. M. Healy, Mr. John Redmond, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, Mr. Dillon, Mr. William O'Brien, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, and Mr. Dwyer Gray made able and effective speeches, too — all Par- nell's lieutenants, in fact, acquitting themselves in spirit, style, and manner worthy of the great occasion. The ministry, on the premier's advice, resolved to dissolve 3* 497 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Parliament and to obtain a verdict against the opponents of his bill from the electorate. Opinion has been divided since then as to whether this was a wise or imprudent course. Mr. Morley, in his Life of Gladstone, says it was an inevitable step, seeing that the prime-minister had insisted upon it as a duty imperatively required of him under the circum- stances. He was also, it appears, sanguine of a favorable judgment from the resulting elections. The masses of Great Britain had, to all ordinary appearances, as viewed by the size, number, and enthusiasm of great meetings, supported the wonderful old man who had taken this huge burden of duty on his shoulders at the age of seventy-six. This manifestation of popular approval was extraordinary, remembering the events of the previous six years, and how deep-seated anti-Irish sentiment is in the average English mind. It was a belief in Mr. Gladstone more than a liking for Home Rule which explained this friendly disposition. Mr. Schnadhorst, the able and astute manager of the Radical caucus, gave it as his conviction that the Liberal Home-Rulers would be sustained by the constituencies, and it was for the foregoing reason and in this hope that Parliament was again dissolved and an appeal was made to the people against those who had defeated the proposed message of peace to Ireland. Once more the wonderful old man made a triumphant pilgrimage to Midlothian, armed as ever with his unequalled weapons of eloquence and earnestness, which bore down every opponent. He addressed great gatherings, also, in Manchester and Liverpool, and roused the country with his marvellous display of vigor and enthusiasm in the cause of justice to Ireland. Irish members were in demand every- where for Liberal meetings in Great Britain, Mr. Pamell being naturally most in quest. It was exceedingly dif- ficult to persuade him to speak at a single English demon- stration. He disliked the thought of it, somehow, though assured of the friendliest welcome. At last he consented to speak at a series of some six meetings, but after addressing three, in Portsmouth, Manchester, and some other city, he relinquished the task, and awaited the decision that was being registered in the ballot-boxes of the three countries for or against the proposed settlement of the feud with England which he had accepted in behalf of the Irish race. The causes which operated against Gladstone's first Home- Rule bill were these : The unpreparedness of the English mind for the idea of a separate Parliament for Ireland; the unscrupulous tactics of the Tories and their organizations in 498 HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED appealing to the forces of political fear and religious bigotry; the dead weight of Gladstone's land-purchase scheme; the bolting of Hartington and Chamberlain from the Liberal party; and the irritation in the minds of a large section of English and Scotch Radicals at the support given by the Irish voters in Great Britain to the Tory party in the previous general election. Natural as the idea of a Home-Rule government seems to Irishmen, and just and expedient as its concession must ap- pear from the American point of view, the proposal amounted to nothing short of a sudden revolution to the mass of the British people. Nor was this matter of astonishment. Ignorant of what Mr. Gladstone had truly stigmatized as "the baseness and blackguardism of the act of union of 1 80 1," the English mind was possessed of the belief that Ireland had fully acquiesced in that infamous transaction. Englishmen also convinced themselves that the Imperial Parliament could legislate as well and as sympathetically for Irish interests as for British concerns. They were like- wise schooled in the faith that the integrity — nay, the very existence — of the British Empire depended upon the main- tenance of a single parliament for Great Britain and Ireland. This being the condition of ordinary public feeling in Eng- land on the Home-Rule question previous to Mr. Gladstone's conversion to that principle, the enemies of the Irish cause found it comparatively easy to arouse the potent forces of fear and bigotry against his proposed Irish constitution. Statements the most false and assertions the most unscrupu- lous were made, written and circulated by Tories and their Liberal - Unionist allies about the scope and character of Gladstone's scheme. He was charged with "betraying the British Empire to the disloyal Irish people." It was affirmed daily in every organ of anti-Home-Rule feeling that such a parliament as that proposed to be established in Dublin was intended but as a door through which the Irish enemies of England were to pass into total separation from the empire. Frantic appeals from press, platform, and pulpit were addressed to the pride, prejudices, and fears of the English people to stand by the empire against the forces of disruption, and to save the honor and interests of England from the disgrace of capitulation to the forces of the Irish National League. Nor was this all. Religious bigotry and racial hate were evoked to do service against Home Rule and Gladstone. The veteran Liberal leader was held up as "a conspirator with the Pope to hand over Ireland to the rule of the Catholic majority, and thereby 499 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND bring about the extermination of the Protestant population." Home Rule was defined as "Rome Rule," while every other sectarian bugbear which bigotry could invent was called into play to frighten the British voter into opposition to the hapless Gladstone bill. It may be of some interest to Ireland's friends in America and Australia to learn something of how this opposition to Gladstone was so successfully worked. The agencies employed comprised two very powerful organizations, one known as the "Loyal and Patriotic Union," and the other as the "Primrose League," both working in conjunction with each other as well as with every other Tory and Orange organization throughout Great Britain and Ireland. Unlimited funds were provided through the operations of the female wing of the Primrose League, known as the "Primrose Dames," and headed by the Duchess of Marlborough, the mother of Lord Randolph Churchill. These dames collected money, distributed anti-Home-Rule literature, and canvassed for Tory votes. Their "habitations," as branches of their organization are termed, spread all over England. The wives and daughters of dukes, earls, lords, baronets, and squires were actively engaged in the work of counteracting Gladstone. The homes of artisans were visited, during their absence, by these titled ladies, and laborers' and mechanics' wives were familiarly appealed to for support in the patriotic task of saving English homes from ruin and England from disgrace at the hands of the terrible Irish National League. Working-men, in their turn, were invited to picnics and other pleasure parties held in the parks of noblemen, where speeches would be delivered to them about the disaster which Home Rule would inevitably bring upon the great British Empire, and the ruin which would consequently ensue to labor and the interests of the English industrial classes. Meanwhile the Loyal and Patriotic Union, ^ supported by * E. C. Houston, secretary of this association, and the person who negotiated the purchase of the " forged Parnell letters," which were pub- Hshed in The Times and led to the trial in the special commission, wrote as follows to the Dublin Daily Express of April 2, 1887: "During 1886 we prepared, published, and circulated 11,122,100 leaflets; 520,300 pamphlets; 11,000 copies of 'The Irish Question,' for colonial circulation, which have been distributed over the world; 20,000 copies of 'Notes on the Irish Land Question,' prepared in connection with Mr. Parnell's bill; 5000 copies of 'Local Government in Ireland,' a sketch of the present system and methods of procedure; 5250 copies of Dr. Webb's reply to Mr. Gladstone's pamphlet; 5500 murder maps, showing the Land-League murders of 1880-82 ; 7000 ' Footprints of the Land" League,' an illustrated broadsheet showing the con- 500 HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED the money collected through the Primrose League and from other sources, took a more open and aggressive stand in the fight against Ireland. Newspapers were subsidized to malign every public man who stood by Gladstone, and to distort and misrepresent the meaning of Irish national self-government; a corps of capable speakers being employed to stump Great Britain for the same end. Meetings were organized and paid for in every town of importance throughout England, Wales, and Scotland. A staff of able writers was organized to pre- pare anti-Home-Rule literature, which in pamphlets, leaflets, and newspaper articles of the most rabid form of abuse and mendacity were circulated in millions in every town and hamlet in the three countries. In addition to all this a few renegade Irishmen were secured to dish up fabricated "revelations" about the past political careers of leading Irish nationalists, Richard Pigott being the chief libeller, while, in order to leave no resource of opposition untried, this Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union deliberately organized and incited the Orangemen of Belfast to manifest their opposition to Home Rule to the extent of openly terrorizing that city and provoking violence and bloodshed. What is known as "The O'Shea " incident, which threatened for a time the retirement of Mr. Parnell from the head of the Irish movement, occurred during the month of February, 1 886. Captain O'Shea, who had represented one of the divisions of County Clare since 1880, had figured prominently in negotiating the Kilmainham treaty. He was the in- termediary between Mr. Parnell and Mr. Chamberlain in the first stages of this transaction, and between the Irish leader and Mr. Gladstone subsequently. This record, coupled with the reputed relations between his family and his friend, caused him to be intensely disliked by most, if not all, of Mr. Parnell's lieutenants. He was looked upon as a dan- gerous intriguer who was capable of working some harm to a party and a movement in which he had no standing of any kind, but over the fortunes of which, through his close association with their leader, he had a power for injury out of all proportion to the value of his public services and the capacity of the man. nection between the crime record and the Parnellite vote; 91,500 copies of 'Notes from Ireland,' the weekly record of the sayings and doings of the Parnellite party; 100,000 wall posters of different kinds. We had forty-three speakers in eighty-six of the most important English constituencies and twelve of the most important Welsh constituencies." 501 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Timely warning was conveyed to Mr. Pamell that there would be no place for this person in the next representation for County Clare. That spirited county would tolerate no such candidature as his, no matter by whom recommended or upheld. Provision, therefore, had to be made elsewdiere for him, and he was put forward by Mr. Parnell, in conjunction with the Liberals, for one of the divisions of Liverpool. He was defeated. In the same general election Mr. T. P. O'Connor was returned both for Gal way city, his first con- stituency, and the Scotland Ward division of Liverpool, which was largely an Irish Parliamentary division of the Mersey's big maritime city. O'Connor selected to sit for the Liverpool seat, whereupon a vacancy occurred in the Citie of the Tribes. For the Galway seat Mr. Parnell determined to have his friend elected. It was an astounding resolve, in face of the known antipathy existing in the party towards the object of this patronage, and on account of certain other facts only too well and too truly suspected at the time. But, repre- hensible as it was in its audacious disregard of all con- sideration for the constitutional rights and honor of an Irish constituency, it was but an exercise of that very au- thority of absolutism so subserviently preached for him by Mr. Healy and Mr. O'Brien in United Ireland during the three previous years. Had he not been described as " an honest dictator ' ' ? Was he not applauded for having trampled upon the prerogative of a convention in Tipperary? Were not stanch nationalists Hke Mr. John Duddy and other Belfast leaders denounced as factionists because they had dared to think for themselves on the land question, and not as some of Mr. Parnell's lieutenants had thought they should think — hence had he not been encouraged to assert the right of imposing his views upon them? So long as this autocracy was directed against men who followed principles and not persons it was unobjectionable to the political staff of the great leader, but when he wished to exercise this prerogative of personal authority against their prejudices and wishes it began to assume another character, and to appeal to a spirit of revolt among the hitherto complacent disciples of Mr. Parnell's right of dictation. Mr. Healy and Mr. J. G. Biggar had the courage to proceed to Galway and to openly oppose the scandal of the O'Shea candidature. Popular feeling was overwhelmingly on the side of the local candidate, Mr. Lynch, who came forward as a Parnellite. The issue was therefore knit between Mr. Parnell and two of his most loyal followers, when he at once 502 HOME RULE, AND HOW DEFEATED resorted to the very power with which they had invested him and held the pistol of threatened resignation to the party's head. Armed in this manner, he followed the two rebellious members to Galway, reduced Mr. Healy to silence, and forced upon city, party, and friends the man who within four short years was to become the instrument of his own ruin, and a name of everlasting ill-omen to nationalist Ireland. I remember a conversation I had with Mr. A. M. Sullivan shortly before the lamented death of this most estimable and able Irishman in September, 1884. He was then ill, but in his characteristic ardent manner he spoke warmly and most hopefully of the prospects of the national cause. "I have only one dread," he remarked, as if in a prophetic reverie, "and that is O'Shea. Should no harm come from that quarter, Home Rule is sure in your time, if not in mine." That was a year and a half before the Galway incident, and it was a truly far-seeing prediction. It was, obviously, the party's duty to their own honor and integrity to have stood clear of the Galway scandal, if they refused to sanction it. O'Shea would have been beaten had Messrs. Healy and Biggar not been opposed by the party's decision as well as its leader's purpose, and possibly the calamity of 1890 and 1891 might not have realized the prophetic vision of A. M. Sullivan in 1884. But the party, like Mr. Healy, had already, and more than once, surrendered both their will and authority to their leader's absolute keep- ing, and he stamped upon both with the same contempt with which he treated Galway when he was compelled to find a parliamentary seat for the man in whose power he had placed both his own and his country's political fortunes. CHAPTER XLI LAND-PURCHASE SCHEMES This brief outline of the unscrupulous policy and tactics resorted to by the enemies of Home Rule will give a faint idea of the state of feeling against which Mr. Pamell and his forces had to contend in their efforts to win a favorable verdict for our cause at the second general election. But there were heavier odds still against the hapless Home-Rule measure. In an evil hour both for his administration and his Irish government bill, Mr. Gladstone proposed that an indispensable portion of his policy would be the buying out of the Irish landlords by aid of a loan in consols from the imperial exchequer. He argued that an act of justice to the people of Ireland should be accompanied by one of relief to the Irish landlords from an untenable position. This proposal alarmed the British taxpayer. Chamberlain attacked it in a most unfair manner. The landlords, in their blind fury against Home Rule, joined in a chorus of condemnation of a scheme actually brought forward for their benefit. In fact, the whole of Great Britain rang with denunciation of a proposal which was represented as asking the laboring and ratepaying classes of England and Scotland to run the risk of being taxed to the tune of one thousand million dollars for the benefit of Irish landlords and Irish farmers. This sealed the fate of the Home-Rule bill. One measure appeared to be bound up in the other, and thousands of voters w^ho would have supported Home Rule, if presented in a separate issue, recorded their ballots against it as a twin measure with the scheme for the purchase of Irish landlord property. Still, what was the actual result of all this ex- traordinary combination of Tory power and influence, Liberal - Unionist treachery, vast expenditure of wealth, appeals to religious rancor and to racial hate? Why, this: That Ireland again returned Home-Rulers at the rate of four and a half to one of her total representation; that Scotland elected three to two in our favor; that gallant little Wales 504 LAND-PURCHASE SCHEMES gave us five to one; while out of a total of four hundred and sixty-five members elected by England one hundred and twenty-nine were returned pledged to a separate parliament for Ireland. In a word, if the comparatively small number of seventy thousand more votes, out of the total electorate of England, had been polled for Gladstone, his scheme of Home Rule would have passed through the British Parlia- ment. When it is recollected how hopeless the Home-Rule cause appeared to be five short years previously, when the Liberal government had imprisoned one thousand Land - Leaguers without trial, when account is taken of the iron rule of coercion which prevailed in Ireland under Earl Spencer from 1882 to 1885, and when it is borne in mind that we were then but five millions of souls in the old country, struggling against one of the greatest empires in the world, it was more like victory than defeat when Gladstone and Spencer, Harcourt and Granville — our previous jailers, in fact — became avowed Home- Rulers, with Scotland and Wales and a million and a half of English voters declaring in favor of an Irish legislature in College Green for the management of Irish affairs, vice Dublin Castle abolished. These results had been achieved by the twofold process of convincing the English people who followed the lead of Mr. Gladstone that neither to force nor coercion, imprisonments nor defeat, would Irish nationalists lay down their arms until they obtained the restoration of Ireland's right to national self-government, and in the task of accomplishing this ration- al and righteous end to resort only to such means as civilized public sentiment throughout the world would endorse. Mr. Gladstone's complete Home-Rule plan, as already ex- plained, comprised at first a proposal to buy out the Irish landlords and to create a peasant proprietary in place of the system of Irish landlordism. This proposal he justified on the ground that there might be some danger to the inter- ests of an unpopular class in leaving their property in land at the mercy of a legislative body in which the tenantry of Ireland would be in an overwhelming majority as against the landlord interest. It was a right and chivalrous proposal, no matter what might be said of the fears which in part prompted the Liberal leader to encumber his Home- Rule bill with so huge a scheme as one involving at least ;^ 150,000,000 of imperial credit in its execution. The price the landlords were to receive was at the time thought to be excessive by all but the partisans of the landlords. They, however, scouted the whole proposal. They refused "to barter their 505 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND rights as British subjects in Ireland" for pecuniary con- siderations, and this portion of the Home - Rule plan was dropped out of the general Gladstone programme without much regret from either side, but, unfortunately, not in time. While the Gladstone land-purchase scheme was still before the public, some remarkable pronouncements were made in the British press, which shed an instructive light upon the difference between the estimated English value of Irish land- lord property, from the point of view of its relation to economic rent, when its sale had to be considered as a matter involving the credit of the British taxpayers, and, contrariwise, when the Irish tenant was alone concerned with the same property as a rentpayer or would-be purchaser. Sir James Caird, writing to The Times on March 20, 1886, against Mr. Gladstone's proposal to buy out the Irish land- lords, said, inter alia : "The land of Ireland is held by two distinct classes of tenants — the small farmers who pay rent from ;;^i to ;^20, and the comparatively large farmers who pay rent from ;£20 upward. Of the first class there are five hundred and thirty-eight thousand holdings, averaging ;^6 each; of the sec- ond class one hundred and twenty-one thousand holdings, averaging ;^56 each. The rent payable by the first class is ;^3,572,ooo, and by the second class ;^6,845,ooo. Five- sixths of the Irish tenants thus pay about one-third of the total rental, and one-sixth pay nearly two-thirds. ... If the present prices of agricultural produce continue, I should fear that from the land held by the large body of poor farmers in Ireland any economical rent has for the present disappeared. A purchase of it, at any price, would therefore be certain loss. How many years' purchase, even with better prospects, would any sane capitalist give for a nominal rental of three and a-half millions, to be collected from five hundred thou- sand holdings of poor land from tenants averaging £b each ? . . . "The collapse of agricultural values, when capitalized, amounts to many hundred millions, to which must be added losses, probably not less in proportion, in every other branch of business and trade in this kingdom. "A change so great, however brought about, whether by enormous development of foreign production and diminished cost of transport, or by appreciation of gold, or by these united, cannot be met by partial help in favor of a single interest. All interests must be allowed time to settle into what may prove a new condition. But there can be no adequate security at present given by the land of Ireland 506 LAND-PURCHASE SCHEMES for such a stupendous advance by the British people. And I trust that the wisdom of Parhament may guard the country from being committed to an engagement which could only end in loss and possibly disaster." Commenting upon this economic "no-rent manifesto," the London Times, of the same date, was even more pro-Land League than Mr. Parnell in its language of warning to the public and Parliament. It said: "We print to-day a very important and able contribution to the discussion of Irish land purchase by Sir James Caird, whose authority upon agricultural questions is universally recognized. . . . His extensive knowledge and long experience are sufficient warranty for the substantial accuracy of his figures, even were they not borne out by the facts unhappily too patent to all the world. From them we may judge what has been the fall in Irish agricultural values, and can easily conceive that on the soil, to a great extent 'poor, worn-out, and badly farmed,' not only has rent disappeared, but cultiva- tion threatens to become impossible. . . . These are figures affording much food for reflection. It is not too much to say that the rental of the five hundred and thirty-eight thousand holdings is practically irrecoverable by anybody, whether landlord, English government, or Irish government. ... At the same time a wholesale purchase even of the good land of Ireland would be a very dangerous speculation. The market has fallen and is still falling. We have reason to believe that the full effect even of the existing shrinkage of values has not yet been experienced, and we have no cer- tainty whatever that values will not fall lower still. In that case all the weaker men among the comparatively strong will go down, and their rental will have to be written off as a bad debt. Thus one-third of the total rental is worthless ab initio and the other two - thirds are obviously liable, apart from all political difficulties, to indefinite depreciation. Sir James Caird is surely fully justified in concluding that 'there can be no adequate security given at present by the land of Ireland for such a stupendous advance by the British people' as even, on the lowest estimate, Mr. Gladstone's scheme involves." To be fair to such a consistent enemy of Ireland as The Times, it is right to add that, in its view, some of the blame for the condition of the Irish tenants should be given to those who had attacked the law, and had thereby depreciated the security and value of landlord property, while the smaller tenants, in its opinion, could have materially improved their position and prospects by greater industry. Making fair 507 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND allowance for these partisan views, these facts still remained: It was for a war against rack-renting on the very land which was subject to the adverse circumstance of falling markets and foreign competition, explained and admitted as above, that the Land League had been suppressed in 1881. It was for affirming on hundreds of platforms the facts and con- clusions fully admitted in 1886 — but vehemently denied in 1881 — by The Times, that a thousand Irish leaguers were put in prison in Ireland. In other words, landlord property was of the highest rental and purchasable value, in English opinion, when Ireland only was concerned in the transactions between landlord and tenant, but of no economical value whatever when it was a question of its being bought out by imperial credit as a part of Mr. Gladstone's Home-Rule pro- posal. Before Mr. Gladstone's proposed land-purchase plan had virtually killed his Home-Rule bill, a proposal far abler and infinitely less alarming to the British taxpayer was placed before the public by the eminent economist, Mr. (now Sir) Robert Giffen, in a letter to The Economist. It absolutely safeguarded the imperial exchequer against possible loss, and had the Liberal leader adopted this plan, which was approved of both by Mr. Parnell and Mr. Chamberlain at the time, it might have saved the measure which the other more complicated and more expensive scheme weighed down to defeat and ruin. Summarized, the Giffen plan was this: The imperial government was (i) to buy out every land- lord in Ireland, giving him consols at par, equal in nominal amount to twenty years' purchase of the present judicial rents; (2) to give the land free to the present occupier, subject only to a rent-charge of one-half or two-thirds of the present judicial rent, payable to the new local authorities in Ireland; and (3) to relieve the imperial exchequer of all payments now made out of it in connection with the local government of Ireland. The plan was, in fact, to throw the cost of local government in Ireland upon Irish resources exclusively, and to give the Irish people the rent of the country for the purpose of conducting it. The conflict be- tween landlords and people would thus come to an end. Eng- land need no longer fear that if she gave Ireland Home Rule the property of the landlords would be confiscated. The Giffen scheme of settlement was widely discussed in the press, and met with an all-round public support, excepting from the extreme landlord organs. Mr. Parnell, in his speech on the opening of the then current session of Parliament, spoke of these proposals as follows: 508 LAND-PURCHASE SCHEMES "Some scheme of purchase may be devised on the lines understood to be suggested by that eminent statistician, Mr. Giffen, in a recent letter, under which it may be possible — I do not pledge myself to the details — but generally under which it may be possible to purchase for a bulk sum the land in the occupation of the agricultural tenants." The Archbishop of Cashel, Dr. Croke, in a letter which appeared in The Statist of February 6th, said; "I approve of the principal or main features of the proposal for the settlement of the Irish land question which appeared in a recent issue of The Statist over the signature of 'Economist.' The principle, as I take it, substantially is that the interest of existing landlords should be purchased out, and the land given to the tenant subject to a rent-charge amounting to considerably less than the present judicial rents." In a letter addressed to Mr. Gladstone on February 17th by the Roman Catholic hierarchy of Ireland, the following passage occurs: "As regards 'the settlement of the land question,' we have no hesitation whatever in stating that, in our opinion, it now imperatively calls for a final solution, and that this cannot be better effected than by some such measure as that which certain English journalists and statesmen have recently advo- cated — that is, the purchase by government of the landlord interest in the soil and the reletting of the latter to tenant- farmers at a figure very considerably below the present judicial rents." The Freeman's jfournal, the most powerful organ of public opinion in Ireland, likewise expressed its approval, subject to certain amendments in matters of detail. In England the reception given to the proposals may be fairly represented by what a writer in the Fortnightly Review for February (presumed to be Mr. Chamberlain) had said of them: "The scheme published in The Statist newspaper, and which has been attributed to Mr. Giffen, has been objected to in some of its details, and it certainly appears to contemplate too large a payment to the existing land-owners, while the amount of grants from the exchequer to local purposes seems to be estimated too highly But in any case, the fact remains that such grants are made annually to a very large extent, and that they represent a capital sum which affords the basis for an immense operation in the way of land purchase, and of the municipalization of the land of Ireland by its transfer to local authorities, who may be invited and empowered, under proper conditions devised to prevent subletting and the re-creation of the landlord class, to deal with the existing 509 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tenants, and to give them full and independent rights of ownership, subject to a quit-rent of very much less than the present payment." Encouraged by this most representative expression of opin- ion in support of his scheme, Sir Robert Giffen further ex- plained it as follows: "i. I should be quite disposed to believe that when we come to business it will be found that the effective rent which Irish landlords will have to sell and the government to buy will not be so much as eight millions. As my letter showed, I had no intention to name an exact figure which would be equitable in the circumstances — I only named a figure which would give a general idea of the subject, and which would probably exceed and not be less than the real effective rent that would have to be dealt with. It is for those acquainted in detail with the circumstances of Ireland, with the conditions of past valuations and the methods in fixing judicial rents in different localities with the exact in- cidence of rates, which would appear in some cases to diminish the effective interest the landlords will have to sell, to make the necessary calculations, if such a scheme as I suggested is to be tried at all. "2. As to the number of years' purchase to be paid, twenty years was equally no more than a suggestion on my part. What ought to be the normal number of years' purchase to be given to Irish landlords on the compulsory expropriation of their property is a question that could only be answered after much study of many facts, and which could only now be answered approximately by those acquainted with the circumstances and selling value of land in Ireland in former times, when there was less agitation and doubt about rents +han there have lately been. It is obvious, however, that if the Irish landlord is to be bought out, not upon a nominal but upon an effective rent, the number of years' purchase ought to be higher than it was customary to give when the nominal rental was the basis of the calculation. In suggesting twenty years I was desirous not to suggest too low a figure. It was important to show that the scheme was practicable even if the landlord got very good terms. "3. In my former letter I assumed what appeared to be true on the face of the figures — that if the imperial govern- ment bought out the Irish landlords on the terms suggested, and gave the new rent-charge to the Irish local authorities in return for the withdrawal of contributions from the imperial exchequer to the internal administration of Ireland, it would be Ireland and not Great Britain that would gain by the 510 LAND-PURCHASE SCHEMES plan. We would assume a burden on the one hand costing ;i£4, 800,000 a year. We were only to be relieved, on the other hand, of an annual charge of ;i^4,ooo,ooo. The exact figure of the latter charge, I may say, according to the last finance and revenue accounts, is ;;£3, 800,000, apart from an average annual loss by loans to Ireland, which would bring up the total to very nearly ;;^4,ooo,ooo, if not rather over that figure. So far there would appear to be a new charge of ;i^8oo,ooo upon the imperial exchequer involved, and I suggested that it might be equitable to require the local authorities in Ireland to contribute to the imperial ex- chequer the difference between the annuity of ;^4,8oo,ooo we should have to pay to the landlords and the annual charge for the internal administration of Ireland of which we would be relieved. "I am satisfied, however, on further consideration of the subject, that the arrangement does not really involve any large concession by Great Britain. At present Ireland pays more in taxes than its fair share, comparing its resources with those of Great Britain. The figures are not quite certain, but the Irish taxpayer appears to contribute ;:^6,7oo,ooo^ to the imperial exchequer, whereas his proper contribution ought to be about half that sum. If Ireland contributed proportionately, however, it would only be entitled to have spent upon it in return for purposes of internal administration £800,000 a year — a twentieth part, that is, of the total sum spent on the internal administration of Great Britain and Ireland — instead of ;(^4,ooo,ooo, which is practically now spent in Ireland. The imperial exchequer thus gets out of Ireland, in the first place, about ;£3,2oo,ooo more than it ought to get, and then spends upon the internal administration of Ireland the whole amount. The expenditure does not benefit Ireland as it ought to do, because it is largely waste; but neither does Britain gain. "The effect of the proposed arrangement would be: " I. That we should cease to spend on Ireland the ;^4,ooo,- 000 we now spend — both the ;^8oo,ooo to which Ireland would be entitled if it only contributed originally in pro- portion to its resources, and the £3,200,000 additional that we spend, and in so doing return to Ireland an apparent equivalent for the excess taxation received from Ireland ; and "2. That we should burden ourselves in exchange with a new annuity of £4,800,000 to Irish landlords. If the latter annuity should be reduced to £4,000,000 the account would ' He contributes fully £2,000,000 more now. — M. D. THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND be balanced as far as Great Britain is concerned, but Ireland would gain absolutely nothing in return for its dispropor- tionate contributions to the imperial exchequer. It is en- titled to about ;^4, 000,000 a year from that exchequer for the purposes of internal administration — the rent-charge it is proposed to give over to the Irish local authorities is only an equivalent for the latter sum. "Where both parties would gain by the transaction would be, as far as Great Britain is concerned, by the substitution of an amicable for a hostile Ireland, if that should be the happy result, and, as far as Ireland is concerned, by the relief of the tenants from the difference between the excessive rents which they now pay and the rent-charge to be constituted. In other respects the arrangement seems strictly equitable, or nearly so, and it cannot be said that it is a large concession to Ireland. If Ireland were to demand now a strict account of its contributions to the imperial exchequer it would be very difficult to show that it gets value for the excess it con- tributes beyond the fair proportion to its resources. It is easy for us to say that the taxes are indiscriminate, the only exception being that Ireland is exempted from some of them. If in point of fact the taxes are of such a nature that they effectively discriminate between Great Britain and Ireland, so that the taxpayers of the poorer country pay, in fact, more than their share, the latter have a clear right to the con- sideration of the fact in the disposal of the proceeds. By this plan suggested Ireland will have a real equivalent and no more."^ I had worked out a plan for solving the problem of the Irish agrarian war on those very lines while in Portland Prison in 1881, which was elaborated in a speech delivered in Liverpool shortly after my release. The Times of June 7, 1882, reported this speech in full, and, while rejecting the plan as a whole, commented upon it as follows: "It is characteristic of Mr. Davitt's cast of mind that he believes in the accomplishment of this plan without wrong to any man, without loss to the state, with full compensation to vested interests, and with relief to the taxpayer as well as to the tenant." And yet this plan and speech have figured in Irish-landlord speeches for twenty years as "the ticket-from-Kingstown- to-Holyhead kind of compensation proposed by Mr. Davitt for the Irish landlords." Two years subsequently (to 1886), during the period of the » The Statist, February 6, 1886 512 LAND-PURCHASE SCHEMES "plan of campaign," and while the Unionist government was in power, Mr. Chamberlain proposed a scheme of com- pulsory purchase for the solution of the Irish land ques- tion, in which he adopted the Giffen terms of compensation and practically the same plan of settlement. His proposals were summarized as follows by himself: "To sum up, we put, in the following propositions, the objects to be aimed at in any measure for the solution of the Irish land question: "i. To make the tenant practically the owner of his holding, subject to an ultimate fixed payment, or land tax, of a moderate amount, and to conditions which it may be in the interest of the state to impose, in order to prevent subdivision and the growth of encumbrances. "2. To give to the present owner of the land its fair capital value in a security easily marketable at par. "3. To relieve the British taxpayer from all risk of loss. "4. To interpose a local authority as creditor of the ten- ant, with direct interest in enforcing payment of any rent or tax which may be imposed. "5. To make the tenant debtor to an Irish local authority, instead of to an individual landlord, often an absentee. "6. To secure the proper use of the land, and prevent undue subdivision, by the action of the local authority, in the interest of the whole community. "7. To ascertain the true market value of estates as a basis for compensation, with special regard to the circum- stances of each estate. "8. To secure present relief to the tenant by an immediate reduction of rent. "9. To relieve congested districts by a rearrangement of the smaller holdings where these are insufficient to provide means of existence for a family."^ ' Sketch of Unionist policy. Pamphlet No. 2, pp. 76, 77, 33 CHAPTER XLII "THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN" Mr. T. Harrington, the secretary of the National League, was the author of the plan of campaign, against which combination, in its later stages, Mr. Arthur Balfour pitted all the resources of English power in Ireland in a combat with- out quarter. The story of "the plan" needs no lengthy nar- rative to tell. The facts are as follows: Lord Salisbury and his Liberal-Unionist allies, with a par- liamentary majority out of all proportion to the actual majority of votes recorded in the elections, came into office in July, 1886, and opened Parliament with a ministerial pro- gramme in August. This programme had to be in the nature of an antithesis to that defeated at the polls. The electors in England had rejected the Home Rule for which Ireland, Scotland, and Wales had polled an overwhelming majority of votes and a majority of more than two to one of mem- bers to the House of Commons. England, however, was the predominant voting power, and she backed Lord Salis- bury's policy of "twenty years of resolute Castle govern- ment " as against the Gladstonian proposal of an Irish na- tional legislature. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach was made chief secretary for Ireland. His accession to that post almost coincided with the appointment of a royal commission to inquire into the conditions of agriculture in Ireland, as they v/ere affected by a marked fall in prices of produce for the 3'ears 1885 and 1886, and the results of these conditions upon the working of the Land Act of 1881. It was again a resort to the stereo- typed English policy of kicks and halfpence. The special power for kicking was not demanded immediately from Parliament, but it was unmistakably intimated that Lord Salisbury's "twenty years of resolute government" panacea was to be applied whenever the chief secretary should call upon the resources of Parliament to that end. The National League was by this time almost as strong a power as the Land League had been in 1881. Its resources 514 "THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN" were increasing as the auxiliary movements in America and Australia were progressing in active co-operation. The third convention of the American League was held in Chicago in August, 1886, and was attended by Messrs. William O'Brien, John E. Redmond, the late John Deasy, and myself, as representing Mr. Parnell and the league in Ireland. The gathering of delegates was large and influential, and the proceedings attracted unusual attention both from the Brit- ish and American press, on account of the recent elections in Great Britain and Ireland and the transcendent impor- tance of the issue on which these contests had been fought. It was generally expected that the Irish- American organiza- tions would favor an extreme policy, in view of the defeat of Home Rule, but these expectations were not realized. The convention was influenced and led by the delegates from Ireland, and there was an all but unanimous decision come to in favor of Mr. Parnell 's position and in support of the home organization. Mr. Patrick Egan resigned the presidency of the league, which he had held from the date of the Boston convention, and was succeeded by the late Mr. John Fitzgerald, of Lincoln, Nebraska, a wealthy contractor and banker of that city, with the Rev. Charles O'Reilly, of Detroit, again elected as treasurer, and Mr. J. P. Sutton, of Lincoln, as secretary. Meanwhile Mr. Parnell had introduced a bill in the new session of Parliament based largely upon the facts and ad- missions put before the public in Sir James Caird's letter of the March previous and on the generally admitted crisis in agriculture caused by the collapse of prices. The action of the government in appointing the Cowper Commission acknowledged the existence of this crisis. Mr. Parnell had called attention to it in an amendment to the address on the opening of the new Parliament, and in the debate upon his motion Mr. Chamberlain spoke as follows: "We have to deal in the amendment with a crisis which is apparently imminent, with the general inability to pay rents, with the numerous evictions and consequent suffering, and with great danger to social order. I do not think that any one will deny that there has been a great fall in the price of almost all the chief produce of Ireland since the judicial rents were fixed. That fall may be variously es- timated, but I should put it myself at twenty or thirty per cent. Now, if the judicial rents were fixed upon the basis of former prices, and at that time they were fair, then they must necessarily be unfair now. I do not admit for a moment that there is any sanctity about judicial or any other rents. If 515 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND rent cannot be paid and leave a fair subsistence to the tenant, no doubt the landlord must bear the loss."^ No Land - Leaguer could have put the case clearer or stronger, but Mr. Chamberlain voted against Mr. Parnell's amendment. It was to meet the case thus conclusively made that the Irish leader brought forward his tenants' relief bill sub- sequently. This measure proposed to do three things, to this end: (i) To stay evictions for non-payment of rent until the ability of the tenant to do so, or otherwise, was legally inquired into; a lodgment of fifty per cent, of the rent due to be made to the landlord's credit as an essential condition to obtaining this redress; (2) judicial rents ad- judicated upon since 1881 to be again revised in the land courts on tenants' applications, in consequence of con- tinuous depression; and (3) the admission of leaseholders to the benefits of the Land Act of 1881; this class of tenant having been excluded therefrom against the protests of the Irish party. On September 27th Mr. Parnell's bill was rejected by a ministerial majority, the leaders of the government declaring they would not, on any account, sanction any of the three main proposals of the Irish measure. On October 23d, twenty-six days later, Mr. T. Harrington, in consultation with Messrs. Dillon, O'Brien, and others, launched his plan of campaign in United Ireland in conse- quence of the refusal of Parliament to provide any legisla- tive remedy for a crisis which was patent to every observer and had been admitted and emphasized in Mr. Chamberlain's speech. It was a fighting policy on extreme lines; and to be in any way effective in its purpose it was necessary to put it in force without delay. The November rents were falling due. No rent, or scarcely any, had been earned by the land, for the reasons so clearly pointed out by Mr. Chamber- lain ; and in view of the refusal of the government to agree to the proposed legislative remedy offered in Mr. Parnell's bill, it became evident to the tenants and their leaders that it was a case of God helping those who resolved to help them- selves, at once. The chief proposals of Mr. Harrington's plan were these: The tenants on an estate where no voluntary abatement of rent was offered by the landlord were to wait upon him in deputation and ask for one on reasoned grounds. If this request was refused, the tenants were then to resolve not ' Parliamentary Debates, August, 1886. 516 "THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN" to pay any rent until the landlord would agree to a reduction commensurate with the prevailing depression. They were to pay into "a campaign fund," on the estate, the reduced rent offered to and refused by the landlord, to be given to him should he consent, under this pressure, to grant the abatement asked for, or to be used, as far as necessary, in the fight which might follow if he should resort to legal proceedings and eviction. The plan possessed an extreme and arbitrary purpose to all who were unacquainted with both the old and new con- ditions of land tenure in Ireland. It looked like a combina- tion to repudiate legal contracts, and the English press made its usual prejudiced uses of the apparent injustice of the plan by describing it as a system of robbery resorted to by dis- loyal tenants to the injury of loyal and pro-English landlords. This view purposely overlooked the patent facts of the whole situation as well as the neglect of the legislature to provide some remedy for a crisis that could not be disguised. The conditions of tenure were no longer what they had been. Previous to the Land Act of 1881 the landlord claimed to be the sole owner of the land. He fixed what rent he pleased and confiscated at will whatever property or right the tenant might possess in his holding. This state of things produced the Land - League revolution, and the legislature was in- duced to intervene with a law which recognized two proper- ties in the land — the soil itself, in its intrinsic rent-bearing value, and the improvements made in farms by the capital and labor of the tenants. The law declared that no rent should be levied on this latter property in behalf of the landlord. The administrators of the law, the nominees of Dublin Castle and the landlords, decided otherwise, and measured the fair rents levied by the land courts accordingly. Here the trouble, friction, and injustice came in. Mr. Parnell and his party made repeated attempts to have this wrong rectified at the time. He had all Ireland, except the land- lords, behind him in his demands — Ulster as well as the South. But he failed, even in that very session, in face of an all-round depression in prices, to induce the new ministry to listen to the claims of reason and of justice in behalf of those who were tied down to rents which Mr. Chamberlain had declared to be no longer fair. There were other and even stronger grounds than these under the platform of the plan of campaign. There was no economic product in the soil of Ireland at the time such as would equitably and fairly warrant the imposition of such a rent as partisan tribunals levied in the landlords' interests. 517 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND The rent thus imposed was in every essential respect a tax upon industry and not upon the intrinsic value of the land. Sir James Caird and The Times loudly proclaimed this fact only six months previously, when there appeared to be some danger to English credit in Mr. Gladstone's proposal to buy out the Irish landlords at twenty years' purchase of the judicial rents. The plan took all these facts and admis- sions into account, and in making a reasoned demand for a fair abatement in current rents it was only claiming, in a limited degree, that the tenant's own property in his farm should not be too highly taxed by the land courts in the interest of the other partner in the ownership of the holding. One other ground of justification upheld the aim of Mr. Harrington's scheme. From 1884 to the rejection of Mr. Parnell's bill in September, 1886, no fewer than eight thousand tenants had been deprived of their statutory rights in their holdings by eviction for non-payment of excessive rents. Most of those were, it is true, left in their farms, but only as tenants-at-will, as in the pre-land-act period. With these facts to justify it, and with an avowed hostile political party in power, it was felt by the originators of the new movement that no remedy but a fighting policy remained, >and they therefore launched the plan of campaign: Mr. Parnell was not consulted. On my return from the United States, early in 1887, he requested me not to take any part in the new agitation until I had seen him. I crossed to London, where, during parts of three days, the whole situation in Ireland and the Home-Rule position in England were fully gone over by him in the most outspoken manner. He complained that neither Mr. Dillon nor Mr. O'Brien had communicated to him their intention to open up in this way the agrarian conflict again. He said not a word about motives, but he severely criticised the tactical unwisdom of the whole proceeding. The plan could not possibly be justified before English public opinion, which, unfortunately, had the fate of Home Rule at its disposal. Home Rule had been beaten by lies and tricks only, and this but in England. Scotland and Wales were sound, and it only needed the conversion of about one hundred thousand out of some four million English voters to enable Gladstone to win at the next general election. Gladstone was now "the one and only hope for Ireland." He was seventy-six years of age. He had flung himself in the most courageous and chivalrous manner into the fight for an Irish parliament, and it was nothing short of cruel, apart from the merits of a scheme S18 "THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN" which was a deliberate challenge to a new measure of coercion, to handicap the great Liberal leader in his mighty task by an agitation which would only wear a sordid character to the voting classes of Great Britain in comparison with the national interests and future welfare of Ireland embraced in the fortunes of Home Rule. Mr. Parnell was suffering at this time from some serious illness, the real nature or extent of which he was too proud a man to explain to his political friends. He appeared to be in wretched health, and remarked, in a kind of foreboding spirit, "I don't care who leads when I am gone, but I am anxious the old country should get some kind of parliament.as a result of our struggles, and unless Mr. Gladstone can do this for us no other living Englishman can." This, beyond all question, was the real motive of Mr. Parnell's abstention from the Dillon -O'Brien movement. N^ He was undoubtedly right in his view at the time, and at ; his request I took little_^rj[io_part in. tlie- campaign which ^^^ his two foremost lieutenants fought with such tenacity of purpose and for which they subsequently endured so much adverse criticism and blame. But there was another and a personal objection weighing s with him to which he did not refer. The plan. 3ras a y breach., of the conditions of the Kilmainham treaty, and to this arrangement Mr. Parnell held true with a loyalty which did him infinite credit, considering its unpopularity in Ireland and the calamitous results which destiny had re- solved should follow from it. For good or evil he had made up his mind not to enter again into any phase of a land war '> that might by any possible chance reproduce similar events to those of 1881-82, and though he loyally advanced moneys out of the funds as required by Dillon and O'Brien, he took care to disassociate himself from the new agrarian action in which they had embarked. Rumors asserted at this time that Mr. Parnell's illness and other causes might lead to a change in the headship of the movement. Mr. Dillon's name was, unfairly to him, freely mentioned as Mr. Parnell's probable successor, while a re- ligious order that is impartially abused in Catholic and Prot- estant countries alike for its alleged proficiency in the science of political mischief-making, the Jesuits, were be- lieved in some quarters to be zealously concerned in the future political ambition of Sir T. G. Esmonde, M.P. I asked Mr. Parnell whether he attached any importance to these state- ments, and it was in reply to this question he made the answer already recorded — he did not care who succeeded to 519 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND his post after he had gone. He created the impression on my mind that he thought Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien were desirous of taking the direction of the movement and party out of his hands, and I shared in that belief at the time. This was an injustice to two men who had been among Mr. Parnell's most loyal followers, and was especially so towards Mr. John Dillon, whose name was put in rivalry with his lead- er's. No leader ever had a more devoted or more energetic lieutenant and no cause a more unselfish or unsullied record than that of the foremost protagonist of the plan of cam- paign. This movement was not officially connected with the National League. The secretary of the national organiza- tion was the author of the plan, but for reasons of discretion this was not made known at the time. The finances of the fight, its direction and general policy, were attended to apart, in order that neither Mr. Parnell nor the organization proper of the league should be involved in any legal proceed- ings arising out of the advance-guard attack upon the land- lord position. The scheme was put in operation on eighty-four estates. The tenants formed estate combinations, paid the "plan rent" into the hands of a committee, and awaited results. In no fewer than sixty instances the landlords prudently gave way, and settled on the plan terms, which averaged less than twenty-five per cent, of an abatement. On twenty-four estates a brief struggle ensued, but wisdom prevailed over obstinacy, and the landlords came to terms on a similar average of reductions. In the case of seventeen estates, where the landlords, including Lord Clanricarde, stood out against the tenants' demand, an average concession of a thirty per cent, abatement would procure a similar peaceful settlement. Evictions followed instead of agreements, with the result that hundreds of thousands of pounds were lost by landlords, tenants, and the state; the cost of extra police, employment of military forces, and of special prosecutions alone amounting, from 1887 to 1894, to an estimated sum of ;^96o,ooo. In the session of 1887, six months after the rejection of Mr. Parnell's bill, and four months following the launching of the plan, the Lord Cowper Commission issued its report (February, 1887), and declared, ijiter alia, as follows: "16. The fall in the price of produce of all kinds, and in all parts of the country, has much impaired the ability of the farmer to pay the full rent, and this, following on a previous restriction of credit by the bankers and other lenders of 520 "THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN" money, as well as by the shopkeepers, has very greatly in- creased their financial difficulties. "17. The land commissioners, recognizing this depression, began towards the end of 1885 to reduce the rents then being judicially fixed by from ten to fourteen per cent, below the scale of reduction in the four previous years, and they have since continued to act on this principle. "18. The sudden fall in prices during the last two years was intensified in its effect by a gradual deterioration which had been going on in the quality and produce of the soil, both tillage and grass, during a series of years of low temperature and much rain, especially in 1879, the worst year of the century. During this period much of the tenants' capital had disappeared. The cost of cultivation, compared with that of an earlier period, had also greatly increased." Here was Lord Salisbury's own Unionist commission found confirming the very grounds upon which Parliament was asked to legislate by Mr. Parnell in September, 1886. Surely, then, the troubles, evictions, and other evils which followed from the ministerial policy that had closed its eyes to patent facts, for party reasons, in September, 1886, to open them again, for party purposes, in February, 1887, ought to be fathered upon the maladroit expediency of Lord Salisbury and not upon Mr. John Dillon and the plan. In one — and that the most striking — instance of the plan of campaign contests the leaders did, in my opinion, commit a big blunder. The Tipperary fight was a grave mistake. On one important point it violated even the principles of the plan itself. That scheme of combination very wisely laid down the rule that "Holders of town parks who are shopkeepers have a strong claim to exemption [from joining the combination], for a judgment against them may be ruin." Just so. It is both bad tactics, in a fight of the kind, and a lamentable want of a sound knowledge of human nature also, to ask a man to run the risk of losing a business worth ;^5ooo on account of an agricultural rent of ;£20 or ;;^3o. Somc of the Tipperary shopkeepers were called upon to sacrifice sums equal to this, and herein is where the blunder of breaking away from the written advice of the plan itself came in. Mr. Smith Barry's policy of retalia- tion in helping to frustrate what otherwise promised to be an amicable settlement on the Ponsonby estate brought upon himself the weight and cost of the Tipperary struggle; but his opponents gave themselves very badly away when they put their own weakest wing — the shopkeepers — forward to turn the flank of their strongest antagonist. It was 521 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "magnificent," no doubt, and called forth a few splendid exhibitions of self-sacrifice, and enthusiasm galore, but it was very bad "war" all the same. Lord Randolph Churchill, who as chancellor of the ex- chequer had led the House of Commons in the autiunn session of 1886, suddenly resigned in December, on a ques- tion of English party policy. The resignation was intended as an argument of pressure upon Lord Salisbury, and was tendered only to be withdrawn, according to the canons of ministerial courtesy. The prime-minister had far more relatives than courtesy at his disposal, however, and he accepted with alacrity what had only been offered to be returned. The pretended Home- Ruler of the elections of 1885 fell a victim to kindred tactics on another question within a year, and thus terminated in effect what had promised at one time to be a career culminating in the blue-ribbon prize of British politics, the premiership of the British Empire. Sir Michael Hicks-Beach succeeded Churchill at the ex- chequer, whereupon Mr. Arthur Balfour became chief secre- tary for Ireland. Meanwhile the plan of campaign was in full swing. The victories already alluded to were recorded, and it became necessary, in face of the recommendations of the Cowper Commission, to justify still further Mr. Harrington's clever plan by legislating on the very lines proposed in vain by Mr. Parnell in the September previously. A bill was in- troduced by the government authorizing the land commission to revise the judicial rents that had been fixed from 1881 to 1886, and to admit the exempted leaseholders to the benefits of the Gladstonian land act. Had this been done six months earlier there would have been no plan of campaign. But, being done six months too late, it became necessary, in due accord with English ideas, to accompany the ameliorating bill by a corresponding measure of repression. There was, in fact, to be a further provision for closure on debates in the House of Commons and a maximum of coercion for Ireland. To make things as "thorough" as possible, a perpetual coercion bill was to be made to signalize the year of Queen Victoria's jubilee, as an unconscious testimony to the triimi- phant failure of the act of union. ^r. Balfour was no believer in half measures, and was determined to be armed with all the powers that a parlia- mentary majority could give him in his fight_ against the plan. He engrafted upon his land bill a legal process of 'eviction which would obviate the ordinary serving of evic- tion notices, and in this way he succeeded in enabling land- 522 "THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN" lords in Ireland, almost without cost, to deprive thirty or forty thousand tenants of all the statutory advantages se- cured for them under the act of 1881. In addition, he suc- ceeded in manning the large staff of land court sub - com- missioners with open partisans of his own party and enemies of the tenants' cause. His coercion armory included a provision to enable himself to declare any association in Ire- land an illegal combination, and to remove trials to wherever the most promising juries could be empanelled. And, thus fortified for the counter-war which he had planned against the movement led by Dillon and O'Brien, he stripped him- self to the combat and refused all quarter. He virtually challenged all the elements of disorder to a free fight with the Castle, and the country was soon plunged into a state of turmoil which recalled the exciting times of 1881. Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien were prosecuted and imprisoned more than once. During their trial in the first instance, at Green Street, Dublin, a comical incident occurred which is no rare commentary upon the absurdities associated with the rule of Dublin-Castle law and order. One of the large Western landlords, having had enough of the plan of campaign on his estate, made overtures to the leaders that he was willing to settle and to avert any resort to the law. There was, however, a difficulty in the way — the responsible leaders were in the very act of being tried in Dublin for the illegality of the plan. But the landlord could not afford to wait. Money was wanted and could only be got in the payment of his rent. He came straight to Dublin. Mr. Dillon was wilhng to effect a settlement, but he was engaged in court — on his trial. No matter. The case of rent was more urgent than that of law, and it came to pass that Mr. Dillon left the court where his trial was proceeding for an official's room in the same building, where he met the agent of the Western landlord, and, having ratified an illegal agree- ment under the plan, within a few paces of the judge's bench, walked back to the court to be sentenced to find bail, or an alternative of six months' imprisonment, for his conduct in similar cases elsewhere. It was due to and arising out of the Balfour policy of legal aggression that "the Mitchelstown massacre" occurred in September, 1887. A great meeting was being held in the large square of that town, at which Mr. John Dillon and other leaders of the plan were to speak. Numbers variously estimated at from five to ten thousand persons attended from Cork, Tipperary, and Waterford counties. As the proceedings 523 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND were about to begin a body of the Royal Irish Constabulary marched into the throng, escorting a government reporter. No application, it appears, had been made to the promoters of the meeting to allow the note-taker to occupy a place on the platform. The intrusion of the police was a stupid or deliberate attempt to create confusion and a disturbance, and it succeeded possibly far beyond the wishes of the officer in command. The crowd at once resented the action of the police, and these had to fall back. This incident was reported to the officer in charge of the barracks, whereupon a reinforcement arrived on the scene and attempted to open up a way for the reporter to the vicinity of the speakers. This was accepted as a challenge to the meeting as to whether the people or the police should have their way, and the row began. Batons were swinging in the air at once, and were met with stout blackthorns in a resolute blow-for-blow spirit which soon compelled the protectors of the Castle reporter to run for the shelter of the constabulary barracks, pursued by stones and other missiles from the victorious crowd. This building stood flanked by other dwellings in a street which traversed the bottom of the square, and was distant about two hundred yards from where the row had begun. On reaching the shelter of the barracks some of the police fired with rifles from the windows back at the people who were assembled at the corner of the square where the street en- tered it. Mr. Dillon, on seeing the flight of the police, di- vined what would happen, and rushed to prevent the crowd from pursuing the constabulary into the street where the barracks stood. Almost all the crowd responded to his orders, but a few men and boys remained on each side of the thoroughfare where it and the square merged into the wider space, and shots deliberately fired at these took effect. An old man named Casey was killed on the spot, and two more, Lonergan and Shinnock, one a youth, were so severely hit that they died a few days subsequently. The shooting created intense indignation in the country. This feeling was rendered more bitter by the conduct of Mr. Balfour, who openly prejudged the whole case, and espoused the side of the accused police by asserting in the House of Commons that they were not to blame in any sense, and only acted in self-defence, and to preserve their lives from a furious onslaught by a riotous mob. A coroner's jury tried the case against the constabulary, and after a fortnight's forensic fight between counsel on both sides a verdict of wilful murder was recorded against the officer who ordered the firing and four or five of his subordi- 524 "THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN'* nates. But no other trial was ever held. No person was ever punished for the deaths of three innocent citizens, and this shameful protection of police criminals by Dublin Castle did not invite any new degree of respect for an old, incriminated offender against the highest as well as the other rights of Irish citizenship. A copy of a telegram from Dublin Castle to a magistrate in a Southern county about this time fell into the hands of United Ireland, and part of its contents — "Don't hesitate to shoot" — when published, was not calculated to make popular feeling any less tender towards Mr. Balfour. On the other hand, this amazing language was freely interpreted by his subordinates during the period of the plan. The Mitchelstown case has been referred to. At Youghal, in the same county, a young man named Hanlan was stabbed to death by a policeman, on the occasion of the arrest of a most popular and respected priest. Rev. Canon Keller, on a charge of putting the plan of campaign into operation. A large crowd had gathered to show popular sympathy with their esteemed pastor. The people were ordered to disperse, and the youth was bayoneted while in the act of running away. The coroner's jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder, but the Crown concerned itself only with steps to enter a nolle prosequi. Another man was bludgeoned to death by police at Fermoy. The coroner's jury found a verdict of murder, but two of Mr. Balfour's removable magistrates acquitted the accused, who, they declared, "left the court without a stain on their characters." A boy was killed during some excitement in the town of Tipperary. He was shot by a policeman who was believed to be semi-intoxicated. The coroner's jury brought in a ver- dict of murder, but the Crown refused to prosecute. At Timoleague the police fired on a crowd and killed a peasant. The jury was carefully packed, and disagreed. There was no further prosecution by the Castle. On the other hand, when on the occasion of the arrest of the Rev. James McFadden, of Gweedore, County Donegal, a police inspector named Martin was killed in a riot, both the priest and several of the crowd were tried before a specially packed jury at Maryborough and sentenced to various terms of im- prisonment. During fierce riots in Belfast the Orangemen terrorized the city. A trooper of the West Surrey regiment, named Hughes, and a head constable of the Royal Irish Constabulary, whose name I have forgotten, were killed. Two Orangemen were 525 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tried for the murder, but no Belfast jury would convict them. One of them was ultimately sent to prison, but released after a few years' incarceration. Culprits were more summarily dealt with in the South, where Mr. Balfour's magistrates were judges and jury com- bined. One boy was charged with "intimidating her Maj- esty's subjects." The evidence to support this indictment proved that "the lad had looked at the poHceman with a humbugging kind of a smile." He was, of course, sent to prison. Several other crimes of a kindred atrocity were duly punished. One consisted in the whistling of a tune called "Harvey Duff" in the hearing of the sensitive Royal Irish Constabulary. Another amounted to this extraordinary in- stance of criminality: the prosecuting policeman swore that he had heard the accused "cheering for Mr. Gladstone " ! This culprit was relegated to prison for a week. In County Mayo, in December, 1887, a disturbance took place over a seizure for rent. An old woman, Ellen Tighe, aged seventy, was twice examined before the magistrates for riotous conduct. She was ultimately discharged. Not so Ellen Conroy. She, too, had obstructed the majesty of the law while its agents were engaged in seizing some sheep, belonging to a peasant, in the interest of a landlord. Ellen was found guilty and sent to jail for a week. Rev. P. Mc- Alpine, who knew the girl as one of his parishioners, assured me that her age on the previous birthday was twelve years. As an illustration of the riotous temper of the law during these exciting years, the following week's diary of coercion proceedings may prove interesting to readers who reside in other lands than Ireland: "Tuesday. — Mr. Dillon summoned before the court of Queen's Bench, and ordered to give bail to be of good be- havior or go to jail for a year. " Thursday. — Police make a raid on popular rent-office at Loughrea, illegally seize money, documents, pencils, and blotting-paper, arrest Messrs. Dillon, O'Brien, Sheehy, and Harris, and charge them with conspiracy before a magistrate, who commands them at their peril to appear before him again at Loughrea the following Thursday. Mr. Dillon's second prosecution within two days. "Thursday {later). — Mr. Sheehy served with another docu- ment requiring him to appear before a magistrate in Temple- more to answer a charge of making a speech calculated to create public disorder. Mr. Sheehy 's second prosecution in one day. 526 "THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN" ''Friday. — Mr. Dillon receives a summons to appear at his peril in the police court, Inns Quay, Dublin, to answer a charge of conspiracy, on the same day and at the same hour as he is commanded at his peril to appear in Loughrea. Mr. Dillon's third prosecution within three days. "Messrs. O'Brien, Harris, and Sheehy similarly warned to appear in the same two places at the one time, this being Mr. Sheehy's third prosecution within two days. "Messrs. Crilly, M.P., and W. Redmond, M.P., summoned to Dublin on same charge. "Saturday. — Resolute government discovers its Boyle- Rochery, and has Mr. Dillon and his sureties served with a notice announcing that he needn't appear at Loughrea, and that that prosecution is abandoned. Mr. Dihon now the target for only two prosecutions. Messrs. O'Brien, Sheehy, and Harris informed that the Loughrea prosecution against them is likewise abandoned. Two prosecutions still aimed at Mr. Sheehy. ''Sunday. — The plan of campaign having been advertised from the house-tops for two months, put into operation in all directions, under the eyes of government policemen and reporters, and declared by the attorney-general to be beyond the reach of the executive, is proclaimed an illegal and criminal conspiracy, whose promoters the executive intend to arrest, and whose money, documents, and so forth they intend to seize whenever they can. "Monday. — Mr. Sheehy notified to pay no attention to his summons to Templemore, that prosecution against him being abandoned. Father Fahy released from Galway jail without being asked to complete his sentence."^ Many dramatic scenes and some romantic episodes marked the three years' fierce combat between Mr. Balfour as coercion- ist ruler of Ireland and the forces led by Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien. On one occasion Mr. O'Brien, instead of accom- modating a removable court by appearing before it when summoned to do so, crossed from Wexford to Manchester to keep a public engagement to address a meeting in that city. A warrant was issued for his arrest. He was most courteously entertained by the mayor of Manchester before addressing the assembled audience, and after fulfilling this duty was con- ducted back to Ireland to be sent to prison. During one of his terms of imprisonment he fought a resolute battle against the degradation inflicted upon prisoners not charged with any dishonorable offence in being com- * Six Months of Unionist Ride, pp. 32, 33. John J. Clancy, M.P., Irish press agency, 1887. 527 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND pelled to wear prison clothes. i\Ir. O'Brien was forcibly stripped by prison warders, but he successfully resisted their efforts to garb him in prison dress. He was assisted by friends inside and out of Tullamore jail in obtaining a suit of clothes to replace the garments of which he had been deprived. After courageously struggling for the principle in- volved in the right of a prisoner to wear his own clothes, he was ultimately victorious in the manly fight thus made. It was in resisting a similar brutal indignity that Mr. John Mandeville, a gentleman farmer residing near Mitchels- town, contracted an illness which directly resulted in his death. The campaign against Clanricarde and company, like every previous phase of the land war, had its humorous as well as its tragic incidents. The late Dr. Tanner, M.P., or "Charley Tanner," as his friends loved to call one of the kindest and most courageous of men, who was only unkind to himself, had many amusing encounters with the police, and led them many a wild and bootless chase. On one occasion he an- nounced his intention to address a meeting near a lake in County Clare. There was a warrant for his arrest in the hands of the police for "campaigning" performances, and, having pursued him in vain for weeks, they believed he had at last voluntarily placed himself in their hands. The day of the meeting arrived, a large number of people assembled, and the "peelers" lay handy at a convenient distance to execute the delayed message of the law. A shout from the gathering announced the approach of the genial doctor. He came — in a boat. The people grasped the humor of the situation at once, as Charley, rowing his way within some twenty feet of the shore, commenced to address the assembled crowd, and to indulge in more than his usual vehement orthodoxy on the virtues of the plan and the vices of "the blood- stained law of the Mitchelstown murders." Finishing his speech, with a few more complimentary allusions to the police and the chief secretary, the member for Mid-Cork bade a genial au revoir to the baffled magistrate and constabulary, and departed as he came. A batch of campaigners were awaiting trial before a re- movable court in a town in Cork County. The local prison was seldom taxed in its lodging capacity to the extent of more than a few disorderly cases following a good fair, and on this occasion its sole inhabitants, besides the warder in charge, were the six plan prisoners. Two of his charges were members of Parliament, and all the accused were personally known to him. The prison rules were not too 528 "THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN" rigidly enforced during the period of detention, as the follow- ing facts will testify: The best of good things in the town of M were freely at the disposal of prisoners and — warder. The night before the day of trial there was an extra "good time" being en- joyed, a kind of farewell to the place, when the keeper of her Majesty's prison opened the door of the banqueting-room with this apology: "I beg yer pardon, jintlemin. I don't wish to interrupt the harmony in any way, but there is an ay-co in Mr. C 's voice when he's singing 'The West's Awake' that might disturb the sleep of the peelers, down at the police office in the town, and I thought I would just mintion a lower kay for the music." An hour afterwards the vigilant jailer was carefully put to bed by his prisoners, his keys were borrowed, and the whole party retired to a friend's house in the town where the good time was continued until 4 a.m. By five o'clock Mr. Balfour's prisoners were back again in custody. The warder was reminded of his duties, in the return of the keys, and the culprits were subsequently dealt with according to "removable" law. The assistance given by the Irish people and the national organization to the "wounded soldiers" of the plan of campaign agitation was on a generous scale. In 1887 a sum of ^^8890 was expended in the movement and for the maintenance of the evicted families; in 1888, £i'j,S6g; 1889, £T,6,2oy, 1890, ^83,930; 1891, ;^48,i5i; 1892, £i'],<)2']; 1893, £1'] ,g(iO\ or a total of over ^230,000 in seven years.^ When to this is added a sum of ;£2 9,ooo which has been distributed to evicted tenants by Mr. Dillon and myself out of the "Paris Funds" during the past ten years (i 893-1 903), ' "I may say that from the beginning of this movement, which commenced in November, 1886, I kept a very accurate account of all the moneys. I kept books, and we received by deposits from the tenants under the plan of campaign, £41,894 145. 50?., and out of this we have returned to the tenants on settlements of one kind or another, ;^3o, 06 7 165. "jd. The balance spent in supporting and aiding the tenants was £1 1 ,000 odd. I can give the commission all the expenses and details. The total sum received by us from all sources was ;,^234,43i 145. 8t/. ; grants to tenants and maintenance, £i2'j,:^ig lis. yd.; legal expenses in defending tenants, £11,435 i4-^- loc?.; building and repairing houses for the evicted tenants, £50,607 gs. yd.; mis- cellaneous expenses (including travelling expenses) , £17,035 55. gd.; deposits returned to tenants, £30,067 165. id.; grants to aid the tenants in effecting settlements, £1051 155. gd.: and the balance was made up of grants to isolated tenants not belonging to the movement." — Evidence of Mr. John Dillon, M.P., before the Evicted Tenants' Commission, January, 1893. 34 529 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND it will be seen that the country has not been as unmindful of the victims of the land war of the later eighties as English political opponents, and some unfair Irish critics, have alleged. The merit of this is due entirely to the pro- verbial open-handedness of the Celtic people of Ireland tow- ards every deserving cause which appeals to their patriotism and love of justice for approval and support. CHAPTER XLIII THE r/M£:5-UNIONIST P L O T— " P A R N E L L I S M AND CRIME " While all the resources of coercion were busily employed in Ireland in a conflict with the forces of the Irish National League, the chief secretary's allies were not idle in a kindred combat in England against the cause of Home Rule. In fact, a front and flank attack was made in 1887 and 1888 upon the whole Irish moveinent, which has never been paralleled in the history of political agitations. The explanation of this crusade was twofold: The enemies of Mr. Gladstone's Home- Rule policy were startled at the enormous vote that had been recorded by the electors of Great Britain in support of the proposal to restore to Ireland a domestic legislature. As already pointed out, a hundred thousand more ballots would have condemned the Unionist coalition against the bill of 1886, and secured the return of the Liberal leader to power with a mandate to enact that measure into law. To the latent anti-Irish spirit in the average English mind this was an alarming development of pro-Irish feeling. It threatened the existence of minority rule and of privileged ascendency in the government of Ireland. The strongest of English racial prejudices was therefore challenged and excited, and for an envenomed expression of this hatred of everything national in connection with the Irish question The Times has ever been the watchful and accredited organ. The Salisbury cabinet and its Irish policy were the minis- terial embodiment of this anti-Irish prejudice. They had appealed to it, and were put into office as its parliamentary instruments. But the premier in his Newport speech. Lord Carnarvon in his interview with Mr. Parnell, and Lord Ran- dolph Churchill in his sinister intrigues with the Irish party had given both moral and political justification for Mr. Gladstone's more consistent policy. They had more than coquetted with Home Rule for Irish support. It became necessary, therefore, for the party having this recent record, but which had been elected on an anti-Home Rule issue, to 531 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND break away from the policy of 1885 by attempting to govern Ireland on the most extreme coercionist lines. The Loyal and Patriotic Union and the London Times had been the zealous allies of the Tory party in the defeat of Mr. Gladstone, and the same forces were now employed in a campaign of systematic calumny against Mr. Parnell and the Liberal leader in their joint pursuit of a pact of peace between the two countries. It was in furtherance of the ends of the campaign thus en- tered upon that on March 7, 1887, The Times published its first of a series of contributions under the caption of ' ' Parnellism and Crime." The articles were outspoken enough in all con- science. They left nothing to be desired by the most rabid enemy of the Irish movement in the way of imputation and indictment, while the editorial comments punctuated with trenchant accusation every charge contained in the articles. These articles were continued at intervals during March, April, May, and June, and necessarily created a sensation, owing to the great journalistic position and influence of the paper, and the crimes which it sought to bring home, in language about which there could be no two meanings, to a prominent parliamentary and political leader and to his chief lieutenants. But the contributions in the month of April were reinforced by a publication before which all the preceding allegations paled into comparative insignificance. This was a letter in facsimile, with Mr. Parnell 's signature, purporting to justify the Phoenix Park murders. Its terms were as follows: " Alay 15, 1882. "Dear Sir, — I am not surprised at your friend's anger, but he and you should know that to denounce the murders was the only course open to us. To do that promptly was plainly our best policy. " But you can tell him and all others concerned that though I regret the accident of Lord F. Cavendish's death, I cannot refuse to admit that Burke got no more than his deserts. "You are at liberty to show him this, and others whom you can trust also, but let not my address be known. He can write to House of Commons. "Yours very truly, "Chas. S. Parnell." In a previous article, printed on March loth, The Times openly charged Mr. Parnell with having consorted with cer- tain men, afterwards connected with the Invincibles, during his release on parole from Kilmainham early in 1882. The 532 THE r/MES- UNIONIST PLOT author of the above letter, if it were genuine, and if the charge of March loth were true, would be writing to those he had seen, as suggested, to explain his action in signing the mani- festo of May 7, 1882, in which the perpetrators of the park murders were strongly condemned. The time, the circum- stance, and the phrasing of the letter were cleverly con- trived to sustain the atrocious imputation previously made, while the apparent genuineness of the signature lent a seeming proof to the authenticity of the document which created a wide-spread belief that it was genuine. In fact, no such thunderbolt had fallen in the Irish camp since the deed of May 6, 1882, of which this letter was an accursed re-echo. There is a strong proof of the connivance of members of the Tory government in the }iou?>ton-Times conspiracy to ruin Parnell in the appearance of this product of a villanous plot on the very day on which the Unionist coercion bill was to be read a second time. No hired bravo, in undertaking to despatch some victim in a Sicilian vendetta, ever made a more business-like arrangement for driving a stiletto into the object of his professional vengeance than did the men who planned and premeditated this assassin-blow at the Irish cause through its leader on that April 18, 1887. Coercion had not been popular in the latter end of the late Parliament, even with Tories. They had repudiated it in 1886. Their leaders had even denounced it in 1885. They had provided for a Maamtrasna debate, and more than one of them had censured Lord Spencer for having carried repressive measures in Ireland to extreme lengths. This record had to be ob- scured or explained away in order to justify a renewed coercion act which was not to be limited in time of duration. In what more efifective manner, therefore, could this be done than in the Houston - Times way of launching this letter upon the public on the morning of the day when the fate of the new coercion act was to be decided? Our information was that the late Mr. W. H. Smith and the then home secretary were both privy to the intended publica- tion of this letter, and that Mr. Walter, of The Times, arranged for its appearance, in conjunction with them and others, on that very date. The part played by The Times manager in this whole business, as explained by himself at the special commission, was that of a whipping-boy for his master. Mr. MacDonald was not the simpleton he would lead the public to believe, and was not imposed upon by either Houston or Pigott. He was screening other and more im- portant persons .when taking upon his broad Scotch shoul- 533 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ders the burden of responsibility which rightly belonged to a higher-placed member in the hierarchy of this political plot. The appearance of the letter created a momentary con- sternation even in the Irish ranks. The effect was stupefying. The superscription was so much like Mr. Parnell's well-known writing that the inherent improbability of the wording and purport of the document was obscured by the staggering similarity of the signature. If this was the impression that was made on the minds of many of Mr. Parnell's own friends, it can easily be imagined how great was the effect produced on popular opinion in England. The test and extent of this were given in the House of Commons when the Irish leader rose to speak before the division which the atrocious letter was intended to influence. Dead silence marked his rising, except among his own party, who cheered him generously. He was clear and collected as usual in his lan- guage, and employed the strong and scornful manner of an innocent man in exposing TJie Tivies production as a forgery. An angel from heaven could not use words more truthful or indignant than his were. But the allies of The Times on the ministerial benches laughed back a scornful disbelief of his dignified assertion that the whole thing was an audacious fabrication — just as they would have done even if the speaker had been a saint from heaven who might fall, as an Irish leader, under the ban of English suspicion. This, then, was the conduct of a great English party inside what is supposed to be an equally great tribunal, in face of an honest, outspoken declaration of a nation's leader that his signature was forged. Was it any wonder that the feeling outside was more incredulous still as to the declarations of an innocent Irishman? The Times fabrication was at once pressed into the active service of the enemies of Home Rule. Lord Salisbury, the descendant of the saintly Burleigh of Queen Elizabeth's time, took the guilt of Mr. Parnell for granted, and attacked Mr. Gladstone for having an ally "tainted with the strong pre- sumption of conniving at assassination!" This example en- listed thousands of imitators, and politicians and news- papers pressed home the charge in support of the worthy cause of the unholy act of union of 1801. And the course which this state of feeling in England com- pelled Mr. Parnell to adopt only confirmed the judgment which an English prime-minister had already given. "Why does he not sue The Times for libel?" was the English reply to the Irish denial and complaint. "Let a jury decide it," was the view of those who would conscientiously permit their 534 THE r/iV/ES-UNIONIST PLOT faith in The Times to outweigh the value of a mere Irishman's reputation. A verdict, if not against a person by chance innocent, would at least be against a man who was known to oppose English rule in Ireland. So Mr. Parnell rightly refused to play the game of The Times by trusting the case to a London jury, and this only increased the presumption in England that his fears were of another kind. Mr. Parnell believed in one source, and one only, as to the origin of the forgery and of the deadly blow which was aimed at him in its publication. Captain O'Shea was the object of this suspicion. Few of his friends went with him in this belief. Not that they had any greater tiiist in his honor or reputation, but because the act was above his capacity to execute, even though the motive might not be so far removed from the character of his friendship. Pigott was my first belief, and it remained so to the end. So also was it of most of Mr. Parnell's lieutenants; a few of them dissenting and putting the authorship down to a former member of the Irish party whom Mr. Parnell had expelled from public life. Still, the victim of the forgery remained obdurate in his own conviction. Pigott might, as we all believed, be behind the " Parnellism and Crime " articles, but he was not, in his opinion, the author of the facsimile letter. Only one man could, in his view, be guilty of this deed, and he was the individual whom Mr. Parnell knew to have some ground for a human desire to do him a retaliatory injury. During the summer months proof of the most complete kind that Pigott was either the actual forger or his accomplice came to Mr. Parnell from Mr. Patrick Egan. who then re- sided in Lincoln, Nebraska. Mr. Egan had known Pigott very intimately when residing in Dublin, and it was with the Land-League treasurer Pigott negotiated the sale of his papers. The Irishman and The Flag of Ireland, to the league. When The Times containing the facsimile letter reached America, Mr. Egan at once suspected the origin of the document, and in looking over letters received from Pigott, and copies of those written in reply, figures and phrases which had been used in the genuine letters were found by Egan in the forged ones. Mr. Egan's proofs finally convinced Mr. Parnell that Pigott and not O'Shea was the author of the facsimile letter.^ * After Patrick Egan, on the advice of Alexander Sullivan, of Chicago, former president of the American National League, got the analysis of the forgeries in legal form, Mr. J. Dee, of the Detroit Michigan News, was selected to carry the papers to London. At the last moment he was unable to go. Mr. Sullivan then suggested the Rev. Maurice Dorney, of Chicago, who consented at once to be Mr. Egan's messenger, 535 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND During this interval The Times articles were continued, with additional "revelations," while the practice of taunting Mr. Parnell with his reluctance to face a jury had become a party parrot-cry in anti- Home -Rule discussions. But this baiting of Parnell did not succeed. He waited for the complete evidence which time nearly always brings in refutation of a great wrong, and for circumstances which would give truth a fair trial in a contest with a falsehood skilfully put forward. An injudicious friend broke in upon this policy of prudent reserve and precipitated a clash. In November, 1887, Mr. F. H. O'Donnell, a former brilliant member of Mr. Parnell 's party, took action against The Times for libel, alleging that the articles on " Parnellism and Crime" had some reference to him. Mr. Parnell was not consulted. He tried to induce O'Donnell not to proceed with the case, but the latter, believing he coiild not then withdraw from his action without injury to himself, resolved to proceed. The Times engaged the attorney-general of England, Sir Richard Webster, to conduct the defence, which was that the articles were substantially true, as to others, but did not relate to the plaintiff. On this issue the case was listed for trial. It came on for hearing before Lord Chief-Justice Coleridge and a special London jury on July 2, 1888. The chief law officer of England, as counsel for The Times, made a three days' speech, in which he read all the articles complained of in reply to the case made out for O'Donnell, justified their statements, declared he w^ould prove both them and the facsimile letter to. be true, and reinforced this position by producing a batch of other letters, including five or six which he asserted were signed by Parnell and about a dozen by Egan, many of these pointing more definitely to complicity in the Phoenix Park murders than did the letter which was published in TJie Times in April, 1887. It was piling more fuel from the same source on the fire which was expected to de- stroy the reputation of the Irish leaders. But the tactics of the accusers were even more unfair if possible than the use they had made of materials which they knew had reached them from a tainted and disreputable source. The letters were not put to the proof in the trial, nor were the accusations in The Times attempted to be substantiated. This would have shown the hollowness of the whole case. So the attorney-general of England, having created by his speech and declarations, his reading of the and in due course handed to Mr. Henry Labouchere, M.P., in the House of Commons, the proofs which convicted Pigott as the forger of The Times letters. 536 THE r/MES-UNIONIST PLOT letters and the rest, a darker cloud of suspicion than ever over the names of Mr. Parnell and others, urged, in the best style and spirit of English rectitude, that it would not be just to Mr. Parnell and those accused with him for the whole case of The Times to be gone into, with no one in court to meet these charges except a plaintiff against whom no one alleged in- criminatory conduct. And, with a verdict against the plaintiff from the complacent jury, the proceedings came to an end. Mr. Parnell, acting on the best advice, had hitherto re- fused to enter a court in England in search of a vindication against the leading English paper. He might as well have chosen a jury from the staff of the journal that had libelled him, as was shown in the verdict against O'Donnell. The wells of English justice had been poisoned by the conspiracy of which The Times was but the mouth-piece. But the work- ing alliance of the government with his accusers in the speech and declarations of the attorney - general in the trial of O'Donnell and Walter forced Mr. Parnell to make a choice between two methods of possible political destruction: either to take proceedings to force the proof of Sir Richard Webster's accusations before a London jury, or to ask another tribunal of which he was a member, the House of Commons, to assert its power to clear or convict some of its own members of complicity in crime. At first he inclined to the more risky course of taking action in the courts for libel on the matter of the letters. This step, however, he allowed himself to be persuaded to abandon, and he finally decided to put upon the House of Commons itself the responsibility of probing the whole case to the bottom by the machinery of a select committee. To this obviously fair demand Mr. W. H. Smith, the leader of the House, who was actually a confederate of Mr. Par- nell's secret enemies, gave a point-blank refusal. The gov- ernment would not consent to give him any fair chance of exposing the plot to which they were parties. They had, however, an alternative proposal ; they would give him a special commission of English judges with power to in- vestigate "the charges and allegations that had been made against Mr. Parnell and other members of Parliament by The Times in the recent action of O'Donnell and Walter." This offer was appropriately made on July 12th. It was virtually the tender to Mr. Parnell of a halter with which to execute himself. The offer resembled nothing so much as that of one from a head Orange society of Ulster to give the use of an Orange lodge, and the services of three grand masters of the Orange organization, to any aggrieved Catholics 537 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND who might have been denounced by some Orange newspaper for practices or deeds wanting in due reverence for the names and memory of William of Orange and of Martin Luther. Bad as the government adaptation of a similar course was, worse remained in the final form of the terms of reference. It was feared by Mr. Smith's friends, the Walters, Houstons, Blennerhassets, Maguires, and the others, that these terms were not an absolutel}^ closed trap. The victim might escape. They knew, of course, that Pigott had forged the letters, and they wanted to bring into play the odious principle contained in the star-chamber law of seditious conspiracy — the law which makes an innocent man legally responsible for crimes committed by some one who may be associated with him for some otherwise declared honest and legal end. The plotters behind Mr. W. H. Smith, therefore, amended the proposed scope of the inquiry, and added "other persons" to the original offer, which had meant to confine the in- vestigation to the charges alleged against Irish members of Parliament. Nothing more atrociously unfair in spirit and object ever prompted the purposes of a political plot. There was one parallel to this action, and one only, in Anglo-Irish history. Since an ancestor of Lord Salisbury's had instructed an Irish lord deputy to invite the leaders of the Irish clans of Lein.ster to a feast at Mullaghmast,^ and to assassinate them while enjoying the hospitality of England's repre- ' O'Connell held one of his great monster meetings in 1S43 on this spot, and thus he spoke its history: "It is not bjr accident that to-night we are on the rath of Mullagh- mast. Where my voice is sounding, and yovi are attentively listening, there were once raised the yells of despair, the groans of approaching death, the agony of wounds inflicted on the perishing and the im- armed. On this very spot they fell beneath the swords of the Saxon, who used them securely and delightedly grinding their victims to death. Upon this very spot three hundred brave Irishmen perished, who, confiding in Saxon promises, came to a conference with the Queen of England's commissioners, and in the merriment of the repast they were slaughtered. There never returned home but one, their wives were widowed and their children were made orphans. Here the Saxon triumphed. Here he raised a shout of victory over his un- anned prey." Thomas Davis wrote a poem on this event; "At the feast, unarmed all, Priest, bard, and chieftain fall, In the treacherous Saxon hall, O'er the bright wine bowl. And now nightly round the board, With unsheathed and reeking sword. Strides the cruel felon lord Of the blood-stained soul." 538 THE r/MES-UNIONIST PLOT sentative, no fouler stroke had been dealt at Ireland's spokes- men than in the means tlius resorted to by the allies of the London Times and Lord Salisbury's first lord of the treasury, working in a common plot to secure the same end — the political and moral assassination of the Irish leaders of 1888. GENERAL CHARGES AND ALLEGATIONS The Land League and National League, their leaders and prominent members, were charged with : The promotion of and inciting to the commission of crimes, outrages, boycotting, and intimidation. The collection and providing of funds to be used, or which it was known were used, for the promotion of and the payment of persons engaged in the commission of crimes, outrages, boycotting, and intimidation. The payment of persons who assisted in, were affected by, or accidentally or otherwise injured in the commission of such crimes, outrages, and acts of boycotting and intimida- tion. Holding meetings and procuring to be made speeches, in- citing to the commission of crimes, outrages, boycotting, and intimidation. Some of the meetings referred to, which were attended by members of Parliament, with the approximate dates and place of meeting, were given in the schedule. The publication and dissemination of newspaper and other literature inciting to and approving of sedition and the com- mission of crimes, outrages, boycotting, and intimidation, particularly the Irish World, the Chicago Citizen, the Boston Pilot, the Freeman's Journal, United Ireland, The Irishman, The Nation, the Weekly News, Cork Daily Herald, the Kerry Sentinel, the Dublin Evening Telegraph, the Sligo Champion. Advocating resistance to law and the constituted authorities, and impeding the detection and punishment of crime. Making payments to or for persons who were guilty, or supposed to be guilty, of the commission of crimes, outrages, and acts of boycotting and intimidation for their defence, or to enable them to escape from justice, and for the main- tenance of such persons and their families. It was charged and alleged that the members of Parliament mentioned in the schedule approved, and by their acts and conduct led people to believe that they approved, of resistance to the law and the commission of crimes, outrages, and acts of boycotting and intimidation when committed in furtherance of the objects and resolutions of the said societies, and that 539 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND persons who engaged in the commission of such crimes, outrages, and acts would receive the support and protection of the said societies and of their organization and influence. They attended meetings of the said societies, and other meetings at various places, and made speeches, and caused and procured speeches to be made, inciting to the com- mission of crimes, outrages, boycotting, and intimidation. They were parties to, and cognizant of, the payment of moneys for the purposes above mentioned, and as testi- monials or rewards to persons who had been convicted, or were notoriously guilty of crimes or outrages, or to their families. With knowledge that crimes, outrages, and acts of boy- cotting and intimidation had followed the delivery of speeches at the meetings, they expressed no bona-fidc disapproval or public condemnation, but, on the contrary, continued to be leading and active members of the said societies and to subscribe to their funds. With such knowledge as aforesaid they continued to be intimately associated with the officers of the same societies, many of whom fled from justice, and with notorious criminals and the agents and instruments of murder and conspiracies, and with the planners and paymasters of outrage, and with the advocates of sedition, violence, and the use of dynamite. They and the said societies, with such knowledge as afore- said, received large sums of money which were collected in America and elsewhere by criminals and persons who were known to advocate sedition, assassination, the use of dyna- mite, and the commission of crimes and outrages. When on certain occasions they considered it politic to denounce, and did denounce, certain crimes in public they afterwards made communications to their associates and others with the intention of leading them to believe that such denunciation was not sincere. The additional charges embraced in the forged letters were made against Mr. Parnell, Mr. Patrick Egan, Mr. James O'Kelly, and Mr. Michael Davitt. The two special charges referred to at the end of the Judges' Report were made against Mr. Davitt. The following Irish members of Parliament were included in the general charges made by The Times: Charles Stewart Parnell, Thomas Sexton, Joseph Gillis Biggar, Joseph Richard Cox, Jeremiah Jordan, James Chris- topher Flynn, William O'Brien, Dr. Charles K. D. Tanner, Will- iam J. Lane, James Gilhooly, Joseph E. Kenny, John Hooper, 540 THE r/ ME 5 -UNIONIST PLOT Maurice Healy, James Edward O'Doherty, Patrick O'Hea, Arthur O'Connor, Michael McCartan, John J. Clancy, Sir H. Grattan Esmonde, Bt., Timothy D. Sullivan, Timothy Harrington, William H. K. Redmond, Henry Campbell, Patrick J. Foley, Matthew Harris, David Sheehy, John Stack, Edward Harrington, Denis Kilbride, Jeremiah D. Sheehan, James Leahy, Patrick A. Chance, Thomas Quinn, Dr. Joseph Francis Fox, Michael Conway, Luke Patrick Hay den, William Abraham, John Finucane, Francis A. O'Keefe, Justin McCarthy, Timothy M. Healy, Joseph Nolan, Thomas P. Gill, Daniel Crilly, John Deasy, John Dillon, James F. O'Brien, Patrick O'Brien, Richard Lalor, James J. O'Kelly, Andrew Commins, Edmund Leamy, P. J. O'Brien, Thomas Mayne, John O'Connor, Matthew J. Kenny, Jasper D. Pyne, Patrick Joseph Power, James Tuite, Donal Sullivan, Thomas Joseph Condon, John E. Redmond, John Barry, Garrett Michael Byrne, and Thomas P. O'Connor. CHAPTER XLIV "THE GREAT INQUISITION" Mr. W. H. Smith, as leader of the House of Commons, had to introduce the bill which was to give statutory authority to the proposed commission. He was not a lawyer, but he was a personal friend of the proprietor of The Times and an active worker in the political plot behind the newspaper which had brought things to this pass. In framing this bill he would have the assistance of the law officers of the Crown, the head of these being Sir Richard Webster, who had lent the position of attorney-general to the work of The Times in the recent case, and had declared in open court that the forged letters were genuine documents and The Times charges true allegations. Another adviser to the first lord of the treasury would be the home secretary, formerly member of Parliament for Dungarvan, by aid of Fenian influence, and now one of the committee of three in the Salisbury government who were in active league with Houston and the Loyal and Patri- otic Union. The bill was introduced after midnight on July i6, 1888, in a speech which lasted exactly fifty seconds. It was a take- it-or-leave-it measure. It was not printed at the time. There had been no explanation of its provisions, no names of judges given, and no promise that time sufficient would be offered for the second - reading debate of such an ex- traordinary legislative proposal. Mr. Parnell in vain pro- tested against this course, and was unusually vehement in denouncing the nature of the tribunal thus offered to him and the unlimited field of accusation that would be thrown open to The Times by the terms which were to be embodied in the bill — namely, "An act to constitute a special commission to inquire into the charges and allegations made against certain members of Parliament and other persons by the defendants in the recent trial of an action entitled O'Donnell, Walter, and Another." Here Mr. Parnell's protest ended. He did not offer opposition to the bill at this stage, and this fact gave the government the advantage they had sought. 542 "THE GREAT INQUISITION" The principle of the bill was sanctioned by the House without division. It was now resolved by the ministerial and other plotters to make the measure in every sense a compulsory inquisition for the trial of their political foes. The con- ditions imposed would make it all but impossible for them to vindicate themselves before a tribunal and under a law specially framed and devised to give the accusers every possible latitude for every conceivable form of allegation in connection with what had been a virtual Irish revolution. The government pressed their purpose forward by every unscrupulous means. The bill was placed before the House as a matter for it and not for the ministry to deal with, until Mr. Parnell, perceiving how useless it was to contend for an atom of justice and fair play, allowed the measure to pass a second reading — without division. It was finally rushed through the House of Commons by means of the closure, and became known on the statute-book as the Act 51 and 52 Vict., 1888. The special commission consisted of three English judges. Sir James Hannen, president. Sir J. C. Day, and Sir A. L. Smith. They were each and all political opponents, not only of Mr. Parnell, but of the English Liberal party, with which the Irish leader was in alliance on the Gladstonian policy for Ireland. What Sir James Hannen termed a "Great Inquisition" commenced its proceedings in the royal courts of justice (Probate Court No. i), the Strand, London, on October 22, 1888. The Times was represented by the attorney-general (Sir Richard Webster), Sir Henry James, Mr. Murphy, and Mr. Graham, with Mr. John Atkinson and Mr. Ronan, of the Irish bar. Mr. Parnell engaged the services of Mr. George Lewis, the famous London attorney, to conduct the legal business of the defence, and he briefed Sir Charles Russell to lead, with Mr. H. H. Asquith, Mr. R. T. Reid, Mr. F. Lockwood, Mr. Lionel Hart, Mr. Arthur O'Connor, and Mr. Arthur Russell, of the London bar, and Mr. T. Harrington, secretary, of the Irish National League. I pressed strongly for the employment of Mr. T. M. Healy, but Mr. Parnell's recollection of the Gal way election incident intervened, and the able services of one of his most brilliant lieutenants were, in a measure, lost, though Mr. Healy attend- ed the commission occasionally to watch his own case. The late Mr. J, G. Biggar and myself dispensed with legal assistance, and defended ourselves. 543 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND The proceedings occupied one hundred and twenty-eight sittings of the commission, beginning on October 22, 1888, and ending on Friday, November 22, 1889. Four hundred and fifty witnesses were examined, in close upon one hundred thousand questions. Speeches of five, seven, and ten days' duration respectively, of five hours each day, were delivered in forensic combat between the leading counsel on both sides, and the final and verbatim report of all the evidence, rulings, speeches, and findings had to be reccrded in eleven folio volumes of some eight thousand pages. It was a trial without a jury, and a political trial, too, in the home of Magna Charta; the cause of the trial a half- successful revolution, with the tribunal and its defined jurisdiction constituted by our political adversaries, as al- ready explained. It is but fair to say that Sir James Hannen did all that a judge could well do to be just under terms of reference as fairly framed as loaded dice could be considered fair in a game of hazard. He held the leaded scales of justice in an upright spirit, and did his best, within the rigid compass of the court's defined powers, to render the scandalous partisanship of the tribunal's charter as little injurious to the reputation of the English judicial bench as transparently honest efforts to be impartial could hope to achieve this high purpose. Where he occasionally leaned to the accusers' side he was influenced more by the fact that he had no power to weigh the value of the political work done for Ireland by Mr. Parnell and the others who were accused with him, as against the speeches and acts which TJie Times alleged to be productive of crime and outrage only. His rulings, too, were influenced by the terms of the law for which politicians and not judges were responsible. Probably no man engaged in the unique inquiry over which he had to preside saw more clearly the outrage upon political free- dom of seeking under the form of a judicial investigation to measure the bounds of political action under constitutional rule. It was an attempt to procure the conviction of a great national and political movement which had already persuaded the Imperial Parliament to pass no fewer than three great land acts for Ireland. To attain the ends of the anti-Home-Rule conspiracy, the creators of the commission and the accusers of Mr. Parnell attempted to indict the Irish nation as represented by its leaders and their political and party organizations. It was fully expected by our side, and by the public too, that the very first work of the judges would be to examine 544 "THE GREAT INQUISITION" into the genuineness or forgery of the letters pubHshed by The Times. These were the central and paramount charges against Mr. Parnell. They constituted the greatest and gravest allegation ever made against a political leader. If he wrote them, no punishment would be considered too severe for his guilt. If they were audacious fabrications, then the greatest crime ever attempted against the honor, character, and reputation of an Irish leader and the hopes centred by a nation in the cause he had led was committed by The Times and its agents. The origin and authenticity of the letters, therefore, rightly demanded the promptest attention from the commission. But it was just here where Mr. W. H. Smith's secret advisers played their desperate game with successful purpose. Pigott had told The Times people, through Houston, at the time of the O'Donnell trial, that he could not prove the letters to be genuine! Consequently they knew then, even if not before, that they were forged. This knowledge was in their possession when the parliament- ary demand was made by Mr. Parnell to investigate their origin. Hence the terms of reference, vague and elastic, in the charter of the commission. It was in order to keep back as long as possible the inevitable exposure of the known forgery by Pigott, which would explode the whole plot, that the attorney-general induced the court to permit him in behalf of The Times to relegate this vital part of the in- vestigation to the very last stage of the accusers' case. Thus, every possible allegation arising out of ten years of political agitation, excitement, and of semi-revolution in Ireland could first be piled up against the accused and be reported during four months in the daily press of Great Britain. To this scheme of deliberate evasion the commission lent its sanction, and it was over this vast area of secondary matter the judges resolved to allow the inquiry to proceed. Trials in Ireland that had already been decided in courts of law were again brought up; persons who had been punished, accused, or acquitted on agrarian or political charges were once more, as it were, tried; murders which had no con- ceivable relation to political agitation, as well as some which were both incidental and accidental to the play of human passions in a wide-spread agrarian war, were particularized in every detail; moonlighting outrages, acts of violence of all kinds, threatening letters, maiming of cattle, boycotting in action, in threats, and in dubious resolutions; speeches of every kind and character from deliverances by Mr. Parnell to the vaporings of any drunken village babbler, and in hundreds, were all introduced before the commission with 35 545 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the object of proving that all this crime, intimidation, and incitation to disorder sprang from one source and had one inspiration — namely, the Land League, its leaders and friends. In support of these wholesale accusations hundreds of witnesses were brought over from Ireland — injured persons, threatened persons, frightened persons; peasants from Mayo; cottiers from Kerry; land-grabbers from many places; bailiffs from several estates; land-agents from each province; landlords, ladies who owned land; resident magistrates, jus- tices of the peace, police officers and privates; convicted mur- derers from prison; informers of all kinds, professional spies, government reporters, and one Catholic priest. Then there were the graver charges associated with the contents of the forged letters and the treasonable allegations contained in the " Parnellism and Crime" articles. In these it was freely declared that the Land League was part of the Clan-na-Gael revolutionary conspiracy; that the Invincibles were but a wing of both combined; that Mr. Parnell and others had consorted with the authors of the Phoenix Park murders, had paid money for the perpetration of political crime, were privy to deeds of violence against public buildings in London and elsewhere, and that the grand object of Par- nellism in Parliament, as in the Land-League movement, was to effect the ultimate separation of Ireland from England by the agency of political crime, including the assassination of government officials and a resort to the terrorism of dynamite explosions. This was what we had to face during four months, from October, 1888, to February, 1889, before Pigott was pro- duced. We knew all this time not only who the forger of the letters was, but all about the plot in which he was enlisted as agent by Houston. We were also aware of the thousands of pounds that were being expended by The Times in efforts to buy or to bribe men in Irish, English, and American cities, and certain convicts in various prisons, to come forward and substantiate all or any charges which they knew Pigott and their other agents and witnesses could not sustain. All this mass of testimony flowed on from day to day like an endless stream. There were tales of acts of cruelty inflicted by midnight bands, and stories of brutal murders, with all the added horror of deliberate deeds of vengeance in some in- stances, for the taking of some farm or for some other cause arising out of the human hunger for land where land is the only means of livelihood. It was all sickening and revolting. So would be the letting loose of all the sewers of London, and 546 "THE GREAT INQUISITION" the turning of this filth into the Strand with the object of showing that this filth was a direct result of the work of municipal reformers and agitators against the vested in- terests which stood in the way of an enlightened system of metropolitan drainage. But the purpose of The Times overreached itself in this plan. Irish history did not begin with the Land League in 1878. The agrarian war of Ire- land was then near two hundred and fifty years in exist- ence, and in almost every year of this period the undeni- able wrong and oppression of landlordism, the offspring and agency of confiscation, produced the same crimes and appealed to similar passions in the conflict for the right to live as against the power to tax the means of human existence as a tribute to the interests of triumphant wrong. This was Mr. Parnell's defence, the Land League's reply to its accusers, and, as truth was on our side, it was certain ultimately to win a vindication. Sir Charles Russell towered in personality and in fame as a great lawyer above all the able men engaged in the case. He was a combination of the Celt and the Saxon in some features of his individuality. His sympathies leaned towards Ireland, his ambition towards England. He was in no sense an Irish nationalist, but he had a warm feeling and attachment for the land of his birth. He became a Home-Ruler only when Mr. Gladstone did, but he had taken an earlier interest in the Irish land problem. He visited Kerry and other parts of Ireland during the Land-League struggle in 1880, and wrote a series of informing letters to the London Daily Telegraph, which had some influence in bringing Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party round to what had been Mr. Isaac Butt's views of land reform. These letters were subsequently published in a book as New Views on Ireland. This intimate knowledge of the question, and a keen sympathy with the struggle of the Irish peasant to win a hold for himself on the land, coupled with his reputation as the foremost pleader at the English bar, gave Sir Charles Russell a great advantage over his rival, Sir Richard Webster. The Irishman had a greater intellectual capacity, a far wider knowledge, and a more robust imagination. He had, too, in a conspicuous degree, a greater skill in cross-examination. He dissected his witness, as it were, with his own assent, leading him irresistibly towards the truth which justice sought for, or dealing with him, if perversely misleading, in the severest manner of the counsel who unites the moral func- tions of a judge in the duties of an advocate. He was also, in the strictly legal sense, a great lawyer, and his services to Mr. 547 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Parnell and the Irish movement during the commission were of enormous value. His speech in opening the case for the defence was one of the very best ever dehvered in an EngHsh court of law, and won from the presiding judge the compli- ment, "A great speech, worthy of a great occasion." Sir Richard Webster made up in industry, in a marvellous knowledge of all the intricacies and details of so vast a mass of evidence, and in thorough bull-dog tenacity what his rival gained over him in the higher equipments of personality and profession. Probably no counsel ever employed in a mighty trial of the kind flung so much hard work, earnest study, and partisan enthusiasm into his task as Webster did in serving The Times during this great inquiry. It was im- possible not to admire his truly gigantic labors, no matter what one might think of the political spirit and purpose which inspired them. There was little, if any, humor in the whole proceedings, despite the Irish character of the drama which went on from day to day in the ugly royal courts of justice. The "inquisition" bore a truer relation in its name and pro- ceedings to a tribunal of political torture inflicted by in- tolerable wrong than to any ordinary court of law where an occasional flash of wit may spring from a witness or figure in a lawyer's speech. One genuine "bull," and one only, was, I think, perpetrated during the inquiry, but it had the stamp of originality upon it. A witness who had been examined on one side was discussing the merits of the case with a suspected informer in the employment of the other. Their controversy took place in a public-house, and so heated did it become that one disputant drew out a revolver to support his contention or to repel that of the other. This other fled, and gave up the argument. On being questioned in the court upon the incident, the witness was asked, "Did not you run away?" "I did, faith," was the reply, "for it was better to be a coward for five minutes than to be dead for the rest of me life." CHAPTER XLV PLOTS AND COUNTER PLOTS The general belief that the Unionist government was an ally of The Times in pressing its charges and allegations against Mr. Pamell and party won for us a great deal of practical sympathy from unexpected quarters. It was a powerful combination in an unfair fight, carried on with poisoned weapons, and many persons who were strongly opposed to the league and its leaders were coerced by an honest indignation at so unfair a combat to help us against such unscrupulous tactics and assailants. Assistance came to us from all quarters. Correspondents, anonymous and otherwise, warned us of what Times agents were doing in British, Irish, and American cities, in the way of hunting up witnesses and information. Letters from these agents were sent to us. Documents of all kinds came; in some instances most opportunely and with good results; in others with no object save to offer well-intentioned but useless matter and service. From many government departments, from ex- detectives, and in the later stages of the commission from discarded Times agents, we received evidence and advice which enabled us to checkmate some of the combined moves of our adversary and his ministerial allies. We soon had at our disposal an irregular but most effective intelligence department, with a staff of agents, private detectives, and well-informed correspondents equal to all our requirements. In addition there was the organization of the National League in Ireland, Great Britain, and America, with branches in every chief city and town. The Irish peo- ple and friends of our cause soon placed a fund of thirty or forty thousand pounds at Mr. Parnell's disposal for the defence of himself and colleagues. We thus found ourselves thoroughly well equipped for even an unmatched encounter with the most powerful newspaper in the world and the government of England behind it. All the resources of the secret service of the English Home Office, of Scotland Yard, and of Dublin Castle were at the disposal of The Times. 549 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Nevertheless, we were able to cope with these formidable op- ponents by agencies which our means enabled us to command, many of our most useful instruments being ex-employes of these very departments. Some of the men who had for a time been in the service of Mr. Soames, The Times solicitor, "as secret agents," came into our service afterwards, while at one time a few of his detectives were in our pay. It was, in fact, a case of a la guerre comme la guerre, and there were not many scruples wasted on either side over tampering with the scouts and mercenaries em- ployed by opponents. We were probably sold, too, to Mr. Soames, but not, I think, as fully as we were able to become possessed of many of his plans and a large proportion of the "secrets" for which he had paid big sums of money. Thanks to the friendly aid referred to above, we were en- abled to read, almost as soon as Mr. Soames, all his "code" despatches from the United States and Canada. We easily deciphered these messages, and in this way learned what his agents were doing, all about their plans, and whom they wished to enlist in the battalion of testimony for the purpose of The Times. Some amusing experiences resulted froin this intimate knowledge of our adversary's secrets. A witness was leaving Canada for London, on, we learned, the initiative of Sir C. T., who, in the opinion of this eminent statesman, would give "valuable testimony." We provided a fitting reception for him, having first obtained a full historj'- of his disreputable career. He was met at Queenstown by a de- tective and escorted to London. The detective was sent to offer him " a safe escort." He was conducted to a West End hotel, and liberally provided with champagne. We had all the information in his possession from the successful detective the following day. Another agent of The Times landed in New York, and went straight to the (then) head of the police force of that city, now dead. His mission was disclosed, his plans were dis- cussed, and the amount of money at his disposal was revealed. That night our friends were informed of everything that had transpired at the interview. This was in no sense a breach of police etiquette. The agent from London was not in quest of criminals, nor was he, though a high official of Scotland Yard, on any mission such as would entitle him to a share of international courtesy at the hands of American officials. He was paid to hunt down the political opponents of his London private employers, and the Irishman in the New York police chief's personality was as free to unselfishly serve those he sympathized with as his visitor was to try 550 PLOTS AND COUNTER PLOTS and harm them for the price of a huge retainer. The sequel was disastrous for the agent, if what was subsequently joked about among the New York police force was well founded. Scores of Pamell, Dillon, Sexton, and Davitt letters of a most "compromising character" were offered to the emissary from Scotland Yard. One batch, it is said, was disposed of for five thousand dollars. But this did not end the costly practical joke for the agent. Mr. Blank, it was said, woke up in his hotel, after a previous night's "good time," and found himself minus the purchased documents, with a gentle hint conveyed in a serious letter that the sooner he returned to England the better it would be for his state of health. This sadder and wiser Englishman has, I believe, held strongly to the opinion ever since that the police force of the United States was only one of the many branches of the Land League. One cipher message to Mr. Soames from Colorado gave our experts in reading cryptic cables much trouble. It was not "built" upon any scientific or systematic plan, and was on that account unintelligible to us. It looked formidable, and coming from where we knew Times agents to have been engaged in hunting up Land-League organizers, it was tan- talizing not to know as much as Mr. Soames did about this particular private despatch. It obstinately refused, however, to divulge the secrets represented by words, figures, and hieroglyphics, and we had to cable to agents in New York and Chicago to keep an eye upon Colorado. Fortunately, a dis- tinguished Irishman, a learned embodiment of all the sciences, arrived in London at this time, and the puzzle from Colorado Springs was submitted to him in the despairing hope that, as he was an authority upon almost everything, he might unravel its hidden story. He succeeded after a whole night's labor, and the startling statements which it unfolded gave us a bad quarter of an hour the following morning. The agent's communication informed Mr. Soames that he had had several interviews with Mr. P. J. Sheridan, at the latter 's ranch, at Monte Vista, with the result that Sheridan had shown him (Kirby) a black bag "containing letters of Parnell's, Dillon's, Egan's, Davitt's, and others which will completely sustain The Times charges." Kirby had not seen the letters, but there was no mistake as to the existence of the bag, or, in his opinion, about the resolve of Sheridan to "be even" with the "Clan" and its allies, who, he affirmed, were contemplating his "removal." There was a little question about money in the message. Sheridan v/anted /^2o,ooo — ten thousand down, before starting, and the bal- 551 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND ance after he had given his evidence before the commission in London. This communication caused Mr. Parnell much anxiety and needless alarm. He knew, of course, there could be no compromising letters of the kind described. Sheridan had been, however, unlike Pigott, a Land-League organizer, and had made bunkum speeches in New York about his reputed connection with the Invincibles — speeches which had much more of Byronic bravado than of actual criminality to boast about — and these proflEered letters and statements would tend to increase suspicion even where they could not establish guilt, and would work an all-round mischievous complication. This was the worst and most pessimistic view of the cable from Colorado. I refused to believe a word of Kirby's yarn. Sheridan was not that kind of a man, and I ventured to suggest that it would turn out to be a repetition of the New York "deal" in manufactured documents. I crossed at once to Paris and cabled to Mr. Thomas Brennan, former secretary of the Land League, then resident in Omaha, and to Mr. Alexander Sullivan, of Chicago, a summary of the Kirby despatch, referring to Sheridan, not by name, but in a description which I hoped would clearly indicate who was the person in question. I authorized Mr. Brennan to purchase from Sheridan any letters or books which we could produce before the commission, and any correspondence he might have had with the emissary from Soames. What transpired had better be told in a con- temporary account of the affair as given by Mr. Brennan to the New York Herald: [by telegraph to the herald.] Denver, Col., Jan. ii, 1890. — Thomas Brennan, of Omaha, the first secretary of the Land League in Ireland, and who knows all the inside workings of the league on both sides of the water, furnishes the Herald with a history of how the London Times attempted to bribe Patrick J. Sheridan to be a witness against Parnell, and how Sheridan hoodwinked The Times agent. He says: "On May 6 last I received a cable despatch dated Paris, and although it was unsigned I believed it came from Michael Davitt. This belief was subsequently verified by a messenger from Davitt, who came to this country on the business referred to in the cablegram, the purport of which was that some person on this side had offered to go over to London and give evidence in behalf of The Times before the 552 PLOTS AND COUNTER PLOTS Parnell Commission ; that money had been sent by The Times people to Chicago and Pueblo, Col. He asked me to consult with Patrick Egan on the subject, as he (Davitt) had cabled to him more fully on the matter. On the same day Alexander Sullivan received from Paris an unsigned cable despatch, which I am authorized by Mr. Davitt to say was also sent by him, and which was substantially the same as the one received by me. This despatch Sullivan repeated to Mr. Egan at Lincoln, Neb. "The cable despatch to Egan requested him to see me, and he came to my office at Omaha on May 7th. After a long consultation we were unable to determine who was referred to in the cable despatch as hkely to give evidence. "We remained in ignorance as to the person with whom The Times was negotiating, until both Egan and I were called to New York to meet a messenger from Davitt, when we learned for the first time that the man referred to was P. J. Sheridan, of Colorado. "We were all then at ease, because we had faith in Sheridan. Davitt 's messenger informed us that by a fortunate accident Davitt and his associates had discovered that Kirby, The Times agent, was negotiating with Sheridan, and had re- ported that he could secure that gentleman as a witness for his masters for a consideration of ;^2o,ooo. "It was this discovery that led to the sending of the cable despatches and a messenger already referred to. While we had the most perfect confidence in Sheridan, and knew that if he had met TJie Times agent it was only to ascertain what iniquity The Times proposed, and not to aid it, we deemed it wise that I should visit him and get all the in- formation possible, so as to send it back by the messenger, as I did, instead of trusting it to the mail, which is careftilly watched by the British government. "Mr. Sheridan had kept detailed accounts of his meetings with Kirby and had preserved all the correspondence which had passed between them. He was glad to have an oppor- tunity of supplying the record to friends at home by a trusted messenger, and at once prepared and delivered me a complete history up to that date in the shape of a sworn statement, a copy of which I am glad to furnish you." Sheridan's statement is as follows: "On or about Octo- ber 15, 1888, a gentleman called on me at my ranch at Spring Creek, Monte Vista, Colorado, representing that he wished to purchase my herd of sheep, which he had seen ad- vertised. "After a reference to wool-growing in Colorado, he in- 553 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND troduced himself as a representative of the London Times newspaper, and said, as it was better not to waste words or time, he would come to the point at once and tell me that his friend Joseph Soames, attorney for The Times, had sent him direct from London to see if I had any objection to come to London and testify on behalf of that paper before the Parnell Commission; that they believed that there was no man living who could throw more light on the subject before the commission than I, and that he was armed with plenary powers to come to terms with me and satisfy any demands I might make for my services in giving evidence. " The Times people, he added, did not think I was a cheap man, and did not want me at a low figure. I told the gentleman, who had introduced himself as J. F. Kirby, of Montreal, Canada, to go back and tell his friends that he had not gold enough to buy me even if I had any secrets to sell, which I had not. He apologized and took his departure. The next day he appeared again and said that he did not think he would be justified in going back to London without ex- hausting all the powers vested in him, and that he had carte blanche from The Times to close with me at any figure, pro- vided I went to London and told what I knew before the commission. "In the mean time I had thought over the matter and concluded to get as much information from him as I could, and at the same time fool himself and his employers; so after some conversation I was requested by him to name my price. '"Will The Times give me $100,000 to do this thing?' I asked. "Kirby replied: 'Yes. Provided your evidence is satis- factory you will be paid that amount one hour after your examination closes.' "'What will you consider satisfactory evidence?' I in- quired. '"The Times people w^ant evidence to the effect that Parnell was party to the Phoenix Park murders. He did not instigate them, and your evidence to that effect will be satisfactory.' "'Is the government aiding The Times — defraying the expenses of the commission?' I inquired. "'Not as the government, but as individuals, I presume they are, he replied. "'What guarantee will I have that your people will pay the money in the event of my evidence proving satisfactory?' I asked. "'Before you leave the country Joseph Soames will cable 554 PLOTS AND COUNTER PLOTS a draft on any bank we may agree upon in New York or Chicago in favor of your wife, or whoever else you may name, the same to be paid over as soon as your examination closes, provided it is deemed satisfactory.' '"Well, I guess I don't care for the voyage, anyhow,' I said. 'Could I not give my evidence in this country before a sub-commission ?' '"Yes, but you cannot hope for the protection here you would get in London,' he replied. "We then debated at some length the question of giving evidence before a sub-commission in this country, and I ultimately led him to believe that I would give my evidence before such sub-commission ; and, as such evidence would make it impossible for me to live in my present home, provision was to be made by an advance of ;£io,ooo for my wife and family before the sub-commission sat. I then suggested the advisability of my being posted as to whatever evidence of importance was to be given by other witnesses, in order that mine should be corroborative, or at least non-contra- dictory. "In reply he said that these were serious questions and the answers required to them would be given by Soames as soon as he (Kirby) got back to London, after which he was to return here and perfect arrangements with me. "He closed by saying that he would return to London and consult with Soames, he promising to be back early in December of that year. " Before parting with me we agreed that in any correspond- ence that we might have his address would be in care of J. Donaldson, and he would address me as M. Smart. " Not having heard from him up to January 6, 1889, 1 wrote him in substance as follows: '"I want to know by return mail whether or not you mean to take any further steps. I will not consider myself bound by our contract unless it is attended to at once.' "I sent that communication through Miss Jennie Donald- son, of Ravenswood, near Chicago, Illinois. Having received no reply, on February i8th I wrote him as follows: "'Circumstances have altered since you left here. Your interest demands your speedy return to Colorado.' "I received the following message, of which this is a copy: "'London, March 14, 1889. "To M. Smart, care of P. J. Sheridan, Del Norte, Col.: '"Letters, February 6th and i8th, received. Leave for Alamosa Sunday evening. J. D.' 555 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "I next received from him the following letter, dated New York, March 25, 1889: " 'Arrived per Ems, 3.30 p.m. I leave to-morrow for Denver; due there Friday evening. If possible, try to meet me there on the evening of Friday, or, if you fail to receive this, try and come on Saturday, as it will be very material regarding purchase of ranches and flock. I will be found at the Windsor Hotel, so if you first call at the post-office before coming to the hotel you'll receive the letter addressed to this, telling you that you need not ask at the hotel. "'I send sufficient to cover expenses there from your place. I have no bill but this, and if I went out to get it changed I would lose the mail. I am over here to close the purchase if we can come to terms, but I don't think there is any use to say more until we meet. "'The card you have will be my name on the Windsor books and not the other. If you can't be there before Friday or Saturday wire me to undersigned. '"J. Donaldson, Windsor Hotel, Denver.' "On March 28, 1889, I received the following telegram: " 'Leavittsbury, Ohio. "'M. Smart, care of P. J. Sheridan, Monte Vista, Col: "'Arrive at Pueblo station Friday noon. Meet me. Im- portant. J. D.' "And on the same day I received the following telegram: "'St. Louis. "'M. Smart, care P. J. Sheridan, Monte Vista, Col.: "'Cannot reach Pueblo before Saturday morning. Letter at Del Norte. Leave to-morrow; meet me at station. J. D.' "On March 30, 1889, I received the following telegram: "'Union Depot, Pueblo, Col. "*M. Smart, care P. J. Sheridan, Spring Creek Ranch, Monte Vista, Col.: "'Can you come on to-night's train? To go to Colorado Springs. Answer paid, care station agent. J. D.' "I replied: '"y. Donaldson, care station master, Pueblo, Col.: " * Just returned home. Come by next train to Monte Vista. I will meet you there and explain.' 556 PLOTS AND COUNTER PLOTS "On April 9, 1889, I received the following telegram: "'Pueblo, Col. "'M. Smart, care P. J. Sheridan, Monte Vista, Col.: '"Will you come here to-night? Answer paid. "'J. Donaldson.' "I replied as follows: "'Meet me in Monte Vista on to-morrow's train. I got home this morning only. Can't go to meet you. S.' "I received the following reply: " ' Pueblo, Col. '"P. J. SJteridan, Monte Vista, Col.: '"Reply received. Tell Smart I am agent he saw before; will leave to-night for there. J. Donaldson.' "On April 4, 1889, Kirby again called at my ranch. He commenced our interview by saying that he had re- ceived both my letters forwarded him through the address in Ravenswood and understood at once the meaning of them. "He knew, he said, that I was sentenced to be assassinated, and that he anticipated as much, owing to a mistake made by Soames in his evidence before the commission, when he stated I had offered to go to London and give evidence before the commission for ^^20, 000, and explained that he had called Mr. Soames 's attention to his mistake immediately after he had given evidence. "I then told Kirby it was true that my assassination had been ordered by the Clan-na-Gael and that it would be im- possible for me to give evidence before the sub-commission as arranged in our last interview; that at present I had to have two men armed with Winchester rifles to protect me, and as I could not think now of living in this country I would go to London on condition that The Times would buy my ranch and other property in Colorado for ;^io,ooo, the money to be paid over to my wife before I started for London; ;^io,ooo to be paid me after I had given my evidence, and that I would be guaranteed protection by the English govern- ment. "After some hesitation he consented to my terms, and said he could speak for both The Times and the government in accepting them. "About the nature of my evidence he asked me if it would not be likely to create a sensation and if I did not 557 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND think that after my first day on the witness-stand Parnell would be Hkely to f!y the country. "I repHed that Parnell and his friends would either fly the country or walk into the dock after I had given my evidence. I told him I was desperate and was anxious to get even with the men who had ordered my assassination, therefore I wanted to go to London at once. He said he would im- mediately communicate to The Times the result of our in- terview and request that the money be immediately forwarded. Before parting I asked him to change the name by which he would sign his communications to me in future, and it was arranged he should sign as Smith. "Kirby then went to Pueblo, from where I received several letters excusing his delay in getting money, and laying the blame upon The Times people. "On May 25th I met him in Colorado Springs in obedience to a telegram from him, and appointed a meeting for the following day, when he handed me a list of questions I was to be asked before the commission and requested me to fill in the replies which the questions suggested. "I told him I would not answer such questions until I got to London and was safe under the protection of the English government. "He then asked me to repeat to a Mr. Birch, one of the agents employed by The Times, who had just come over from London the nature, of the contract existing between us, and tell him how far my evidence would be corroborated by the documentary evidence in my possession. This I refused to do, and then Kirby asked me to place Birch in a position of being able to say when he returned to London that he had seen me in Kirby's company, and state that we had arrived at a satis- factory understanding. "This I consented to, when Birch handed me his card and told me he was there as The Times representative. Kirby then stated there was some delay in receiving the money from Chicago, and it was agreed that I should return home and arrange my affairs, and that on the 29th I shotdd return to Colorado Springs with the papers to perfect the transfer of my ranch. "In conclusion, I have to say that I deliberately entered into negotiations with Kirby as The Times representative for the purpose of getting such information as I could from him as to the methods which The Times employs in getting up its case, for the purpose of fooling Kirby and his employers, and with the object of selling my ranch at a good figure when I found he was willing to buv. I have no information to give 'S5S PLOTS AND COUNTER PLOTS that would be useful to The Times or injurious to Mr. Parnell or his friends. "Dated at Monte Vista, Col., this 28th day of May, i88g. "P. J. Sheridan. "Subscribed and sworn to before me this 28th day of May, 1889 — Edward E. Everson, Notary Public." "The statement, with the letters and telegrams referred to, were forwarded to Mr. Davitt June 3, 1889. Since the date of that statement Sheridan has reported to me regularly every movement made by his victim, which I in turn have forwarded to Davitt. It will interest the people in this country to know that Sheridan continued to play with Kirby, and kept him on the anxious seat, even up to so late a date as the last ten days. Sir Henry James's tedious speech before the Parnell Commission was prolonged until it became an unbearable nuisance, in the hope that Kirby would keep his oft -repeated promise and deliver Mr. Sheridan, at the last moment, as a witness for Tlte Times to swear to a lot of stuff which had its only foundation in Kirby's diseased mind."^ Another person who was intelligently interested in behalf of The Times in Mr. Sheridan's opinions and possible action was the late William Henry Hurlbert, one-time editor of the New York World. He wrote a book, Ireland under Coercion, during the sitting of the special commission, which was in- tended to show that Mr. Parnell and the National League, and not Mr. Balfour and Dublin Castle, were the true coer- cionists in Ireland. What the purpose or motive of the book was has remained a mystery. He addressed the following letter to Mr. Sheridan: "12 Southwell Gardens, Cromwell Road, S.W., "April 6, 1889. "Dear Sir, — I do not know how fully or accurately the proceedings taking place now before what is called the 'Parnell Commission' may be reported in America, and I should be much surprised to find that they are reported either accurately or fully there. But if your recollection of a very interesting conversation which I had with you in my office in New York, on an occasion of much importance to yourself, in 1883, is as vivid as is mine, you will quite understand, I am sure, the impulse which prompts me now to invite your serious attention to the elaborate efforts which * New York Herald, January 12, 1890. 559 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND are now making here to convert parliamentary Parnellism from an Irish and revolutionary into a British and Radical organization. Wm. Henry Hurlbert." Mr. Hurlbert 's anxious concern for the interest of a rev- olutionary organization did not apparently awaken a re- sponsive feeling in Mr. Sheridan's mind. There was no reply sent to the letter. CHAPTER XLVI THE CAREER OF RICHARD PIGOTT Edward Caulfield Houston, the employer of Pigott in the "search" for letters which Pigott had forged, was bom in Dublin, and was about twenty-seven years of age when he appeared as a witness before the commission. He was said to be the son of a prison warder. His record was quite in keeping with the part he had played as honest broker in the dealings with Pigott. He had been employed in the early eighties on the staff of the Daily Express, the then pro- landlord organ in Dublin. In this post he assisted the Dublin correspondent of the London Times, the late Dr. Patton, and probably had his first connection with the "Thunderer" of Printing-House Square in this capacity. He was next found as private secretary to a prominent landlord who had pro- jected a scheme for the wholesale planting of Scotch and English tenants on Irish land. This land corporation came to grief, and on the recommendation of Dr. Patton young Houston obtained the secretaryship of a new political or- ganization, called the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union. This body came into existence in 1885 and was described by Houston in his evidence as an "anti-Land-League society." It represented the landlord and Dublin-Castle spirit of opposi- tion to Mr. Gladstone's policy of justice to Ireland, and was financed by the wealthy land-owners, brewers, and dis- tillers of the country. Its headquarters were in Dublin, and Houston, in want of a man who would be best qualified to do the work required by the most malignant of the enemies of the national movement, searched for and found Richard Pigott. The following correspondence will explain how this con- genial colleague in the mission of the Irish Loyal and Pa- triotic Union was discovered and employed: "Liberal Central Association, 41 and 42 Parliament St., S.W., "October 9, 1885. "Sir, — In reply to your letter of the 8th, I beg to say that I shall be glad to see the pamphlet or a proof of it before I am able to promise you any assistance. 36 561 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "Pray believe that in asking this I am not imputing any doubt as to the character of the pamphlet, but there are two or three points connected with Irish legislation to which I should be sorry to commit myself in ignorance. "I am, sir, yours obediently, "(Signed) Richard Grosvenor. " Richard Pigott, Esq., 20 Corrig Avemie, Kingstown, Dublin." " Liberal Central Association, 41 and 42 Parliament St., S.W., " October 13, 1885. " Sir, — I am obliged for your letter of the loth, in which you give a very tempting account of the contents of 3'our pro- posed pamphlet. You must forgive me for saying that, as you are an entire stranger to me, I am unwilling to spend money (not my own) in an undertaking of which I have no opportunity of estimating the value, and I suppose that you could hardly give me a reference, as I assume that latterly your friends have lain among the nationalists; but still I am willing to trust you, and should be glad to know what you estimate would be the cost of printing your pam- phlet, or could we come to terms as to allowing me to see it and having it printed here; or would it be more advisable to have it published in Dublin. "I am, sir, yours obediently, "(Signed) Richard Grosvenor. " R. Pigott, Esq." " Liberal Central Association, 41 and 42 Parliament St., S.W., "October 15, 1885. "Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your lettel" of the 14th. I return you, enclosed. Lord Derby's letter, and will write you further on the other subject to-morrow. "I am, yours faithfully, "(Signed) Richard Grosvenor. " i?. Pigott, Esq." "Parliament Street, S.W., October 19, 1885. " Pigott, Corrig Avenue, Kingstown, Ireland : "H., of Dublin, will see you. Grosvenor." "College Green [Ireland], October 30, 1885. " Pigott, 20 Corrig Avenue, Kingstown : "Shall not be able to see you to-day. H. [Houston]." In November, 1885, immediately after. his interviews with Houston, Pigott published a pamphlet called "Parnellism," 562 THE CAREER OF RICHARD PIGOTT which was a rehash of the articles he had written for various London papers since 1882. It is probable that the money for this publication came from the chief whip of the English Liberal party, through Houston. But be this as it may, this latter person, in his own evidence before the commission, told how he had entered into an agreement with Pigott, after the publishing of the pamphlet, at the rate of a pound per day and expenses "to find documents," and do such other work of that kind as would serve the end of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, which was, in Pigott's ow^n account of his engagement, "to hunt down the Parnellites." No man connected with the press or politics of Dublin could be ignorant of the true character of Pigott. Houston knew well who the man was, in all his reputation, to whom he gave the tempting salary for the search of material which might injure or ruin political opponents. How the forged let- ters were in time produced, purchased by Houston, and pub- lished in The Times, will be presently related. But this son of a Dublin warder had other allies besides Pigott's Liberal patrons in 1885 and The Times in 1887-88. He had, likewise, the assistance of the secret -service department of the home office, then under the direction of Dr. Anderson, a former employe of Dublin Castle. This official accepted the "in- vitation" of Beach, or Le Caron, to give evidence for The Times, and during the examination of the famous spy it was Houston, and not the lawyers employed by The Times, who was in charge of the secret documents which Beach had sent from time to time to the department of which he was a paid secret agent. There was no attempt to deny this collabora- tion; it was open and above-board. But our side alleged, and Sir Charles Russell declared for Mr. Parnell, that he could prove by the books and papers of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, if brought into court, that money out of the secret - service fund voted by Parliament had been con- tributed to Houston and company towards defraying the costs incurred in Pigott's expensive fees and journeys, and in kindred work in the task of destroying the Parnellites and defaming the whole character and purpose of the Irish movement. Information which reached us from more than one well-informed source affirmed that three members of the cabinet of Lord Salisbury during the years 1886-88 w^ere parties to the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union plot; that monej^s were contributed by them, in checks, towards the fund for the purchase of the forged letters ; that the publica- tion of the letters in The Times and the draughting of the bill which created the special commission, with its loaded-dice 563 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND provisions and character, were the direct work of that con- spiracy. On the facts placed before him Sir Charles Russell declared he could have proved all this, and more to the same effect, if the tribunal thus fashioned by his leagued enemies to ruin Mr. Parnell would give him the power to summon witnesses and to obtain access to papers and to books in which this proof was to be found. And it was the refusal of the commission to grant this power which caused the great advocate to advise Mr. Parnell and the other traversers to withdraw from all further part in the one-sided investigation, at a certain stage in its proceedings. Richard Pigott was of obscure origin. His father was a native of the County Meath. Pigott, senior, made his way to Dublin, where he was for some time employed as a clerk in the office of The Tablet, a publication then edited by the late Frederick Lucas. George Pigott, the father of Richard, next obtained a position on the staff of a newspaper called The Monitor, pubhshed in Lower Abbey Street, DubHn, upon premises subsequently occupied by The Nation. It was after the foundation of The Nation, in 1842, that Richard Pigott made his debut in the humble role of an office boy. After some years he transferred his service to a journal published in Belfast by Mr. Denis Holland, The Ulster man. Here he learned a good deal of the business branch of a newspaper office, and when Mr. Holland after- wards changed the name of his newspaper to Tlie IrisJi- man, and transferred the publication office to Dublin, he placed Richard Pigott as manager in charge of the commercial department. The Irishman does not appear to have been a financial success in the hands of its conductors at this period, and Mr. Holland disposed of it to the late Mr. P. J. Smyth, a well-known Irish patriot and politician, who was for some years one of the Irish representatives at Westminster, where he displayed remarkable oratorical abilities. In Mr. Smyth's hands The Irishman was also financially a failure, and about 1865 he transferred its ownership to Richard Pigott for a merely nominal figure. The leaders of the Fenian organization, which was then a powerful movement in Ireland, started an organ of their own, in 1863, called The Irish People. A couple of years later the staff was arrested and the paper was suppressed. This afforded Pigott an opening, which he shrewdly availed himself of by advocating the cause of Fenianism. The result was that the sale of his paper went up at a bound to about fifty thousand a week — a large sale in those days. Many of 564 THE CAREER OF RICHARD PIGOTT the contributions to the paper were ably and vigorously- written in defence of the Fenian prisoners and of the Irish revolutionary movement, and the consequence was that Pigott became, as the owner of such an organ, a very promi- nent personality in the press politics of the time in Ireland. The income which he derived from The Irishman about this period has been estimated at ;^2ooo a year. Pigott 's position as proprietor and editor of the reputed organ of the physical - force party, gave him exceptional opportunities of learning whatever "secrets" belonged to revolutionary bodies. Though never an enrolled Fenian, it was generally believed he was either a member of the "Supreme Council," or, at least, one of the leading lights of the secret organization. He encouraged this belief when speaking or writing to members, or to subordinate officers, in order to be made the repository of a confidence which he could turn to account as opportunity might offer. Pigott was perfectly impartial in his scheming propensities. He found revolutionists and constitutionalists sometimes trusting and then using him, and he made them pay for the attention he bestowed upon them. When the late Mr. Isaac Butt founded the Home -Rule movement, Pigott subjected him and many of his colleagues to a systematic blackmailing. He threatened them with the active opposition of the Fenian organization, declaring that if he were not relieved from his pecuniary difficulties he would be compelled to make terms with others. The sum of ;^iooo was immediately guaran- teed him by Mr. Butt, Mr. Mitchell Henry, and a few other prominent Irish members of Parliament, who were con- sequently lauded in the columns of The Irishman, until its proprietor's next financial embarrassment compelled him to put the screw on again. In Mr. Butt he always found a squeezable friend in need. The father of the Home - Rule League, great lawyer though he was, fell an easy victim through his good -nature to Pigott's plans, and frequently when Mr. Butt, who was himself always poor, had not many pounds to spare, he would share them with this uncon- scionable rogue, who knew so well how to play upon the innate goodness and generosity of the last of Ireland's popu- lar tribunes. While pretending to uphold Mr. Butt's consti- tutional policy, Pigott encouraged honest, but hot-headed, Fenians to organize opposition to the Home- Rule move- ment, and he was largely responsible for the open attack which was made upon Mr. Butt's Limerick meeting in 1876, an act which caused many who had previously believed in Fenianism to become its active opponents afterwards, 565 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Pigott's last performance of this kind, before attempting to exploit the Land League, was to induce the late Lord Francis Conyngham to go guarantee for him for ;^6oo in one of the Dublin banks. From the very inception of the Land League Pigott became its underhand enemy. I never spoke to him but once in his life, and that was in the office of The Irishman, in February, 1878, when, with Messrs. McCarthy, Chambers, and J. P. O'Brien, we called to thank him for his paper's support of the efforts which Butt, O'Connor Power, and other Irish members of Parliament had been making to obtain our release. We had already called for a similar purpose upon the editors of the Freeman's Journal and The Nation. I had, however, once written to Pigott. It was from Dartmoor Prison. The note so written has now a history. After many years' im- prisonment a friendly warder was found. I had matured a long-cherished plan of escape, in which at that time lay the only hope of ever regaining liberty, as declining health precluded the possibility of my being able to work out the whole of my sentence of fifteen years. A little money was wanted, and the idea of turning "prison poet," with the view of earning, rather than asking for, the money, suggested itself. The verses were sent surreptitiously to The IrisJinian, with a note explaining that the writer needed a few pounds for a particular purpose. The few pounds never came; but the note, according to Pigott's confession to Mr. Labouchere, was the inspiration of the letter which Pigott afterwards forged for the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, and which Mr. Soames swore was in the handwriting of Mr. Davitt ! The virtual collapse of the Home -Rule League, with the death of Mr. Butt, took from Pigott one means of raising the needful for himself and his declining papers. He was practically bankrupt in money and in influence when the Land League came into existence in 1879. The circulation of The Irishman had gone down almost to zero, and Pigott's character and reputation had followed suit. All Dublin knew of his scheming, borrowing and blackmailing prac- tices. His credit, pecuniary and political, was gone, and it was only a question of a short time until his papers would disappear too. He attacked the Land League in his paper The Flag of Ireland, and encouraged many well-known Fenians to support him. All this was done for a purpose. Pigott was playing the old game of intimidation as a means of raising the wind. I regret to have to say he did not altogether play in vain. Mr. Parnell became alarmed. So did a few more of the 566 THE CAREER OF RICHARD PIGOTT prominent Land-Leaguers, and when, a few months subse- quently, Pigott made a demand for money from the treas- urer, Mr. Egan, a sum of ;;^25o was paid with the consent of Mr. Parnell, notwithstanding an undertaking which had been given to Mr. Thomas Brennan and to myself that the threats or demands of the proprietor of The Irishman would be unheeded. The way in which Pigott .succeeded in obtaining this re- lief was thoroughly characteristic of the man. During the months of August and September of 1880 he modified the tone of his papers towards the Land-League agitation. Mr. Parnell was occasionally lauded. Mr. Egan came in for ju- dicious praise also, and something good for the country was predicted as a result of the uprising of the people against landlordism. In October Pigott sent for Mr. Egan, and, in apparent anxiety, showed him a "special order" which he declared had been served upon him by the executive of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. It was a printed document — printed in the office of The Irishman, as the original copy, in Pigott 's own handwriting, has fallen into my hands, and places this fact beyond all dispute. It read as follows: "I. R. B. " Special Order, No. i (New Series). " I. The Irishman newspaper and its auxiliary. The Flag of Ireland, and the writings of these journals, should be in full accord with the aspirations of those whom they claim to represent — the men who are laboring for the restoration of Ireland's national independence. "2. For a number of years the proprietor and conductor of those journals has outraged the feelings of those in whose name said journals lived, moved, and had their being, by supporting every adventurer who appeared on the stage of Irish politics, from Butt to Parnell. "3. Recent writings of these journals in question, in prop- ping up a socialistic movement headed by Land-League agi- tators, are calculated to mislead the public, and to bring the name of nationality into disrepute, because the inference will be drawn that an alliance has been formed with the national party and the designing knaves who are aided by those jour- nals, and endeavoring to trade on their name. " 4. Now it is hereby ordered that an end be put to such treasonable proceedings, and that Mr. Richard Pigott, as pro- prietor and editor of The Irishman and The Flag of Ireland, be commanded to resume its advocacy to the national cause, and to eschew all moral - force doctrines from the columns 567 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND of said journals, or change the names of the papers for others, to be approved of by the executive authority who issue this order. "5. That this order be enforced by the general in command of the district in which the aforesaid journals are published, and due notice be given to the proprietor of the journals re- ferred to, and all whom it may concern. That this command herein named shall be complied with on and after the ist day of November next, one thousand eight hundred and eighty. " 6. The penalty of refusal is the forfeiture of the life of the said Richard Pigott." It is inconceivable that a man who was so well informed of Pigott 's past exploits as Mr. Egan could have been deceived as to the real authorship and purport of this document. He doubtless saw through the whole of it, and was influenced solely in making the grant of money to Pigott by a desire to stop him from inciting the Fenians to attack the Land League. Pigott agreed, in consideration of the ;(^2 5o, not to allow his papers to be made the medium of opposition to the league, but, needless to add, the agreement was not carried out. Pigott had found his way, as he thought, to the exchequer of the movement, and as his necessities were a constant exercise to his talent for roguery, his demands for money became constant. Meanwhile the Land League was growing in influence and power. The organization began to embrace the whole country, while an auxiliary league was being formed in America and Canada, from which large remittances were made every week to sustain the fight against landlordism. In the language of Sir Stafford Northcote, the Land League had become "the de facto government of Ireland" at the beginning of 1881. Its enemies, naturally enough, were alarmed at the extraordinary spread of the agitation, but especially at the growth of its financial resources. The landlord press in Ireland, and the hostile English press, began the game of assailing the administration of the funds of the league. The agitators were declared to be misappro- priating moneys sent for the relief of evicted tenants; members of Parliament were charged with helping themselves liberally out of the league treasury, and so on; the object of these calumnious statements being to sow distrust in the public mind as' to the honesty of purpose of the leaders of the league. Pigott was not slow to avail himself of the means which this line of attack offered to his blackmailing practices. He 568 THE CAREER OF RICHARD PIGOTT wrote to Mr. Egan, informing him that "two strangers," whom he suspected of being "emissaries of DubHn Castle," had called upon him, and had offered him a sum of ;£5oo if he would publish a certain document in The Irishman which was to be an expose of the squandering of the moneys of the league. It was from this correspondence between Pigott and Mr. Egan we may date the origin of the conspiracy which eventuated in the publication of " Parnellism and Crime." It was, likewise, as if in retributive compensation, from the letters written by Pigott on this occasion and shortly after- wards, when The Irishman was sold to Messrs. Parnell and Egan, that the authorship of the forged letters was first dis- covered by Mr. Patrick Egan. In a letter dated February 27, 1881, Pigott told the follow- ing story: ' ' I received an anonymous letter saying that two gentlemen would call upon me and make a proposition, which, if I accept, will turn out greatly to my advantage. They came last Monday evening. The interview lasted a couple of hours, and, to make a long story short, they asked me to publish a statement in The Irishman, which they showed me, and stated that I might name my own price for doing so. . . . The thing purports to be a true statement of the expenditure of the league funds, and is, I think, an outrageous libel from beginning to end. It, however, makes very circumstantial charges, mentions names, gives dates, etc. . . . My own opinion is that the whole affair is a tissue of falsehoods; but it is so artfully done, and so apparently truthful, that its publication would, I think, be likely to do much harm." How well the description of this plot of 1881, given by the man who was practically the author of the " Parnellism and Crime " articles of 1887, tallies with the plan and purpose of the Houston-Pigott fabrications which produced the Par- nell Commission! Pigott went on to say, in the same letter: "But I have also ascertained certain things which make me conclude that the moving spirits of tlie affair are Castle people"; the writer winding up with a request that Mr. Egan should forward him ;^3oo to relieve him from pecuniary difficulties, which otherwise might tempt him to accept the money of the "two mysterious emissaries" from Dublin Castle. Mr. Egan, who was at this time in Paris, wrote a brief acknowledgment of Pigott 's communication, to which the latter replied on March gth, in a further letter, from which the following are abstracts: "The publication of the statement would be very damaging to the league, even though it may be proved to be mainly 569 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND built up of fabrication. . . . My reasons for thinking that the Castle people (the Irish government) are the prime movers is that articles have appeared in the Express with much the same tendency. . . . Now you will see from the enclosed note that if I publish this dociiment I will get ^^500, and will not be required to vouch for the correctness of any of the statements it contains. To come to the point, I am in desperate straits. I must have money somehow, or throw up the sponge at once. I cannot afford to let so lucky a chance pass of saving myself literally from ruin. No matter what the consequences are, I must and will take this offer unless you come to my assistance." The "note" to which reference is made in this letter, and which Pigott asserts was sent to him by the Castle agents, was as follows: "5- 3- '81. "Your decision is still anxiously awaited. You are not re- quired to authenticate any of the statements made. You may even throw doubt upon them, and invite contradiction. You are only asked to print this document. Will wait another week for your answer, and if you agree to publish, ;^5oo will be lodged to your credit in any bank you please, in Dublin or elsewhere." To this letter Mr. Egan replied on March 11, 1881, as follows : "Sir, — As I understand your letter, which reached me to- day, it is a threat that unless I forward you money by Monday next you will close with the government, and, in consideration of a sum of ;^5oo, publish for them certain documents which you believe to be false against the league. Be it so. Under any circumstances I have no power to so apply any of the funds of the league; but even if I had the power, I would not, under any circumstances, act upon it. Whenever any such accusations are made we will know how to defend ourselves." No sooner had Pigott disposed of his papers, in the ill- advised purchase of them by Messrs. Parnell and Egan in August, 1 88 1, than he began to put into execution the scheme of defamation which had been "suggested" to him in the February previous. He became the inspiration or the author of most of the attacks made upon the Land League for its falsely alleged identity with outrage and malversa- tion of funds which appeared in leading landlord and Tory organs in Dublin and London from 1881 to the publication 570 THE CAREER OF RICHARD PIGOTT of " Pamellism and Crime." And it is only right to say that, years previous to the printing of these hbels in The Times, articles similar in character were contributed by Pigott to such papers as the Dublin Daily Express, the (London) Standard, St. James's Gazette, Evening News, Morning Post, The Globe, society journals like Vanity Fair, and other organs of anti-Irish opinion. From December, i88t, down to the time in 1885 when Houston employed him to write an en- larged edition of the pamphlet " Parnellism," Pigott kept up a ceaseless attack upon the league and the Irish leaders in the columns of the above papers. The following extracts from a diary of Pigott's, found after his suicide, will indicate the kind of work which he performed for the St. James's Gazette: 1883. March 19. Sent notes. 31. One-column article. 1884. March 17. Sent notes. 25. Sent notes, Davitt and Harrington. " 26. Impartial reporting. " 31. Parnell and ;^4o,ooo. April 13. Arrests alleged dynamiters in London. " 22. Notes on dynamite. May I. On Stephens and franchise. " 2. Notes on Gladstone. " 5. Article on Davitt 's return. " 27. Leader, " Invincibles and Vigilants." June 2. Notes, "O'Brien's Fine" (3). 23. Barbavilla murder (4). August 16. Notes, "Boston Conference." 29. Leader, "A Celebrity at Home." " 30. Notes, "Justice in Ireland." Nov. 20. Leader and notes. 25. Leader, "Joe Poole." " 27. Leader, "Earl Spencer." " 30. Attack on Hussey. The diary further records the following among the many contributions which he made to the London Evening News (now the Evening News and Post): March 16. Sent leader, "Irish Patriots and their Parties. " 23. Sent leader, "Parnellism." 27. Sent leader, "Irish Rivals." April I. Leader on "Dynamiters and Assassination." 571 " 28. " 30- May 4- 9- " IS- June 6. Nov. 23- THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND April 4. Leader on " Invincibles." 13. Article, "Late Arrests, Dynamiters in London." 16. Leader, " Parnellites at Loggerheads." " 20. Article, "Incidents in Ireland." Irish Republicans. Notes, "Gladstone for Mayo." Notes, "Gladstone and Home Rule." Notes, "League Conventions." Notes, Parnellites. Two leaders. Leader and notes. The St. James's Gazette remitted him a total of ;^i32 2s. 6d. for ten months' contributions alone. It was while thus employed as "dynamite revelationist " for the leading London journals that Pigott was called upon by Houston, as already related, and engaged as salaried agent of the anti - Land - League combination. The recom- pense was tempting and the work congenial to the man who had already recommended his wares to Liberal and Tory enemies of the Parnell movement impartially. After re- issuing his pamphlet, he started out in his quest for "facts" more damaging still than those which he had already prof- itably retailed to the political and newspaper caterers for calumnious matter against the hapless Irish cause. And, as heretofore, and like every other unscrupulous mercenary and spy in the pay of Pamell's enemies, Pigott bent his steps towards — Kasey, of Paris, and Eugene Davis. This was the general emporium for "plots," "secrets," "revolutionary designs," and "treasonable" documents, and it was to this source the new agent of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union turned his face in order to find the alleged proofs that John Devoy, of New York, as affirmed in the pamphlet " Par- nellism " was "the chief originator of the Invincibles." Davis resided at Lausanne in Switzerland, and thither Pigott went. He had repeated interviews with his friend, and returned to Paris. As a result of his talks with Davis, he met some agents of the Clan-na-Gael in Paris, who chanced to be in the city, and learned from them that a black bag, which had belonged to Frank Byrne, who had been im- plicated in the "Invincible" conspiracy, had been left behind when he departed for America in 1883. In this bag a bundle of letters was found — letters of Mr. Parnell, of Mr. Patrick Egan, and others — all directly implicating these in the Phoenix Park murders and in other Invincible designs of a treasonable and murderous character. The agents were 572 THE CAREER OF RICHARD PIGOTT good enough to allow Pigott to copy some of the documents, and Houston was in due course made acquainted with the damnatory nature of the evidence therein contained against the leader and treasurer and organization of the Land League. It transpired, however, that the letters could not be de- livered up except on an order from a certain person in New York named John Breslin; and Pigott suggested to Houston that he (Pigott) should cross the Atlantic for the open sesame authority of Mr. Breslin. An assent was given to this pro- posal, and Pigott, under an assumed name, sailed for New York from Liverpool per the Aiirania on May i, 1886. Breaking away for a moment from Pigott's yarn to Houston, it transpired, on inquiries which I made in New York sub- sequently, that Pigott had fallen into the hands of a gang of sharpers while he was pretending to seek a man to whom he would have been afraid to speak, the late Mr. John J. Breslin, who had rescued the Fenian military prisoners from West Australia in the middle seventies. The following let- ter will explain the kind of "conspirators" Houston's emis- sary associated with in the great Manhattan city: " Mayor's Office, New York, "May 20, 1886, ''Richard Pigott, Esq., of Kingstown, Dublin: "Dear Sir, — On behalf of the mayor I desire to reply to your letter of the 19th inst., and am requested by him to say that the matter has been referred to the police depart- ment for immediate attention. Should the detective force be able to trace the confidence men, you will be notified. "Yours respectfully, "(Signed) Wm. Le Snoued, Secretary." It may also be added here that five days after Pigott sailed back for Europe, the first sensational article revealing cer- tain Clan-na-Gael "secrets" and dissensions, which were sub- sequently used in the preparation of the " Parnellism and Crime" literature for the London Times, appeared in the New York Times. These articles I have found carefully placed in Pigott's scrap-books, along with copies of his con- tributions to The Times and other London papers on similar subjects. On Pigott's return to Paris, "Murphy and Brown," the ubiquitous agents of the "Clan," appeared again in that city, and were opportunely able to discuss the business side of the Parnell and Egan letters with the man who had brought the Breslin sanction for their delivery from New York. Their 573 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND terms were put before Houston, and he, in company with a Professor Maguire, of Trinity College, Dublin, went to Paris to hand over the money which would gain them possession of the coveted documents. This was in July. They put up in the Hotel des Deux Mondes, and Pigott brought them the letters, saying that the "Clan" agents were down below awaiting the payment of the ;)(^5oo which had been agreed upon as the price. The professor handed the money to Houston, who paid it to Pigott, who then rejoined the "agents," and disappeared. The ;;^5oo covered the bargain for the documents, but up to this time a sum of over ;^iooo had been paid by Houston to Pigott for expenses, information, and other work, since the November previous. That would be at the rate of ;^i5o per month. It was in every respect a golden engagement for the ex-editor of The Irishman. In Houston's evidence he swore that he had borrowed the money for Pigott 's remuneration and expenses in ne- gotiating the letters from Professor Maguire, Sir Roland Ponsonby Blennerhassett, and Mr. Jonathan Hogg, of Dublin, leading lights of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union. In bargaining with Pigott for the letters, it was agreed that Houston should keep private the source whence they were obtained, and the adroit secretary of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union took the precaution, immediately on the passing of the special commission bill, to destroy all his cor- respondence with Richard Pigott. For six months (after July, 1886) Houston hawked the letters round London. Prominent politicians and one or two editors were shown them. We were informed that they had been loaned to a person who took them to Rome, where they were seen by the cardinal secretary of the Propaganda. This was about a year previous to the edict against the "plan of campaign" being published in The Times before it had been communicated to the Catholic bishops of Ireland. Finally, Mr. Houston disposed of the letters, in their various batches, to The Times, obtaining for .them a sum of some ;£20oo; and their publication, as already related, together with the proceedings in the case of O'Donnell I's. Walter, led to the events which called the special commission into existence. I learned from one Joseph Casey, of Paris, that he was asked by Pigott to go with him to a cafe close to the Hotel des Deux Mondes, on a day corresponding with the date of Houston's and Maguire's visit. Joseph Casey declared that he knew nothing of Pigott 's business with the two travellers. No other person accompanied them. 574 THE CAREER OF RICHARD PIGOTT Shortly before the opening of the commission Pigott wrote the following letter to this Joseph Casey; "ii Sandycove Avenue, Kingstown, October 3, 1888. "Dear Mr. Casey, — I would ask you to let me know in the strictest confidence, and solely for my own information, if you have heard anything further from [Eugene] Davis and his expected appearance before the commission. I may tell you in confidence that I have reason to believe he is in a very dangerous position just now, and that the danger may extend to some of his most intimate friends. "Yours faithfully, "Richard Pigott." At this time Eugene Davis was assisting Mr. Parnell and myself to unravel the "Parnellism and Crime" plot in which he had played, as Pigott's, Hayes's, and Major Yellow's boon companion in Paris, in drunken intercourse, a part of which he had cause to be thoroughly ashamed. This knowledge had reached Pigott, and is certain to have had something to do with his confession to Parnell, at Mr. Labouchere's, three weeks subsequent to the writing of the above letter. In his talks with Houston, Pigott had made Davis the pivot of the "compromising letters." His alleged revelations at Lausanne gave the key and inspiration to the "search " which ultimately "discovered" them. The appearance of Davis as a witness for Parnell would therefore explode the whole fabrication. CHAPTER XLVII PIGOTT'S CONFESSION AND SUICIDE The advent of Pigott on the witness-stand was the event of the commission. For fifty-three sittings of the court we had waited for him, knowing he was the forger, and the foiis et origo of the whole dastardly plot; facts equally well known to our accusers, and giving them, therefore, fifty-four reasons why they should keep him back, by hook or by crook, as long as possible. On stepping into the box, Mr. Parnell re- marked, quite audibly, "The rat caught in the trap at last!" Pigott 's appearance would not suggest the character of an unmitigated scoundrel. Rather the contrary; for his bald head, white beard and mustache, respectable attire, eye- glass conspicuously displayed, and an age of fifty-four years, would be more in keeping with the bearing and presentment of a secretary of some benevolent institution or of a retired, wealthy trader. A closer inspection of the face and eyes revealed, however, those latent qualities and dominant passions which go to the make-up of the human puzzles in educated depravity who are led by some aberration of their moral nature to devote ten times more talent and in- telligent energy in committing crime than would suffice to win an honored position among their fellow-men if directed to the easier task of making an honest livelihood. The small, protruding eyes, fleshy nose, and flabby mouth; the thin, caressing voice, and the sly and shifty expression of the face, were keys to the character and life which were about to be dissected under the merciless hand of the man who sat watching him from the counsel's bench as a hawk would watch a doomed prey. Russell took no note of Pigott 's direct evidence. He had heard the story of the hunt for, and the sale of, the letters in Houston's testimony, and he wanted nothing but the end of the tissue of perjured state- ments that would put the miserable instrument of a base plot at his mercy. The witness concluded at last. Sir Richard Webster sat down, and a hush fell upon the court. 576 PIGOTT'S CONFESSION AND SUICIDE Russell was on his feet in an instant with a large sheet of paper and a quill pen in his hand : "Mr. Pigott, take this pen and paper, and write me down a few words," was spoken in tones of command, and with hand stretched towards the witness, which told the audience and the man on whom all eyes were fixed what was coming. Pigott took the paper and pen mechanically, and waited. "Write me down 'likelihood,' 'livelihood,' ' proselytism,' and your own name, and 'Patrick Egan'"; Russell pausing after each word, to give time to the witness to do what he was told; "and " (as if a mere after-thought) " the word 'hesi- tancy.' " Not a sound was heard in the stilled court while this dramatic scene was being enacted. The words were written as ordered, and the paper was returned to Russell. He glanced eagerly at the performance, and just a faint glitter in the eyes denoted a look of triumph as he saw that the last word was spelled "hesitency," as in one of the forged letters. Then followed a few questions relating to a correspondence which Pigott had with Parnell and Egan over the ill-advised purchase of The Irishman newspaper, in 1881. The witness was cautious and non-committal in his replies, becoming a little more self-possessed, and nerving himself for the ordeal through which he had to pass. Suddenly, however, all this manner changed when he was asked: "Had you a private correspondence with Archbishop Walsh in 1887?" A look of terror came over the face, the hand shot up ner- vously to the beard, as a shaky voice replied: "Yes, but it was a correspondence under the seal of the confessional!" Judge Day, who was a Catholic, burst into laughter at this answer, while Russell, with a look of ferocious contempt, made a scornful gesture which plainly said, "Don't tell that lie to an Irish Catholic like me." Then a drawer in front of Russell flew open, and out came a packet of papers. They were copies of letters written by Dr. Walsh to Pigott in 1887, in reply to communications which the wretched man had made, in which he spoke of a plot to ruin Parnell; of alleged incriminatory letters to be published (four days before the appearance of the first forged letter in The Times), and asking the archbishop's ad- vice how he (Pigott) could warn the Irish leaders of the machinations of their enemies! Russell had not confided even to Parnell the fact that Dr. Walsh had sent him these proofs of Pigott 's intimate knowledge of the Houston plot, 37 577 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND and the line of examination which they disclosed was as great a surprise to us all as it was a thunderbolt in the camp of the forger and his backers. The production of these letters knocked Pigott to pieces. He went from one transparently perjured statement to another, in a helpless, floundering at- tempt to make some stand against his remorseless assailant, who metaphorically flayed him as a butcher would strip the carcass of a slaughtered calf. He could not say; he had forgotten; he was not sure; his memory was bad; his letters were marked private and confidential: "the archbishop has deceived me"; he must have meant something else; he could not be referring to The Times letters; he did not know, and so on, in like manner, until finally he got on the ground that what he alluded to in his letters to the archbishop must have been something "far more serious than The Times letters." "Very well. What was it?" came from the terrible voice which held its prey under the spell of a resistless power. He could not remember, he had forgotten, he — "Is it hermetically sealed up in your bosom?" "No," came from the almost paralyzed victim, "for it has flown out of my bosom completely," at which reply the whole court, judges and audience alike, roared in contemptu- ous laughter. And the first day's performance of Richard Pigott in the great inquisition came to a close. Pigott wrote to his housekeeper that night and told her, "Our worthy archbishop has ruined me and my children." Why he ever mustered up sufficient courage to face Russell the next day has puzzled those who knew Pigott intimately. The explanation was found in Russell's masterly manage- ment of the witness and of the facts at his disposal. He had not yet taken him over the ground of the forged letters, and until Pigott had again, and in cross-examination, sworn to the genuineness of the forgery, so as to give that testimony on oath, that would affirm once more "the innocence" of The Times in having been deceived by Houston's agent, he was compelled to remain. Pigott had not enough money with which to fly on Thursday night, February 21st, so he had no alternative but to face the ordeal again on Friday morning. Utterly broken as he was after his first day's experience, he put on a bold front for a short time and attempted to retrieve the disastrous effect which the disclosures in Dr. Walsh's letters had upon his testimony. Russell never hurried nor harried him. He gave him full time and free scope for the employment of every evasive expedient, watch- ing and waiting for the inevitable opening in the wriggling evidence into which would dart the thrust of an unerring 578 PIGOTT'S CONFESSION AND SUICIDE lance. He led him from the archbishop's letters to those of Mr. Patrick Egan's of the year 1881. This entire cor- respondence had been published by Mr. Egan at the time, but Pigott appeared to have forgotten the fact. The letters were an attempt on Pigott's part to obtain money under false pretences from the Land League. He represented that Dublin Castle had sent agents to him, to offer him money for the publication in The Irishman and The Flag of Ireland of attacks upon the Land League, and of disclosures that would do much harm to the league and Parnell. Mr. Egan saw through the whole subterfuge and refused to advance a shilling, telling his correspondent bluntly that he might close with " the mysterious visitors," for aught he cared. The Land League had nothing to fear. In one of the letters sent to Mr. Egan, Pigott enclosed a slip of paper which, ac- cording to his account, the Castle emissaries had handed to him as an ultimatum. Egan not only carefully kept the whole correspondence, but this slip of paper, too, which in handwrit- ing and in the use of certain phrases bore a striking resem- blance to the penmanship and wording of one of the letters published in The Times in the year 1887. Russell toyed for a few minutes v/ith a slip of paper which he held in his hand; then, with a stern gesture, he handed it to Pigott, saying: "Do you know that handwriting?" It was the identical slip Pigott had sent to Egan in 1881! "No," was the reply, but the face grew paler and the voice was a contradiction of the perjured lie. Once again the witness was mentally collapsing under the merciless fire of Russell's questions. Next he was asked to look at two letters: one was dated "Paris, June 18, 1881," and read as follows: "Dear Sir, — Your two letters of 12th and 15th inst. are duly to hand, and I am also in receipt of communications from Mr. Parnell, informing me that he has acted upon my suggestion and accepted the offer made in vour first letter. "P. Egan." This was a genuine letter, and related to the negotiation for the sale of Pigott's papers in that year. The next was the forged letter which appeared in The Times as one of the batch published in " Parnellism and Crime," 1887: June 18, 1881. "Dear Sir, — Your two letters of the 12th and 15th are duly to hand, and I am also in receipt of communications 579 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND from Parnell, informing me that he has acted upon my suggestions and accepted the offer made by B. You had better at once proceed to Dundalk, so that there may be no lost time. Yours faithfully, "P. Egan." "What do you say about those letters, Mr. Pigott?" asked Russell, in a caressing kind of way. "Very remarkable, indeed," was the mechanical reply of the now thoroughly muddled witness. But Russell, who was revelling in his splendid work, began to play with his victim as a cat might play with a mouse, resorted to his snuff-box, as if in search of some new secret, and, leaning forward, put Pigott this innocent question: " If you wanted to forge a letter, Mr. Pigott, how would you proceed to do it?" And here followed this series of questions and replies: Q. "Would it be any help to you to have before you a letter of the man concerned?" — -4. "I suppose so." Q. "How would you use it?" — A. "Take a copy, of course." Q. " How would you proceed to do so?" — .4. " I can't say; I don't pretend to any experience of that kind." 0. " But let us know how you would set about it?" — A. " I decline to put myself in that position at all." Q. "Yes, but speaking theoretically?" — .4. "I don't see any good in discussing the theory." Q. " Let me suggest, now. Would you, for instance, put delicate tissue-paper over the letter? — would you, in fact, trace it?" — A. " I suppose so. How would you do it?" Q. "No; I'm asking you. Supposing you put delicate tissue-paper over the genuine letter, that would enable you to reproduce its character, would it not?" — -4. "Yes, that is the way." Q. " How do you know?" — .4 . " Well, I suppose it would be the most easy way." Q. " How do you know? Have you tried?" — .4. "No, but I suppose so." Q. "Is Mr. Parn ell's signature a difficult signature to imitate?" — .4. "I do not know." Q. "But what do you think?" — .4. "It is a peculiar signature." Q. "You mean it is a strongly marked one? Well, do you think it would be easy?" — .4. "I am not competent to give an opinion. What is your opinion?" Q. "I am very anxious to have yours. Would you think 580 PIGOTT'S COxNFESSION AND SUICIDE it a difficult or an easy signature to imitate?" — ^4. "Con- sidering its peculiarities I should say difficult." Q. "More difficult than a free, flowing signature?" — ^4. "I think so." The forged letter which induced Russell to ask Pigott to write the word " hesitancy " was supposed to have been written in Kilmainham Prison, and was as follows: "9, I, '82. " Dear E , — What are those fellows waiting for? This inaction is inexcusable ; our best men are in prison, and nothing is being done. "Let there be an end of this hesitency. Prompt action is called for. You undertook to make it hot for old Forster & Co. Let us have some evidence of your power to do so. " My health is good, thanks. Yours very truly, "Chas. S. Parnell." Here is how Russell put Pigott through a spelling-lesson, the point in the questioning being the possession by Russell of a genuine letter of Pigott's, written in 1881, with the word "hesitancy" spelled as in the forged letter and on the sheet of paper written upon by Pigott the previous day : Q. "Among the words you wrote down yesterday at my request is the word 'hesitancy.' Is that a word you are accustomed to use?" — A. "I often have used it." Q. "Well, you spelled it as it is not ordinarily spelled." — .4. "Yes, I fancy I made a mistake in spelling it." Q. "What was the mistake?" — .4. "I used an 'a' in- stead of an 'e' — no, I mean I — well, I'm not sure what the mistake was." Q. "I'll tell you what was wrong. You spelled it with an 'e' instead of an 'a.' H-e-s-i-t-e-n-c-y is not the recognized spelling, I think. Now, have you noticed that the writer of the body of the letter of January 9, 1882, makes the same mistake?" — .4. "Yes, it has often been pointed out to me. In fact, I think I had, owing to this having been pointed out to me, got the mistake thoroughly into my head. But everybody spells the word wrong." The continued exposure of the witness after this was a process of slaying the slain. He was plunging deeper than ever in a maze of perjury, pursued from point to point, from lie to lie, with relentless persistency until the whole per- formance became almost painful in the exhibitions of tort- uous and hopeless efforts on Pigott's part to make the semblance of a stand on some plausible pretext that he could not be the forger. His letters to Mr. W. E. Forster, 581 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND during "Buckshot's" chief secretaryship, revealed even a deeper spirit of knavery in the witness than in the expose of the Egan letters. He combined the informer, sycophant, hypocrite, and blackmailer in his self-revealed character. It was with a sentiment of loathing, but in a spirit of con- scious victory over this creature and his employers, that Russell flung him, as it were, reeking with perjured falsehoods and the slime of exposed infamy, at The Times side, in re- suming his seat after the greatest and most triumphant piece of cross-examination ever witnessed in a court of law. There were many tactical blunders committed on both sides during the prolonged investigation, but Mr. Parnell's consenting to meet Pigott in Mr. Labouchere's house, and the following day in Mr. Lewis's office, was the greatest. Had TJic 'Times, Houston & Co., played the card thus thought- lessly put in their hands, the results would have been disastrous to our side. Up to that time (October 25, 1888), Pigott was under subpoena from Lewis only. He was a Parnell, not a Times, witness, in the sense that one side had served him with a summons to attend, while the other had not. He was daily and nightly followed by private detectives in the employment of both sides, and all his movements were watched and recorded. On the morning after the interview, Parnell came early to my hotel, and was much elated. "He has confessed!" he exclaimed on entering the room. "To whom?" "At Labouchere's, last night. I was present — " "Good Heavens! You don't mean to say that you gave yourself away like that to the enemy?" "How could I give myself away?" "Unless The Times people are more stupid than we believe them to be this is what will happen: They know as well as we do that Pigott is the forger. He will report all kinds of statements to them about the interview, and The Times will give him ;^50oo to go to some distant place of conceal- ment. When the time for his appearance in the witness- box arrives, their private detectives will swear he was last seen entering Labouchere's house, where you followed him, and leaving it after a long stay there in your company. The obvious inference will be that you bribed him to vanish, and long before the truth can assert itself the mass of the public will have made up their minds against you." Mr. Parnell's good spirits fell some degrees at this prospect, and he resolved he would risk no more interviews with Pigott, and he did not. 582 PIGOTT'S CONFESSION AND SUICIDE It transpired afterwards that this interview was first sug- gested by Sinclair, the detective, to Pigott, at the latter's home in Kingstown. According to a letter to Houston, which was read in court after Pigott 's flight, the chief organizer of the anti - Parnell conspiracy and Mr. Soames, The Times attorney, approved of Sinclair's suggestion and were privy to the presence of Pigott at the meeting in Grosvenor Gardens. An erroneous impression about this meeting has served the ends of many newspaper stories since the event occurred. Writers have drawn a graphic picture of the wretched forger making his way to Mr. Labouchere's more recent residence, in Palace Yard, Westminster, meeting the Irish leader there, then "vanishing into space," to be heard of no more until a shot from a revolver in Madrid adds a suicide's fate to the final chapter of a life of unique deception. Dates and houses are alike very much mixed up in this popular version of the actual facts. The interview in question took place, as already related, on October 25, 1888, a few days after the opening of the com- mission. Mr. Labouchere resided at that time in Grosvenor Gardens, near Victoria Railway Station, London. It was four months afterwards, on Saturday, February 23d, in the same house, that Pigott, broken and terrified after the previous day's cross-examination by Russell, turned up to see Mr. Labouchere, and eager to make a full and signed confession of the forgeries. Neither Mr. Parnell nor George Lewis was present. George Augustus Sala was,* he having ' "At length Mr. Pigott stood up and came forward into the Hght, by the side of Mr. Labouchere's writing-table. He did not change color; he did not blench; but when — out of the fulness of his heart, no doubt — his motith spake, it was in a low, half-musing tone, more at first as though he were talking to himself than to any auditors. By degrees, however, his voice rose, his diction became more fluent. It is only necessary that in this place I should say that in substance Pigott confessed that he had forged the letters alleged to have been written by Mr. Parnell; and he minutely described the manner in which he, and he alone, had executed the forgeries in question. Whether the man with the bald head and the eye-glass in the library at Grosvenor Gardens was telling the truth or uttering another batch of infernal lies it is not for me to determine. No pressure was put upon him; no leading questions were asked him; and he went on cjuietly and continuously to the end of a story which I should have thought amazing had I not had occasion to hear many more tales even more astounding. He was not voluble, but he was collected, clear, and coherent; nor, although he repeatedly confessed to forgery, fraud, deception, and misrepresentation, did he seem overcome with anything approaching active shame. His little peccadilloes were plainly owned, bvit he appeared to treat them more as incidental v^eaknesses than as extraordinary acts of wickedness." — Lije and Ad- ventures. G. A. Sala. 583 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IX IRELAND been sent for by Labouchere to be a witness to the confession which Pigott had dictated, a copy of which was then taken to Lewis's office, but immediately returned to Pigott on Mr. Parnell's orders. Nor did Pigott disappear at once after this final visit to Grosvenor Gardens. Shannon, the Dublin lawyer, who had visited the murderer Delaney in Maryborough Prison — the Invincible who came thence to give evidence for The Times, and who swore to the authenticity of eight of Pigott 's forged letters — this Mr. Shannon saw Pigott, and spent some time with him in Anderton's Hotel, Fleet Street, both on that Saturday night, February 23d. and on the day following, taking down a statement — a half - confession — from him on this day, and getting it sworn before a notary as an affidavit on the Monday. Two members of the Royal Irish Constabulary were in the hotel on Shannon's service guarding Pigott, and these agents and their emplo^^er were the persons who were in Pigott 's company on the three days following the visit to Mr. Labouchere's, before the miserable forger fled to Paris on his way to Spain. Why was he induced, or allowed, to escape? On our side we had anticipated a move of this kind ever since the ill-advised interview in October. Those who knew Pigott intimately assured us he would never have the courage or audacity to enter the witness-box and swear to the genuine- ness of letters to the forgery of which he had confessed to Mr. Parnell and his lawyer. He was closely watched in London and in Kingstown, while I had made arrangements for his arrest in Paris in the event of our surveillance of his movements in London being at fault. This warrant for this arrest was obtained in this way: I had discovered that the unfortunate wretch had been dealing for several years with Paris booksellers in rare books, of which he was an expert judge. Suspecting from his record that his relations with these houses would not be all that business integrity might require, I interviewed a few of these dealers and found my surmise only too well grounded. I therefore induced M. Theophile Belin,* of the Quai Voltaire, I "MEMORANDUM " Theophile Belin, Libraire, Paris, le 13 mars, 1889 " 29, Quai Voltaire. Monsieur Davitt, Londres. " J'ai I'honneur de vous rappeler que je suis toujours a voire dis- position si vous avez besoin de moi pour I'aflfaire Pigott. " De mon cote je prends la liberie de vous demander si je ne puis esperer avoir quelque chose de la succession de cet homme pour me rembourser au moins d'une partie de ce qu'il me doit? " Re9evez, monsieur, mes salutations empress^es." 584 PlGOTT'S CONFESSION AND SUICIDE to swear information against his customer for issuing checks on banks in which he had no credit, and to obtain a warrant for his apprehension should he be found anywhere in France. On the evening of February 2 2d, immediately after Pigott had shattered The Times case under the terrible fire of Russell's cross-examination, I crossed to Paris, expecting the forger would try and bolt that night and make for that city. Mr. Parnell and George Lewis were expected to have him watch- ed, as usual, and he was shadowed until Monday afternoon. Meanwhile all arrangements were made in Paris in the event of his turning up there, and I recrossed to London on the Monday night, there being no trace of him in the former city up to the hour at which I left. My movements, un- fortunately, were known to Kasey, who had been an associate of Pigott, and it is more than probable that this person kept him informed of what was being done in Paris. Pigott left Anderton's Hotel, Fleet Street, a little after four o'clock in the afternoon on Monday, having been in Shannon's company, and that of a clerk in Mr. Soames's office, in the morning. He must have crossed to France that night and passed me on my return to London. It was not until near the hour of noon on Tuesday, October 26th, when he failed to appear in the commission court when called upon, that we were aware of his having bolted. I wired at once to Paris, and detectives were placed at the Gare du Nord, but the fugitive was by that time nearing the Spanish frontier and our Paris plans had come to nothing. Who supplied him with the money with which to fly? He had none, except his ordinary expenses as a witness, up to the day of his first appearance in the court. He received nothing from Mr. Labouchere. He was, however, in corre- spondence with Houston on Friday and Saturday, before his disappearance, and was in the company of Shannon and Charsley, Mr. Soames's clerk, on these days, and upon Mon- day, as related above. On Monday he met Shannon in the lodgings of Charsley, and, according to Shannon's testimony, importuned him for money. Shannon swore that he gave him none. Mr. Charsley was not sworn. That he received money from some source before starting from London there can be no reasonable doubt. He required it for his hotel bill and his tickets and expenses to where he had made up his mind to fly to. And it appears that he had thought of his children up to the last, for he sent two small Bank of England notes to his housekeeper on the Sunday or Monday before his flight. The question in this connection naturally arises: If he had failed to obtain any 585 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND money from Shannon before leaving London, why should he wire, under palpable risks, from his place of refuge, to the same person for assistance afterwards? Public curiosity was intensely excited over his possible place of refuge. The letter posted in Paris to Shannon, which was handed over to the court unopened, turned out to be the copy of his confession at Mr. Labouchere's, which he had sent to Mr. Lewis, and which was by him returned, as related above. This was a clew that he had taken the French capital as a route to a safer place, and Madrid was therefore conjectured to be his present destination. Meanwhile Mr. Parnell had compelled the law to help him to bring the forger to the witness-stand, from which some of the law's agents in the pay of The Times had enabled him to escape. On failing to appear on Tuesday, February 26th, Sir Charles Russell immediately demanded that a warrant be made out for his apprehension. The Times side made no objection. The blow which they had so unscrupulously put off, with the connivance of the court, for fifty-four sessions of the commission had fallen upon their case of constructive infamy at last, and they looked like the detected plotters which Pigott's perjured story and flight had shown them to be. They had, however, been saved, by some agency, from a fuller and more damaging exposure in the disappearance of the author of the forged letters, and for this they were doubt- less grateful. On Mr. Parnell's side there was a feeling of dismay and of bitter disappointment at the failure of the chief agent of the Houston conspiracy to resume his testi- mony. We knew there were other plotters of far greater importance behind Houston, and these were the men we were most anxious to get at. A complete confession from Pigott in the witness - box would have given helpful clews, if not reliable facts, towards their discovery, and it was a cruel stroke of an unkindly fate to have thus thwarted our hopes when so near success, after the long agony endured over the " Parnellism and Crime" fabrications. Mr. Parnell, accompanied by some of his friends and Mr. George Lewis, proceeded at once to Bow Street to swear information against Pigott as a fugitive from justice. By this time the news of the forger's flight and the consequent exposure of The Times case had got out through special edi- tions of the evening papers. Parnell's appearance in the Strand was the signal for an outburst of enthusiasm. A large crowd had assembled, and he was followed down the street by a mass of cheering people, mostly English. Cab- men, 'bus drivers, all kinds and conditions of men in the 586 PIGOTT'S CONFESSION AND SUICIDE crowded thoroughfare, as if moved by a spontaneous feel- ing of sympathy for a greatly wronged man, hailed him with friendly cries, and manifested their pleasure at the discom- fiture of his unmanly foes. It was a small taste of the sweets of a tardy justice after the unmerited stigmas of the previous two years. The cheering crowd followed him to the doors of Bow vStreet police court. Inside, the requisite formalities were gone through, and at last Scotland Yard and other de- partments of English police administration would be com- pelled to aid in the detection of real iniquity instead of lend- ing their agents and influence to The Times in bolstering up a case of manufactured political crime. That evening there was yet another historic scene in the House of Commons in connection with the Irish leader and his cause. The confession and flight of Pigott had produced its maximum effect in that assembly, and those comparatively few Englishmen who had manfully repelled the atrocious insinuations of The Times letters a year previously were now justified in their confidence. Mr. Parnell's entrance was hailed with a great outburst of cheering from his own party and from the few other members referred to. There was, likewise, a kind of subdued greeting from the ranks of his baffled opponents — the sort of involuntary applause which might be called forth in the arena of the Roman Colosseum when the audience, after bending back their thumbs to de- note their desire to have the wounded gladiator despatched, would see the fallen combatant spring to his feet in one last supreme effort and recover his right to live by the over- throw of his would-be slayer. It was a feeling exactly de- scribed by Sir Richard Webster in delivering a reluctant apology for the unparalleled wrong done by The Times to Mr. Parnell and others in the publication of the forged letters : "After the evidence which has been given, we are not entitled to say that they are genuine." ^ Nothing more thoroughly English in spirit (in the matter of an Irish wrong) could better illustrate the boasted Anglo-Saxon love of "fair play" than this incident in the history of this centre of England's pride of pov/er. A man who stood for Ireland and her cause was foully and atrociously wronged in the interest of English rule; this very chamber having deliberately voted the commission of political opponents by which it was hoped the Irish leader would be forever politically destroyed. He, however, es- capes this i^lot and peril by the confession of the man who was paid by the allies of the government to destroy him, and * Special Commission Report, vol. vi., p. 33. 587 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the words quoted above were the true expression of England's sense of what "fair play" means when an Irish leader has been saved by chance or good - fortune from a deliberately planned scheme of political assassination. The following day Pigott's confession, addressed to Shan- non, was read by the clerk of the commission. It was in these words: " Saturday, February 23, 1889. "I, Richard Pigott, am desirous of making a statement before H. Labouchere and G. A. Sala, and I make this, of my own free will and without any monetary inducement, in the house of the former. "My object is to correct inaccuracies in the report of my evidence in The Times, and also to make a full disclosure of the circumstances connected with the publication of the fac- simile letter in The Times, and the other letters of Mr. Par- nell, Mr. Egan, Mr. Davitt, and Mr. O'Kelly produced by The Times in evidence. "Corrections. — I stated that after I disposed of my news- papers in the year 1881 I continued in touch with the Irish Republican Brotherhood. That is not so. I also stated of my own knowledge that Egan and others continued to be mem- bers of the Irish Republican Brotherhood after the resignation of the positions held by them on the supreme council of that organization. "In my account of my interview with Davis, at Lausanne, I stated that I made rough notes in his presence of the con- versations that took place between us, which were embodied in the statement read in court. That is not correct. I made no notes. The statement was written by me on the following day from my recollection only. Davis made no statement on his own authority. We merely gossiped. I am now of opinion that he made no reference whatever to a letter of Mr. Parnell's which I stated was left in Paris with other docu- ments by a fugitive Invincible. I gave the statement to Houston as the heads of a pamphlet which I said Davis would write at a future time. He did promise to write a pamphlet against the Land League, but not founded on the contents of the statement. I agreed to pay him £100 for the pamphlet when written. " Letters. — The circumstances connected with the obtaining of the letters, as I gave in evidence, is not true. No one, save myself, was concerned in the transaction. I told Hous- ton that I had discovered the letters in Paris, but I grieve to have to confess that I simply myself fabricated them, using genuine letters of Messrs. Parnell and Egan in copying cer- tain v^rords, phrases, and general character of the handwriting. 588 PIGOTT'S CONFESSION AND SUICIDE I traced some words and phrases by putting the genuine letter against the window and placing the sheet on which I wrote over it. These genuine letters were the letters from Mr. Parnell, copies of which have been read in court, and four or five letters of Mr. Egan's, which were also read in court. I destroyed these letters after using them. Some of the signa- tures I traced in this manner, and some I wrote. I then wrote to Houston telling him to come to Paris for the docu- ments. I told him that they had been placed in a black bag with some old accounts, scraps of paper, and old news- papers. On his arrival I produced to him the letters, ac- counts, and scraps of paper. After a very brief inspection he handed me a check on Cook for ;;^5oo, the price that I told him I had agreed to pay for them. At the same time he gave me £io^ in bank-notes as my own commission. The accounts put in were leaves torn from an old account-book of my own, which contained details of the expenditure of Fenian money intrusted to me from time to time, which is mainly in the handwriting of David Murphy, my cashier. The scraps I found in the bottom of an old writing-desk. I do not recollect in whose writing they are. "The second batch of letters were also written by me. Mr. Parnell 's signature was imitated from that published in The Times facsimile letter. I do not now remember where I got the Egan letter from which I copied the signature. "I had no specimen of Campbell's handwriting beyond the two letters of Mr. Parnell's to me, which I presumed might be in Mr. Campbell's handwriting. I wrote to Mr. Houston that this second batch was for sale in Paris, having been brought there from America. He wrote asking to see them. I forwarded them accordingly, and after keeping them three or four days he sent me a check on Cook for the price demanded for them, £550. The third batch consisted of a letter imitated by me from a letter written in pencil to me by Mr. Davitt when he was in prison, and of another letter copied by me from a letter of a very early date which I received from James O' Kelly when he was writing on my newspapers, and of a third letter ascribed to Egan, the writing of which and some of the words I copied from an old bill of exchange in Mr. Egan's handwriting. This third letter is what has been called the 'bakery letter.' Two hundred pounds was the price paid to me by Mr. Houston for these three letters. It was paid in bank-notes. "I have stated that for the first batch I received ;^io5 for myself, for the second batch I got ;;^5o, for the third batch I was supposed to have received nothing. 589 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "I did not see Breslin in America. This was part of the deception. " It was mutually agreed between Houston and me that my name was not to be given up and that I should not mention his name. I did not learn until October, when I was taken by Houston to Mr. Soames to make a statement, that Houston had mentioned my name to Mr. MacDonald. I had an angry correspondence with Mr. Houston and also with Mr. Soames in consequence of what I considered to be a breach of faith. "With respect to my interviews with Messrs. Parnell, Lewis, and Labouchere, my sworn statement is in the main correct. I am now, however, of opinion that the offer to me by Mr. Labouchere of ;<^iooo was not for giving evidence, but for any documents in Mr. Egan's or Mr. Parnell's hand- writing that I might happen to have. My statement only re- ferred to the first interviews with these gentlemen. I had a further interview with Mr. Labouchere, on which occa- sion I made him acquainted with further circumstances not previously mentioned by me at the preceding interviews. "I stated that I had destroyed all Mr. Houston's letters to me. This was not correct. I have some of them. "I declare that this statement is taken down by Mr. Labouchere at my dictation in the presence of Mr. Sala. "Richard Pigott. "Witness, George Augustus Sala."' This letter was likewise read: " lo AND II Ely Place, Holborn, London, E.G., "February 25, 1889. "Sir, — Mr. Labouchere has informed us that on Saturday you called at his house and expressed a desire to make a statement in writing, and he has handed to us the confession you made, that you are the forger of the whole of the letters given in evidence by The Times, purporting to be written respectively by Mr. Parnell, Mr. Egan, Mr. Davitt, and Mr. O'Kelly, and that in addition you committed perjury in sup- port of the case of The Times. "Mr. Parnell has instructed us to inform you that he declines to hold any communication directly or indirectly with you, and he further instructs us to return you the written confession, which we enclose and which for safety sake we send by hand. "We are, sir, yours obedientlv, " Richard Pigott, Esq."^ " ^^''''^ ^ ^^^^^^ * Special Commission Report, vol. vi., pp. 31, 32, 33. '^ Ibid. PIGOTT'S CONFESSION AND SUICIDE There was this further letter to Shannon in the envelope: " Hotel des Deux Mondes, 22, Avenue de l'Opera, " Tuesday, February 26th. "Dear Sir, — Just before I left, enclosed was handed to me. It had been left while I was out. Will write again soon. "Yours truly, R. Pigott."^ The final act in the extraordinary drama of Pigott's life was now near at hand. It was to be a fitting though a sensational ending to the most complete career of systematic criminality in the records of modern political history. He remained in the Hotel des Deux Mondes, Paris, for a couple of hours only, in the early morning of Tuesday, February 26th, and then departed direct for Madrid. He arrived there on Thursday morning, three days after his flight from London. He put up at the Hotel des Ambassadeurs, under the name of " Roland Ponsonby," and he appears to have immediately wired to Shannon for money and to have given his address. This message was sent by telegraph and could not be con- cealed at the London end. The wire was communicated to the police, whereupon an official order was at once de- spatched to the British minister at Madrid to have " Roland Ponsonby " arrested by the Spanish authorities on an extra- dition warrant. Pigott was engaged on Thursday and Friday in seeing the sights of the Spanish capital under the guidance of an interpreter. On Friday afternoon, upon returning from a visit to some picture-galleries, he was called upon at the hotel by a visitor. His interpreter informed him that the visitor was a Spanish inspector of police, and that he had come to arrest him. "Very well," replied Pigott, and he asked permission to get his hat. He retired to his room, opened his bag, took out a revolver, and, without a second's hesitation, placed the muzzle to his mouth and blew out his brains. The tragic ending of Pigott's life had a passing and sensa- tional interest for the ordinary public but an intensely absorbing one for the protagonists in the fight within the royal courts of justice. Did he leave any private letters or papers that would throw additional light on the anti-Parnell conspiracy ? The question suggested the promptest possible visit to his home at Kingstown, and within twenty-four hours of the news of his death I called on his housekeeper, a very respectable and intelligent middle-aged woman. I saw at ^Special Commission Report, vol. vi., pp. 31, 32, 33. 59^ THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IX IRELAND once that I had come too late. Visitors from DubHn had been able to arrive sooner than a traveller from London, and it was matter for little surprise to learn that the ubiquitous detective, Sinclair, had been the first on the scene. He had been authorized, in a letter written by Pigott early the previous week, to call for a certain batch of papers, and the authority thus given was availed of to ransack the house for the mass of letters, diaries, and documents which Pigott had left behind even after taking away with him a portmanteau laden with papers when leaving his home for the last time previous to his examination. The housekeeper was most friendly and obliging, and she regretted I had not called before Sinclair and "the sham bailiffs" who had visited the place the previous evening. They carried bundles of material away, but the letters from Houston were not, as she believed, among the contents of the box she had burned, as related in one of the following letters. The Houston correspondence was either taken away by Pigott when last leaving home, or was seized by Sinclair, presumably acting for Houston, on the previous evening. Much was left, however, even after the haul made by "the sham bailiffs," and among the parcels were found several diaries, note-books, bundles of letters relating to his contri- butions to London papers, unused manuscript, and other matter dealing with The Times charges. A dozen volumes of carefully selected newspaper cuttings, neatly and systemati- cally compiled, were placed at my disposal, and in these were found copies of all his special articles to The Times, Standard, Globe, St. James's Gazette, Evening News, Vanity Fair, and other London papers and magazines, from the year 1882 down to the opening of the special commission in October, 1888. Also the material from the New York Times, Irish World, and United Ireland, out of which he had briefed the writers of the " Parnellism and Crime" articles that had been the outcome of the conspiracy against Mr. Parnell and the Land League. The letters, diaries, correspondence, and scrap-books thus found, together with the confessions made to us by men who had been employed by The Times, Houston, and the secret -service department of the Home Office, sup- plied Parnell with the material for his counter-case against The Times and the government. This case would have been proved to the hilt had the judges of the commission granted Sir Charles Russell's application to have the books and cor- respondence of the Loyal and Patriotic Union brought into court for examination, as the papers and books of the Irish National League had been produced by Mr. Pamell's side. 59? PIGOTT'S CONFESSION AND SUICIDE This demand was refused. The act creating the commission did not provide for any such counter case, and this, perhaps, thoughtful omission by the framers of that measure, some of whom were in the Houston conspiracy, saved the Unionist government of the day from an exposure of actual complicity in the plot for Pamell's ruin. Correspondence relating to Pigott's last days in London, and the information supplied by his housekeeper, will be of some interest to the reader who has followed my story so far. " Anderton's Hotel, Fleet Street, London, E.G., ''February 8, 1889. "Dear Mary, — Herein P.O. order for £t,. "I got your wire and letter yesterday all right. "There is no chance now that I will be examined until next week, and meantime I have to wait on here doing nothing, and wretchedly unhappy about one thing or the other. How- ever, I must go through it all. "Please write to me when you get the box. I hope Jack is all right by this time, and that Dick is well. "Love to all. "Faithfully yours, " (Signed) Rd. Pigott." This and the following three letters were received by me during the week ending March 3, 1889. They bore no date. " MuRPHYSTOWN, Sandyford, County Dublin. "Sir, — In answer to your letter received this morning I as- sure you, before God, no man has ever called or got box, bag, or paper from me. None has left the house, only what you have seen, with the exception of what the sham bailiffs took the night they came in. I fear they took more than I gave them credit for, but I cannot say until the time comes when I may see his effects. I enclose a scrap torn off one of Mr. P.'s let- ters with the numbers of notes. You may not be able to understand it, but I will tell you as I told Mr. V. B. Dillon before. He said, ' I may send that man Sinclair to you on Monday with a letter for the box as it stands, if not make a bonfire of it as it stands. I am sorry to say it contains books and pictures not fit for you to see.' I wrote back saying if he gave me leave to burn the box and its contents, I would not pry into its secrets. He sent me a telegram on the fol- lowing morning to do so. If you still doubt me, I am ready to swear to it, and no fear that I shall perjure myself. My belief is half of his papers did not come back; in fact, the 38 5Q3 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND cabman was hardly able to carry out his portmanteau the night he went away. I wondered what could be in it, for his personal luggage was never much. He also had a large bag, and that box, but no black bag, and a child of ten years old could lift the box he sent back. "Apologizing for writing all this preamble, I remain, "Your obedient servant, "(Signed) Anne Byrne." " MuRPHYSTOWN, Sandyford, County Dublin. "Dear Sir, — Your letter, received in due time, afforded me great pleasure, as it has given me an opportunity of apolo- gizing to you for the intemperate manner in which I answered your former letter. Unfortunately, the day before I received your letter I had been treated to a lot of talk about what I had done, or rather what they said I had done. No one can regret the destruction of those things, under the present cir- cumstances, more than I do. God knows I thought I was doing everything for the best. My whole thought was to try and save that unfortunate man from further sin or trouble. Little did I think his crimes were so heavy; to me he was ever the kindest of men, and, as far as I could see, one of the most unfortunate — indeed it was pity for him kept me with him so long. Even now I cannot be as hard on him as the rest of the world. Before Houston came to him he used to write a good deal for the St. James's Gazette and a paper called the Morning News [of Paris]. Of course, when he went to do Houston's work he lost all this, and then him and his family must starve or find material for his employers. Poor old man! this day twelvemonths he appeared very happy with his children. Again apologizing to you, "I am, your obedient servant, "A. Byrne." " Murphystown, Sandyford, County Dublin. "Dear Sir, — I have come to the conclusion that it will do no harm to let you know part of the contents of Mr. Pigott's first letter to me after his cross-examination. After com- mencing his letter in the usual way, I cannot call to mind the first two or three words, but in it he said 'Our wor- thy archbishop has ruined me and my poor children be- yond recall. Every friend I had in the world has deserted me; even Father Maher has sent on some letters he had of mine to those ruffians here. Things look so bad at present that I think The Times will throw up tlie case, and prosecute me for perjury or something as bad.' This is not all, but the 594 PIGOTT'S CONFESSION AND SUICIDE rest could not interest you. I always thought by that letter that The Times people abused and threatened him after leav- ing the witness-stand that day; at all events they ceased to think him an object worth watching, although they had not come to that conclusion before. "My friends the detectives have not paid me a visit since. "Yours respectfully, "Anne Byrne." CHAPTER XLVIII PARNELL'S VINDICATION The central figure in the whole drama was Mr. Pamell. The inquisition was popularly called "The Pamell Com- mission," and both inside and outside the court the public curiosity was concerned most in the appearance and bearing of the man for whose political destruction the inquiry was insidiously planned. The Irish leader, Le Caron, and Houston were the three "best witnesses"; best for the court, the examining counsel, and the press, in the clearness of the evidence, and the self- possession exhibited under cross-examination. Though under fire for several days, Mr. Parnell never lost his temper or self-control, nor failed to make himself understood in every rejoinder to friendly and to hostile questions alike. Nor did he for a single instant relax the dignified manner in which he bore himself throughout the ordeal of a public "confession" which covered his whole political career. There was no hesitation or ambiguity in his answers, nor apparent reluctance to speak when or where an opinion differing from a colleague, or likely to awaken the prejudice of the court, might be a natural reply to some pointed question. On one occasion only throughout his long examination did he lose a grip of the business before him. He was induced, either by lapse of memory, or the manner in which the query was addressed to him, to declare, to the utter dismay of Sir Charles Russell, that he had once "deliberately misled the House of Commons," in some statement touching the existence of Ribbonism in Ireland. It was Sir Richard Webster's only triumph with the witness, and the most was made of what was an obvious outcome of mental confusion. But it greatly upset Parnell during the evening. He was induced to look up the speech in which this self-alleged dereliction had occurred, when it was found that he had ridiculously accused himself in his evidence of something he had never done. Sir James Hannen promptly accepted the explanation which was at once made from the witness- 596 PARNELL'S VINDICATION stand the following morning. But the Unionist papers that had so carefully captioned their report of the previous day's proceedings with startling headings : "Mr. Pamell deliberate- ly misleads Parliament," seemed to lose all special interest in the correction which followed only a day later. Mr. Pamell was not a regular attendant in Probate Court No. I, and this was very annoying to Sir Charles Russell. In fact, the two most prominent men of the commission got on better together in court than when in closer contact in the business of the case outside. The great lawyer had a temper which was scarcely angelic, and the cool and seemingly impassive Parnell, with his air of lordly indif- ference to what was transpiring before the judges, greatly irritated the man who had the whole weight of the defence upon his shoulders. "It is bad policy, to say the least of it, and is sure to prejudice his case with the judges," Sir Charles would remark; "not to mention the studied disrespect which he shows to those who have the responsibilities of this weighty business thrown upon them." This would be repeated to Parnell, but with no better attendance resulting. "Tell him straight from me," said Russell, on the eve of an important phase of the trial, "if he does not turn up in good time to- morrow I shall throw up my brief." This message was duly delivered, and it appeared to please rather than to otherwise concern the imperturbed Parnell. "Oh! Russell is a bully, you know, and you have to tame him a little." On the occasion of this reply (when he, however, promised to attend more regularly) I was curious to know what he had in a paper parcel, from the end of which I saw what looked like a weapon protruding, when placed on the table of my room in the Arundel Hotel. "This is a new soldering-iron I bought this evening. I broke my old one yesterday. The other parcel contains six pounds of lead. I have been trying some experiments during the past few weeks." The commission was by this time in the second month of its labors. The following morning Russell's first question on entering the court was, "Is he coming?" "Yes. He will be here presently," was replied, and shortly afterwards the desired visitor sauntered in, and took his usual seat. There was an important witness giving evidence, but Parnell 's attention was given exclusively to a small brown-paper parcel which he extracted from his coat -pocket. He began to untie this, and, after divesting the contents of four or five shells of paper, he turned out a small piece of gold, about quadruple 597 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the size of a pin's head, on a sheet of white paper, and said to me: "After fourteen years' search for gold at Avondale, this much has at last been found. I got it out of a parcel of stone sent to me two days ago by my agent." Then he carefully wrapped it up in a piece of tissue-paper, put it into his cigar-case, and turned a leisurely attention to what was going on around him. On another, and later, occasion he exhibited a feeling which no one who knew him, relative or friend, would expect from one so self-centred and coldly insensible to average human influences. Russell was making his opening speech, and forecasting the counter case with which the defence would make answer to the charges and allegations of 7 he Times. He was dealing in a fine, sympathetic tone with the early life of suffering and trial of one of the accused, and the rich, expressive voice was charged with deep emotion as he described, in carefully chosen phrases, the hardships and privations of the struggling poor in the West of Ireland. The speaker had touched a deep chord of human feeling in the whole audience, by both voice and words, and I suddenly noticed that Mr. Parnell, who was sitting next to me, was bent forward, the forehead resting in the palm of his left hand, with the elbow on the table before us. He slowly took his handkerchief from his pocket with the right hand, and in a furtive way wiped his eyes. Turning to me he said: "I don't remember ever crying before, not even when I was a child, but I really could not help it." On relating this incident to Sir Charles the same evening, as a testimony to the success of that portion of his great speech, the mighty advocate thought more of Parnell's pre- vious misconduct in keeping away from the court than of the power of his own eloquence, as he muttered: "I'm glad something can move him!" The confession and suicide of the chief factor in the plot against Parnell, shattering as they did the whole fabric of accusation, did not bring the labors of Sir James Hannen to an end. The confession, or an equivalent, at any rate, was anticipated by those of the forger's employers to whom he had declared, months before, that he could not prove the letters to be genuine. The expose was looked upon by them as an incident of the campaign against the Irish leader, and Tlie Times and its backers proceeded with the work of flinging more mud at the man and the movement they were resolved if possible to destroy. So the congenial task went on from day to day until a case which opened in the evidence of Captain O'Shea, near the end of October, 1888, was brought 598 PARNELL'S VINDICATION to a close in the examination of his boon-companion, the friend and associate of Pigott, Hayes, Kasey, and company — George Mulqueeny — in the sixty-fourth sitting of the com- mission, on March 13, 1889. Hundreds of witnesses had testified, miles of speeches, editorial articles, pamphlets, resolutions, blue-books, and official returns had been read — all as portions of the indictment which had Pigott 's exploded infamies as inspiration, cause, and effect. Sir Charles Russell opened the case for the defence on April 2d. In a speech which occupied five hours and a half each day of seven days, the charges, forgeries, and perjuries of The Times witnesses, and the statements, deductions, and argu- ments of Sir Richard Webster, were gone over in a masterly review of the whole field of evidence and accusation. It was a convincing and crushing counter indictment of The Times and its backers that left nothing unsaid that could well bring home to the authors of a plot so base the shame and the moral penalty of its guilt and exposure. He discussed the entire Irish question, in his analysis of the allegations that the Land League had fomented disturb- ance and promoted crime for political ends. Evidence al- most without end was quoted to refute this calumny. The records and reputations of Mr. Parnell and his chief followers were then gone over and defended, in sketches of what they had done for their country, the laws they had helped to pass, the reforms which they had won for Ireland, and the esteem in which they were held by the people for whose welfare they had labored with some success, while facing obloquy, hard- ships, and imprisonment for themselves. Froude and Lecky and other eminent writers were drawn upon for historic testimony, while the admissions of one- time coercionist rulers of Ireland, converted by extended experience of the country and a closer contact with the Irish people into advocat-es of concession, were adduced. Nothing, in fact, which resplendent ability, animated and in- formed by more than a great lawyer's skilled advocacy, could urge, with the force of brilliant speaking-power, was omitted. It was an illustrious Irishman who was pleading with an elo- quence born of full confidence in the justice of his case and of the conviction that it was Ireland, and not Mr. Parnell, that was assailed by unscrupulous enemies. The speech had all the qualities of a great utterance on an equally great issue; facts deftly handled, authorities clearly marshalled in sup- port; the fullest possible knowledge of the subjects, topics, and questions reviewed ; along with all the necessary accesso- ries of an historic deliverance — a fine voice, a thorough com- 599 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND mand of the best English, a superb style, and a manifest earnestness which added force to the convincing power of an unequalled forensic performance. The concluding sentences touched a personal note, but likewise a high spirit of political conviction : " I have spoken not merely as an advocate. I have spoken for the land of my birth; but I feel, I profoundly feel, that I have been speaking to, for, and in the best interests of Eng- land, of the country where my years of laborious life have been passed, and where I have received kindness, considera- tion, and regard, which I should be glad to make some at- tempt to repay. My lords, my colleagues and myself have had a responsible duty, we have had to defend not merely the leaders of the nation but the nation of Ireland itself. We have had to defend the leaders of the nation whom it was sought to crush, to defend the nation whose hopes it was sought to cast down, to dash to the ground. This inquiry, intended as a curse, has proved a blessing. Designed, prom- inently designed, to ruin one man, it has been his vindication. In opening this case I said that we represented the accused. My lords, I claim leave to say that to-day the positions are reversed — we are the accusers — the accused are there [point- ing to the representatives of The Times]. My lords, I hope this inquiry at its present stage and in its future development will serve more even than as a vindication — that it will re- move painful misconceptions as to the character, the actions, the motives, the aims of the Irish people and of the leaders of the Irish people; that it will set earnest minds — and, thank God, there are many earnest and honest minds in this land — thinking for themselves on the question; that it will remove grievous misconceptions and hasten the day of true union, of real reconciliation between the people of Ireland and the peo- ple of Great Britain, and that there will be dispelled, and dis- pelled forever, the cloud, the weighty cloud, that has rested on the history of a noble race and dimmed the glory of a mighty empire." * The witnesses who were examined for Mr. Parnell and the , league represented every class of reputable citizen in Ireland, I including all those of Mr. Parnell's party who were specifically charged with any serious oflfence. All the books of the Na- tional League, covering the period from October, 1882, down to the commission, were produced by Mr. Harrington, and examined both for the judges and The Tiiiics. The Land- League books had been destroyed, or had gone astray, after ./7 ' special Commission Report, vol. vi., pp. 662, 663. 600 PARNELL'S VINDICATION the suppression of that organization in 1881 ; seven years be- fore The Times required them to be brought into court. The absence of these books appeared to impress the judges ad- versely to the case for the league in the matter of accounting for the expenditure of its funds. But, on the other hand, the many informers who were examined in behalf of our ac- cusers, some of whom had been employed in Land-League offices in 1881, failed to make good a single allegation about money being paid for any illegal purpose. The judges having declined to give orders for the produc- tion of the books and papers belonging to the Loyal and Patriotic Union, on the demand of Sir Charles Russell, as necessar}?^ to prove the counter charge of Mr. Parnell that there was a conspiracy to effect his ruin behind The Times and Houston — a consultation was held, and it was decided, on Russell's advice, to withdraw from further attendance before the commission. By this time all real public interest in the proceedings had ceased. Mr. Parnell's own evidence, and the favorable impression he had made, practically ended the in- quiry, and the judges' report iipon the whole case was awaited. Under these circumstances the decision to withdraw was a sensible one; though it was not calculated to make a too favorable imjjression upon the three men whose duty it would be to sum up the evidence and pass a verdict upon it. It was arranged, on Sir Charles Russell's suggestion, and cordially approved of by Mr. Parnell, that Mr. Sexton, Mr. Big- gar, and Mr. Davitt should attend at the final sittings of the commission and address the court: Mr. Sexton to speak for the Irish Parliamentary Party ; Mr. Biggar for himself, as co- treasurer of the Land League with Mr. Egan ; and Mr. Davitt in belialf of the Land League and its American auxiliaries. When, four months subsequently, the judges resumed their suspended sessions, Mr. Biggar, in his best manner, ad- dressed them. He offered a very unflattering estimate of the manner in which Sir Richard Webster had conducted the case for The Times. He spoke twenty minutes, and in his dry, cynical manner consoled the court by informing it that "my friend, Mr. Davitt, will follow me with a few obser- vations"; which "few observations" occupied the time of the commission for the five days ending on October 31, 1889. As this commission sat to try the Land League, and as the future course of this .story will not require the infliction of any more of the a.uthor's speeches upon the patient reader, he may, perhaps, be pardoned if he reproduces here a few of the final sentences of his defence of the great Irish organization 601 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND which had been on its trial before this tribunal of its English enemies for a year. " My lords, I now bring my observations to a close. What- ever legal points are to occupy your lordships' study and care in this long and arduous investigation, it will appear to the public, who will study the report or the decision of this tribunal, that two institutions stood indicted before it. One has had a life of centuries, the other an existence of but a few brief years. They are charged, respectively, by the accused and the accusers, with the responsibility for the agrarian crimes of the period covered by the inquiry. One is Irish landlordism, the other is the Irish Land League. The Times alleges that the younger institution is the culprit. The Land League, through me, its reputed founder, repels the accusation, and counter charges landlordism with being the instigation and the cause not alone of the agrarian violence and crime from 1879 to 1887, but of all such crimes as are on record, from the times spoken of by Spenser and Davies, in the days of Elizabeth, down to the date of this commission. "To prove this real and hoary-headed culprit guilty, I have not employed or purchased the venal talent of a forger nor offered the tempting price of liberty for incriminatory evi- dence to unhappy convicts in penal cells. Neither have I brought convicted assassins or professional perjurers, like the Delaneys and Le Carons, before your lordships. I have not sought assistance such as this with which to sustain my case. Nor have I been aided by the Colemans, Buckleys, and Igos as confederates, or had to scour the purlieus of American cities for men who would sell evidence that might repair the case which Richard Pigott's confession destroyed and which his self-inflicted death has sealed with tragic emphasis. "I will not go to such sources nor resort to such means for testimony against Irish landlordism. I relied not upon the swearing of spies or informers, but upon unbiased facts left as legacies to truth by men who are held in reverence by England for service rendered to their country, to justice, to humanity. I have reproduced the words which these men have placed on record against crime-begetting Irish land- lordism. Among those quoted as authorities, but not of them — one with them in their verdicts, though not to be class- ed otherwise with honored names — I have placed The Times newspaper, which is the Land League's accuser. I have made it speak its own condemnation and compelled it historically to exculpate the league. The face of what the first editorial ever written in The Times likened to the pagan deity, Janus — the face which circumstances have sometimes forced to look 602 PARNELL'S VINDICATION towards truth by power akin to that v/hich compels matter to look towards the sun — I have made to confront and shame by contrast the other face of fraud and falsehood which, like an evil genius, has led England to regard with hate and distrust every effort of the Irish people for right and justice. I have made The Times of 1847 and of 1880 give the lie direct to The Times of this commission, and have caused it to become my strongest historic accuser of the evil system which it now condemns by its very advocacy. To this testimony I have added the sworn evidence of the persons whom it charges with the deeds of its client — the evidence of the living actors in the Land-League movement, and of others who represent every class into which Ireland's population is divided — bishops, priests, members of Parliament, municipal rep- resentatives, journalists, merchants, traders, laborers, me- chanics — who one and all say, with The Times Red-Book of 1880, that evictions and threats of eviction are the chief source of all agrarian crime in Ireland. " But there is another and a higher interest involved in the drama of this commission now rapidly drawing to a close, an interest far surpassing in importance, and the possible con- sequence of your lordships' judgment, anything else com- prised in this investigation. It stands between The Times and landlordism on the one hand, the persons here charged and the Land League on the other. In by-gone ages his- torians, with some prophetic instinct, called it 'The Isle of Destiny.' And destiny seems to have reserved it for a career of trial, of suffering, and of sorrow. That same destiny has linked this country close to England. Politically, it has remained there for seven hundred years and more. During that period no race ever placed upon this earth has ex- perienced more injustice or more criminal neglect at the hands of their rulers than we have. This even English history will not and dare not deny. This land, so tried and treated, has, nevertheless, struggled, generation after genera- tion, now with one means, now with another, to widen the sphere of its contracted religious, social, and political liberties — liberties so contracted by the deliberate policy of its English governing power; and ever and always were these struggles made against the prejudice and might, and often the cruelties, of this same power, backed by the support or the indifference of the British nation. But, despite all this, the cause so fought and upheld has ever and always succeeded, sooner or later, in vindicating its underlying principles of truth and justice, and in winning from the power which failed to crush them an after justification of their righteous demands. 603 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND "A people so persevering in their fight for the most price- less and most cherished of human and civil rights, so opposed but so invariably vindicated, might surely, in these days of progress and of enlightenment, excite in the breasts of Englishmen other feelings than those of jealousy, hate, and fear. To many, thank God, it has appealed successfully, at last, to what is good and what is best in English nature. It has spoken to the spirit of liberty, and has turned the love of justice in the popular mind towards Ireland, and has asked the British people, in the interests of peace, to put force and mistrust away with every other abandoned weapon in Ireland's past misrule, and to place in their stead the soothing and healing remedies of confidence and friendship based upon reason and equality. " The verdict of this court, the story that will be told in the report of this commission, may or may not carry the appeal which Ireland's struggles and misfortunes have addressed to the conscience and fairness of the English nation much farther than it has already travelled in the British mind. But one thing, at least, the history of this commission will have to tell to future generations. It will narrate how this prog- ress of conciliation between ruled and rulers was sought to be arrested; how a people asking for justice were answered by ferocious animosity; how men who had suffered i:n- prisonment, degradation, and calumny in their country's service were foully attacked by the weapons of moral assassina- tion, and how every dastard means known in the records of unscrupulous warfare were purchased and employed to cripple or destroy the elected representatives of the Irish nation. " This story will picture this once-powerful organ of English public opinion earning again the title of 'literary assassin' which Richard Cobden gave it near thirty years ago. It will stand again in this light when its writers are seen plotting with Houston, planning with Pigott, and bargaining with Delaney how best to reawaken in the English mind the old hate and jealousy and fear of a people who were to be depicted in its columns in the most odious and repulsive character that forgers' or libellers' mercenary talent could delineate in 'Parnellism and Crime.' This story will exhibit these men sitting in the editorial rooms of Printing-House Square with professions of loyalty on their lips and poison in their pens ; with ' honesty ' loudly proclaimed in articles which salaried falsehood had written; with simulated re- gard for truth, making 'shame ashamed' of their concocted fabrications. And these men, with the salaries of the rich in their pockets and the smiles of London society as their 604 PARNELL'S VINDICATION reward, carrying on a deliberately planned system of in- famous allegation against political opponents who were but striving to redeem the sad fortunes of their country, in efforts to bring to an end a strife of centuries' duration between neighboring nations and people."* JUDGES' REPORT "We have now pursued our inquiry over a sufficiently extended period to enable us to report upon the several charges and allegations which have been made against the respondents, and we have indicated in the course of -this statement our findings upon these charges and allegations, but it will be convenient to repeat, seriatim, the conclusions we have arrived at upon the issues which have been raised for our consideration. "i. We find that the respondent members of Parliament collectively were not members of a conspiracy having for its object to establish the absolute independence of Ireland, but we find that some of them, together with Mr. Davitt, estab- lished and joined in the Land-League organization with the intention by its means to bring about the absolute indepen- dence of Ireland as a separate nation. The names of those respondents are set out at page 32 of this report. "2. We find that the respondents did enter into a con- spiracy by a system of coercion and intimidation to promote an agrarian agitation against the payment of agricultural rents, for the purpose of impoverishing and expelling from the country the Irish landlords who were styled the ' English garrison.' "3. We find that the charge that 'when on certain occa- sions they thought it politic to denounce, and did denounce, certain crimes in public, they afterwards led their supporters to believe such denunciations were not sincere' is not estab- lished. We entirely acquit Mr Parnell and the other re- spondents of the charge of insincerity in their denunciation of the Phoenix Park murders, and find that the 'facsimile' letter on which this charge was chiefly based as against Mr. Parnell is a forgery. "4. We find that the respondents did disseminate the Irish World and other newspapers tending to incite to sedition and the commission of other crime. "5. We find that the respondents did not directly incite ' Special Commission Report, vol. xi., pp. 24, 25, Mr. Davitt's address. 60^ THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND persons to the commission of crime other than intimidation, but that they did incite to intimidation, and the consequence of that incitement was that crime and outrage were com- mitted by the persons incited. We find that it has not been proved that the respondents made payments for the purpose of inciting persons to commit crime. "6. We find as to the allegation that the respondents did nothing to prevent crime and expressed no bona-fide disap- proval, that some of the respondents, and in particular Mr. Davitt, did express bona-fide disapproval of crime. and out- rage, but that the respondents did not denounce the system of intimidation which led to crime and outrage, but persisted in it with knowledge of its effect. "7. We find that the respondents did defend persons charged with agrarian crime, and supported their families, but that it has not been proved that they subscribed to testi- monials for, or were intimately associated with, notorious criminals, or that they made payments to procure the escape of criminals from justice. "8. We find as to the allegation that the respondents made payments to compensate persons who had been injured in the commission of crime, that they did make such payments. "9. As to the allegation that the respondents invited the assistance and co-operation of and accepted subscriptions of money from known advocates of crime and the use of dyna- mite, we find that the respondents did invite the assistance and co-operation of, and accepted subscriptions of money from, Patrick Ford, a known advocate of crime and the use of dynamite, but that it has not been proved that the re- spondents or any of them knew that the Clan-na-Gael con- trolled the league or was collecting money for the parlia- mentary fund. It has been proved that the respondents invited and obtained the assistance and co-operation of the physical-force party in America, including the Clan-na-Gael, and in order to obtain that assistance abstained from re- pudiating or condemning the action of that party. "There remain three specific charges against Mr. Parnell — namely, "(a) That at the time of the Kilmainham negotiations Mr. Parnell knew that Sheridan and Boyton had been organ- izing outrage, and therefore wished to use them to put down outrage. We find that this charge has not been proved. "(b) That Mr. Parnell was intimate with the leading In- vincibles, that he probably learned from them what they were about when he was released on parole in April, 1882, and that he recognized the Phoenix Park murders as their handiwork. 606 PARNELL'S VINDICATION "We find that there is no foundation for this charge. We have already stated that the Invincibles were not a branch of the Land League. "(c) That Mr. Parnell, on January 23, 1883, by an oppor- tune remittance, enabled F. Byrne to escape from justice to France. We find that Mt. Parnell did not make any re- mittance to enable F. Byrne to escape from justice. "We consider that there is no foundat on whatever for the charge that Mr. Parnell was intimate with Invincibles, know- ing them to be such, or that he had any knowledge, direct or indirect, of the conspiracy which resulted in the Phoenix Park murders, and we find the same with reference to all the other respondents. We do not think it necessary to enter into the question whether or not any persons other than those who were convicted were guilty of participation in those crimes, because we are c early of opinion that none of the respondents were aware at the time that any persons with whom they as- sociated were connected with these murders. "The third charge we have to consider is 'that when on cer- tain occasions the respondents thought it politic to denounce and did denounce certain crimes in public, they afterwards led their supporters to believe that such denunciation was not sincere.' "This was chiefly based on the letter known throughout the inquiry as the 'facsimile letter.' "This letter was one of a series obtained from the witness, Richard Pigott, by Mr. Houston, who afterwards supplied them to the manager of The Times newspaper upon pay- ment of sums amounting to ;£2 53o. We do not propose to narrate the circumstances attending on the obtaining of these letters. They will be found in the evidence. "The story told by Pigott as to the manner in which he had obtained these letters was entirely unworthy of credit, and be- fore his cross-examination was concluded he absconded and committed suicide. We find that all the letters produced by Pigott and set out in the appendix are forgeries, and we entirely acquit Mr. Parnell and the other respondents of the charge of insincerity in their denunciation of the Phoenix Park murders. "The two special charges against Mr. Davitt — viz., (a) 'That he was a member of the Fenian organization, and convicted as such, and that he assisted in the formation of the Land League with money which had been contributed for the purpose of outrage and crime ' ; (b) ' That he was hi close and intimate association with the party of violence in America, and was mainly instrumental in bringing about 607 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND the alliance between that party and the Parnellite and Home- Rule party in America,' are based on passages in TJie Times leading articles of March 7 and 14, 1887: 'The new movement was appropriately started by Fenians out of Fenian funds ; its "father" is Michael Davitt, a convicted Fenian.' 'That Mr. Parnell's "constitutional organization" was planned by Fenian brains, founded on a Fenian loan, and reared by Fenian hands.' " We have shown in the course of the report that Mr. Davitt was a member of the Fenian organization, and convicted as such, and that he received money from a fund which had been contributed for the purpose of outrage and crime — viz., the Skirmishing Fund. It was not, however, for the formation of the Land League itself, but for the promotion of the agitation which led up to it. We have also shown that Mr. Davitt returned the money out of his own resources. " With regard to the further allegation that he was in close and intimate association with the party of violence in Amer- ica, and mainly instrumental in bringing about the alliance between that party and the Parnellite and Home - Rule party in America, we find that he was in such close and intimate association for the purpose of bringing about, and that he was mainly instrumental in bringing about, the alli- ance referred to. "All which we humbly report to your Majesty. "Archibald L. Smith, "James Hannen, "John C. Day. " Henry Harding Cunynghame, Secretary. " Royal Courts of Justice, February 13, 1890." CHAPTER XLIX SECRET-SERVICE SPIES — I. " LE CARON" Le Caron was the most theatrical of all The Times wit- nesses. It was a great occasion for him after his twenty years' experience as a spy among the American Clan-na-Gael, and his first appearance in public in his true character wo^^e all the interest of a dramatic episode. He looked the character he had personated to the life, and his examination was one of the few very interesting incidents in the long and tire- some investigation. He was a small, wiry man, aged about fifty, under the medium height, slight in build, a very alert and intelligent face, deep -set and dark eyes, wide and in- tellectual forehead, and black hair. His manner was ex- cellent under cross-examination, and he made a favorable impression on the court and upon counsel on both sides as a witness. He was the only important witness we had not been warned about by our friends or agents in America, and his appearance on the stand was a complete surprise. I had learned that "a colonel or general" had left New York for London, while Mr. Labouchere was informed by cable that "a Chicago apothecary" was to give evidence for The Times. Neither description suggested the real person, and we were taken some- what unprepared. His evidence made up in volume what it lacked in direct value in support of The Times case. He had been a spy for twenty years in Braidwood. Joliet, and Chicago, and had kept the secret - service department of the home office reg- ularly informed of such facts relating to the Clan-na-Gael as came within his cognizance as a subordinate officer of the organization. His main contributions to this end consisted of "secret" circulars, the construction and wording of which documents utterly destroyed whatever reputation the " Clan " had previously possessed in the way of "conspiracy." As a prominent lawyer remarked in my hearing, after all Le Caron 's "secret" circulars had been read: "Your 'clan' appears to be a body of men, half of whose time seems to have been occu- 39 609 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND pied in concocting ridiculous cipher circulars which could con- ceal as many secrets as a sieve could hold water, and in wasting the other half of their time in securing the destruc- tion of these silly documents." Le Caron was expected to prove three main allegations made by The Times, for which it afterwards transpired he was to re- ceive the sum of ten thousand pounds. First, that the "clan " was a part of the American Land League ; secondly , that there was an alliance between Mr. Parnell's party and the league in Ireland with the " dynamite " party in the United States; and, thirdly, that I was the connecting link between the sea- divided combinations and the proof of its existence. He failed completely to prove these charges, or even to convince the judges that they had any substantial basis of fact to rest upon. His alleged interview with Mr. Parnell in the House of Commons, and of the Irish leader's declaration that he was a "revolutionist " and that "a blow would be struck" when the league funds should amount to a sum of ^100,000, was a palpable yarn engrafted upon a probable interview such as any American visitor to the House of Commons could have with a prominent member. The story about the "im- portant " document which Devoy intrusted to him for Egan in Paris, on the occasion of a visit to Europe, was a measure of the liberal amount of fiction with which he flavored his facts. We had no time during the period of his examination to investigate such statements as this, but I obtained in due course from Mr. Egan, who was at the time United States minister to Chili, the "important document" of which Le Caron was the bearer It consisted of some ten lines of an ordinary introduction, such as one man would give to another, without the least reference to politics, revolutionary affairs, or other matters. He was referred to in the letter as a "good Irishman," though a Frenchman, and that was the extent of the treason and "secrets " contained in a letter which had exercised the great ability of Sir Richard Webster in elucidation for a considerable portion of the spy's examination. In my own case I had to resort to a stratagem so as to secure being the first witness as to my relations with the mysterious "clan" conclave. Having cross-examined most of the pre- vious witnesses, as an amateur counsel, it was a natural in- ference to draw that I would also question Le Caron upon his references to me in his evidence. I encouraged this belief among the audience, though I had, on the advice of Sir Charles Russell, and for the reason stated, decided to leave the somewhat formidable spy in far abler hands. This 610 SECRET-SERVICE SPIES nise succeeded beyond expectation. He made but two allusions to me in his direct evidence, and these of the most trivial kind — that he had seen me in company with a Chicago member of the "clan " on one occasion, near a railway station, and that I had attended a Land-League meeting in his (Le Caron's) company, at Braid wood, on another. And this was the sum total of his evidence as to my intercourse with the organization inside of which he had acted as a spy for a score of years! Of course he knew something more, but he held this in reserve until, as he fully expected, I would take him in hand, when his testimony against me might be all the more telling on account of being tendered through the medium of my cross-examination of him. His disappointmicnt was manifest after he had passed through the lawyers' hands to find me busily engaged in looking over papers and omitting to put him a single question. His friends in the press the following day attributed my action to "fear" of revelations, but my point had been gained at his expense; for, as he had not added one single material link of evidence to the incon- clusive testimony already sworn to, he was debarred in his re-examination from adding a word about me to the little he had already said. When my own examination arrived, I told the judges much more about my visits to "clan" camps in Chicago and elsewhere than Le Caron had sworn to; thereby showing how ignorant he appeared to be of my relations with that body, and giving the court my own version of these where they would have had the adroit spy's liberal allowance of in- sinuation and coloring had the chance for amplification been given him. It transpired, too, that despite his boasted knowledge of the working of revolutionary circles in America, he had not been able to warn the British authorities of the rescue of the Fenian prisoners from Freemantle, in West Australia, in the middle seventies, though an American vessel, chartered by the Clan-na-Gael, and under the direction of the late John J. Breslin (who had liberated James Stephens from Richmond Prison, Dublin, in 1865), had sailed from a port in Massachusetts fully equipped for the object of the ex- pedition. In fact, the one notable achievement of Beach's career was his appearance before The Times commission. It was not a bad testimony to his keen business capacity that he thus secured ten thousand pounds by telling to the public, with absolutely no harm to those it was intended to injure, the story of his record as a spy in Chicago. Had he related the same experiences through the medium of a published 611 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND autobiography, it would not have added a hundred pounds to his rewards from the EngUsh secret-service department. One interesting fact was brought out during his evidence, which rather turned the laugh against me. He swore to having attended a meeting with me at Braidwood, Illinois, in 1880, and that I had an attack of illness while in that mining town. Le Caron being a Braidwood miners' "doctor," he professionally prescribed for me, and prided himself upon having sent me on my way indebted, unknowingly, to the medical attention of an English spy. Unlike so many other persons of the same calling, Beach, or Le Caron, was never once suspected during his twenty years' intercourse with Irish-Amer- ican revolutionists of being anything but what he represented himself to be. II. — "MAJOR YELLOW Major Yellow I have already introduced to my readers. This, of course, is not his real name. His exploits, as referred to in Chapter XXXV., represented but a small part of his per- formances as an agent of the secret service and an em- ploye of The Times previous to and during the commission. Like Sinclair, he was suflficiently daring to be frequently in- discreet, and he also foolishly discharged accomplices without adequate compensation, and was very careless in the manage- ment of his official papers. These blunders, and the knowl- edge that he had been in a little trouble with some ladies, which he would not wish should come out in cross-examina- tion, spoiled him as an intended witness for The Times, and enabled our intelligence department to obtain much useful and some startling information about his doings while en- gaged in trying to bring about our political destruction. He established his quarters at an Irish public-house in Wardour Street, London, in 1885, following his Paris achieve- ments, as already related. He was frequently visited by Hayes, Mulqueeny, Pigott, a late Irish M.P., and others. It was at a gathering of this precious company that a requisi- tion was prepared and signed calling upon Mr. Pamell, in the name of "the advanced nationalists" of London, to find a Parliamentary seat for — Captain O'Shea. To lend additional weight to this requisition, it was taken across to Paris by the subsequent Times witness, Mulqueeny, an intimate friend of Captain O'Shea, for the signature of Kasey. During Major Yellow's sojourn in Wardour Street he read three books — The History of the Carbonari, James Stephens's Autobiography, and The History of Secret Societies in Europe. 612 SECRET-SERVICE SPIES Next year (1886) he and others produced a pamphlet called The Repeal of the Union Conspiracy; or, Mr. Parnell, M.P., and the I. R B. This compilation anticipated, to a large extent, the " Parnellism and Crime" articles which appeared in 'J'he Times in 1887. It contained a series of fabrications founded upon the speeches and letters of Mr. Parnell and others, the whole argument being that the Irish party and the National League were but parts of a treasonable organi- zation engaged in dynamite and other outrages. It was compiled chiefly from the drunken ravings of Kasey and other Paris "dynamiters," the "revelations" of the spy Hayes, Pigott's pamphlet, "Parnellism Exposed," and the statements of Captain O 'Shea's friend, George Mulqueeny. For this work a sum of ;^iooo was received (it is alleged) from the secret-service fund, under the control of the Union- ist government which came into power in the summer of that year. The Major had interviews with the three ministers of the Unionist government who were in touch with Houston, Bag- enall, and company, of the Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union, and then went to Kerry — as an arms agent from the United States. He underwent a prearranged arrest, and was lodged in prison, in his character as a dealer in revolvers, his object being to get into the confidence of moonlighters. Sir Red- vers Duller was at that time employed in Ireland, under Chief Secretary Sir Michael Hicks-Beach. On learning all about Yellow's manoeuvres, he warned him ofif the premises, mak- ing it clear he would not sanction any agent - provocateur business in Kerry or elsewhere. The Major then transferred his activity from Kerry to Belfast, where he disposed of ;£ioo worth of revolvers to some branches of the Orange organization. This was followed by a sensational article in a London paper, purporting to re- veal the secrets of a military organization in Ulster, in prepa- ration for a possible advent of Home Rule — "a drilled and disciplined body of fifty thousand men." This formidable army, like the Major's many "secret societies," existed only in the very fertile and very profitable imagination of Yellow. Major Yellow's next adventure was to follow, as a spy of the secret service, in my footsteps during a visit to the United States. He obtained a commission from the Colt Revolver Syndicate, in Springfield, Massachusetts, as agent, and in this capacity introduced himself to leading Fenians and Clan-na-Gael men in various American cities. In co- operation with other English agents in New York, he planned the kidnapping of Captain McCafferty, whom he alleged to 613 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND be the "No. i" of the Invincible conspiracy, but the plot did not succeed. Having tracked me during a portion of a lecture tour through various places, he returned to England early in 1887. He wrote a report upon his experiences and his alleged knowledge of the inner workings of "secret" societies, and of the alleged relations of these bodies with Mr. Parnell's party, which was submitted to the then home secretary and the late Mr. W. H. Smith. This report was afterwards sup- plied to The Times, and it led to the Major's employment by the paper, for a time, during the subsequent commission. Yellow had been "too clever by half" in one of his Amer- ican exploits, and his services as an agent of the secret ser- vice were dispensed with shortly after his return. Had he appeared, as was expected, as a Times witness, the foregoing particulars of his career, and very much more that could not otherwise be obtained, would have come out in evidence: the names of the members of the govern- ment with whom he had interviews, the source whence the money for the " Black Pamphlet " had been obtained, along with information as to the expenditure of a sum of ;^5ooo which our intelligence department alleged had passed through his hands out of secret - service funds and from other gov- ernment sources. But to our disappointment he was not examined. III. — THE SPY HAYES The spy John P. Haj^es was another of The Times allies in the case, but, unlike Le Caron, he was not put forward as a witness. The account of his record and reputation which follows probably explains this prudence. We became ac- quainted with this man's calling, and of his association with Pigott, Mulqueeny, and others in London and Paris, and Mr. Parnell resolved upon a bold stroke in his regard. He took steps to have him brought from Philadelphia to Paris. We had learned that he possessed several letters of Pigott 's and some of Major Yellow's, and of other associates of those who were working up The Times case. Our informant was Eugene Davis, who had had the interview with Pigott at Lausanne, and whose part in the whole business of infamy was disreputable enough to cause him to try and atone for it to some extent by rendering Mr. Parnell some little service in hunting down the gang of ruffians and spies who had fore- gathered with Davis and Kasey in Paris for so many years. He was induced to write a friendly letter to Hayes, hinting 614 SECRET-SERVICE SPIES that he might be asked to give evidence in behalf of Mr. Par- nell. Money was forwarded to him, and he was to come forth- with to Paris; on reaching which city he was to wire to Davis, whom he was led to believe he would meet at a hotel in the Rue St. Honore, on a given date. This Hayes was a hulking scoundrel and reputed despera- do. He had boasted that it was he who had caused the dyna- mite explosion at London Bridge and in the House of Com- mons, in letters written to New York from London at the very time when he was constantly calling at the House seeking in- terviews with Mr. Parnell — requests which were never com- plied with. Mr. Parnell advised Mr. Campbell, his secretary, now town clerk of Dublin, and myself to take revolvers with us for the interview, which the spy had been led to believe would be with his former friend Davis. This was a necessary precaution, in view of the ruffian's character, and on the date suggested by Davis we walked into the reading-room of the Hotel de Lille et de Londres, where we found our quarry .writing. He was a burly -looking, brutish-mannered fellow in the prime of life, powerful in build, and with the face of a prize- fighter. He recognized me at once, having seen me at public meetings in Philadelphia, and he made no objection to a re- quest to take us to his room where our message from Mr. Par- nell could be delivered. He showed us the way. Immedi- ately after entering his room a revolver fell by "accident" from one of the visitors on the floor, and was picked up again without a word. This incident revealed another purpose to Hayes than the expected visit from Davis. He was at once told that every scrap of writing in the room was required for Mr. Parnell's defence, but would be paid for. Without a word he unlocked a box and placed a large bundle of letters in Mr. Campbell's hands, saying, with a tone of injured innocence, that it was evident he was not altogether trusted. The letters thus secured were Mr. Parnell's "find," as the whole scheme of bringing the spy from Philadelphia was his, and Mr. Campbell departed with the parcel that day to Lon- don. I did no more than glance through them, while Camp- bell was taking down a statement from the spy, relating his past association with Pigott and others. The letters com- prised several of Pigott 's and of Eugene Davis's, all tending to show that Major Yellow, Hayes, and other secret-service agents, posing as dynamiters and patriots, had exploited the man Kasey and his friends, as Pigott also had done, in order to obtain money for material and information, manufactured in Paris, that would show Parnell and his party to be connected with the Invincibles and the Clan-na-Gael. 615 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND After extracting all the information that could be got from Hayes, I gave him money, and informed him that Mr. Parnell would probably not need his services as a witness. It was no part of our plan to let him suspect that we knew his real char- acter and calling. The day after reaching the commission again, Sir Richard Webster was able to say that I had recently been in the company of two dynamiters in Paris! I V. — D E L A N E Y During the recess of the commission, in 1889, this Hayes. in the company of Kasey, visited Dublin, and endeavored to enlist witnesses for The Times case. He failed in both enter- prises. One of the chief witnesses for The Times was the convict Delaney. His account of his own antecedents was in thorough keeping with the moral character of our chief accusers. He had undergone five years' penal servitude for highway rob- bery, early in life, on his own confession. He then joined the Fenian movement, and in 1881 became an Invincible. He undertook to assassinate the late Judge Lawson, but revealed his purpose to a policeman, was arrested, tried, and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment. The Invincible trials occurred a few months afterwards, and James Carey informed upon Delaney as an accomplice. He was tried anew, pleaded guilty, and was sent to prison for life. He was visited by Shannon, the Dublin solicitor, in Mary- borough convict prison, during the sitting of the special com- mission, and induced to give evidence. No witness created a worse impression than this unmitigated scoundrel. He swore that he recognized Mr. Patrick Egan's handwriting in eight of the letters which Pigott subsequently confessed to have forged, and for services thus rendered to The Times he was shortly afterwards released from penal servitude. A letter of his to the late Dr. Carte, of Dublin, an accomplice of Houston's, which fell into my hands, revealed the fact that he had been offered his liberty on condition of giving evidence to connect Mr. Egan, myself, and others with the Invincibles! Six years after the ending of the commission I was travel- ling in one of the British colonies. My interest in the question of prison reform prompted me to ask permission to inspect the convict prison in W . The governor was a fellow- countryman, and, after courteously showing me over the establishment, took me to a particular cell and requested me to look at the occupant through the spv-hole. 616 SECRET-SERVICE SPIES "Do you recognize him?" "No." "Well, he is doing a six years' sentence for stabbing a man in a public-house. His name here is Clarke, but he is no other than the Invincible informer Delaney, who gave evi- dence before The Times commission." V. — " S I N C L A I R " The most mysterious and romantic of the many strange people who figured directly or otherwise in The Times com- mission was the secret agent Sinclair. This is not his real name; it is only one of several assumed names. He was a handsome man, in the prime of life, with light hair, blue eyes, strong, resolute face, lightish mustache, military bear- ing, and no beard. He bore some resemblance to William Henry Hurlbert, already alluded to; a fact which adds an- other romantic chapter to Sinclair's history, if Hurlbert 's testimony in the case made against him in London by a lady in 1892 be true — namely, that one "Wilfred Murray," and not Hurlbert, was the gallant gay deceiver in the case in ques- tion. The description given of Wilfred Murray corresponds with that of Sinclair, who had been at one time in Hurlbert 's service. Sinclair's history almost beats the creations of romance in its revelations. He was the son of a well - known citi- zen in . He graduated in one of the three great uni- versities, and practised subsequently as a lawyer in a pro- vincial town. In the later sixties, he emigrated to one of the British colonies, and carried with him, to the premier of that country, a highly comiplimentary letter of introduction from a present lord chancellor, two present peers, and three distinguished judges, now dead. He returned to England after a long absence, and proceeded on some mission to New York. He was then an agent of the Enghsh secret service. He convoyed the alleged dynamiters, Gallagher and company, in 1883, to London, where they were arrested and sent to pe- nal servitude for life. For this work Sinclair received a large sum of money through Mr. Jenkinson,and departed for South Africa. He was back once more in London in 1885. He was employed by Mr. Labouchere for service in aid of Mr. Parnell in The Times commission, and was sent to America to see Mr. Patrick Egan. He returned with a book which he alleged he had received from Frank Byrne. Before starting on this journey he had had an interview 617 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND with Mr. Parnell, Mr. Labouchere, and Mr. George Lewis, in the latter's office, Ely Place, London, full particulars of which he supplied to Mr. Soames, The Times solicitor, subsequently. On coming back from the United States he called on Pigott at Kingstown, and induced him, as already related, to obtain an interview with Mr. Parnell in Mr. Labouchere's home, which has been described. On the da^'^ following the suicide of Pigott in Madrid he visited his Kingstown residence before any one from our side had called, and possessed himself of some papers. All this time he was an agent of the secret service of the Home Office, and in the pay of Major Gosselin. He turned up next in Chicago, in the character of an in- spector for an ale company, and registered in a hotel under the name of "Stackpool." His secret was found out, how- ever, and he disappeared. Letters which came to the hotel after his departure were claimed by a Pinkerton detective, and they ultimately came into my hands. He crossed the Atlantic twice in the same ship as Mr. Chamberlain, and attempted to exploit the late colonial secretary, as will be seen from the letter to Mr. Labouchere which will be found on another page. In this and in sub- sequent attempts to turn the powerful enemy of Home Rule to his account he was not a success. He carried his enter- prise so far as to cause a report to be spread that an attempt would be made by the Clan-na-Gael to do some personal injury to the member for Birmingham during his stay in the United States. He then warned Mr. Chamberlain of this "danger!" This concoction produced a curious state of things. So alarmed were the then leaders of the clan at the possibility of some such insane attempt being made, that they paid the expense of Pinkerton agents to quietly watch, unknown to him, over the safety of the great enemy of the Irish cause all the time he remained in America! Sinclair's wife became a resident of the city of Chester, and was paid to watch whether American visitors or Irish members were calling upon Mr. Gladstone at Hawarden, in 1 89 1. Her messages to the secret -service department during her husband's absence were addressed to "Simnosity," Lon- don, Major Gosselin's code-name being "Norton." During the hearing of the Hurlbert case in London, Sinclair turned up in Santiago, Chili, on a visit to that city. He called upon Mr. Patrick Egan, at that time American minis- ter to the Chilian Republic. He was on a secret mission from the London Times, and cabled this despatch on his arrival : 618 SECRET-SERVICE SPIES "Soames, London: "Munificent, Embrute, Pantry." (Meaning: "I have seen Mr. Egan, who received me in a friendly way and will willingly see me again.") After fruitless efforts to obtain any information from Mr. Egan, to console The Times for its losses over the commission, Sinclair returned again to England. Once more he obtains a commission from The Times in the extraordinary letter which will be found below. His auda- cious attempts to carry out "a more active and bold course " landed him in trouble. He was living in New York under cover of the name "Wilson," and represented himself as a commission agent. Suspicion was aroused among men into whose confidence he attempted to worm himself, with the result that he left his lodgings precipitately, and left docu- ments behind him which are the source whence most of the matter for this brief chapter has been taken. ^ His next attempted exploit was in Belfast, during the election of 1892, when he proposed a scheme so violent in its nature that the leading Orangeman before whom he put his plans refused to sanction any anti-Home Rule proceed- ing of that kind. In more recent years "Sinclair" vanished into space, and * The Times code for deciphering some of the following letters will explain their meaning: John Mr. Parnell James John Dillon, M.P. Isabella Michael Davitt George Patrick Egan Edward Mr. Labovichere, M.P. Ruby The Clan-na-Gael Richard The National League of America Moses The Ancient Order of Hibernians Pearl The Fenians Jane Patrick Ford Bella P. J. Sheridan Sarah Thomas Brennan Gladys McCarthy (Denver) Ada Captain Slattery Felix John Devoy Clara Alexander Sullivan Samuel The Times Jeremiah Sinclair Kate Mr. Soames Beatrice Major Gosselin (Secret-Service De- (partment. Teresa Mr. Gladstone A New York I C Boston B Philadelphia | D Chicago, etc. 619 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND has apparently left no trail. The following letters were found among his papers : "December 24, 1884. "Sir, — I have received two letters from you from the Cape. I could not write before because you had not given me any address. Your second letter, however, gives your address. I am glad to hear that you had such a good passage, and I hope that soon you will succeed in getting some employment. I suppose you received that money on your arrival, though you do not mention it in either of your letters. I am out of town just now, but when I return towards the end of January I will make arrangements for a further small re- mittance, as I promised you I would do before you left Eng- land. But you must endeavor to become independent as soon as possible, for I cannot send you more than a very small sum. ' ' I am much obliged to you for the remembrance of you which you sent me just as you were leaving London, I could not acknowledge it before because I did not know how to address your letters. "Yours, E. Jenkinson." "November 10, 1891. "Dear Sir, — The effect of what I told you was that there was considerable uneasiness because it was feared there were certain documents in the possession of John* — that the rumors had taken a tangible shape inasmuch as it was re- ported that one of the documents was the book in question which had been sent over by a special emissary who had been in communication with Rebecca. Yours truly, "Kate." ^ "November 16, 1891. "Dear Sir, — I have just heard that Jessie^ intends to go out on Saturday to see Maria.^ Yours truly. "Kate." " December 3, 1891. "Dear Sir, — If you go to Dalziel's agent in New York, I think you can get the information. It came through him. "In your letters just received you mention several persons * "John," Mr. Parnell; "Rebecca," Mr. T. Harrington. ^ " Kate," Mr. Soanies, solicitor to The Times. ' "Jessie," E. J. McCue, an accomplice of Sinclair's, playing the part of a patriot. *" Maria," Mr. Sutton, secretary of the National Leagvie of America. 620 SECRET-SERv^ICE SPIES I do not know, and whose identity I cannot trace. I mention them: Ada, Gladys, Terence, Samuel, Felix, Luke, Frederick, Aaron, Abraham, Pearl.* " I sent you a cablegram to-day to tell you to do as you sug- gested. Yours truly, Kate." " Eastbourne, January 3, 1892. "Dear Sir, — I am not sure that I shall be visible to-morrow, but if I can see you I will send you a telegram in the morning. I must confess that I am disappointed at the non-result of the last trip, and hope that a more active and bold course will be taken this time. Clearly, to stay at New York without getting in touch with any one of note is useless, and is not what I understood you undertook to do when you went out. From this visit we ought to have some results in the shape of some- thing tangible. I have but little doubt a good deal may be done in obtaining for me the sort of information we have al- read}' discussed, but if you find it cannot it will not be worth while trying for the impossible or incurring further needless expense. I shall be glad to know what measures you propose to take on your arrival, and that these will be taken promptly. "Yours truly, Kate." "[Copy] "Hotel Oddo, Santiago de Chile, March 13, 1892. "Dear Sir, — I arrived in Valparaiso on 20th last month. I immediately telegraphed to G., and asked him where he could see me. On the following Thursday I was informed by a gentleman that G. was somewhere in the South, and that there was no one in the legation. I again telegraphed to a gentleman in Santiago, who I was told might know where he was. I received a reply from him, stating that G. was with all his family in the South, near a place called Coronel, but that it would be difficult to get a telegram to reach him, as he could not find out the exact address. However, on the 29th I tele- graphed to G. to Coronel, and on March 3d I received the following reply: "'Your telegram received. I will be passing through Val- paraiso early in the next week. — Egan.' "On March 5th the United States consul at Valparaiso called on me, and stated that the secretary of legation, who had returned (and who is the consul's son), had telephoned •"Ada," Captain Slattery; "Gladys." McCarthy (Denver) ; "Ter- ence," O'Gorman; "Samuel," The Times; "Felix," John Devoy; "Luke," unknown; "Frederick," Moore of Chicago; "Aaron," Dan O'SuUivan; "Abraham," T. B. Grant; "Pearl," the Fenians. 621 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND him that G. had directed him to keep me posted as to his movements. On March 7th I received the following wire (wire enclosed) from the secretary: "'The minister will be in Santiago on Saturday, if he ar- rives before he will telegraph. — McCreevy.' "I wired him on the 8th to know if he was coming via Val- paraiso or via Concepcion; he telephoned via Concepcion. I therefore left for Santiago on the loth. . . . Sinclair." " October 25, 1892. "Dear Sir, — I generally see the papers myself and am pretty well informed as to what they contain as to American and home matters. It is hardly worth while, therefore, to trouble yourself to send me extracts from them. I quite agree with Major Le Caron's remarks as to the secret service. A miHtary man may possibly be a very good figure-head for a large police force, but he is certainly not qualified by training or education to act as a detective himself or to direct others to act in such a capacity. I do not think, at present, at any rate, I shall do anything with the Devoy matter; but I should like to see the McDermott, Davitt, Labouchere correspondence to decide about that. Yours truly, Kate." " June 27, 1893. "Dear Sir, — If I were you I would avoid McDermott. He can have no real business with you, and I think his interviews with Captain Webb must be to mislead the latter. "Yours truly, Kate." " Xovcmbcr 21, 1893. "Dear Sir, — I return you Mr. Chamberlain's letters and the copy of your letter to him. I do not think, however, that the letters assist you much as a corroboration of your state- ment as regards the interviews. Yours truly, Kate." "March 22, 1889. "Dear Mr. Labouchere, — I find I have the Chamberlain letter which I now enclose you. "I wrote Mr. Chamberlain, stating that I did so according to the arrangement I had made with him on La Boiirgognc. I have, however, not seen him. I have now written him as follows : " ' I trust you will excuse me for not before replying to your letter of January 28th last, but the fact is I was not in a position to do so, as I was without instructions from the other side. If you now desire to see me, I think I am in a position 622 SECRET-SERVICE SPIES to speak. Your late suggestion seems to have found favor. I take the liberty of asking you to keep our correspondence perfectly quiet, as you will readily see I might easily be placed "between two fires." What did I tell you about the letters on the Aurania / I take it you now agree with me. If you desire to make an appointment with me, I shall be most happy to keep it, but under present circumstances I should not like to go to the House of Commons.' "Please keep this, as it is the only copy I have of the letter to the right hon. gentleman. "Yours faithfully, Sinclair. "Henry Laboucherc, Esq., M.P." "40 Prince's Gardens, S.W., April i, 1889. "Sir, — I am obliged by your letter of March 29th. I can only say that I entirely agree with your opinion that the sooner the present state of the Irish question is terminated the better it will be for Ireland. To this result I would at all times gladly contribute, but I do not see that at the present moment I have any influence which could be usefully em- ployed to this end. I am, "Yours obediently, "(Signed) J. Chamberlain." " 40 Prince's Gardens, S.W., September 9, 1893. "Sir, — I am directed by Mr. Chamberlain to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 8th inst., and to say in reply that in the present state of parliamentary business it is quite uncertain whether he will be able to visit the United States or not. If, however, he does, he will not allow his arrangements to be interfered with in the slightest degree by such considera- tions as those contained in your letter. He imagines that the Irish in America are not such fools as to make any demon- stration which would seriously injure their own cause; but, in any case, the responsibility for preventing it must rest with the United States authorities, and does not concern Mr. Cham- berlain. I am, sir. Yours obediently, "(Signed) John Wilson." CHAPTER L HOPES AND FEARS Taking into account the character of the commission and the manner of its creation, the report of the judges was a ver- dict for Parnell almost as emphatic as the flight and suicide of Pigott. It was to all political intents and purposes an acquittal at the hands of a hostile tribunal. The Irish leader had virtually conquered his enemies again, and the exposure of their methods and agents in the plot that had been worked against himself and party made his victory a doubly valuable one in the struggle for Home Rule against the same foes and their ministerial allies. Once more the skies looked bright and the clouds had vanished below the horizon in the political outlook for and from Ireland. The report was debated in the House of Commons on March 3, 1890. The allies of Walter and Pigott had a majority in Westminster. Majorities are not necessarily bound to obey any just impulse such as might influence an individual who is an honest-minded opponent. As a rule they follow the direction of their leaders and place the interests of party above just or moral considerations, especially if the party hap- pens to be in power. Mr. W. H. Smith, as leader of the House, resisted a motion of Mr. Gladstone's which asked the Commons of England to put on record its condemnation of the atrocious charges that had been made and disproved against the Irish members of the House. It was not an extravagant form of reparation to make to the members of a Parliamentary party and the authorized spokesman of a nation who had been so foully maligned. No more appropriate or more simple act of justice could have been suggested, seeing that it was the same House of Commons which had called the commission into existence and had forced Mr. Parnell and his friends to accept a trial for their political lives at its hands. But Mr. Gladstone asked leaders of the government to pass judgment upon their own acts in his motion. They were auxiliaries to the Houston-Walter conspiracy. They had helped with money, spies, open and secret agents, and in the public decla- 624 HOPES AND FEARS rations by Lord vSalisbury and the attorney-general, to fasten the forgeries of The Times as proofs of guilt upon the Irish leader. They were unconvicted, because untried, accom- plices of detected plotters, and they obtained from their party the defeat of the motion which a great Englishman had hoped the British House of Commons would willingly place to its own honor and credit upon the records of that assembly. Mr. Gladstone's speech was remarkable for one noted ad- mission by the author of the great land act of 1881. "Sup- pose I am told," he said, "that without the agitation Ireland would never have had the land act of 1881, are you prepared to deny that.^ I hear no challenges upon that statement, for I think it is generally and deeply felt that without the agita- tion the land act would not have been passed. As the man responsible more than any other for the act of 1881 — as the man whose duty it was to consider the questions day and night during nearly the whole of that session — I must record my firm opinion that it would not have become the law of the land if it had not been for the agitation with which Irish society was convulsed.""^ He pleaded in vain in one of the noblest appeals he had ever addressed to that House. So did Mr. Thomas Sexton, whose speech, next to that of the venerable Liberal leader, was the greatest oratorical effort of the debate. Mr. W. H. Smith and his majority remained true in spirit and in vote to the baffled purpose of the Houston-Pigott plot, and the House of Commons was induced to pass a vote of thanks to the judges of the commission and to place their report upon the records of Parliament. The action of the House of Commons in supporting the policy of the ministerial allies of TJie Times and not the more honorable proposal of Mr. Gladstone was not re- flected in the attitude of public opinion upon the judges' decision. Here there was a more just verdict given. The confession of the forgeries was accepted as an emphatic judgment for Parnell, and he became in consequence im- mensely popular in Great Britain. There was a decided revulsion of feeling in his favor; all the stronger in its public showing on account of the general credence that had been given to the calumnies so persistently published against him. The city council of Edinburgh voted him the freedom of Scotland's capital. The Eighty Club, embracing the active spirits of the Liberal party, made him a life member and gave * Morley's Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., p. 410, 40 625 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND him a public banquet. He appeared at a great meeting in St. James's Hall, in company with Lord Rosebery and Lord Spencer, and received a welcome and an ovation from a great London audience such as no Irish leader had ever before experienced at English hands. Political fortune ap- peared to caress him with sunniest smiles, and hopes beat high in Home- Rule hearts that the leader whose ruin had been all but accomplished by malignant enemies would soon occupy the place and responsibilities of an Irish prime- minister in a legislative assembly in Dublin. The situation in Ireland corresponded to this brighter out- look in Great Britain. Coercion had, as ever, overreached its spirit and purpose. Mr. Balfour had not suppressed any effective agency working against landlordism or Dublin- Castle rule. Quite the reverse. A policy of force vindictively applied in the imprisonment, on frivolous charges, of a dozen members of Parliament, of a Lord Mayor of Dublin, who was a prominent nationalist and a popular poet, Mr. T. D. Sullivan, of half a dozen editors of country newspapers, for publishing reports of National-League meetings, could only have one general result with a people like ours. It made the power in whose name this political dragooning was done more hated than ever, and the law by which it was enforced more detested. Hundreds of local leaguers and campaigners had been sent to prison for short terms, for their part in the movement, only to come back to their towns and villages with the prestige of "martyrs" and all the honors that a brass-band and a turf bonfire could confer upon them. Mr. Balfour's counter campaign against the league had another equally unlooked-for result. English visitors were attracted to the country by the political excitement which the prosecutions of editors, members of Parliament, and priests created. Among these visitors were many politicians who came as enemies and went away as friends of the cause against which all this coercion was directed. They saw with their own eyes what they had hitherto refused to believe: the poverty of tenants on the "campaign" estates, the wretchedness caused by landlords, of whom many were absentees, and they learned that it was in England's name, and by the means of English-made law, that evictions and all their attendant hardships and cruelties were inflicted. It was an object-lesson in a stupid system of blind misrule, and it exercised a missionary influence upon hitherto prejudiced minds. Visitors more friendly to the Irish cause had an unexpected taste of what laws passed for the coercion of Irishmen could 626 HOPES AND FEARS be made to mean for intrusive Englishmen. Mr. Coneybeare, an English Radical, and Mr. Wilfred Blunt, an English aristocrat and husband of Lord Byron's granddaughter, were sent to prison by Mr. Balfour for attending proclaimed meetings and attempting to make speeches! The former committed his "crime" in County Donegal, and was im- prisoned in Derry jail. The latter had dared to go to a meeting in County Galway, and found his way in conse- quence to the prison of Limerick. Mr. John Dillon had by this time returned from his success- ful Australian tour, and threw himself with his customary earnestness into the " plan-of-campaign " contest, which was now largely centred in the project to build a new Tipperary in retaliation upon Mr. Smith-Barry (now Lord Barrymore), the leader of a rival landlord combination who owned the old town of that name, with its flourishing butter-market. The local leader in this enterprise was an uncompromising and resourceful "campaigner," the Rev. David Humphreys, a zealous and patriotic priest who had been a veteran Land- League fighter in the eighties. Enormous sacrifices were being made by Tipperary merchants and others in obedience to the enthusiasm which Father Humphreys and his ad- herents had called forth in the fight, in response to the appeals from Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien, who were directing the whole movement at this period. Mr. Balfour resolved to strike another blow at the heads of this combination. He singled out Mr. Parnell's two fore- most lieutenants for a third prosecution, and then prepared, in accord with the traditional policy of English chief secre- taries, to surrender something to the movement which he was attempting to put down. Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien's last adventure before their final imprisonment by Mr. Balfour was their escape in a boat to France. A warrant had been issued for their appearance before a coercion court, and, it being no part of their duty to facilitate the working of a law which was but a criminal mockery of justice, they resolved to visit the United States on a mission in behalf of the objects of the "plan," instead of obliging the chief secretary by going to prison for the third or fourth time. There would be no chance to leave Ireland, under these circumstances, in any ordinary way, so the affair was placed in capable hands. At a late hour on a dark night in October, 1889, a small boat shot out from beneath the shadow of Bullock Castle, near Dalkey, and picked her course to a yacht which was lying south of Kings- town. Mr. Clancy, a picturesque personality in Dublin na- 627 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tionalist circles, was in charge of the expedition, which was a guarantee that no ordinary mishap would mar the plan of escape. Cherbourg was finally reached, when the following "log" of the voyage was published in the press: "Mr. William O'Brien, M.P., who arrived in Cherbourg yesterday with Mr. John Dillon, M.P., gives the following account of the voyage from Dalkey, ten miles from Dublin, to France: 'Just arrived after a singularly unfortunate passage. Rowed out of Dalkey, Wednesday midnight, to the yacht lying two miles off. Not an enemy in sight. Next morning found us ninety miles away towards the Welsh coast, with a light breeze astern. On Friday and Saturday fell a dead calm. On Sunday morning we rounded Land's End; the wind again died away, and we were forced to lie all day in a brilliant sunshine within two miles of the shore. A Trinity House cutter passed quite close, and the crew of the Royal Adelaide, at Falmouth, actually exchanged greetings with our sailors. The Dublin steamer also passed close. A heavy fog came down on Sunday night and buried us from sight ; four steamers were blowing fog-horns around us during the night. By the morning we had cleared the Lizard and darted across the French coast, out of the track of British shipping. We were becalmed again on Monday, and obliged to beat up Channel by the Channel Islands. A brisk gale sprang up on Monday night, but the yacht behaved magnifi- cently. While passing Guernsey, after midnight, we were apparently pursued for some hours closely by a revenue-cutter, which was unable to weather out the gale, and gave up the chase. This morning we were running free before the wind for Cherbourg, and landed on French territory about eleven o'clock. The weather, which was phenomenally fine, is now squally and dangerous. We had reached our last day's supply of fresh water and ship's oil. All the arrangements worked, thanks to a prominent Dublin citizen who superin- tended them, perfectly, and with unparalleled good luck.'"' Public opinion in Great Britain began to tire again of Irish coercion, imprisonments, and the rest, especially when, late in 1889, the very government which was responsible for this kind of rule made it known through their organs in the press that a new land act was to be introduced in the next session. A measure of county government for Ireland was also to be a coming Tory concession to a people from whom Lord Salisbury and his nephew had taken away free- dom of the press and of public meeting on account of their * Freeman's 'Journal. October 16, 1890. 628 HOPES AND FEARS insistence upon an amendment of existing land laws and de- mands for other reforms. By-elections in Great Britain had begun to go steadily in the direction of a reaction against the policy of evictions, bat- tering-rams, prosecutions, and jails. The time for an appeal to the electors was also approaching. Political parties were again compelled to take into account the factor of the Irish vote in Great Britain, and the power which Mr. Parnell would wield in the division lobbies at Westminster in the coming Parliament. From the United States financial support for the National League continued steady and substantial from the date of the last convention at Chicago (August, 1886) down to December, 1889. The central treasurer of the National League of Amer- ica, Rev. Charles O'Reilly, accounted for total subscriptions amounting to $279,800 in his balance-sheet of January 29, 1890. This money, less expenses and balance on hand, had been sent to the treasurers of the league in Dublin or direct to Mr. Parnell, as specific calls or demands from the home organization asked for remittances. An Irish Parliamentary Fund Association had been formed in New York in 1885 to assist Mr. Parnell in the then im- pending elections. The late Mr. Eugene Kelly, banker, was chairman, and Mr. Miles M. O'Brien, a prominent New York citizen and old-time nationalist, was secretary. This body remitted to Mr. Parnell a total sum of $78,000 up to the year 1889. Considerable portions of this amount were collected through the mediums of the New York Sun and the New York World, and many American citizens not of Irish parentage had measured their sympathy for the Irish movement by subscriptions towards its success. During the period covered by the sittings of the commission, Mr. John Dillon, Sir Thomas Esmonde, and the late Mr. John Deasy went to the Australian colonies on a mission from the Irish party and the National League. All the large cities and towns in Australia were visited. Meetings were addressed and financial help for the home movement was obtained. Up- ward of /^4o,ooo resulted from this tour — a truly munificent showing for the comparatively small population of Irish birth and parentage in these distant colonies. In fact, neither in America nor in Great Britain have the Irish race contributed as generousl}^ in their support of the Irish movement of the past quarter of a century, in proportion to numbers, as those who have encouraged the fight for land and liberty at home from these far-off regions; though the whole-hearted help steadily and readily given from these nearer countries marks 629 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND one of the chief triumphs of the national and land-reform agi- tation since 1879. Those among the Irish of Australia and New Zealand who joined the Land League and who made the mission of the Messrs. Redmond a success in 1882-83 were the earnest help- ers of the Dillon-Esmonde mission in 1888-89. Here and there a younger generation of Irish-Australians offered a new fervor of assistance. Among these was Dr. Nicholas O'Donnell, of Melbourne, at present the heart and soul of everything pro- Celtic that can advance the good or can promote the honor of a land he has never seen, but still has ardently loved and most faithfully served in every way that can make for its hap- piness and freedom. Shortly before Christmas Mr. Pamell was the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, at Hawarden. This was matter of no surprise to the public, extraordinary as was the change which the fact registered between the memorable Guildhall speech of October 13, 1881, and this hospitality of 1889. Mr. Pamell related to me an interesting incident of the more pleasant of the two events: "The old man took me round the grounds to show the place. We were accompanied in our walks by Miss Gladstone. He talked all the time about the history of the house, and led us to the ruins of the older castle. Here he described the plan of the ancient structure, and launched into an account of the old family who had built and occupied it. We were moving away when Miss Gladstone said: " ' Why, papa! You have omitted all reference to the most interesting part of the ruins.' "'What is that, dear?' "'Oh, you forgot to show Mr. Pamell the dungeon!' " The telling of this incident gave Pamell intense pleasure. He laughed boyishly in the recollection of it, and remarked: "The old man looked very grave, and was evidently not pleased at having his memory taken back to the time he put me in Kilmainham." Then, in a subtone, as if to himself, and with a bitter smile, he added, " Yes, he shut me up in prison." His intense and almost diseased pride had made his six months' imprisonment in 1881-82 an unpardonable act on the part of his subsequent political ally. Thus from every quarter of a world-wide area of encourage- ment and help for the cause of which he was the head, Mr, Pamell was being looked to, at the close of the year 1889, as likely soon to witness the triumph of the movement which he had led, with such conspicuoixs success, when once more a 630 HOPES AND FEARS thunder-clap, not altogether undreaded among his followers, was to plunge the Irish cause into darkness and despair. On Monday morning, December 30th, the world of politics was startled at the news that Captain O'Shea had filed a petition for divorce against his wife, and that Mr. Parnell was to be the corespondent in the case. CHAPTER LI A CHAPTER OF INTERROGATION (captain o'shea before the times commission) 335. Attorney-General {handing laitness the forged Parncll letter dated May 15, 1882). "Whose signature do you believe that to be?" — "I believe it is Mr. Parnell's handwriting." 337. "Look at the two letters dated June i6th. Whose do you believe the signature to be?" — "I believe it to be Mr. Parnell's signature." 341. "Will you look at the signature to the letter dated January 9, 1882. Whose signature do you believe that to be?" — "I believe it to be Mr. Parnell's." 344. " In what business are you now engaged?" — " I am not engaged in business anywhere, but am engaged on business in Madrid." Cross-examined by Sir Charles Russell. 357. "By whom were you asked to give evidence?" — "By Mr. Buckle, editor of The Times, through Mr. Chamberlain." 388. "Through whom? (Did you volunteer to comply?)" — "Mr. Houston." 404. Wit>iess. "I looked upon Houston as Buckle in the matter." 436. Witness. "I met Mr. Buckle at dinner in August, at the Privatelli Hotel." 445. "Who was the host?" — "Sir Roland Blennerhassett." 451. "Do you know the name of Pigott?" — "I know the name of Pigott — yes." 457. "Did you learn from Houston that he. Mr. Houston, had obtained them [the forged letters] from Pigott?" — "No, certainly not; but what I heard was it was said that I had entered into some combination or conspiracy to get these letters." 552. "Who is Mulqueeny?" — " Mulqueeny is an Irishman, resident in London, who assisted me very much when I was canvassing an East End constituency for a friend of mine." 632 A CHAPTER OF INTERROGATION 597. "Do you know of an Irish public-house in Wardour Street?" — "Yes, I have been there once." 602. "How did you come to go there?" — "I went there because a number of advanced nationaHsts had signed a testimonial to me, or rather a declaration, protesting against my exclusion from Irish politics; and I was told I would meet some of them there if I went, and I went." 611. "Who was the man who got up this testimonial?" — "It was brought to me by Mulqueeny."* EVIDENCE OF GEORGE MULQUEENY 57,877. Witness. "I have received ^i per day from The Times for every day the commission has been sitting." 58,088. "I am a friend of Captain O'Shea's." 58,092. "If Captain O'Shea said that I had told him that I had sent the letter [Frank Byrne's letter] I would not con- tradict him. Captain O'Shea is, to my mind, a thoroughly honorable gentleman." 58.133. "To whom other than to Captain O'Shea did you give this information [anent the Frank Byrne letter] at any time?" 58.134. Witness. "I never gave this information to any- body that I know of except Captain O'Shea, and that was over a glass of wine at his house." ^ SOME FACTS LEADING UP TO A SERIOUS QUESTION 1. Captain O'Shea was acting for Mr. Chamberlain, mainly, in 1882, when he negotiated the Kilmainham treaty with Mr. Parnell, then in prison. 2. The Irish public -house in Wardour Street, London, which Captain O'Shea visited in 1885 was then a rendezvous for spies and casual informers. Major Yellow had his head- quarters there for two months in that year. It was frequented by Mulqueeny, Pigott, Hayes, and others of a like character. It was in this place, in that year, that Mulqueeny got up the testimonial for Captain O'Shea, protesting against his exclu- sion from Irish politics, for presentation to Mr. Parnell, which testimonial was taken by Mulqueeny to Paris for the signa- ture of Kasey. 3. It was after this precious requisition was thus prepared ^Special Commission Report, vol. i., pp. 354-365. ^Ihid., vol. vi., pp. 391-401. 633 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND that Captain O'Shea forced Mr. Parnell to put him forward as parliamentary candidate for Galway City. 4. Buckle, editor of The Times, asked Mr. Chamberlain, as related above, to obtain Captain O'Shea's evidence for the commission, after the decision in the case of O'Donnell and Walter, and 0\Shea dined with Buckle and Blennerhassett, as recorded, on the eve of the sitting of the commission. 5. It was to O'Shea that Mulqueeny revealed the existence of the Frank Byrne letter. 6. O'Shea was the first witness to give evidence at the com- mission as to the signatures of the forged letters. 7. He swore that he believed these were in Mr. Parn ell's handwriting. Query: After the collapse of the Houston-Pigott conspiracy, and the triumph of Mr. Parnell over the 7'n;/t^5-Unionist com- bination in the special commission, who, or what agency, asked, urged, or persuaded the "thoroughly honorable gen- tleman" {vide Mulqueeny) to institute the proceedings for divorce .? CHAPTER LII SAMSON AGONISTES I'HE shadow of impending disaster fell across the move- ment after the public notice, referred to on a previous page, ap- peared in the press. Men said in private what they would not otherwise utter or write, and the evils of yet another crisis were anticipated to the dispiriting of some of his most sanguine sup- porters. But none of his lieutenants would see him to seek an explanation that might encourage a hope or confirm a fear. They shrank from approaching him on a matter which was, in a political sense, almost as vital to them as to him, and more so to Ireland than to the whole parliamentary party. This extraordinary temper reflected the prevalent state of feeling in the ranks of his chief followers. It had been engendered by his growing reserve and absence from the party in recent years, and by the unwisely excessive laudation of his personal- ity, which held him up as a man of a superior mould to the men whom he led. It was a spirit of unreal subserviency. But it misled him into the belief that it was genuine, and this lost for those who sang his praises loudest a claim to his confi- dence or a hold upon his esteem. Men who ought to have sought explanations at once from him were unable to break through the barrier of aloofness which his own action and that of the weekly trumpeters of his fame had set up between him and the men who had so loyally served and suffered with him for so many years. And for months after this suit against him had first threatened the cause of Home Rule with a great danger, those who should have done their duty to that cause, by frankly asking Mr. Parnell what he intended to do so as to avert a calamity, consoled themselves by saying that it would "blow over"; that it might be "another plot," and that, after all, if the worst happened, it was nobody's affair but Mr. Parnell's. This view was not a rational one, nor the one best calcu- lated to serve the interests of a menaced leadership. I sought an interview with him in this expectant interval, which he readily granted. I had told him what I wished to see him 635 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND for, and I transcribe, from notes made at the time, what passed. I asked him frankly what danger there was in the case, and whether he had anything to fear. This was his manner of replying : "Before we talk on that subject," he remarked, with his usual serene smile, "there is a matter I want to speak to you about. I don't approve of your labor organization in the South of Ireland; it will lead to mischief and can do no good. What do the laborers and artisans want that we cannot ob- tain for them by the efforts of the National League as well if not better than through those of this new combination? I thought you were opposed to ' class movements ' ? What is trades -unionism but a landlordism of labor? I would not tolerate, if I were at the head of a government, such bodies as trades-unions. They are opposed to individual liberty and should be kept down, as Bismarck keeps them under in Ger- many. He is quite right in his policy. Whatever has to be done for the protection of the working-classes in the state should be the duty of the government, and not the work of men like John Burns and others who will by-and-by, unless prevented, organize the working-classes into a power that may be too strong for the government to deal with. I would not allow that condition of things to grow up in Ireland, if I could prevent it in time, and I would most certainly try to do so." "But—" "Excuse me a moment. There is yet another considera- tion I want to insist upon. You are overlooking Mr. Glad- stone's position and difficulties. Any agitation in Ireland, except one making directly for Home Rule, increases the ob- stacles he has to contend against over here. It diverts at- tention from the main issue of our movement, and your new labor organization in Cork will frighten the capitalist Liberals, and lead them to believe that a Parliament in Dublin might be used for the purpose of furthering some kind of Irish social- ism. You ought to know that neither the Irish priests nor the farmers would support such principles. In any case, your laborers and artisans who have waited so long for special legislation can put up with their present conditions until we get Home Rule — " "When, I suppose, you would deal with them as Bismarck does in Germany?" This was Mr. Parnell's manner of discussing the subject we had met to consider! It was a superb piece of bluff, and was intended to warn all who might think it a duty to meddle in 636 A SAMSON AGONISTES "his" affairs to attend to something else. The extraordinaty opinions he gave utterance to were possibly the momentary expression of irritation at being asked a question about the divorce case, and not the reflex of his actual views on labor questions and organizations. They were diametrically op- posed to many of his previous opinions, emphatically so to what be said and did subsequently when he actually captured the very labor organization he had thus repudiated, and pressed its members into the service of his personal conflict with the majority of his party and of the country. This was, however, but an expedient in the exigencies of a fierce contest. The same opportunist spirit which governed all his political actions would have led him in the event of his reaching the head of an Irish administration, to repress, as far as possible, all combinations which should seek to question or disturb nation- al authority as he had assailed that of Dublin Castle. In fact, had the "classes" of Ireland and Great Britain really known Pamell, in his inward political convictions and strong bias against the very methods of agitation he had been constrained to adopt as a means to attain his ends for the good of Ireland, they would have hailed him as absolutely safe for their inter- ests, and as a conservative ruler of the country in 1886, in- stead of approving of a conspiracy to destroy him in 1887. He finally assured me, in this the last interview we were ever to have, that there was no peril of any kind to him or to the movement in Captain O 'Shea's "threatened proceed- ings." He bade me say to friends who might be anxious on the matter that he would emerge from the whole trouble without a stain on his name or reputation. These words were afterwards denied by him, but they were spoken as written above. What was possibly working in his mind at the moment was a firm belief that the person who instituted the suit would be induced to withdraw it from the courts, and that in this manner Mr. Parnell's assurances of innocence would be negatively confirmed should the case not come to trial. On the 15th and 17th of November the petition for divorce by Captain O'Shea was heard before a London jury. It was not defended. Neither the wife nor Mr. Pamell appeared in court. The details filled the press of Great Britain, Ire- land, and America for two days, and filled the minds of all Ireland's friends everywhere with sorrow and fear. The facts disclosed in evidence related a story of nine years of,) secret cohabitation under circumstances which added" hotTiing but discredit to Parnell's name. It revealed a double life of wretched deception, unredeemed by a single romantic feature 637 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND which could offer any excuse for a course of conduct that was bound some time to involve him in disgrace and to overwhelm the cause he led with the consequences of his guilt. There had been one, and only one, ground on which a human if not a moral extenuation of the liaison could be offered, and no attempt was made on behalf of the corespondents to sus- tain it — the connivance of the husband at the misconduct of the wife. The question of what Mr. Parnell would do, in the event of a verdict being obtained against him, had exercised the minds of friends and foes for a few weeks before the trial. Again the timid, temporizing spirit in his party, and in the country too, did mischief to him it was meant to serve. "There must be no English dictation"; "We will stand by our leader," and other thoughtless bravado did duty in the press and on the platform for common-sense and sane statesmanship. There was no issue of the kind at stake but one affecting Mr. Par- nell 's own duty to his responsibilities and position as Irish leader. This language and action encouraged him to pursue a course which he had probably determined upon all along. For he had evidently made up his mind to ignore the whole business as if nothing whatever had happened that required action or explanation on his part. So, on the very day, November 17th, on which a jury found a verdict against him, he published a summons in the press to his party to assemble in Westminster on the 25th to consider the parliamentary business of the autumn session. "I wish to lay special stress," the circular said, "upon the necessity for the attendance of every man upon the opening day, as it is unquestionable that the coming session will be one of combat from first to last, and that great issues depend upon its course." This was a deliberate challenge to all who might think he was bound in any way to bend for a time be- neath the storm his conduct had created. Two league meetings were held in Dublin after the issue of this summons. They were turned by thoughtless parti- sans to the service of Parnell's reckless decision. Nothing less wise in themselves, or more injurious to the leader they were meant to uphold in a senseless course, could be done at the time, and the attempt to justify a wrong procedure on the ground that it was "English dictation" and not Irish folly that called for protest, was a policy as foolish as ever suggested itself to earnest men faced by the perils of a political crisis. Earlier in the year Messrs. T. P. O'Connor, T. Harrington, T. D. SulHvan, and T. P. Gill went to the United States to join Messrs. John Dillon and William O'Brien in a mission to 638 SAMSON AGONISTES collect money for the support of the evicted tenants and the national movement generally. They were cabled to by those of their colleagues who were forcing the running for Mr. Parnell's fatal resolve, and were induced to send a message to the Dublin Leinster Hall meeting (T. D. Sullivan dissent- ing) laden down with superlative adjectives of laudation of a leader who was to be discarded in the course of a few hours, in equally eloquent language, from the same source. It was all well meant, but lamentably short-sighted and pregnant with a mischief to Home Rule which was destined to require many years of struggle and suffering to mitigate, and a gen- eration wholly to undo. In the face of all this Parnell's course was clearly deter- mined. Those who knew him best and who felt that he would not take a just or truly patriotic view of his position, if doing so should make any claim upon his inordinate pride," fully expected what happened. He would treat the party as his subordinates and self-confessed servitors, and would be sure to carry a section, if not a majority, with him in any T'esolve to hold his ground in defiance of all consequences. The party met on Tuesday, November 25th, to elect a sessional chairman, as on the opening day of every previous Parliamentary session. One member, and only one, out of fifty-nine of his colleagues assembled in committee-room 15,' ventured timidly to ask Mr. Parnell to do what it was his own obvious and bounden duty to do, to retire temporarily from his position until the storm he alone had caused by his con- duct should blow over. Not a single voice was added to Mr. Jeremiah Jordan's appeal, and the election was forth- with concluded. The meeting broke up after listening to an extraordinary speech from Mr. Parnell, and the unwise act that had just been collectively done began to bring home to individual minds what it was all to mean to the fortunes of the Home-Rule cause. It transpired that Mr. Gladstone had written a most friendly letter to Mr. Morley on the subject of Parnell's position, on failing to hear from the Irish leader what he intended doing in face of the divorce-court verdict. This letter was to be read to Mr. Parnell, before the meeting of the party, and its purport was to be communicated to the members of the party only if the appeal which the letter addressed to Mr. Parnell's patriotism and good sense should not induce him to resign, for a time, his place at the head of the Home-Rule movement. Mr. Parnell knew this letter was written, and what it asked him to do, but said never a word about it at the party meeting. Mr. Justin McCarthy was aware of the con- 639 ,\' THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tents of the letter, but did not communicate a word of them to his colleagues until the election of Mr. Parnell had been decided. Mr. Gladstone, learning of the action of the party, and believing that Mr. McCarthy had informed his colleagues of what the Liberal leader had written, published his letter in the press to explain and justify his own position ana thereby told the public, after the party meeting, what had been in- tended only for the Irish members before their decision should be arrived at. Here the blame was all on the Irish side, and yet "Mr. Gladstone's dictation," and not Mr. Parnell's de- liberate wrong-doing, was to be made a battle-cry of faction by men who knew the facts as they had occurred, and who were aware of the injustice that was being done to the Eng- lish statesman who had tried, honestly and honorably, to save the Irish cause by seeking to persuade its leader not to be guilty of an act of political suicide. Mr. Morley's book places Mr. Gladstone's action in this crisis far above all suspicion as to the fairness of his conduct towards Mr. Parnell. He shows how the great Englishman absolutely refused to judge Parnell on the ground of the moral wrong involved in his conduct. That was no afTair of an English leader or party. It was a matter for the Irish party and public opinion in Ireland to determine upon. But Mr. Gladstone, as leader of the British Home-Rule party, in alliance with Mr. Parnell, was bound to take cognizance of how the Irish leader's retention of his position, in face of the verdict of public opinion and of the court against him, would affect the political situation in England, Scotland, and Wales at pending elections. He could not ignore what his own following felt and said, or what was the tenor and trend of common feeling in his own country. It would be as reasonable to ask him to shut his eyes at night-time and to imagine that daylight was as much abroad as before the sun went down. He saw what all intelligent minds could not help seeing, that the political consequences of Mr. Parnell's continued leader- ship of the Irish party, without some decent atonement being made to the average moral sense of the public mind, would spell ruin to the Home-Rule cause by snapping asunder the links of union which Mr. Parnell had himself forged in acts and in words as manifest and as clear as anything that had ever happened in his political career. Mr. Morley's account of how the fateful letter was written, and in what spirit, shows how unjust were the imputations which were cast by Mr. Parnell and his friends upon the motive in which it originated : "The Liberal leaders had a right to assume that the case 640 SAMSON AGONIST ES must be as obvious to Mr. Parnell as it was to everybody else, and unless loyalty and good faith have no place in political alliances, they had a right to look for his spontaneous action. Was unlimited consideration due from them to him, and none from him to them? "The result of the consultation was the decisive letter addressed to me by Mr. Gladstone, its purport to be by me communicated to Mr. Parnell. As any one may see, its language was courteous and considerate. Not an accent was left that could touch the pride of one who was known to be as proud a man as ever lived. It did no more than state an unquestionable fact, with an inevitable inference. It was not written in view of publication, for that it was hoped would be unnecessary. It was written with the expectation of finding the personage concerned in his usual rational frame of mind, and with the intention of informing him of what it was right that he should know. The same evening Mr. McCarthy was placed in possession of Mr. Gladstone's views, to be laid before Mr. Parnell at the earliest moment."^ In an interview with Mr. Parnell, which took place im- mediately after his re-election, Mr. Morley spoke to him as follows : "I replied that he [Mr. Parnell] might know Ireland, but he did not half know England; that if he set British feeling at defiance and brazened it out, it would be ruin to Home Rule at the elections; that if he did not withdraw for a time the storm would not pass; that if he withdrew from the actual leadership now, as a concession to public feeling in this coun- try, this need not prevent him from again taking the helm when new circumstances might demand his presence; that he could very well treat his election as a public vote of con- fidence by his party; that having secured this, he would suffer no loss of dignity or authority by a longer or shorter period of retirement. - I reminded him that for two years he had been practically absent from active leadership."" To this friendly appeal Mr. Parnell gave a frigid refusal. He had determined to put nothing above or before his personal pride and feeling. He would stake all upon his own resolve to remain in the saddle. The subsequent action of the Irish party was an instance of wisdom coming too late. They attempted to correct the first mistake by committing another. Two blunders were to amend that of the initial election, and for eight or ten days the newspaper readers of the political world perused the ^Lifc of Gladstone, vol. iii., p. 436. ^ ibid., p. 440. 41 641 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND debates in " Committee - room 15" with a relish which an Irish faction fight can alone provide for the keen appetite of Ireland's enemies. It was a debate over the coffin of Home Rule by the men who had been parties to the deed which Mr. Parnell was permitted to commit, unrestrained, in their presence. Many good things were well said during the discussion — which could have been more appropriately spoken on Novem- ber 25th. Mr. McCarthy quoted Grattan in his fine expres- sion, "No man can be lavish with his honor, or woman with her virtue, or country with its liberty." Mr. Sexton told Mr. Parnell that, "no service rendered by any leader to any cause entitled him to effect its ruin." Mr. Parnell's con- temptuous rejoinder was: "You elected me unanimously. You now want to throw me over at Mr. Gladstone's dictation. You all have said, again and again, that I am indispensable to the Irish cause. For these and other reasons I shall re- main." These were not his exact words, but they represent the spirit and purpose of his defiance to all the arguments and influences that had been used on the other side. He had presided over his own trial by his colleagues. They were treated by him with studied contempt during the whole proceedings, and never once did he admit, by word or sign or action that he had done any wrong or that the party had any right to go back upon its first decision. At one time during the discussion it looked as if the appeals that had been addressed to him had weakened his resolution. He asked for forty-eight hours' time for reflection.- This was hopefully given. He sought the direction of whatever hidden in- fluence had completely usurped his personal power and will, and returned obdurate and unrelenting. He would risk all and concede nothing. Neither Ireland, nor Home Rule, nor his party, nor his own political salvation had weighed against whatever counsels had urged him — knowingly, no doubt — to a ruin which might, thereby, be that of the cause that Pigott's forgeries, sworn to by O'Shea, had failed, through Pigott's confession and suicide, to destroy. The die was cast. The Irish party was split in two, and with it the entire league movement throughout the world. The Irish Samson had pulled the pillars from beneath the temple of a great cause in his own downfall. No blunder of his party, or weakness of his chief lieu- tenants, or consideration for man or woman, offered even the shadow of a rational excuse for Mr. Parnell's action. He had been treated in the most indulgent manner and spirit by his colleagues, even after the facts about the Gladstone 642 SAMSON AGONISTES letter had leaked out. It was proposed to him, in their be- half, that he could appoint a committee of his party — men of his own preference and selection — to conduct its affairs during a six months' absence. He could offer to resign his seat in Cork — an offer which would not be accepted. The chair of the party would be left vacant ; no one would occupy it, if the offer were made; no offer of the kind would come from his colleagues. He could withdraw from his position until the storm blew over, marry the lady for whom, or from whom, all this disaster had been brought upon a movement with which she as an Englishwoman had no friendly concern, and then come back and resume his old position. More generous terms had never been ofi'ered to a man whose own act had brought him face to face with the threatened ruin of himself and his party. It was in a deliberate refusal to accept of this way of escaping from a position of his own making, and not on the grounds of his moral misconduct, that Mr. Parnell made himself impossible as a leader, and which compelled the men who had built up the Irish movement with him to declare themselves his antagonists in his efforts to undo his and their work. The most noted and influential of his lieutenants pro- nounced against him after all attempts to reason him into a sane line of action had failed. Those who took his side were the men of least prestige and experience in the party. These were likewise in a marked minority. Division in Ireland followed on similar lines. Mr. Parnell 's former clerical and episcopal supporters went with the majority. The minority in the country, however, included a majority of the most active of local leaders. Friends were driven asunder. Fami- lies even became divided. Some town or village in a count)^ would be found practically of one way of thinking, while another hamlet or town, a few miles away, would hold to the opposite side. This was what happened in Ireland. In the United States the whole league organization toppled over like a house of cards. "Committee-room 15" undid, in ten days, the work of as many missions from Ireland and the labors of ten years in building up a great auxiliar}' organiza- tion beyond the Atlantic. The friends in Great Britain and Australasia remained more or less with ranks unbroken, only dispirited, and on the side of the majority. In the Kilkenny, Sligo, and Carlow elections, which followed the "split," the popular verdicts upheld the action of the majority, and condemned that of the Parnellite factionists. The people had been appealed to, and their judgment was emphatic. Still, Mr. Parnell resolutely re- 643 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND fused to listen to any decision against him, or to adopt any alternative course to one of dogged, ruthless desperation. Former implacable opponents espoused his cause, without opening his eyes to the significance of this sinister sympathy, and without any protest from those who were conducting his campaign. Ever}^ enemy of Home Rule in Ireland and England wished him success, and every land-grabber in Ire- land insulted his former record by taking his side. Men and bodies formerly against him, when he stood for a united Ireland and a mighty race movement, now ranged themselves against his opponents, and lent him a help which was only offered in the hope of thereby destroying the great organiza- tion of which he had been the trusted leader. And in this disastrous course a great personality was driven by the impulse of a fatal pride and the backing of a reckless faction- ism to rush headlong to ruin. It would be a useless and sorrowful task to inflict upon the reader the story of the internecine conflict forced upon his own movement by Mr. Parnell. No good or even historic end would be served in such a narrative. It would tell only of a heart-breaking conflict between men who were separated by no principle of political faith, and no aim of public duty, in a country which had almost reached the goal of its long-deferred national hopes. It was a most hateful and senseless struggle, and earned for our cause some pity and much contempt from former supporters who were not of our race. It rendered the work of political life in Ireland a pathway strewn with thorns for those whose duty it was to defend the land movement and the cause of Home Rule against the revolt of Mr. Parnell and his followers. One can only hope that the recording angel in the paradise, or purgatory, reserved for Irish patriots in the fabled regions of Hy - BraziP will charitably obliterate from his tablets the words spoken and written in these years of humiliating sectional strife. One factor only in that strife calls for a brief reference. This was the taunt levelled at his chief lieutenants by their former leader, that their independence had been sapped by the Liberal party of England, and that they were, in conse- quence, faithless to Ireland and disloyal to him. This ab- surd charge was without an atom of foundation. The alli- ance with Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal party was Mr. Par- nell's own work, and the chief triumph of his political career. In that alliance he secured the adhesion of the foremost of England's statesmen and one of the two great English parties * The Elysium of Celtic legends. 644 SAMSON AGONISTES as the pledged allies of the Home-Rule cause. It was he, and not Mr. Gladstone, who ruptured this alliance, honorable as it had been to both, and full of promise to Ireland. To maintain what he had thus created; to uphold the policy which he had wisely laid down in 1886; to continue the joint labors of Irish and British Home-Rulers in the cause of na- tional self-government for Ireland, was what his oldest and ablest supporters determined he should not be permitted to undo for any personal issue, and it was his opposition to this resolve and to them which caused and continued the disas- trous "split" in 1890. Speaking at a Liberal meeting in the National Liberal Club, London, on July 20, 1887, Mr. Parnell referred to this alliance as follows : " It will always be associated with his [Gladstone's] memory, as one of the evidences of his greatness, that he was not afraid to ask, first of all his party, then the House of Commons, and then the whole country of Great Britain, to trust the little sister country of Ireland. No lesser man could have attempted to do it, and I believe, having placed his shoulder to the wheel, he will carry it through (and that before many months have gone by), and that the country will recognize that he is the truly great statesman to whom they have to look, and that all others are pretenders, imitators, and tinkerers. ... If nothing else had been done the Liberal party might fairly claim credit for themselves and be amply rewarded in the spectacle which has been presented in Ireland during the last eighteen months of the absence of crime and wrong-doing, because they believe their English brothers, whom they now look upon for the first time in seven centuries as brothers, are about to do justice to them, and are about to give them the power of doing justice to themselves." At a banquet given in his honor bv the (Liberal) Eighty Club, on May 8, 1888, Mr. Parnell said: "Believe me, such a reception from such a body will have a great effect in Ireland. It will remind the Irish people that they are not alone in their struggle for the legitimate rights of their country ; and it will remind them also — which is of more importance — that their responsibility is not a sole responsibil- ity in this matter. . . . They will be more than ever impressed with the necessity that both in their speech and in their action they should do nothing to damage the position and the power of their own potent allies in this country. They will recog- nize that the position of the Irish people and their fight is no longer that of a forlorn hope, but that it is the advance of a victorious army, with allies stronger, overwhelmingly stronger, 645 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND than themselves, who, by their own strength more than our strength, are about to estabHsh for Ireland the success of her cause." Again, in June, 1889, at a meeting held in the Westmin- ster Palace Hotel, London, he reiterated his faith in the alli- ance with the Liberal party, and eulogized the genius and services of Mr. Gladstone in these clear terms: "I pledged myself that I would hold myself aloof from all English party combinations — from all English parties — until an English party arose which would concede to Ireland the just rights of the Irish people, and enable her to obtain for herself those just rights in an Irish assembly in Dublin. That time has since come about when an English party — a great English party — under the distinguished leadership of Mr. Gladstone, has conceded to Ireland those rights, and has enabled us to enter into an honorable alliance — honorable and hopeful for our country, honorable for that great English party — an alliance which I venture to believe will last, and will yield permanent fruit, and result in a knitting together of Great Britain and Ireland in a true and real union. . . . They will intrust to that great statesman who will then be called to power — the only man of distinguished genius before the public — as his great, final, and crowning work, the task of finding some method in which might be intrusted to Ireland her own destinies, while she also is privileged to take a share in the greater interests of the empire." On the occasion of the presentation of the freedom of the city of Edinburgh, July 20, 1889, Mr. Parnell said: "... But to-day everything is changed. Nobody can pre- tend for a single instant, be he the most advanced revolution- ist or whoever he may be, that constitutional action during the last ten years has not been most abundantly justified by its results, and that Irishmen are not now justified in look- ing to such constitutional means, and such constitutional means alone, for the future prosperity of their country and the success of their movement. And if there existed any such fanatic, who persists or who would persist in telling us to- day, in view of the fact that we have the greatest man of the English race pledged to do his utmost to grant Ireland her legitimate freedom and the means of prosperity, that we have side by side with us the great Liberal party, which has never lost any fight that it once commenced, I say that if any such person exists (I know not of the existence of any such person), who could tell us not to rely upon our constitutional policy and to turn back into the old path of revolution and violence, that the Irish race would unanimously and with one accord, 646 SAMSON AGONISTES whether in Ireland, in America, in AustraHa, or wherever they were, tell him that he was not to be their guide. . . . And if the armed hand of revolution after the concession of this great measure were to be lifted against the authority of the Queen in Ireland, you could stamp out that rebellion as remorselessly with your power as you could a rebellion in the heart of Edin- burgh, and you would be justified in the measures you took by the public opinion of the world ; we should no longer have (as we have now) the sympathy of America in our struggle, we should no longer have the good wishes of all the continental nations. But we should exhibit ourselves in the contempti- ble position of men who spurned the hand of those who tried to benefit them, and who stung the heel of those who did for their good. I do not think that such things are possible for a single instant. But if you want further proof, look at the altered feeling of the Irish people at home and abroad; since Mr. Gladstone instituted his great measure of conciliation, the whole nature of Irishmen everywhere has been changed; those who before threatened and talked rebellion, and felt it too, are now willing to live with you in unity as fellow-citi- zens in a great empire. This is not a feeling alone which has extended throughout Ireland. Great as the change has been there, evidenced by the diminution of crime and the willingness of the people to bear, without reply and without answer or retaliation, the aggressions, the horrible aggressions, of the present government, it has been exceeded by the attitude of the Irish of America, who are represented to you as being revolutionists and assassins of the deepest dye. They also have accepted this compromise. They are willing to leave this matter in Mr. Gladstone's hands. They are satisfied that he will give us such a concession as public opinion in this country can be brought to consider consistent with their in- terests and the future well-being of their nation. They are satisfied that such concessions should be accepted in good faith, and that it should be worked out in good faith in both countries. But that if any man raises his hand to stop this work of good-will he should be put down as a disunionist and an enemy of his race. . . . The great Liberal party has taken up this question. Our great leader has taken it up; and we are convinced that neither you nor he will rest, will stop, until you have carried this legitimate measure." ^ ' Edinburgh daily papers, July 21, 1889. PART IV FROM THE DEATH OF PARNELL TO 1903 CHAPTER LIIT DEATH OF PARNELL — APPRECIATION Mr. Parnell continued the combat against great odds, with characteristic tenacity, during the summer and autumn of 1 89 1. He addressed demonstrations in various parts of the country each Sunday for months, travelHng from Brighton, in the south of England, to Ireland on a Saturday, and re- turning again direct to his home from the place of meeting. He lost ground steadily in his desperate campaign, but never lost courage. Doggedly, if hopelessly, he persisted in the struggle until his strength gave way. The end came with startling suddenness. There had been no tidings of serious illness, though it was known that his health was breaking down from the physical strain of weekly journeys from Eng- land to meetings in Ireland. He died at Brighton on October 6, 1891.^ He was only in his forty-sixth year, and but ten short months had rolled by since he broke with the majority of his following in refusing to adopt the course which his wisest friends pressed in vain upon him. Had their counsels prevailed, they would have averted the split, saved his life, in all human probability, for years of useful and still greater services to Ireland, and insured the success of the Home- Rule cause at the general election of 1892. Parnell 's claim to greatness no Irish nationalist, and few Irishmen, will ever deny. To do so would be like ignoring the existence of a mountain or some other objective fact in nature. His work was great, and would of itself make the political fame of any man with a similar record. Like all the world's historic characters, there were marked limitations to his greatness, not counting the final weakness which precipitated his fall. * It was a dramatic coincidence that Mr. W. H. Smith, the ally of Walter of The Times, and the author of the act which created the special commission that was expected to effect Parnell's political ruin, died on the same day as the Irish leader. Sir John Pope Hennessy, who fou.s:ht the first parliamentary contest with the Parnell party after the split, also passed away on the same date. 651 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND His immense popularity with the Irish people was not due to any Celtic quahties. Of these he had not even a trace. There was no racial affinity between him and them. He was far less like O'Connell than even Mr. Gladstone. The great Englishman inherited a Scottish kinship with the Irish nation through his maternal ancestors, and had some traits of character more Celtic than Saxon. Mr. Parnell was bom in Ireland. Beyond this and his descent from English ancestors of the Pale, there was nothing in habits, tempera- ment, or individuality that would establish relationship be- tween him and those whose boundless confidence he had won, except in the common purpose of the national move- ment which he led. He was a Protestant, leading a nation chiefly Catholic; a landlord, commanding tenants in a war against his own class; a cold, reserved man, at the head of one of the most warm- hearted and impulsive of races; a sober, unemotional speaker, who never quoted an Irish poet but once, and did it wrong, in a country remarkable for passion and ornate oratory; a public man and leader who treated his party with icy aloofness for years, who lived away from Ireland most of his time; and who appeared in his conduct towards the Irish people to be absolutely unconcerned as to what they thought of him until the personal issue involved in the unhappy event of 1890 roused him into a fierce contest with those who ques- tioned his right to lead only when the leadership headed directly for disaster. He was unlike all the leaders who had preceded him in his accomplishments, traits of character, and personal idiosyn- crasies. He had neither wit nor humor, eloquence or the passion of conviction, academical distinction of any kind, scholarship or profession, Irish accent, appearance, or mannerism. In fact, he was a paradox in Irish leadership, and will stand unique in his niche in Irish history as bearing no resemblance of any kind to those who handed down to his time the fight for Irish nationhood. What, then, was the secret of his immense influence and popularity? He was above and before everything else a _- splendid fighter. He had attacked and beaten the enemies of Ireland in the citadel of their power — the British Parliament. \ It was here where he loomed great and powerful in Irish "^ imagination. As Wendell Phillips put it on one occasion, Parnell was the Irishman who had compelled John Bull to listen to what he in behalf of Ireland had to say in the House of Commons; and the personal force which had done this, and had flung the Irish question and representatives across the 652 ? DEATH OF PARNELL plans and purposes of English parties, in a battle for the Irish people, appealed instinctively to the admiration of those in whose name this work was accomplished. He was fortunate, too, in being heir to the ripenmg fruits of his predecessors' labors — the Daniel O'Connells, Fintan Lalors, Gavan Duffys, James Stephenses, and Isaac Butts, who had sown the seed in less propitious days and under darker skies. The popular mind is not historic in its judgments, nor inclined to portion out its awards in equitable measurement to just desert. The founder of Home Rule, and the little Bel- fast pork-butcher who planned unparliamentary obstruction, were forgotten in the public memory as Mr. Parnell became prominently identified with weapons of political warfare he could use more damagingly against the opponents of the Irish cause than those who had forged what his limited organizing capacity or constructive skill could not have created. He had an essentially strong but not a broad or com- prehensive mind. It was slow in grasping all the bearings of a problem, or in seizing upon the chances or dangers of a situation, but once it caught hold its power of concentrated application to the task before it made him a match for greater intellects within the sphere in which the issue was to be de- cided. He had a will of adamant, nourished more by a measure- less pride than by any dominating conviction or faith, and, as he was a political paradox in most respects, the same characteristic distinguished him in making the strongest trait of his per- sonality the secret of his weakness and the cause of his fall. The commonest act of human prudence and most ele- mentary knowledge of men would have safely guided a less proud and less self-centred man through the wretched divorce calamity. It was the weakest of the human passions that had invited the peril. Yet, instead of seeking guidance or counsel from worldly wisdom or ordinary prudence, as all other men would do in like situations, a morbid pride rejected all the promptings of common-sense. He scorned the friendly advice of truer friends than those associated with his error, in order to repel the attempt to invade the, to him, inviolable right to exercise his own indisputable will in what he blindly persisted in believing concerned him alone, independent of his position, duties, and responsibilities as the leader of a nation. In the earlier period of his public career he confronted political foes and dangerous situations with the loyal help of unselfish comrades. He sought both for advice and sugges- tion in emergencies which called for counsel and the mutual 653 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND confidence of leader and lieutenants. Where he departed from this practice the results showed an infirmity of judg- ment and a lack of moral courage which in the end terminated what promised atone time to be one of the most brilliant careers of the nineteenth century. The Kilmainham treaty, the Galway election, and the resolve to face the divorce-court storm as if nothing had happened in the world of public opinion, were individual actions taken in contemptuous in- difference to the views or feelings of the party of which he was the elected and not the autocratic chairman. These were, however, the events in his career in which the secret of his personal relations with a married lady called into play all that is weak, defective, and morally unsound in a leader to whom the world was paying the homage of its admiration. Here historic judgment will follow that of human leniency in weighing this blot in his record against "the timid tear in Cleopatra's eye," which may, possibly have been solely responsible for the final frailty of the man j with the iron purpose of earlier years. I A franker intercourse with men, more of comradeship with ^ the members of his party, would have repaired the defect in his personal equipment for wiser leadership. He lacked the lesson that should teach the essential fact for all great political chiefs to learn — that no matter how famous a head of a party may become, there are times and emergencies when the safest form of leadership is to follow and not to lead. Both Napoleon and Hannibal had to employ guides when crossing the Alps. Parnell could not, or would not, see that the leadership of a political party is unlike a military com- mand over a militia company, with no will but that of the officer they are bound to obey. Men with representative re- sponsibilities, and often with capacities and records demand- ing as a right to share in tlie councils which shape policies or frame programmes, are not to be treated as if they were automatons without rights, feeling, or authority. In this respect, however, there is no more to be said against Parnell's want of this consideration for colleagues than against the too complaisant subserviency with which the Irish people as a rule spoil their leaders before giving them a monster funeral demonstration. They must share with the defects in his character some of the responsibility for the error that took him in the prime of life and midway in a great career from the headship of their cause. Joseph Biggar once startled his hearers by asking a question, in his peculiar way of expressing an opinion: 7f\ "I wonder what Parnell's politics are?" 654 DEATH OF PARNELL The obvious reply was that it was not his politics but his personality that had triumphed in a movement which was semi-revolutionary. Isaac Butt's politics would have offered no riddle to Biggar to solve. They were as well defined in his speeches and labors as were those of Mr. Gladstone. Pamell's prestige and triumphs sprang from a unique kind of blended character, endowed with a magnetic power which made him more formidable than mental culture or oratorical abilities could do. He derived nothing from the profession of political opinions, but everything from an insurrection of social forces led by him in revolt against a system which was the very basis of English government in Ireland, and of aristocratic and class privilege in England — land monopoly. The Eng- lish classes looked at him as a desperate revolutionist — which, unfortunately, he was not — because he had the courage and capacity to strike at what was the weakest point in the foreign rule of his country, and also at the very foundations of England's own supremacy — the House of Commons and the land-owning power of those who filled and owned the House of Lords. Political opinions had little or nothing to do with Pamell's work in the days when he won his fame. He was armed with a reformer's crow-bar and not with a politician's note-book. His work was to undermine and pull down what had been chiefly responsible for Ireland's op- pression, and the opinions he may have held or expressed in these times are only interesting now as a kind of political obiter dicta associated with a historic name. He probably never had a definite conviction on either the system of land laws best suited to Ireland or the kind of national self-government that would be best adapted to the salvation of the country. His views comprehended clearly the abolition of landlordism and the clearing away of Dublin Castle. These reforms effected, he was more or less indif- ferent as to whether the Irish farmer became an occupying proprietor or a tenant with security of tenure, at a reduced rent, under an Irish national state. I believe he would prefer this more nationalist solution of the agrarian problem, but he would not divide a party on such an issue. On the question of national self-government he had no preference for rival plans. He was an avowed Federal Home- Ruler under Isaac Butt. "Grattan's Parliament" attracted his mind for a time afterwards. Then he was willing to accept Mr. Chamberlain's "central board," in 1884 — as an instalment, of course. Mr. Gladstone's "legislative as- sembly," with its one chamber and two orders, obtained his approval, but only in common with that of liis chief lieu- 655 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tenants, in 1886. Subsequently he agreed to a modification of the Gladstone scheme in his famous interview with the Liberal leader, at Hawarden, in 1889. In the "split" he fell back in a fighting factionist policy upon the Grattan constitu- tion of 1782. Speaking at a labor conference in Dublin, on March 13, 1 89 1, he declared himself as follows on the land question: "As regards the remaining points in your programme, in- cluding the question of the nationalization of the land, and the immediate advocacy of taxation of all unoccupied and untilled lands, including grazing lands, I have always be- lieved in the principle of the nationalization of the land as being the correct one; but I have not believed in the crude theories which have been put forward by certain persons for the purpose of carrying out that principle. I think it per- fectly right that taxation should be taken off food and other things and thrown upon the land, perfectly right, and I shall always support legislation in that direction. That is what the object which is called nationalization of the land pro- poses to effect. With that object I am in thorough sym- pathy; and I should hope that the numerous tenant-farmers who will in all probability become owners of their farms within the next few years under the present land-purchase bill of the government will bear in mind that the course of future legislation will tend very much to take the burden of taxation off the producers and to throw it upon the land, and in making bargains with their present landlords they ought to remember that the taxation on the land for the purpose of education, for the purpose of promoting the industrial re- sources of Ireland, and for the benefit of the working classes, is bound to be materially increased in the future, and that they should leave a very wide margin for themselves in the making of those bargains, so that tliey may be sure that when they have become the owners or future occupying owners they may be able to do their duty to the landless rnasses of their fellow- countrymen who have stood so gallantly and valiantly by them in the struggle for their hearths and homes." ^ Addressing a meeting in Navan on May 4, 1880, he spoke in these terms: " We went down to Mayo and we preached the eternal truth — the truth which one day or other v/ill be recognized through- out the length and breadth of Ireland, England, and Scot- land — that the land of a country, the air of a country, the water of a country, belongs to no man. They were not made * Dublin Press, March 14, 1S91. 656 DEATH OF PAR NELL by any man, and they belong to all the human race. We believe that fixity of tenure means fixity of landlordism fixity of degradation; and that if the people of Ireland really desire to settle the land question, that they must strike at the root of the evil — the system of landlordism under which the land of Ireland was first confiscated and robbed from its original holders."^ In between these two periods he declared for a peasant pro- prietary, in preference to the broader national settlement, but probably did this as an opportunist policy, in face of the fact that the farmers and priests were more favorable to the less radical plan of settlement. Mr. Gladstone diagnosed Mr. Parnell's political character and purpose clearly during and after the events of 1885-86. He recognized in him a man of great practical capacity, with conservative tendencies scarcely hidden behind the controlling head of a semi-revolutionary agitation. He knew that a successful reformer would be the likeliest personal in- fluence to accept the responsibility of guiding and directing the forces he had led in the revolt against Dublin Castle and landlordism, when once a rational concession of alternatives to these systems would appeal to his sense of patriotic states- manship. No one more sincerely regretted Mr. Parnell's fall than Mr. Gladstone. " An invaluable man," was his summary of the power and potential qualities of his one-time ally. Not so Lord Salisbury. He took The Times estimate of the great Irishman, and persuaded himself that he was a rev- olutionist, a radical, and an incarnate enemy of the English connection. This was the judgment of prejudice, and not the true estimate of either a penetrating or generous mind. It was an absurdly wrong view, but it beat back the mo- mentary rational purpose of the Newport speech in 1885, and finally decided the leader of the Tory party to fight Mr. Parnell and Home Rule with the aid of The Times and Pigott, and all the resources of unscrupulous party warfare. Parnell was a man of strong personal dislikes. He would forgive anything in a colleague or an opponent but a sin against or a slight of himself. This was unpardonable. His judgment of men was as defective as his confidence in them was governed by a morbid suspicion. These traits in his character grew into prominence in the later period of his career. They were due in all probability to the habits of decep- tion and subterfuge to which he was driven by the necessity * Freeman' s Jourytal, May 5, 1880. 42 657 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND of concealing his life and relationship with the lady who had his will and character in her keeping. Magnanimity or gratitude he had none. His mind had few if any generous impulses, and was barren of all faith except a boundless belief in himself. Here he possessed the fanaticism of the zealot, and made a fatalistic confidence in his own des- tiny the dominating idea of his political career. He frequent- ly quoted two lines of Shakespeare which inculcated fidelity to one's self as the rule of existence. Herein lay the secret of his pride, and the vulnerable spot in Achilles's heel. A fanatical cult of one's own ego in a public man beset by temp- tations, untempered by a little human heresy borrowed from the wisdom of the serpent, if not from any higher moral source, is very apt to beget infidelity to the nobler duties and obliga- tions of life, and thereby to injure or to isolate the idol of self-worship. These faults in the human portraiture of Parnell are but like the wart on Cromwell's face. They not only do not con- ceal his greatness, they attest it by a testimony which would damn smaller men to the level of comparative mediocrity. He has left the impress of his personality and power in the work he has done, and in the universal recognition that exists of the part he has played in the drama of Ireland's struggle against one of the greatest of the world's empires. His fame is a national asset for Ireland, and if the lives and labors of her great men are to be guides and incentives to those who are to maintain the fight for Irish liberty, the faults as well as the virtues of the Wolfe Tones, O'Connells, Butts, Ste- phenses, and Parnells must be looked at, in charity, it is true, but as truth all the same. The best political history of Mr. Parnell is his own account of his life's work for Ireland, as given on oath at the Parnell Commission. He is the one leader among national heroes who was thus called upon to defend his actions against a powerful conspiracy organized to destroy him, and no better testimony to the value of his labors for the Irish people can be found than in the dramatic examination he underwent for nearly a week at the hands of Sir Charles Russell and Sir Richard Webster. It is a story of a wonderful career, told by the leader of a race, and if it is some day taken from the vol- umes of the special commission and printed as if written by Parnell, it will be a unique history of a great leader in every sense singular in his fame, character, record, trials, and achievements. Mrs. Delia Tudor Parnell, mother of Mr. Parnell, once pub- lished in the American press the following family pedigree : 658 DEATH OF PARK ELL Richard Nevill, K.G., Earl of Warwick, the King-maker, killed at Barnet, 147 1, Had issue Lady Isabel Nevill, died 1476, who married George Plantagenet, K.G., Duke of Clarence, who died 1477, Leaving issue Lady Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, beheaded 1541, who married Sir Richard Pole, K.G., Leaving issue Henry Pole, Lord Montacute, beheaded 1549, who married Lady Jane Nevill, daughter of George, Lord Bergavenny, Leaving issue Hon. Katherine Pole, who married Francis Hastings, K.G., second Earl of Huntingdon; died 1561, Leaving issue Lady Frances Hastings, who married Henry Compton, first Lord Compton; died 1589, Leaving issue Hon. Margaret Compton, who married Henry Mordaunt, fourth Lord Mordaunt; died 1603, Leaving issue John Mordaunt, first Earl of Peterborough, died 1642, who married Hon. Elizabeth Howard, daughter of William, Lord Effmgham, Leaving issue John Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt of Ava- lon, died 1675, who married Elizabeth Carey, daughter of Hon. Thomas Carey (son of Robert, Earl of Monmouth), Leaving issue Hon. Sophia Mordaunt, who married James Hamilton, of Bangor; died 1707, Leaving issue Ann Hamilton, who married Michael Ward, Leaving issue Anne Ward, who married Sir John Parnell, Bart. ; died 1782, Leaving issue Sir John Parnell, Bart., died 1801, who mar- ried Letitia Brooke, who was descended from Viscount Mor- daunt of Avalon, aforesaid, whose sister, the Hon. Anne Mordaunt, was her great-grandmother. Leaving issue William Parnell, of Avondale (Hayes), died 182 1, who married Frances Howard, daughter of Hugh How- ard (son of Viscount Wicklow), Leaving issue John Henry Parnell, died 1859, w^ho married Delia Tudor Stewart, daughter of Admiral Charles Stewart, Leaving issue Charles Stewart Parnell, of Avondale, M.P., born 1846. CHAPTER LIV THE NATIONAL FEDERATION What was a melancholy tragedy in Mr. Pamell in the last year of his memorable life became a pitiable exhibition of senseless factionism, fraught with the most serious conse- quences to the Irish cause, when his followers persisted in continuing the party feud after his death. It was backing the one serious mistake of his public life to the injury of his whole life's work. The play of Hamlet minus the part of the Prince of Denmark would be a sensible rendering of Shake- speare's masterpiece compared with a Parnellite faction with the dead leader in Glasnevin. During the month of March, previous to Mr. Parnell's death, the majority of what was his party and their follow- ers in the country organized the National Federation, in lieu of the National League. Mr. T. Harrington and other in- fluential members of the old combination adhered to Mr. Parnell's revolt, and the league became identified in this manner with the disruptionists. The majority of the or- ganization founded in October, 1882, were ousted by the minority from its control, and as the opinion of the country was overwhelmingly with those who remained true to Par- nell's policy, while discarding his lead, a national convention was summoned for the formation of a new body. The delegates assembled in the Antient Concert Rooms, Dublin, on March 10, 1891. There were upward of one thou- sand five hundred representatives of the nationalist movement present, including men from over one hundred public bodies. Mr. Justin McCarthy presided, and was supported by Messrs. Thomas Sexton, T. M. Healy, and more than half of the entire national members of Parliament. The four Catholic arch- bishops of Ireland wrote letters approving of the new organi- zation. Messrs. Dillon and O'Brien were in prison, undergoing their final sentence for a breach of the Balfour coercionist law — they having returned from America to Ireland, via Bou- logne, and surrendered to arrest on reaching England, after some novel interviews with Mr. Parnell in the French city. 660 THE NATIONAL FEDERATION Though not present at the convention, their support of the programme and poHcy which were submitted to the delegates was assumed by the organizers of the conference. This programme was in the main a repetition of that of the National League, and branches of this latter body, on volun- teering to join the federation, were only required to change the name of the branch to fall in with the general scheme of the new combination. The officers elected to manage the new body were: Mr. Justin McCarthy, M.P. (chairman of the Irish party), presi- dent, with the following as members of the executive com- mittee — John Barry, M.P. ; Thomas Condon, M.P. ; John Deasv, M.P.; Thomas A. Dickson, M.P.; Timothv M. Healy, M.P'.; John Morrogh, M.P.; Wilham Murphy, M.P.; Michael McCar- tan, M.P.; Arthur O'Connor, M.P.; Thomas Sexton, M.P.; David Sheehy, M.P.; Timothy D. Sullivan, M.P.; Alfred Webb, M.P. ; Joseph Mooney, J. J. Kennedy, Edward Hughes, Belfast; and Michael Davitt, with William O'Brien, M.P., and John Dillon, M.P., in prison. John Deasy, M.P., David Sheehy, M.P., Michael Davitt, secretaries. Joseph Mooney, WilUam M. Murphy, M.P., Alfred Webb, M.P., treasurers. These officers were to be the government of the federation pending another convention to be held before the (then) coming general election, when a national council, representa- tive of branches of the organization, the Irish parliamentary party, and of other popular bodies, was to be elected. A few changes were made in the above list at subsequent conventions, as resignations were tendered, or other cir- cumstances necessitated the addition of new names, but with these exceptions the above persons, and a dozen rep- resentative men from county and civic delegates, elected each year, continued to be the rulers of the federation down to the year 1894. In 1 89 1 Mr. Arthur Balfour resigned the chief secretary- ship of Ireland to succeed Mr. W. H. Smith as leader of the House of Commons; the latter statesman, who had played so sinister a part in the Houston-7"nH^5 conspiracy against Pamell, having died, as already pointed out, on the same day as the Irish leader. Mr. Balfour's promotion to the leadership of his party in the Commons was the result of his success, as viewed from an English stand-point, in his combat with the plan of campaign combination. I have already given my readers a brief account of the events of that contest. Mr. Balfour was powerfully aided in the later stages of his fight by the split in the ranks of his opponents. This cleavage was alone responsible for the defeat of the not too tactical struggle 661 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND over "New Tipperary." Weakened nationalist forces and the consequent falling off of financial assistance rendered the position of those who conducted the " plan " operations ex- ceedingly difficult, while the people who had made such generous sacrifices in the early days of the struggle lost heart on seeing their leaders at loggerheads with one another over policies and programmes. It was the "split," and not the Tory chief secretary, that broke the ranks of the "plan" forces and procured the ultimate failure of the daring anti- rent scheme planned by Messrs. Harrington, Dillon, and O'Brien in 1886. Mr. Balfour's success has to be considered and judged in another light in order that justice may be done to the labors of his opponents as well as to those of his measures, which were really creditable to his statesmanship. He came to Ireland in 18S7 to carry out an anti-Pamell and anti-Gladstone policy — in other words, to fight the forces of land reform and of Home Rule. I have detailed the results of his vigorous application of coercion. He persecuted and imprisoned upward of one thousand leaguers, as Mr. Glad- stone did in 18S1-82. Then, following the example of his illustrious political rival, he began the work of concession to the very men and forces he had fought with policemen and prisons. The Land Act of 1887 has been explained. The act to amend the Ashbourne land - purchase law of 1885 was passed at his instance in the session of 1890. It greatly enlarged the scope of the older measure, and advanced the sum of ;ir33,ooo,ooo, in the form of state credit, to enable holdings to be bought by tenant-farmers — that is, for the carrying out of the Land-League parliamentary programme of land reform of 1880. Under the provisions of this pur- chase scheme tenants bargained with their landlords for the purchase of their farms, offering, or accepting, so many years' purchase of the annual rent as the price of the pro- prietorship of the holding. When an agreement was arrived at the land commission inspected the farm. If this was deemed to be adequate security for the loan, the amount of the purchase money, less a percentage reserved, was ad- vanced in land stock, carrying the value of government consols to the seller, the tenant contracting to pay four per cent, on the sum so advanced until the loan was liquidated, a period of some forty-nine years. Some other clauses of this act were petty and absurd. They showed a distrust of the Irish tenant as a purchaser of his farm which no one was more ready to acknowledge in later years to be altogether unmerited than Mr. Balfour. It 662 THE NATIONAL FEDERATION was assumed, in the draughting of the bill, that tenants would not loyally carry out their contracts when made with the land commission. It was consequently provided that moneys advanced out of the general taxation fund for purposes of county government were to be hypothecated, as a guarantee fund, against a repudiation of their obligations by the pur- chasers. Not a sixpence of such moneys has ever been re- quired to meet such possible contingencies. Mr. Balfour's next measure was one for which he has been deservedly praised by both friends and opponents. This was the congested districts board act of 1891. The scheme thus embodied in a law was to be administered by a body of nominated members, not necessarily official, and more or less independent of Dublin Castle. The chief secretary, for the time being, was to be the chairman of the board. Other members, to the number of six or eight, comprised Dr. O'Donnell, Catholic Bishop of Raphoe, Rev. D. O'Hara, of Mayo, and the Hon. Horace Plunkett. No salaries are paid to the members. The board had its powers somewhat extended in 1896. Its income has likewise been increased since its original forma- tion. Its labors are confined to those counties and districts, chiefly along the Western seaboard, in which there are areas congested in habitations, generally adjacent to grazing ranches and huge tracts of land called "waste." These labors comprise the enlargement of small holdings, encour- agement of better cultivation, improved methods of sowing cereals and root crops, more scientific breeding of live-stock and poultry, and the betterment of the cottier class generally; including the promotion of cottage and similar industries, together with the improvement of the fishing industry. The comparatively small means placed at the disposal of the board are derived in the form of a permanent income from the investment of a capital sum of money provided out of an Irish fund, and from other grants made by Parliament out of Irish taxes, as the plans of the board require such added resources. Though opinions differ as to the amount of good done by this body, there can be no doubt that much benefit has been conferred by its labors upon several districts com- prised within the area of its operations. It has purchased a few estates and carried out improvements upon the holdings before reselling them to the tenants. The Lord Dillon estate in Roscommon and Mayo counties was acquired (1898) in this way, and the marked improvement that is now seen (in 1903) in the homes and the tillage of the small tenants on this property bear strong testimony to the excellent results of the 663 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND board's efforts. This result causes much regret that the powers and income of the board are not adequate to the carrying out of large schemes for acquiring Connaught grazing ranches on which to "plant" tenants with larger holdings and better land than the great majority of the Western peasantry live upon at the present time. The power exercised by the congested districts board is that of an enlightened state socialism, and the credit due to the initiation of the plan of operations, where its benevolent and practical work was most called for in Ireland, belongs to Mr. Arthur Balfour. His next attempt to legislate for the country was a failure. He introduced an Irish local government bill in the session of i8g2, when leader of the House of Commons, which was killed by ridicule. There was a pretence to treat Ireland in the matter of county government as England had been legislated for in the creation of similar local bodies. T]ie measure, when explained by its author, showed little or nothing in common be- tween the English and the proposed Irish system, except the name of the bill. Councils were to be created for both Irish counties and baronies, but they were to be hedged round with such "safeguards," "limitations," "restrictions," and rights of appeal to judges that it looked as if Mr. Balfour had no very serious intention of pressing the acceptance of his grotesque proposals upon the House of Commons. One provision in the measure suggested to Mr. T. M. Healy the idea of naming the chief secretary's plan "The Put-'em- in-the-Dock Bill," and the name stuck. On the petition of any twenty ratepayers a whole council charged with de- linquencies could be tried by two judges and disbanded, the Lord Lieutenant having power to nominate a body of suc- cessors independent of election. Other equally absurd feat- ures of the bill invited destructive criticism, and it was dropped on the eve of the next general election. This, then, was the whole extent of Mr. Balfour's victory. The men he had imprisoned remained in the movement against which he had pitted all the forces of coercion. He conceded a land-purchase bill, a congested districts board bill, and a measure for the construction of light railways in Mayo and Donegal, and resigned. But the national organization for land reform and for the ending of Dublin-Castle rule con- tinued its labors, as in all the years since 1879, dominated the political life of the country, as heretofore, and succeeded in returning practically the same number of nationalist mem- bers (counting Parnellites) as on each preceding appeal to the electors of the country. There was a victory gained in the 664 THE NATIONAL FEDERATION four years of Mr. Balfour's Irish chief- secretaryship, but it rested with the movement he had failed to put down, and which compelled his government to pass the measures re- ferred to for the benefit of the country. The National Federation was bom in a storm, and its life was in every sense in keeping with its birth. It had to fight the general battle of the national movement, on the lines of preceding combinations, against the opposing forces of land- lordism and Dublin Castle, while being constantly assailed from behind by the Parnellite faction and their many allies. Internal troubles also added to its difficulties, and its power of advancing the interests of the cause was, indeed, greatly handicapped. But the loyal support of the majority of the people was not withheld, despite the many discouragements which appealed to popular apathy. Funds were well sub- scribed, and the federation entered the arena of the general election at the end of June, 1892, well equipped for the con^ tests which were to be fought out against the landlord and Unionist party, on the one hand, and the rebellious nationalist minority, under Mr. John Redmond's lead, on the other. The result of the elections in Ireland was most decisive against the dissenting minority, there being seventy -two nationalists elected as against nine Parnellites. The ver- dict of the country was thus eight to one in support of the policy and platform that had held the field against all oppo- nents since 1880, but the nine gentlemen who were returned in opposition declined to abide by a national judgment so emphatic against their side. In Great Britain the elections were disappointing to Home- Rule hopes. This was due entirely to the rupture in the Irish ranks and the reaction in popular sympathy with Mr. Gladstone's policy which followed the unhappy episode in Mr. Parnell's brilliant career, with all the attendant recrimina- tions and calumnies of the heart-breaking contest he waged against his previous programme of 1886-90. Had this break with the British Liberals not occurred, a majority strong enough to confront and defeat the opposition of the House of Lords would surely have been obtained in this the last electoral campaign of the great Liberal leader's political life. The figures for Great Britain were: Gladstonians, 270; Tories, 268; Liberal-Unionists, 47; with four labor members, and Mr. T. P. O'Connor elected again for a Liverpool division. Counting the Tories and Liberal-Unionists as one party op- posed to Home Rule, the British constituencies had elected a majority of 17 against Mr. Gladstone. In England the 665 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND majority was 71. In Great Britain and Ireland combined there was a majority of 40, afterwards increased by 2, in sup- port of the proposed creation of a Home-Rule legislature. It was a majority composed exclusively of Irish nationalists, and though this fact should not in reason or fair play tell against a decision given by the combined electorate of what was known as "The United Kingdom," it was a fact fatal to the chances of a Home-Rule bill being agreed to by the packed assembly of the House of Lords. Lord Salisbury pretended to see in the decision of the elec- tors no reason why he should quit office, and he therefore met the new Parliament with his defeated administration early in August. A vote of no confidence in his government was car- ried in the House of Commons, in the debate on the Queen's speech, by a majority of forty — an Irish majority — when he was compelled to resign. Mr. Gladstone forthwith assumed office, formed a ministry, and adjourned the newly elected Parliament until February, 1893. Mr. John Morley was again made chief secretary for Ireland. He took up the duties of an office which seldom or ever bring political happiness in their discharge to the hapless incum- bent, whether borne for or against the national feeling of the Irish people. He was and always will be the soul of party chivalry, an exemplar of all the virtues that are humanly pos- sible in political strife ; a man of the most conspicuous public rectitude and of unbending consistency. He would be the kind of Englishman suited to the re<|uirements of an Irish government had the country still remained an island of saints, with no landlords, Orangemen, or other troublesome people to belie this modest, angelic character of a sinless land, and to suggest quite an opposite degree of insular imperfection. Being a Home-Ruler, he felt it his duty to act as if the enemies of Home Rule had all the special claims to his considerate forbearance. To show his far-reaching sympathy with the tenants, he appointed a commission to report upon the work- ing of the land acts, and put the chief burden of the investi- gation upon the innocent shoulders of an English Catholic judge who had done nothing to merit this brief anticipation of purgatory at the hands of his friends. An address to the friends of Ireland abroad was issued by the committee of the Irish party in February, 1893, and signed by Messrs. Justin McCarthy, Thomas Sexton, John Dillon, Edward Blake, T. M. Healy, William O'Brien, Arthur O'Connor, T. P. O'Connor, and Michael Davitt. It gave the Irish view of Mr. Gladstone's second Home -Rule bill, and this estimate of the revised scheme of 1886 will give 666 THE NATIONAL FEDERATION my readers the echo of an appreciative contemporary opinion : "We have reached a most crucial moment in the history of ihd's long struggle for her rights. The prime-minister of England, the leader of the government and of the party which rule the British Empire, has brought in a Home-Rule bill which forms as a whole a broad, solid, and enduring plan of national self-government to Ireland. The bill offers to the Irish people a parliament, practically free to deal with all Ireland's local affairs, and an executive government responsible to that parliament. "In this, as in many other respects, the settlement of 1893 places Ireland on a higher national plane than that of 1886 — increases her place in the governments of the world, and offers more solid guarantees of the honorable fulfilment of the great contract between her and Great Britain. " The representatives of Ireland have accepted, without hesitation, the constitution proposed in this bill, as a fitting consummation of the sacrifices and labors of the Irish race for so many centuries, and believe they could regard the enactment of this measure as a final and triumphant close of the long, bloody, and sorrowful struggle. "The enemies of Ireland, however, do not yet acknowledge that the end is close and assured. Though they knovv' that this bill is certain to pass through the House of Commons by an unbroken majority, and that any measure which secures a majority in the popular chamber has always ultimately passed into law, they invoke the assistance of the House of Lords in postponing the settlement. We cannot, therefore, disregard the possibility of a prolonged and desperate cam- paign to wreck the Irish cause and to defeat Mr. Gladstone's noble efforts. "Confronted by enemies, venomous, unscrupulous, and with boundless wealth, it is impossible for us to carry on even the short remnant of the struggle without the assistance of our brethren and friends in all parts of the world. It is only from people of our own blood and from American and Australian sympathizers with our principles that we have asked or accepted assistance. We make this appeal to the same tried friends the more confidently on the morrow of the day when by a vote, unanimous and unchallenged, the House of Commons has stamped upon the foul and calumnious charge, made by the paymasters of Pigott, that independent Irish nationalists had consented to become the mercenaries of a British administration. " In the struggle of the last fourteen years almost the domi- 667 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND nant factor, next to the courage and tenacity of our people at home, has been the financial assistance of our kindred and friends beyond the seas. "In 1880 America and Australia threw themselves into the struggle, and from that hour the national and parliamen- tary movement has never really looked back. Aided by the generosity of our people and friends abroad, the cause at home has found honest, faithful, and courageous repre- sentatives, not one of whom, during all the stress of thirteen years, has accepted pay or place from the British govern- ment. These representatives fought and conquered coercion; fought and conquered forgery; broke successive hostile ad- ministrations, until at last they find themselves the friends and allies of the greatest of British statesmen and the strong- est of British parties. They ask that they may be enabled from the same powerful and generous people to bring to a consummation their labors and their principles. Borne by the generosity of their race through the long night, they ask now for the aid required for the brief interval that still stands between Ireland and her breaking day." Nothing that a consummate eloquence and an application of unrivalled parliamentary powers could do in support of his second Home-Rule bill was left unsaid or undone by Mr. Gladstone during the debates to persuade and convince the public and the House of Commons in its favor. Age seemed to have left him with unimpaired intellectual power. But it was known inside and out of Parliament that the House of Lords would kill his measure. The hereditary enemies of Ireland were waiting only for the opportunity of showing again their quenchless hatred of everything wearing the garb of concession to the Irish people. The Unionists carried obstructive tactics against the bill beyond all previous performances in the Commons. Every- thing to them was fair which could delay a division or pro- long a debate, and so the weeks rolled on in endless dis- cussions. Points of order, movements for the adjournment of the House, and all the other available methods of wasting time were ostentatiously resorted to. Behind and beyond all this there stood, knife in hand, the House of Lords. After eighty-two sittings the third reading was reached, and carried by a vote of three hundred and forty - seven in favor as against an opposition of three hundred and four; majority, forty-three. The Irish members who most upheld the re]:>utation of their cause and country for speaking ability during the various stages of the bill were Mr. Thomas Sexton, Mr. T. P. O'Con- 668 THE NATIONAL FEDERATION nor, Mr. Edward Blake, Mr. T. M. Healy, and Mr. John Dillon. Mr. John Redmond contributed a speech of striking eloquence to the discussion on the second reading, but did not otherwise compete with the debating capacity of his colleagues. Mr. Blake, who had spent a political lifetime as a party leader in the Canadian legislature, had been induced to join the Irish forces fighting for Home Rule in Westminster in 1893. He was elected, unopposed, for a division of Longford county, and readily responded to the invitation thus ten- dered to him to bring his great experience and ripened political judgment to the service of Ireland in the Imperial Parliament. The House of Lords threw out the bill for the settlement of the Anglo - Irish feud with a feeling of savage contempt for its object and author. Four hundred and nineteen peers against forty-one nullified the votes and voice of the elected majority of the people's representatives, and, because the bill was for the benefit and appeasement of Ireland, English public opinion readily acquiesced in this insulting defiance of the electoral will of the alleged "United" Kingdom. For the remaining life of this Parliament the Irish forces at Westminster fulfilled the task of keeping the Liberal govern- ment in power and in helping it to pass progressive measures for the English masses. The English parish councils bill, with its excellent provisions for rural local government and powers to obtain land for agricultural laborers, owes its existence as a law to the loyal support of Ireland's repre- sentatives. This measure had, however, been mutilated by the legislative thugs of the landlord chamber, and this out- rage, following close upon that of killing his bill for the settlement of the Anglo-Irish question, caused Mr. Gladstone to press his colleagues in the ministry for a dissolution in order to fight out this question of class obstruction before the people. His proposal was not accepted. Younger but less courageous and less combative politicians shrank from this democratic contest against the enemies of popular liberty, and this virtually ended Mr. Gladstone's political career. He resigned during the session of 1894, and was succeeded by Lord Rosebery. A great giant's armor fell, as if in an act of cruel mockery, on the shoulders of a very small dwarf. The immediate cause of his retirement was a disagreement with a majority of the cabinet on a scheme of naval ex- penditure to which he held strong objection. But this was, in all probability, a result of the opposition of the same parties to his previous proposal to fight the lords upon the issue of obstructing the people's declared will in support 669 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND of measures of popular liberty. The great English tribune had wished to fittingly terminate his career in a battle against the enemies of the Irish and English democracies, and the peers within his own cabinet had thwarted that great purpose. His subsequent withdrawal from the leadership of the party was a consequential act. His last utterance in the House of Commons, which was one of the most eloquent he ever delivered, was an attack, in the form of a stern warning, on that assembly of insolent privilege. Had he been ten years younger he would have finally curbed its power for evil. It transpires from what Mr. Morley discloses in his book that Lord Rosebery was sent for by Queen Victoria, not on Glad- stone's suggestion, but independent of it. He would have ad- vised the selection of Lord Spencer as his successor had he been treated in this matter with ordinary royal respect and constitutional practice. This insult to his position and years of public service was earned by his friendship for Ireland. The royal favor for Lord Rosebery did not have long to wait for a justification of its unwisdom. The giant's armor weighed down to the ground the unstaple personality of the Lord of Dalmeny, who succeeded in his short premiership in justifying all the predictions of his party opponents by dis- appointing all the hopes of his political friends. Mr. John Morley gives a touching account of Mr. Glad- stone's last cabinet meeting, and of his farewell to his col- leagues after sixty-two years of public life and his record of four premierships : ^ "Mr. Gladstone sat composed and still as marble, and the emotion of the cabinet did not gain him for an instant. He followed the ' words of acknowledgment and farewell ' in a little speech of four or five minutes, his voice unbroken and serene, the tone low, grave, and steady. He was glad to think that notwithstanding differences upon a public ques- tion, private friendships would remain unaltered and un- impaired. Then, hardly above a breath, but every accent heard, he said, 'God bless you all.' He rose slowly and went out of one door, while his colleagues, with minds oppressed, filed out by the other. In his diary he enters — 'A really moving scene.' " He was the greatest statesman England ever produced, and were it not for the unhapp}^ fault of a great Irishman, he would have succeeded in his resolve to restore to Ireland the remedy for all her wrongs and suffering — a national ^ Life of Gladstone, vol. iii., p. 511, 670 THE NATIONAL FEDERATION legislature. He succeeded, however, in carrying through the British House of Commons a Home -Rule constitution for Ireland, and this service, along with his great Land Act of 1 88 1, will ever be gratefully remembered to his credit and honor by the Irish race. Early in the session of 1894 an unprecedented event hap- pened in connection with a land bill introduced by an Irish party. Mr. Kilbride had been successful in balloting for a date for this bill. In behalf of his colleagues he proposed to amend, on radical lines, the main defects in the land acts passed into law since 1881. An amendment to a subsidiary motion having been defeated by a large majority, the second reading of the Irish 'party's bill was carried without a division. It was a significant proof of the advance which Irish ideas of land reform were registering in Parliament, and of the fading power and influence of the Irish landlords in that assembly. So much were the Tory party afraid of losing the support of Ulster tenant farmers, by opposing this national- ist measure, that they abstained from challenging the assent of the House of Commons to a further acceptance of Land- League principles of land tenure. Mr. Morley proposed and carried a motion to have a select committee appointed to inquire into the working of the land acts, with a view to such legislation as might be shown to be needed in the way of amendment. As is usual in the creation of all such bodies, parties were represented on the commit- tee in equitable proportion. The pro-landlord section ob- structed the business of the inquiry, and succeeded in limiting the investigation to a narrower area of experience than Mr. Morley desired. The results of the committee's labors, however, upheld the criticism and contention of the Irish party, that the existing land laws required additional safe- guards to tenants' interests, protection against the renting of improvements in fixing judicial rents, a shortening of the statutory lease from fifteen to ten years, and a reform in the machinery of the land commission. These and other cognate reforms were included in a land bill which Mr. Morley introduced in the session of 1895. The measure did not pass. Its mention here and the references to the character of its proposals only serve the purpose of denoting a landmark in the progress made by the Irish land question in the parliamentary arena of the House of Commons. An English chief secretary for Ireland had to submit a plan of additional land reform which proposed that all improve- ments found in the inspection of a holding were to be pre- sumed to be made by the tenant in the fixing of a fair rent; 671 THE PALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND there should be no contracting out of the law by the tenant ; the statutory term was to be shortened ; evicted tenants were to be reinstated on conditions equitable all round; statutory tenancies which had suffered detriment under the unamended law were to be repaired into the position of "future tenancies," and the recovery of arrears of rent was to be limited to a period of two years. Thus, the cause of the tenant farmer as against that of the one-time omnipotent landlord was steadily and irresistibly making progress towards the elimination of the latter from the land-holding system of Ireland. In the mean time the general national movement was still laboring against internal troubles. The Parnellite friction was contagious to a people somewhat prone to indulge in factious contention. Quarrels over the distribution of moneys known as "The Paris Funds" (a sum of some ;C4o,ooo which was banked in Paris, at the time of the "split," and was sub- sequently set apart, by the consent of both parties, to meet obligations contracted before the rupture and to relieve evicted tenants) alternated with an absurd press controversy over a circular which had been sent, in thoughtless moments, to some Liberal politicians, soliciting subscriptions for the funds of the Irish party. This last cause of quarrel arose from a wilful misunderstanding of what was a manifest act of carelessness on the part of an old veteran in the Irish fight. Despite these wrangles among leaders, the country gave its continued confidence to the policy of the federation. The usual meetings in support of the national programme were held in all parts of the country, as during previous years. Financial help from abroad was not as generously offered as before the rupture in the ranks of the Irish party. The majority of our friends in America had been discouraged by the divisions that had broken in upon the solid unity of ten years, and they awaited the return of more fraternal feelings at home before again contributing as in times of happier invitation. The veteran supporter of all good causes in Ireland, Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, grandson of Robert Emmet's brother, together with other earnest co-workers in New York, formed an auxiliary National Federation in that city which extended to a few other large centres. It did not grow into a powerful body, before the reunion of the sundered ranks of the move- ment in Ireland, but its officers and supporters merit a kindly mention in this story for the help they extended to the parent organization when it most required assistance. 672 THE NATIONAL FEDERATION Among those who co-operated with Dr. Emmet in his loyal labors were: Officers. — Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, president; Eugene Kelly, treasurer; James S. Coleman, secretary; Joseph P. Ryan, assistant secretary; John Byrne, chairman board of trustees. National Committee. — William R. Grace, New York; Henry McAleenan, New York; John D. Crimmins, New York; Joseph J. O'Donoghue, New York; E. D. Farrell, New York; Hugh King, New York; James A. O'Gorman, New York; John W. Fahy, Rochester; Patrick Cox, Rochester; Joseph P. Carbery, Cincinnati, Ohio; General M. Ryan, Cincinnati, Ohio; John Sullivan, Cincinnati, Ohio; Luke Byrne, Columbus, Ohio; M. Gannon, Columbus, Ohio; Dominick Fov, Boston; Miles M. O'Brien, New York; Hugh J. Grant, New York; Dr. C. J. McGuire, New York; Eugene Parker, New York; General James R. O'Beirne, New York; C. C. Shayne, New York; Dennis Looney, New York; Peter McDonnell, New York; Michael Fennelly, New York; James Smith, New Jersey; M. B. Holmes, New Jersey; Robert Blewitt, New Jersey; Pat- rick Dunleavy, Philadelphia; Hugh McCaffrey, Philadelphia; Joseph Sheehan, Philadelphia; Francis Haggerty, Philadel- phia; Richard Walsh, New York. During 1892, alone, a sum of over eight thousand pounds was collected by Dr. Emmet and his colleagues ; six thousand of this being remitted to the national treasurers in Dublin by Mr. Eugene Kelly, and one thousand coming from the Rev. Father Cronin, of Buffalo, New York, one of the most loyal and most earnest workers the movement in Ireland had the good fortune to find across the Atlantic. Canadian supporters, however, were, in proportion to numbers, the most helpful of the friends in need that came to the financial assistance of the federation during the in- ternal troubles of the nineties. Each year, when aid was most required, their remittances came over the ocean to cheer on the good work against the cruel odds with which it was contending. This doubly generous, because most opportime,. help was due mainly to the great popularity of Mr. Edward Blake with all classes in Canada, and to his own untiring labors to yjrovide the means by which the fight in Ireland and in Parliament could be continued until returning political reason among parliamentaiy leaders should again unlock the resources of general Irish assistance for the cause so upheld. Nor did far-off Australia forget to give a helping hand in these days of discouragement. Friends on the island con- 43 673 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND tinent, and in New Zealand too, were generously mindful of what the situation " at home " required. They sent their drafts and cheers from the antipodes in the old spirit of racial comradeship, which no oceans or continents can weaken while a struggle for justice in Ireland has to be made. CHAPTER LV THE IRISH-RACE CONVENTION A SNATCH division on a matter relating to "cordite," in a discussion of the estimates in the session of 1895, caused a defeat of the Liberal government and precipitated a general election. The result was a smashing defeat for the Liberals, under their new leader. With the absence of Mr. Gladstone's great personality from the struggle, the Unionists scored an easy and an emphatic victory over their not-too- harmonious opponents. The example of the Irish lead- ers seemed to have inspired a similar tendency to a rivalry of claims among contending aspirants for the successor- ship to Mr. Gladstone. This weakness among British allies, together with the conduct of the wrangling disputants in the Irish ranks, made Home Rule a very losing issue on which to appeal for support to British electors. The sting of the defeat lay in the humiliating fact that it was the price of Irish folly, and not the result of any strenuous efifort of English opponents. Twice within the short period of five years those who persisted in fighting friends and one-time colleagues, over personal issues, in senseless disregard of the higher claims of cause and country, succeeded in inflicting a defeat upon Ireland's national hopes. The outcome of the general election in Ireland was a second decisive verdict against the Parnellite section. The coun- try returned ten of them, as against seventy nationalists, and thus, in two appeals to the highest electoral tribunal, a sweeping judgment was given in favor of the candidates of the National Federation and the policy for which they stood. The friction within the ranks of the majority, to which brief allusion has been made, caused the retirement of Mr. Thomas Sexton from Parliament on the eve of the elections. It was a most serious step for the de facto parliamentary leader of the Irish party during the previous dozen years to take, and represented an incalculable loss to Ireland. He was not alone the ablest of the Irish delegation in the work of the House of Commons; he had made a reputation there 675 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND as a parliamentarian which was second to that of no member of the assembly after the resignation of Mr. Gladstone. The injury thus done to Home-Rule interests by the resignation to which Mr. Sexton was driven, called attention, in an imperious manner, to the deadly injury that was being done to Ireland's cause in this way, and set influences at work which ultimately led to a reunion of the national movement. The first impulse and encouragement to this returning political reason came to Ireland from friends in distant re- gions. His Eminence Cardinal Moran, presiding at a lect- ure delivered in Sydney, New South Wales, by the present writer, in September, 1895, and the late Archbishop Walsh, of Toronto, Canada, in a letter to Mr. Edward Blake, written in the following month, made earnest and touching appeals to the disputants at home to end their quarrels, and thus enable sympathizers at a distance to render hearty aid again to the Irish movement. This seed of blessed harmony was blown to Ireland and bore good fruit. On November 14th, at a meeting of the Irish parliamentary party, held in DubHn, Mr. John Dillon moved, and Mr. J. C. Flynn seconded, this resolution: "That this party approves of the suggestion made by the Archbishop of Toronto in favor of a national convention representative of the Irish race throughout the world, and that with the view of carrying this decision into effect, the chairman and committee of the Irish party are hereby authorized to communicate with the executive of the National Federation, and jointly with them to make arrangements for the holding of such a convention." In the month of May following, at another meeting of the same party, it was also unanimously resolved, on the motion of Mr. John Dillon: "We cordially invite Mr. John Redmond and his friends to co-operate with us in a common, earnest endeavor to make the coming convention an effective means of satisfying the wide-spread yearning of the Irish race for a thorough reunion. While it is obviously impossible for us, without the con- currence of those concerned, to include them in the arrange- ments for the national convention, we ask them to join with us in making such arrangements as will secure to them a full representation in the convention on the basis hereinbefore indicated." This appeal met with no friendly response, but the most influential of Mr. Redmond's followers, Mr. T. Harrington, was an active co-worker in the cause of reunion. Encouraged by his example, large numbers of his friends and admirers in the country aided him in the same good work. 676 THE IRISH-RACE CONVENTION The Irish -race convention assembled in Leinster Hall, Dublin, on September i, 2, 3, 1896, under the presidency of the Most Rev. Dr. O'Donnell, Bishop of Raphoe. Some two thousand two hundred and fifty representative persons took part in the proceedings; the National Federation of Ireland, and auxiliary organizations in Great Britain, the United States, Canada, the Australian colonies. New Zealand, and South Africa, being represented by duly credentialled delegates. The delegates from distant countries were: United States of America. — T. C. Boland, Scranton, Pennsylvania; Hon. William L. Brown, New York; John Cashman, Manchester, New Hampshire; M. J. Cooney, Montana; Patrick Cox, Rochester, New York; John B. Devlin, Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania; James Duggan, Norwich, Con- necticut; Patrick Dunleavy, Philadelphia Council, N. F.; Rev. D. W. Fitzgerald, Manchester, New Hampshire; Martin Fitzgerald, Manchester, New Hampshire; P. Gallagher, New York; John Guiney, Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania; Anthony Kelly, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Edward Mackin, Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania; Hon. Martin McMahon, New York; Rev. George F. Marshall, Milford, New Hampshire; Patrick Martin, Baltimore, Maryland; Michael Murphy, representing Irish National Federation of America, New York; Rev. Denis O'Callaghan, Boston; Hon. Edmond O'Connor, Binghamton, New York; Denis O'Reilly, Boston; Hon. C. T. O'SulHvan, New York; Rev. Edward S. Phillips, Pennsylvania; Michael J. Roone3^ representing Irish National Federation of America, New York; Josepli P. Ryan, New York; M J. Ryan, Phila- delphia; James SulHvan, M.D., Manchester, New Hampshire; Edward Treacy, Boston ; P. W. Wren, Bridgeport, Connecticut. Canada.— Hon. John Costigan, M.P., P.C.; Very Rev. M. A. Clancy, Placentia, Newfoundland; P. F. Cronin, Toronto; Rev. Dr. Flannery, St. Thomas, Ontario, representing Ancient Order of Hibernians in Canada; Very Rev. Dr. Foley, HaHfax, Nova Scotia; James J. Foy, Q.C., Toronto; Edward Halley, First Vice - President Young Irishmen's Literary and Benefit Association, Montreal; Very Rev. Dean Harris, St. Catherine's; Chevalier John Heney, Ottawa; John M. Keown, Q.C., St. Catherine's; Lieutenant - Colonel Mac- Shane, Nova Scotia; James J. O'Brien, Halifax, Nova Scotia; Rev. P. F. O'Donnell, Montreal; Rev. F. O'Reilly, Hamilton: Rev. Frank Ryan (representing Archbishop of Toronto), Toronto; Hugh Ryan, Toronto; James D. Ryan, President of the Benevolent Irish Society, St. John's, Newfoundland; Gerald B, Tiernan, Halifax. 677 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Australasia. — Charles Hamilton Bromly, ex-Attorney-Gen- eral, northern Tasmania; Michael Davitt, M.P., delegated for Dunedin, New Zealand; Thomas Hunt, Victoria; Mr. Kennedy, Wellington, New Zealand ; Rev. Father O'Callaghan, C.C., Mallow, delegated to represent southern Tasmania. South Africa. — Moses Cornwall, J. P., Kimberley, represent- ing Irishmen of Griqualand West; H. J. Haskins, Johannes- burg. Two hundred and fifty delegates from branches of the National League of England, Scotland, and Wales, affiliated with the National Federation of Ireland, took part in the sessions of the convention. No assembly equal in representative character had ever before in tlie history of the Irish struggle met* in the capital of Ireland or in an}'' other part of the world. Every country and colony beyond the seas where Irishmen are settled in large numbers sent spokesmen to plead for reunion, and to show the opponents of the Home- Rule movement how world- wide was the combination and the power of active sympathy which stood behind the fatherland in its national demand for justice and liberty. The "Parliament of the Irish race," as the great gathering was named by some of its foreign delegates, was ably presided over by the young Bishop of Donegal, who typified in name, descent, and patriotic fervor the spirit and purpose of the Celtic chieftains who had fought and bled for land and liberty in the earliest stages of the Irish land-war. A few sentences from his opening address to this epoch-making convention will clearly e.xplain the unique character and significance of the historic gathering, and its bearing upon the "wide- world" meaning of the Irish struggle. "Men of the Irish race, there is only one way in whicli I may hope to return thanks for the unique honor which this chair confers upon me. It is to launch at once on this magnificent convention the business that has brought you here from the four shores of Ireland and from many lands beyond the seas. To you, gentlemen, our kith and kin, come home from abroad, we who live in the Green Isle say from our hearts, in the sweet language of your fathers, ' Cead mille failte.' In your love for Ireland you are here from the great republic of the West, where so many millions of our people have built up for themselves a position and a name, and whence in times of trial has come to us the most generous support for every national demand. You are here from self- governing Canada, one of whose great prelates first suggested this convention to end our dissensions. You are come from 678 THE IRISH-RACE CONVENTION friendly Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. You are come even from Australia, which has always vied with America in support of the national cause. You are here from Africa, where, in our days, to the south it promises to rival the northern splendor of fifteen centuries ago. Then the never- failing Irishmen of England and Scotland are here; and, lastly, the tried men, priests and people, who live in the old land, in long array, from every county and every shore. You have come from near and far, at great inconvenience and expense, to work for the old cause, and to banish from our midst the bitterness of strife, filled with the idea that love of our mother- land implies co-operation, and love, and friendship, and for- bearances among ourselves in her cause. In my time I have seen the young family outcast on the road-side from the home the strong man had built ; I have seen the priest dragged to prison for trying to shield the victims of such wrong; I have seen thousands of little boys and girls of from nine to twelve years hired into agricultural service far away from the homes where they ought to be at school; I have seen throngs of young people leaving the old and weakly behind, and hurrying to the emigrant-ship; and I have often asked myself: Will the emigrants ever come back? Will they ever send us back the power to change these things and to undo these wrongs? W^ell, picked men of our race are here to-day from every land of the Irish dispersion, and with God's blessing before they go back the foundations will be laid broad and deep of that victory-compelling unity which this great convention was called to promote."^ Speakers from each of the countries named by Dr. O'Donnell addressed the convention in the same strain. Letters and telegrams were read from Philadelphia, Queensland, Adelaide (South Australia), Auckland and Greymouth (New Zealand), Sydney (New South Wales), France, Buffalo (New York), St. John's (Newfoundland), Ontario (Canada), Hobart (Tasmania), and from various centres in Great Britain, to- gether with the following communication: "At a meeting of Irishmen held in Pretoria, South Africa, on July 2ist, it was unanimously resolved: "'That this meeting, assembled in Pretoria, deeply de- plores the dissension that still exists among the Irish party, and expresses the hope that the coming national convention will unite all sections of the Irish representatives, and erase forever the evil elements of dissension and discord.'" The deliberative spirit of the assembly, the singular feature 'Dublin Freeman's Journal, September 2, 1896. 679 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IxN IRELAND of its racial representativeness, its dimensions, and its suc- cess, were described in an article contributed to a London journal by Mr. Justin McCarthy, who, as chairman of the National Federation and of the Irish party, bore a prominent part in the proceedings: "Perhaps it may be considered by some people that I am not an absolutely impartial or unprejudiced critic when I declare my opinion that the national convention, which be- gan in Dublin on Tuesday and closed on Thursday, was a complete and splendid success. But I have seen a good many political conventions and political movements in my time, and I think I have acquired observation enough and common- sense enough not to confound my own personal wishes with the positive facts and the actual results. The convention realized all my best desires and dearest hopes as an Irish nationalist. The convention was fortunate in its president. The Bishop of Raphoe is a very young-looking man for a prel- ate, and has a clearly cut, statuesque face, which must have won upon every spectator. The Bishop of Raphoe has a fine voice, and is richly endowed with power of argument and with thrilling eloquence. " Let me say that throughout the whole of the three days' proceedings there was hardly any display of that kind of Irish oratory which Mr. Davitt once described as 'sunburstery.' The meeting did not want sunburstery ; it wanted reason and argument. It might have been an English meeting, or a Scottish meeting, so far as quiet, practical intelligence and a desire to get at substantial results could constitute its prin- cipal characteristics. "Was it a representative assembly? Well, I can only say that the vast inajority of those who attended it were regularly elected delegates, openly appointed by the various local branches of the Irish National Federation over all parts of the world. There were delegates from the cities of the United States, from Canada, from the Australasian colonies, from South America, from South Africa, from England, from Scotland, and from Ireland. The great Leinster Hall was literally crowded with delegates. It was a somewhat curious fact that on the same platform sat Mr. John Costigan, long Conservative minister of the Dominion of Canada, and Mr. Edward Blake, for many years the leader of the Liberal party in the Dominion Parliament— both alike devoted to the cause of Home Rule in Ireland. As somebody asked, how could an American, or a Canadian, or an Australasian fail to be a believer in Home Rule? Is it not certain that one of the most distinguished Irishmen living. Lord Rosmead, lately known 680 THE 1 R 1 S H - R A C E CONVENTION as Sir Hercules Robinson, became from an extreme opponent of Home Rule a convert to Home Rule because of his colonial experiences?" ^ Every item in the federation programme — unity, national, political, social, agrarian, industrial, and educational — was discussed and demanded, in appropriate resolutions, and the " Irish-Race Parliament " adjourned its session to an unnamed date. * Daily News, September 5, 1896. CHAPTER LVI I. — MORE REFORMS WON The return of the anti-Home-Rule party to power in 1896 found tlie Irish land question again confronting them in Par- liament, as a result of the continued agitation in Ireland. The first judicial term of fifteen years (since the passing of the Land Act of 188 1) was expiring, and the land courts would have to adjudicate upon the applications for a second rent-fixing. The report of Mr. John Morley's select committee, on the working of previous acts, and the proposals which the Home- Rule chief secretary had made in the bill which was discussed , but not adopted, by the House of Commons in the session of 1895, compelled the new government to frame a measure which would deal with the grievances thus complained of in the administration of the existing law. These faults were undeniable, and a remedy had to be provided. Mr. Gerald Balfour, brother of the previous chief secretary of that name, succeeded Mr. Morley in the Irish Ofitice, and he introduced and succeeded in passing the Land Act of 1896. It was a complicated measure, full of legal technicalities and of statutory references to previous legislation. While it offered no final solution of the radical defects in the existing land laws, it effected three reforms in the tenure and purchase of land in Ireland which contributed to the general work of finally abolishing the landlord system. Recognizing the injustice done to the tenants in having rents fixed upon their own improvements, contrary to the meaning of the Healy clause of the act of 1881, Mr. Balfour's new act proposed that the land commission was (i) to esti- mate the fair rent on the assumption that all the improve- ments on the farm or holding were the landlord's property; and (2) then to estimate the value of the improvements be- longing to the tenant, and to deduct the letting value due to them from the fair rent of the holding as it stands. This ingenious method of doing justice to Irish tenants will be appreciated by non-Irish readers from the fact that every commission that has investigated the working of the Irish 682 MORE REFORMS WON land system, from that presided over by Lord Devon, in 1845, down to Mr. Morley's committee, in 1894, had to acknowledge that all improvements in Irish land were the work of the tenants. Farmers, therefore, who could not legally prove what their fathers or predecessors had done to better the holding in buildings, drainage, etc., would have to pay rent on them as if they had resulted from expenditure on the landlord's part. Thus the new act appeared to amend the law in the tenants' interest, but the partisans of the Irish landlords on the land commission easily succeeded, by means of rules, procedures, and other devices, to nullify in practice what the new statute offered in terms to the rent -earners. A plan for a second valuation on appeal was sanctioned in the act, which enabled the landlord, at the public expense, to try and re- verse a judgment not favorable to his rent-roll. The court valuers who inspected farms, on such appeals, were not ex- amined in the land court, and they were more prone to report in favor of the landlord than the sub-commission, against whose estimate of a fair rent the landlord was encouraged by a clause of the bill to try and have increased. Two other provisions in this act of 1896 were intended to serve the cause of land reform. One related to the buying of farms by tenants, and sanctioned a system of decadal re- ductions in the repayment of loans advanced by the state for the purchase of land. This scheme worked out in this way: The tenant's obligations to the state, on completing a bargain with the landlord for the buying of a farm, would be a contract to pay 4 per cent, annually to the land commission upon the total sum advanced by it for the purchase, £2 155. for interest, and £,\ 55. for a sinking-fund for the liquidation of the debt. Under Mr. Gerald Balfour's plan the time of re- payment was extended from forty-nine years to about seventy, so as to secure to the buyer an abatement each ten years, of four decadal periods, calculated upon the reduction in the capital sum made by the annual instalments in payment of the loan. The obvious object of this plan was to enable the landlords to obtain higher prices for their property from the tenants, by lessening the annual payments of the latter every ten years. Under another section of Mr. Balfour's act estates water- logged in mortgage and managed by "court receivers" were to be sold in the land-judge's court on the petition of the tenants, the judge being empowered to give a preference, as between offers, to the tenants, providing the price so tendered would appear reasonable in his judgment. 683 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND On the whole, the Land-law Act of 1896 was another gain for the movement which had the abolition of the whole landlord system as a primary purpose, and the working of this measure has served that object. The discussion of a complicated bill like that of 1896, bristling as it was with legal technicalities, brought into par- liamentary prominence an otherwise somewhat silent mem- ber of the Irish party. This was Mr. Maurice Healy (brother of Mr. T. M. Healy), at that time member for Cork City. He was a skilful debater where accurate knowledge of the complex land law. of Ireland, of precedents, judgments, de- cisions, and of authorities was required. He made no pre- tence to oratory, but there was no man in the House of Com- mons more capable of dissecting an unworkable statute, or of bringing to bear a clearer fund of common-sense upon a tangle of conflicting contentions, than this quiet-looking mem- ber, with his student's face, strong Munster accent, and hands tucked away beneath the tails of a conveniently long coat. In other respects, too, he had been one of the most valuable members of the Irish representation. He was indispensable for a long number of years in the accurate legal draughting of party bills, and for other services for which his training, his intellectual gifts, and general capacity equipped him beyond any of his colleagues. During the discussion upon the County Government Bill of 1898, to be briefly described below, he was one of the safest guides of the party in detecting the legal pitfalls always concealed somewhere in Irish measures prepared by legal minds, Irish or English, in the service of British rule in Ireland. Mr. Maurice Healy was defeated, on a somewhat personal issue, in the general election of 1900, and his valuable help to Irish interests in the Hoiise of Commons has, for a time, been lost. Lord Rosebery's resignation of the leadership of the Liberal party in October, 1S96, after a two-years' tenure of the position, and a defeat of his party at the general election, caused no regret in the Irish ranks. Mr. Gladstone's mantle had fitted him badly. One of his first maladroit acts as Liberal leader was to promulgate the doctrine that Eng- land, as the "predominant partner," was to determine whether or not Ireland should obtain Home Rule. The fac- tors of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were only to count in a secondary and subordinate sense in the weight of votes and decisions. The combined electors of the three countries had, by a substantial majority, sanctioned the Gladstone bill of 1893, and it was in face of this fact that Lord Rose- 684 MORE REFORMS WON bery laid down a new constitutional argument, which justified the action of the House of Lords in rejecting that measure. About this time Mr. Justin McCarthy, too, relinquished the duties of leadership. He had been called upon, as vice- chairman of the Irish party, under Mr. Parnell's headship, to assume the lead of the majority of those who had to break with their colleagues in "Committee-room 15." To no man in public life, in Ireland or Great Britain, could the " split " be more repugnant, personally and politically. No more amiable nature or less aggressive politician could well be imagined in public life than the genial and "kindly Irish of the Irish" personality of him who was thus forced into a position of seeming rivalry to his friend. For four or five years of great anxieties and of much worry he bore the responsibility thus thrust upon him in a rare spirit of cheerful forbearance which did much to soften asperities, but with a courage that never faltered in face of the most unpleasant duties and situations. All who fought with Mr. McCarthy in those years esteemed him for the many delightful qualities of a singularly lovable man, who probably never had an enemy, and who could count more legions of friends and admirers than most of the celebrities of his time. The leadership of the party and of the National Federation came by force of circumstances and by fitness of selection to Mr. John Dillon. He had been Mr. McCarthy's first lieuten- ant in the House of Commons after the resignation of Mr. Sexton, while in Ireland he took chief command of the feder- ation in all the hard and routine labor of directing the popular organization. His enonnous capacity for work, great experience of public life, in and out of Parliament, his missions to America and Australia, and his unremitting efforts in the early Land-League period secured him a greater measure of confidence from the Irish race than went out to any of his colleagues. It was a confidence fully earned in twenty years of a conspicuously unselfish and beneficial work for Ireland. Mr. Dillon found the position of a recognized parliamentary and national leader the reverse of a bed of political roses. It was a bed made by friends afflicted with more of candor than of comradeship. Open adversaries are no serious concern to a capable and courageous public man. He knows the rules of the game, and can meet the moves of his antagonists on anticipated ground. It is otherwise when political jeal- ousies are prone to relieve the common enemy of some of the duties of dealing with opponents. One's own side may be thwarted now and then in revenge for having failed to recognize and to reward the gifts of leadership which can 68s THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND best show themselves in the petty animosities of a disap- pointed ambition. Mr. Dillon had one marked disqualifica- tion to statesmen of this caliber: like the famous Athenian, there was nothing that could be said in truth against his character, courage, consistency, or record. A public man fatally gifted with an extra equipinent of political honesty, generally acknowledged, necessarily annoys the class of minds that try their best, and fail, to find a serious fault on which to hang a just complaint against a friend and a brother in political arms. The Irish party, under Mr. Dillon's lead, and the popular organization in Ireland were enabled to guide the Irish movement safely through a period of unequalled difficulties. It was a time of trials innumerable, but of transition from the crisis of 1890 to the reconciliation which was to follow as a result of the work set going by the great race convention. To keep the flag of the general national cause flying through these trying years of party recrimination, and to maintain the fight for the land and for Home Rule against the old opponents in Westminster and in Ireland at the same time, was a labor well and bravely done by a leader without v/hose sterling qualities of patience, sound judgment, and patriotic self-sacrifice the movement of the decade of 1 891- 1900 would never have carried the Irish cause so safely into the new decade of reunion and of new hopes. As if in sardonic comment upon the Irish moaning over dis- severed ranks, the political fates decided to make this very decade of dissension one of the most prolific in the concession of reforms to the people of Ireland. It was after the fall of Mr. Parnell that the Land-purchase Act of 1891 was passed; that a Home- Rule bill went througli the House of Commons; that Mr. Gerald Balfour's Land-law Bill of 1896 became law, and that the greatest of all the victories won by the Irish forces was scored in the enactment of the Local - Govern- ment Bill of 1898. It would be absurd to contend that these measures came as a consequence of a distmited national organization. They were conceded to Ireland as a result of an agitation whose power and momentum compelled English parties to render that amount of response to the constitutional demands and political activities of the people of Ireland. The fact, however, remains that it was during the years of the "split" that the local government of the thirty-two counties of Ireland was transferred from the landlords and their supporters to popular councils elected on a parliamentary franchise, and that another reeling blow was thus given to feudalism in Ireland. 686 MORE REFORMS WON Previous to the passing of this act, the rural affairs of each county in Ireland — the levying, collecting, and expenditure of local rates, the up-keep of roads, management of asylums, and other duties and responsibilities — were looked after by bodies called "grand juries" and "presentment sessions" — non-elective, pro-landlord bodies, called into existence by judges and sheriffs appointed by Dublin Castle. The people who paid the rates had no voice whatever in the expenditure of their money or in the election of members of these nomi- nated "juries." They were the arbitrary creation of the ruling landlord class or of its indirect influence. In their administrative actions and political tendencies they were uni- formly anti-national, narrow, and reactionary. The reform which abolished this anachronism in the con- trol of Irish rural affairs is known on the English statute- book as "The Local - Government (Ireland) Act, 1898, 61 and 62 Vict.," and was passed into law on August 12th of that year. It provided for the creation of elective coun- ty councils for each county in Ireland, urban district councils for townships adjacent to cities and boroughs, and rural district councils in localities defined in this last name. The franchise for the election of councillors is generally that of the parliamentary franchise, women being qualified to vote for and to be elected upon rural councils which per- form the duties of guardians of the poor. The rural district councils, corresponding more or less to the parish councils of England in area of responsibility and in general local powers, are mainly the bodies to which the working of the laborers '-dwellings acts, already described, is confided under the law of 1898. The act is a very voluminous one, of one hundred and twenty-four clauses and seven schedules. It specifies innu- merable duties and small powers conferred upon the classes of elective councils into which the local government of Ire- land is now divided. There are, almost, an equal number of restrictions and limitations imposed upon these bodies, most of them of a vexatious kind, and showing the usual anti-Irish bias and jealousy on the part of the pro-English authors of the measure. The central local government board of Ireland, which is a department of Dublin Castle and is entirely independent of Irish public opinion, is invested with powers of interference, of control, and of veto in matters purely local and administrative which are indefensible on any rational ground of public use or necessity. These bureaucratic meddlings are as irritating as they have been 687 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND proved to be unnecessary for any service to the country at large, and there is a standing demand in the popular mind and politics of the country for a sweeping away of these restric- tions. The councils have been an unqualified success. Predic- tions on the part of political opponents about "jobbery," "waste of taxes," "incompetency," and all the rest, have been one and all falsified by results and experience. Except in a few instances, incidental to all popular bodies, there have been no unseemly acts, and absolutely no trace of malversa- tion of funds, such as were not altogether unknown in con- nection with some of the old grand juries. Local govern- ment has been more efficiently attended to, and the various duties appertaining thereto more carefully performed by nationalist councils in three - fourths of the counties than under the previous pro-landlord regime. Testimony to this fact has been borne even by anti -nationalist critics. The all-round proficiency thus exhibited by the people in the la- bors and responsibilities of urban and rural "home rule " are strong reasons and unanswerable arguments with many pre- vious opponents of the popular demand in favor of the com- pletion of the edifice, partly erected in 1898, by the necessary extension of the structure into one of comprehensive national proportions. The concession of this local-government measure to Ire- land was availed of by the Irish landlords for the purpose of one of their endless plans of levying class blackmail upon in- dustry and public taxes. They made the usual clamor for English ears — that they would be taxed by their enemies, the nationalists, under the new system, in retaliation for past conflicts and political antagonism; they would be victim- ized as the "English garrison," and all the rest. Therefore the authors of the bill proposed to relieve Irish landlord prop- erty of taxes for the support of the poor, amounting to a sum of ^350,000 a year, under the pretext that this was to be some assistance to Irish agriculture in face of the prevailing de- pression in that industry; a similar state of things to that in Ireland having induced the same government to pass the Eng- lish agricultural rating act. The whole scheme was one which in America would invite the suggestion of "boodling." It was appropriating /^2, 000, 000 annually from the general taxes of Great Britain and Ireland, at the instance of a pro-landlord ministry, for the direct assistance of their agricultural friends and supporters among the electorate of Great Britain and Ireland. The Irish landlords received their bonus, and in consideration of this sum offered no hostility in the House of 688 MORE REFORMS WON Commons or House of Lords to the extension of a measure of self-rule to the counties of Ireland. II. — FISCAL INJUSTICE The findings of a royal commission which inquired into the financial relations between Great Britain and Ireland in 1894-95 were discussed in the House of Commons early in 1897, and made a strong argument for a Home-Rule manage- ment of Irish affairs instead of that of a government from London. The anomalies of Irish taxation under an English regime are almost without a parallel in the fiscal history of any other country. It has been an instance of a growing imperial levy upon Irish resources, with a continuous decrease of popula- tion and of a relative taxable capacity to that of Great Britain. At the period of the act of union the total taxation of Ire- land, for all government purposes, amounted to a sum of about ;£2,ooo,ooo; in 1825 (twenty-five years after the union with England), the total taxes had increased to ^^6, 000, 000; in 1850, to over ;^'9,ooo,ooo; in 1875, to over ;i^ 11,000,000, with a population reduced two millions during the previous quarter of a century. In 1895, with less than a total of five millions of people, the yearly taxation of Ireland by England had amounted to more than ;^i 2,000,000. At the present time (1904), with a popu- lation of about four million four hundred thousand, the Irish people are taxed fully six and one-half times more than they were a hundred and ten years ago, when a-sort-of-a-parlia- ment in Dublin gave some kind of a national concern to the domestic interests of the country. Side by side with this unparalleled decrease of people and inverse increase of taxes, levied upon the country by rulers in Westminster, the ratio of pauperism to population is larger than when there were fifty per cent, more inhabitants in Ire- land. In 1864, with a population of five million six hundred thousand, in round figures, there were two hundred and ninety thousand paupers in the country, or fifty-two per one thou- sand of population. In 1894, with a population of four mill- ion six hundred thousand, there were four hundred and thirty- seven thousand paupers, or ninety-five per one thousand of population.^ A parallel comparison in relation to the growth of a military ' Thomas Lough, M.P., England's Wealth and Ireland's Poverty, p. 21 T . 44 689 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND police force will inform non-Irish readers of one other notori- ous phase of the alien government of Ireland which Home Rule seeks to abolish. In 1836, with a population of over seven millions, there were about eight thousand five hundred of the Royal Irish Constab- ulary employed in Ireland. In 1895, with a population of less than five millions, and with a lower record of crime than that of any civilized land in the world, we were burdened with eighteen thousand police, including pensioners.* The royal commission referred to was appointed in 1894. Its first chairman was the late Mr. Childers, at one time chan- cellor of the exchequer in a Liberal government; after his death The 'Conor Don was nominated to the position. Mr. Thomas Sexton and Mr. Edward Blake were the leading members representing the Irish party, and rendered very great service by their expert knowledge of financial and fiscal questions. The inquiry extended over a period of two years, and comprised the evidence, oral and written, of many of the leading economic authorities in Great Britain and Ireland. There were several reports presented by groups and mem- bers of the commission upon the completion of their labors ; but eleven out of fourteen members came to a common agree- ment on the five following findings: "I. That Great Britain and Ireland must, for the purpose of this inquiry, be considered as separate entities. "II. That the act of union imposed upon Ireland a burden which, as events showed, she was unable to bear. "III. That the increase of taxation laid upon Ireland be- tween 1853 and i860 was not justified by the then existing circumstances. "IV. That identity of rates of taxation does not necessarily involve equality of burden. "V. That while the actual tax revenue of Ireland is about one-eleventh of that of Great Britain, the relative taxable capacity of Ireland is very much smaller, and is not estimated by any of us as exceeding one-twentieth." In the year (1895) when this report was issued to the public the difference to Ireland between an annual revenue of one- eleventh of what Great Britain paid and of one-twentieth of that amount (which would represent Irish taxable capacity) was a sum of ;£2,7oo,ooo. Mr. Sexton reported his own conclusions as follows: "Having regard to the relative taxable capacity of Ire- ' Thomas Lough, M.P., England's Wealth and Ireland's Poi'ertv. p. 82. 690 MORE REFORMS WON land (i) at the period of the union (1801), and (2) at the present time; also to the continued increase of British popu- lation, and more rapid multiplication of British wealth con- trasted with the decline of Irish manufacture and trade after the union, and the great reduction of Irish population, man- ufacturing industry, and agricultural income since the famine (of 1847-48), it does not appear that Ireland's fair proportion of imperial revenue collected since the union amounted to more than ;,^3,ooo,ooo per annum, or a total, up to 1894, of about ;(^ 2 80, 000, 000. (But) The revenue actually raised in Ireland during the period of the separate exchequers, and "contributed" since then (according to treasury comiputa- tions), has amounted to about ;/^57o,ooo,ooo — or an average approximately of ;^6,ooo,ooo a year — being double the amount stated as the fair proportion of Ireland in view of her relative capacity."* On March 29, 1897, the report of this commission, and the general question arising therefrom, were debated in the House of Commons on a m.otion by Mr. Blake. The motion asked for action on the part of Parliament that would provide remedial legislation for this manifest fiscal injustice, but it was defeated by a ministerial vote of 317 against an Irish and (British) Radical vote of 157. ^ Mr. Sexton's Report. Financial Relations Commission, 1895. CHAPTER LVII NATIONALIST REUNION: THE UNITED IRISH LEAGUE The progress that was being made in realizing, in some measure, many of the objects of the national movement, as evidenced in the concessions referred to in the previous chapter, greatly encouraged the country in its desire for a reunion of the nationalist forces. The issues of the "split" were becoming ancient history, while the dimensions of Mr. John Redmond's following were such as to make it im- possible for so small a faction ever to overcome the majority in popular confidence. Earnest men on both sides began to suggest plans of reconciliation, and circumstances tended to favor their efforts. Mr. John Dillon, in a speech at Glasgow, in October, 1898, suggested a conference of representative men from both sides with the object of bridging over old differences. This proposal was not accepted by the minority. The Limerick board of guardians, composed largely of Parnellites, took up the good work, and in a series of practical proposals, sub- mitted to other public bodies, obtained strong expressions of opinion from all parts of the country condemning a con- tinuance of disunion. A convention, confined to delegates from elective councils in Munster, assembled in Limerick, and resolved upon summoning a conference of the nationalist parliamentary representatives in Dublin, and, without any references to previous disputes, to agree to work together in future for the promotion of the common cause. The con- ference met in due course. Fifty-six members responded, but Mr. Redmond and his eight or nine followers remained away. Mr. James O'Kelly was present, however, and as he was the best known of the Parnellites, and had the longest record of services to Ireland, his adhesion to the movement for harmony had a marked effect upon popular opinion. This parliamentary conference, mainly composed of Mr. Dillon's supporters in the House of Commons, adopted the following proposals, framed by Mr. Edward Blake: 692 NATIONALIST REUNION "i. All Irish nationalists to be reunited in one party on the principles and constitution of the old Parnellite party as it existed from 1885 to 1890. 2. The reunited party to be absolutely independent of all British political parties. 3. The main object of the united party to be to secure for Ireland a measure of Home Rule at least as ample as that embodied in the bills of 1886 and 1893. 4. The party also to fight on the old lines for the redress of all Irish grievances, notably those connected with the land, labor, taxation, and education. 5. That since a genuine reunion involves a real reconciliation, we declare our view that all the adherents of a reunited par- ty should accord to and receive from each other recognition, and standing based on past public service, and capacity for future public service, to Ireland, absolutely irrespective of the course any adherent may have felt it his duty to take at or since the division of 1890, and that the reunited party and its adherents should, while fully recognizing the right of every constituency to select its own candidate, exert all legitimate influence in favor of the adoption of this principle in the selection of candidates for Parliament and for party offices. And as the earliest practicable exemplification of the spirit of this resolution, this meeting, mainly composed of those belonging to the larger party, declares its readiness to support the choice of a member of the Parnellite party as first chairman of the united party." Mr. John Dillon at once resigned his chairmanship of the parliamentary party in order to facilitate the carrying out of the proposals thus agreed to and proclaimed, but Mr. Red- mond did not see fit to follow so inviting a lead for reunion. Subsequent efforts for union were, however, made by Mr. Redmond, in conjunction with Mr. T. M. Healy, on the initiative of Mr. T. Harrington, who had labored steadily since 1896 in promoting reconciliation. At a meeting of seven members held in the Mansion House, Dublin, on January 18, 1900, and presided over by Mr. Harrington, it was resolved to accept the proposals agreed to by the majority, as above, and to co-operate with all other members to that end. In the mean time two other factors were working powerfully in the cause of common-sense and harmony in the Irish ranks. One was the war forced upon the Boer republics by England, and the other was the organization of the United Irish League at Westport, County Mayo, by Mr. William O'Brien, M.P. The attack made upon the Transvaal by the forces of the British Empire, in furtherance of the purposes and plans of freebooters and financiers, appealed most strongly to the 693 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND dissent and reprobation of the Irish people and their parUa- mentary delegates at Westminster. It resembled the past treatment of Ireland by England at the behest of the "Out- lander" landlords. There was a similar stream of calumnies and lies against the Transvaal in the Jingo press; the same attacks upon the Boer people, their laws, customs, insti- tutions, and character; the same audacious professions, that all that was aimed at was "the franchise for Outlanders," "freer government," "equal rights for white men," and to put down "tyranny and corruption" — all with the one object of masking a scheme of conquest and confiscation. We were only too familiar with this kind of hypocrisy as a prelude to predatory designs in Ireland, and the nationalist members of Parliament, of both sections, vied with each other in denunciation of a war so monstrously unjust, and in exposing the sham pretences by which it was attempted to justify what one Irish member declared in the House of Commons to be "the greatest crime of the nineteenth century." This comradeship of combat in a common cause of liberty against the criminal aggression of a great empire upon two little republics finally broke down the barriers which nine years of sectional strife had set up between Irish nationalists. The work of complete reunion was accomplished on February 7, 1900, in the election, by the majority of the nationalist party, of the leader of the minority, Mr. John Redmond, as sessional chairman of the reconciled sections. This result had been greatly contributed to by the labors of Mr. William O'Brien, Mr. James O'Kelly, Mr. P. A. McHugh, and others who had co-operated in the founding and extend- ing of the organization which Mr. O'Brien had projected in 1898. The chief purpose of this new body was to effect a reunion, not so much through appeals to leaders or parlia- mentarians, who had first caused the split, but through a fighting combination of the people, irrespective of past dif- ferences, on the old lines of the "land for the people and Ireland for the Irish." Mr. O'Brien was not alone the originator of this new movement; he was its chief inspiration, organizer, and combatant. He is a man gifted with marked powers of platform eloquence and a style of speaking which is well adapted to evoking the enthusiasm of an Irish audience. In addition, he is popularly known and esteemed in Ireland as a foremost fighter in every stage of the Irish movement since he joined its ranks under Mr. Parnell in 1881. Several imprisonments, various prosecutions for alleged libels on notorious enemies of the cause in papers edited by him, are 694 NATIONALIST REUNION all to his credit in the records of the past twenty-five years of the Irish struggle. He wields an influence in popular councils in proportion to the general public recognition of the services he has rendered and the generous sacrifices he has made in the struggles that have been fought, won, lost, and ref ought during the last quarter of a century, as related in these pages. In 1900, the National Federation, which had been the popular organization for nine years, was merged into the United Irish League. The federation had been identified with the divisions in the national movement, and when the prospects of reunion loomed hopefully upon the cause, it was resolved to allow the branches of the old body to merge themselves in the new. This example was followed by the Irish organizations in Great Britain, Australia, and, to some extent, in the United States. There was no change in programme or in purpose in adopting the name and platform of the United Irish League. The ends aimed at were identical with those of the preceding combinations. It caused no wrench of principle or of methods of propaganda to pass from one name to another where the media and objects remained unchanged. The federation had the good fortune during the period of its existence to possess as acting-secretary the services of Mr. John Muldoon. No political movement could boast of a more faithful officer, and the national cause has since found in the young barrister from Omagh an able advocate and sterling supporter. In 1 90 1 the provisions of the coercion act of 1887 were put in force by Dublin Castle, in the proclamation of various districts in some seventeen counties. This was the time- seasoned method by which the crass stupidity of English chief secretaries, played upon by Irish landlords, came to the assistance of Irish popular combinations. The league had struggled during three years to make headway even in Con- naught, and had only a very few branches east or south of the Shannon. The rural politics of scores of county and dis- trict councils seemed to occupy most of the attention and energies of the men who had made previous movements power- ful and historic. Coercion, however, is to Irish national feel- ing what the proverbial red rag is to the bull, and as in the many previous instances of the same kind of Dublin-Castle folly, the repressive law which was intended to intimidate served only to recruit branches and to extend the league. Meetings were duly proclaimed as illegal; the first under the renewed application of despotism being in Ballinrobe, in 695 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND south Mayo, where hundreds of police were thrown in a cor- don round the town to prevent the then member of Parha- ment for the division from addressing a gathering of his con- stituents. By the aid of blundering officialdom of this kind, and other favoring causes, the league gradually made headway in the other provinces, saving Leinster, where it has not, even since the reunion period, found the favor with which previous organizations were welcomed by its people. In the United States there was a steady revival of practical interest in the progress of the movement in Ireland after re- union had been accomplished. Branches of the league were formed in New York and Boston, while Mr. Patrick Ford had already forwarded a sum of ;^6oo as a subscription from the readers of his paper to the promoters of the Connaught branches of the league. In August, 1901, a great demonstra- tion was held in Chicago by the United Irish Societies of that city, under the presidency of the veteran worker for Ireland, Colonel John Finerty. Some fifteen thousand citizens took part in the gathering, and extended to the league in Ireland an endorsement of its programme and a promise of substantial siipport. Subsequently Mr. John Redmond, as chairman of a united parliamentary party and of the United Irish League, accom- panied by Mr. P. A. McHugh, M.P., and Mr. Thomas O'Don- nell, M.P., went to America on a short mission to proclaim the glad tidings of a reunited Ireland. They addressed meet- ings in the chief cities of the Eastern States, and aroused the latent sympathies of their hearers into a renewed manifesta- tion of active interest in the fortunes of the struggle still going on in the old land. On the return home of the mission. Mr. W. K. Redmond, M.P., and Mr. Joseph Devlin, the leader of the nationalists of Belfast, proceeded to the United States on a speaking tour, and resumed the work which their predecessors had suspended. Branches of the league sprang up where the envoys appeared, and in a few months' hard work the foundations for a revived auxiliary organization, on the lines of the Land and National Leagues of the eighties, were laid in many of the largest cen- tres of Irish- American population. In the month of October, 1902, a convention of representa- tive bodies, league branches, and other friendly organizations, was held in Faneuil Hall, Boston, and was attended by a special delegation from Ireland, comprising Mr. John Red- mond, Mr. John Dillon, Mr. Edward Blake, and the present writer. The convention was a conspicuous success; there being over seven hundred accredited delegates present from 696 NATIONALIST REUNION States and cities stretching south to New Orleans and west- ward to Colorado. Canada was likewise represented in lead- ing Irishmen from Montreal and other cities. The proceed- ings, which were thoroughly harmonious, occupied two days, and the space given to a report of them in the press of Boston revealed a great reawakening of American public interest in the developments which were taking place in the struggle in Ireland. A permanent organization was established by the conven- tion. Colonel John Finerty, of Chicago, was unanimously elected president, with the veteran Patrick Egan, the his- toric treasurer of the Land League and ex - United States minister to Chili, as first vice-president. Mr. Thomas Fitz- patrick, of Boston, also a Land-League veteran, was elected treasurer, and Mr. John O'Callaghan, of the same city, an able and energetic worker for the Irish cause, was made secretary. The delegates from Ireland attended great public receptions in New York and Philadelphia, where large subscriptions were donated, Mr. Dillon and Mr. Davitt extending their tour to ten other cities, and likewise obtaining substantial assistance for the support of the home movement. The financial results of the mission totalled over ;;r 10,000. Mr. Joseph Devlin was again sent out by the directory of the league in Ireland to superintend the work of organization through the United States. This labor was most ably per- formed. It revealed in one of the youngest of the rising Irish leaders a gift of platform oratory, a resource of tactful methods of propaganda and of organization which are hope- ful of much promise to the future service of the cause Mr. Devlin has so ably and courageously served since he became Mr. Thomas Sexton's chief lieutenant during that brilliant Irishman's tenure of the parliamentary seat of west Belfast in Westminster. In the mean time events of far-reaching importance had been hurrying questions of great moment on the road to a settlement in Ireland. Mention, however, must first be made of the general elec- tion which preceded, in the order of time, some of the oc- currences dealt with above. In the autumn of 1900 an appeal to the country was sprung upon the electors in the interests of the ministry responsible for the criminal blunder of the South-African War. It was as well known to Mr. Chamberlain and to the English War OfUce as to independent observers who had witnessed the perform- ances of British troops and generals in the field against a mere ^ 697 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND handful of untrained Boer farmers, that the military prestige of the British Empire as a fighting power had been literally buried under the veldt of the Transvaal, Natal, and the Free State. Ugly facts of crass blundering and of incompetency in connection with high commands; of astounding surrenders to inferior forces; of amazing contracts for war material, and of a ruthless military policy carried out against the homes of the fighting burghers and against their wives and families — these and other damnatory facts, equally discreditable to the name and greatness of one of the world's leading empires, were well known to the chiefs of an incapable government. Dreading the effects of a certain disclosure of evidence, which would convict them of responsibility for all that their inca- pacity had occasioned and cost, they concealed the truth, put a deceptive issue before the electors, appealed to the Jingo spirit of a misinformed public, and snatched a victory which was the measure of their unscrupulous tactics. In Ireland the elections were fought under happier auspices than on the two previous occasions since Mr. Parnell's great loss. There was some friction, which a little forbearance and common-sense might easily have averted, in an opposition to Mr. T. M. Healy in north Louth. The electors of that division refused to dismiss their representative, even at the dictation of the league. One or two other instances of a sim- ilar kind disturbed an otherwise stormless series of elections. The landlord and Castle opponents of the national cause were nowhere in the fight, and the country triumphantly re-elected a party of eighty-one nationalists to continue the old contest and policy in Westminster. It was the least costly general election ever fought by the nationalist forces in Ireland. The total expenses were under a sum of _^4ooo; so little did the common enemy venture to contest the field against the popular candidates, and so skil- fully did Mr. Alfred Webb, the infallible treasurer and gen- eral guardian of the finances of the movement, manage the costs part of the electoral campaign. Mr. George Wyndham became chief secretary in succession to Mr. Gerald Balfour. His blood-relationship to Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and certain suave manners, combined with some previous experience of the country when acting as private secretary to Mr. Arthur Balfour, heralded his advent to the post with predictions of a further development of Mr. Gerald Balfour's policy of "killing Home Rule with kindness." He Ijegan well for the league organization, and badly for the Castle, in reviving some of the powers of the coercion act of 698 NATIONALIST REUNION 1887. As already related, this action was worth the work of a dozen league organizers. Meetings were proclaimed, prosecutions were instituted for boycotting and other acts, all in the bad old custom of previous times. But it all wore an appearance of unreality, suggesting the conviction that this' rusty weapon of coercion was brought out of the Castle armory more to satisfy the insatiable spirit of landlord vengeance against leagues and combinations waging war upon their system than for any real belief in the efficacy of prisons and state trials, after so many notorious fiascoes, as a means of winning Irish minds to a reverence for England's laws. The strongest of the many reasons which rendered a renewal of coercion a stupidly short-sighted proceeding in the light of previous experience was the crimelessness of the country. In fact, at no period in Ireland's modern history was there less crime, violence, disorder, or turmoil than when seventeen Irish counties were in part or in whole proclaimed under the law of 1887. Judges going the circuit of assize in each and all of these counties congratulated juries on the lightness of the calendar and on the peaceful condition of the country. The explanation of the anomaly was the activity of the league in holding public meetings, in the denunciation of grabbers, and in the carrying -out of the general work of keeping before the public and Parliament the unsettled problem of the land question, especially in Connaught, the necessity for other reforms, and the paramount want of Home Rule for the country. Mr. Wyndham knew he was not attacking outrage, but political opponents and the right of public meeting, with laws which no other crimes appealed to for application. For addressing prohibited meetings, or making speeches contrary to the intentions of the law of Edward III. of the year 1361, or printing resolutions or other matter equally obnoxious to the majesty of the law of 1887, the following members of Parliament, journalists, councillors, and other citizens were tried and imprisoned by Mr. George Wyndham in 1901-2: Mr. P. A. McHugh, M.P Twelve months, in four im- prisonments (six sentences in all). Mr. John O'Donnell, M.P Ten months (in five terms). Mr. Wm. K. Redmond, M.P. . Six months (two previous terms). Mr. John Roche, M.P Four months (two previous convictions). 699 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND Mr. Michael Reddy, M.P Seven months. Mr. J. P. Farrell, M.P., editor Longford Leader Five months. Mr. Haviland Burke, M.P One month. Mr. Conor O'Kelly, M.P One month. Mr. Wilham Duffy, M.P One month. Mr. Jasper Tully, M.P One month (one previous term). Mr. John P. Hayden, M.P. . . . One month. Mr. Denis Kilbride, M.P. (then ex-M.P.) Nine months (two terms). Mr. David Sheehy, M.P. (then ex-M.P.) Eighteen months (five terms). Mr. Wm. Lowry, Chairman Birr Poor-Law Board Five months. Michael Hogan Three months. Mr. M. Glennon Three months (one previous term). Mr. Daniel Powell, editor Mid- land Tribune Four months. Mr. Carroll Nagle, D.C Six weeks. Mr. James Lynam Six months (one previous term). Mr. R. Maher, D.C Two months. Mr. Joseph Gantley Two months. Mr. Thomas Searson Six weeks. Mr. James Mumane Five weeks. Mr. Andrew Holohan Six weeks. Mr. J. A. O'Sullivan Four months. Mr. T. McCarthy, The Irish People Two months. Mr. T. O'Dwyer, The Irish People Two months. Mr. S. Holland, The Irish People Served one day. Mr. P.J. Flanagan, Corofin. . . Four months, and driven in- sane in prison. Mr. Martin Finnerty Six months (two being in default of bail). Mr. John Lohan Three months, and two months in default of bail. Mr. James Kilmartin Three months (one previous term). Mr. S. P. Harris, Limerick. . . . Six months. Mr. B. McTeman, T.C Two months. Mr. J. G. Quilty, Co. C Short sentence. 700 NATIONALIST REUNION Mr. M. O'Dwyer, Templemore . Five months. Mr. Patrick Fitzpatrick, Ros- crea Two months. Mr. David Sheehan, Roscrea. . One month. Mr. Thomas Larkin, Roscrea . Two months. Mr. John Mitchel, Roscrea. . . . Two months. Mr. Lynam, editor Waterford Star Two months. Mrs. Anne O'Mahony, proprie- tor Waterford Star (a widow) Two months. The first name on this Hst is one of the most deservedly popular members of Parliament and public men in Ireland, a nationalist with a record second to that of few men in the popular movement for the very highest qualities of political life and for years of devoted service to the national cause. The last name on Mr. Wyndham's list is that of a lady, widow of a very sterling worker in the earlier stages of the agitation. Mrs. O'Mahony refused to give the names of some leaguers who proposed resolutions at some branch meeting and who sent the terms of these motions to her paper for pub- lication. This was the nature and extent of the "crime" for which English law in Ireland consigned her, as a felon, to an Irish jail. And it is of such as these that English coercion, invoked by Irish landlordism, makes "criminals" in Ireland! CHAPTER LVIII THE LAND-PURCHASE ACT OF 1903 These imprisonments of public men in a crimeless country, and the visit to Ireland of special correspondents from leading American papers as a result of the Redmond-Dillon mission, and the revived interest thereby occasioned in the fortunes of the Irish movement, were potent factors in bringing about the change of policy which procured the abandonment of coercion once again. No English ministry can now ignore a marked trend of American feeling in a sympathetic support of reasonable Irish demands. It is the plea of an inter- national influence from one of the greatest of modem nations — from the one mighty power with whom Great Britain is daily yearning for a closer friendship than is possible with Japan or Portugal; for a possible alliance that would be worth that of any two European governments, great or small. All this tells for Ireland, because the millions of our race in Brother Jonathan's colossal republic cannot be ig- nored by any American political party. And herein lies a situation suggesting some poetic justice: Over one hundred and thirty years ago English feudalism in Ireland drove so many Irish away that half of General Washington's army in the War of Independence was recruited from the ranks of these exiles. To-day the movement for the ending of this same evil land system in Ireland derives one of its strongest impulses from the assistance and encouragement extended to us by the people of Washington's world-power nation. No reference to this crucial period in the history of the Irish land war can overlook the part played by the tenants on one or two small estates in County Roscommon. They justly complained of high rents levied on poor land. Their holdings were of the typical Connaught kind, uneconomic generally, with an abundance of better land close by given over to graz- ing interests. They formed a local combination — confined, in fact, to the tenantry themselves — and, on having their demands for a fairer rent, or for a purchase of the land, refused by the landlords, they went on strike (to pay no rent) against a con- 702 THE LAND-PURCHASE ACT OF 1903 tinuance of the old conditions. They were not advised to this action by the directory of the United Irish League. Its leaders believed it to be a right demand put forward in a wrong way. The tenants were left in their contest to the guidance of local sympathizers, one of whom, Mr. John Fitz- gibbon, an old-time Land-League leader, proved the sincerity of his sympathy for them by going to prison in their behalf. It was not a successful fight. The owners were Catholics. This circumstance appeared to cover a multitude of landlord sins in the minds of some discriminating Catholic dignitaries whose political charity would scarcely extend to the same lengths in the case of heavy rents going into Protestant land- lord pockets. The landlords secured the moral support of a local bishop and beat the combination. The fight was, in a sense, a failure, but it was like unto some defeats in a right cause — the victory gained by the landlords and their clerical allies was of a Pyrrhic nature. In the session of 1902 Mr. George Wyndham introduced yet another Irish land bill. Three powerful influences combined to make this step expedient. One was the approach of the third-term judicial-lease period, under the Land Act of 1881, which provided that rents were to be adjusted every fifteen years at the instance of tenant or landlord. The average reduction that was made on the first term was over twenty per cent. That on the second term averaged twenty-two per cent. As prices were still being affected by outside competition and other causes, a further abatement of at least twenty per cent, would, in all probability, follow the application of the law of 1 88 1 to the rentals of 1911. This would mean the lop- ping off of sixty per cent, of the income of the Tory landlord class of Ireland. It would be only economic and legal justice to the tenants, but would spell ruin for the landlords. In the mean time it would weaken their credit, alarm English mort- gagees, and menace with future bankruptcy three - fourths of the ex-rack-renters and evictors of Ireland. The second impulse behind the chief secretary's action was the drop that had taken place in the value of the guaranteed land stock, created under the Balfour Land Act of 1891, in which selling landlords were paid the price of their properties. This stock carried by law the interest and value of consols. On the eve of the South African War these government se- curities stood in the money market of London at 114. When Mr. Wyndham's bill was introduced they had fallen to 90. To-day they are under that figure. This depreciation repre- sented a loss to the selling landlord of £2/^ in every ;^ioo worth of land disposed of. 703 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND The next cause, after the necessities of the landlords, which called for more legislation was that of the United-Irish- League movement and the co - operating influences already described. The country was absolutely crimeless. Ridicu- lous prosecutions were multiplying. Members of Parliament were sent to jail, meetings were being suppressed, until public opinion was again clamoring for some measure that would put an end to the whole land war and give agrarian peace to the country. So Mr. Wyndham produced his bill. It proposed to oil the wheels of land purchase by means which would induce landlords to sell and tenants to buy more speedily than under the Ashbourne-Balfour acts of previous years. This was to be done by lowering the sum payable annually by the buying tenant (in combined interest and sink- ing fund) from £^ on each ;^ioo loan to ^3 155. The owner would also be paid in cash, and not in depreciated consols (no longer value for ;^ii4), an arrangement that would also add materially to his advantages in the transaction. The tenant would be coerced, in a sense, to buy his holding (a strange Tory proposal in the light of past English policy in Ireland!) by a pressure that would deprive him of some ex- isting advantages under the Gladstone law of 1881, should he refuse reasonable terms of purchase offered to him from the land commission. Special commissioners were to be created for the quicker working of land purchase, with the view of the final solution of the Irish land problem in the buying out of all the landlords and the putting in of the tenants as the oc- cupying owners of the soil of the country. There were some proposals in the bill obnoxious to the prevalent popular opinions in Ireland on land purchase, es- pecially the semi-penal pressure in section 36. Mr. Wynd- ham, however, made it clear that reasoned objections against these clauses, and to the other parts of his plan, would not be considered in a no)i possnmus spirit. This bill, unfortunately, was condemned and rejected by the Irish party, Mr. T. M. Healy excepted. A combative plan of anti-landlord agitation was now put forward by some of the leaders of the United Irish League to rouse the country into what was hoped would be "a men- acing agitation." The plan was to partake of a policy for the rental and social "picketing" of landlords on trades-union lines, in some undefined manner, who should be unwilling to sell their estates. There was likewise to be a more vigorous boycotting of land-grabbers who should occupy evicted farms. The landlords struck back at this still-born scheme of aggressive persuasion, and defeated its plan and purpose 704 THE LAND-PURCHASE ACT OF 1903 by the simple counter stroke of assisting a boycotted mer- chant, in a town called Tallow, to take civil action for high damages against the officers of the local branch of the league for alleged injury done to his business. The case came to trial in Dublin, and the superior courts awarded the com- plainant ;£7ooo damages. Lord De Freyne, the owner of one of the Roscommon estates already alluded to, instituted proceedings of a similar kind against the most prominent members of the league directory. Thus attacked on both lines of a not too wisely thought out plan of operations, some of the leading league leaders took fright, and went into a land conference with certain members of the landlord party. The origin of this conference is, to some extent, a matter of dispute. The Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Walsh, a lifelong friend of the cause of land reform, proposed a gather- ing of this kind earlier in the year 1902. Mr. T. M. Healy also advocated a similar m.eeting. A leading landlord in the South of Ireland, Mr. Talbot Crosbie, of Kerry, and others of less note, wrote letters to the press urging the adoption of a conciliatory plan of consultation between tenants' and land- lords' leaders to find a basis of settlement. Finally, Mr. George Wyndham declared publicly that the settlement of the Irish land question lay with Irishmen, in a friendly arrangement of terms, and not with the English government. Captain Shawe-Taylor, son of a Galway landlord, here en- tered upon the scene. He openly invited the Duke of Aber- corn, Lord Barrymore, and some others, in behalf of the land- lords, to meet Messrs. John Redmond, William O'Brien, T. W. Russell, and Lord Mayor Harrington, of Dublin, in behalf of the tenants. The landlords named declined to act, where- upon Captain Shawe-Taylor invited Lord Dunraven, the Earl of Mayo, Colonel Hutchinson-Poe, and Colonel Everard, as new nominees for the landlord side, with the gentlemen already mentioned for the tenants. These parties mutually agreed to meet in the Mansion House, Dublin, and the land conference thus suggested began its work in December, 1902, with Lord Dunraven as chairman. The selection of the names on both sides was an arbitrary one. Rightly or wrongly it was attributed to Mr. Wyndham. But the public appeared to think that the gentlemen so named might be jointly capable of producing a workable plan of set- tlement for public discussion and consideration. On January 3, 1903, the conference proposals were put be- fore the public through the press. Some of these were of a startling character and were hailed with keen satisfaction by 45 705 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND extreme landlord organs. The following were among the terms agreed to: "4. An equitable price ought to be paid to the owners, which should be based upon income. " Income, as it appears to us, is second-term rents, including all rents fixed subsequent to the passing of the act of i8g6, or their fair equivalent. "5. That the purchase price should be based upon income as indicated above, and should be either the assuraiace bv the state of such income, or the payment of a capital sum producing such income at three per cent., or at three and a half per cent., if guaranteed by the state, or if the existing powers of trustees be sufficiently enlarged. "Costs of collection (of estate rentals) where sttch exist, not exceeding ten per cent., are not included for the purpose of these paragraphs in the word income. "6. That such income or capital sum should be obtainable by the owners (a) Without the requirement of capital outlay upon their part, such as would be involved by charges for proving title to sell ; six years' possession as proposed in the bill of 1902 appears to us a satisfactory method of dealing with the matter; (b) Without the requirement of outlay to prove title to receive the purchase money; (c) Without un- reasonable delay ; (d) Without loss of income pending invest- ment ; (c) And without leaving portion of the capital sum as a guarantee deposit." * In addition to these extravagant terms, the landlords were to be enabled to sell their mansions and demesne lands to the state, to be bought back again by themselves! And this, too, on the same terms as tenants would buy their farms; such repurchase not to be considered a security to the mortgagees. It was also provided, "That the owners should receive some recognition of the facts that selling may involve sacrifice of sentiment, that they have already suffered heavily by the operations of the land acts, and that they should receive some inducements to sell." On the landlord side it was conceded that the system of dual ownership should be abolished, the tenants to be made occupying proprietors, the evicted tenants to be restored on an equitable basis; that "separate and exceptional treat- ment" should be accorded to the congested districts, with a view to the better distribution of the population and of the land, with some recommendations for the amendment of the laborers '-dwelHngs acts. * Parliamentary paper, "Land Purchase (Ireland)," March 25, 1903, pp. 6, 7. 706 THE LAND-PURCHASE ACT OF 1903 The immediate effect of the publication of this agreement was to inflate the value of landlord property over thirty per cent. The proposed settlement set out above would amount to an average of twenty-seven years' purchase of an annual rental that had brought an average of less than eighteen years' purchase in the land market of Ireland since 1885. The plan was very adroitly contrived so as to insure the landlord the maximum price and advantage in every detail of the transactions of purchase while confining the tenants within a ring of zones with a minimum advantage of fifteen per cent, and a maximum of twenty-five per cent, "on second- term rents or their fair equivalent," but with periodical re- ductions under the decadal plan of calculated abatements. The previous custom of calculating the value of the land- lords' selling interest by so many years' purchase of the rental was discarded by Lord Dunraven and the ingenious financial device set out above substituted. This new plan enabled him to obtain an agreement from the other side to terms that would probably have been at once rejected if put forward in the more comprehensible manner that had neither puzzled tenants nor their leaders dtiring the previous eighteen years' experience of the working of the purchase acts. Taking into account the falling price of land in England, the steady effects of the working of the Land Act of i88t in bringing down the selling value of land in Ireland, the near approach of the third -term judicial rent, and of the facts generally known and acknowledged that the improvements in the soil of Ireland are solely the work of the tenants, the terms secured for the owners in the joint agreement represented the reconquest by Lord Dunraven (for the landlords who had not sold their properties) from the spokesmen of the tenants of almost all that the land movement and the land acts had won during the preceding twenty years for those tenants who had not bought their holdings. The oldest land reformers in the country severely criticised this surrender, and an angry controversy arose. Mr. Wyndham was quick to see the enormous concessions made to the class he chiefly represented , and he discarded the bill of 1 902 , and framed one more or less on the lines of the land-conference report. A national convention was summoned by the United Irish League to discuss and pass upon this measure. It assembled in Dublin in May, and remained in session for two days. Fully two thousand delegates attended, and the ability, self-restraint, and practical good sense which characterized the entire business, under Mr. John Redmond's able presi- dency, attracted wide and favorable attention. A series of 707 THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND resolutions were debated and carried, calling for radical amendments in twenty or more clauses of the bill, and a mandate was given to the Irish parliamentary party to press for and to obtain these amendments, as vitally necessary to the making of the measure acceptable to the country as a final settlement of the land question. A very foolish policy of over-lauding the bill was adopted by some of the tenants' leaders, which had the effect of kill- ing in advance the chances that had existed of obtaining these essential improvements of the measure in Parliament. Noth- ing could well have been more maladroit or politically short- sighted than this policy. It had the doubly injurious effect of closing the avenues to effective amendment, and of inciting the landlords to turn this ridiculous praise of Mr. Wyndham's scheme, already so enormously advantageous to their interest, into additional demands for prices inflated by such laudation. The chief secretary also took the fullest advantage of this unwise action on the part of some of the tenants' representa- tives. He took the rhetorical booming of his bill as a testi- mony, from his opponents, of the fairness and sufficiency of his proposals. He succeeded in carrying the measure through Parliament without a single division being challenged upon any of the manv serious defects which obtruded themselves through the framework of the latest parliamentary scheme for the ending of the Irish agrarian war. There was no provision of any kind made in the new act for any local or national responsibility in Ireland for either the initial stages of settlement or for the administration of a system which was to transform four or five hundred thousand landholders into state tenants during a period of seventy years. On the contrary, the administration of the law was to be in the hands of three estates commissioners — officials respon- sible, not to the Irish people, but to the Imperial Parliament. No provision was made to protect the homes of the peasantry under the new land code by such homestead laws as obtain in the United States and Canada. No clause was inserted to encourage tillage industry by means that would make the buying of grazing - lands con- ditional upon the compulsory allocation of some percentage of such soil by the purchasers to the employment of labor. No compulsory powers were granted to the estates com- missioners to deal with the exceptional conditions prevailing in the congested districts. It is likewise a debatable ques- tion whether the act, as it stands, really enables the com- missioners to do more than facilitate the action of the land- lords in disposing of the least remunerative part of their 708 THE LAND-PURCHASE ACT OF 1903 estates without the power of making the owners include the whole of their land in the sale transaction. A favorable chance was also lost in permitting the govern- ment and the landlords to secure such extravagant terms of settlement, at the risk and expense involved to the state, without obtaining a complete amendment of the agricultural laborers' dwellings act in what purported to be a final solution of the land question. Such an act of justice to a most deserving class was urgently called for and could have been won by adequate pressure. What the act really does, however, towards the ending of the Irish land war is to provide a total sum of ;^i 12,000,000, in state credit, towards the carrying out of this great work. One hundred of these millions are loanable at the terms of ;^3 55. for each ;^i 00; £2 155. for annual interest, and ten shil- lings towards a sinking fund, but with no decadal abatements. Twelve millions are a bonus from the state, presumably to encourage the landlords to sell and the tenants to buy — a condi- tion which is likely to be interpreted as meaning that the whole sum is to be added to the extra price demanded by the landlords under the "boom" created by the land conference agreement. Provisions in the act secure the state against possible loss through the failure or refusal of tenants to pay their annual instalments. The results of improvident bargains, or of re- pudiations by purchasers, are made to fall upon the general taxpayers of Ireland; though these have no voice of any kind in the arranging of terms of purchase or in the administration of the land after being sold by the landlord. The folio wmg tables and calculations bearing upon the purely financial character of the new land law, and its com- parison with the working of previous purchase acts, have been prepared by Mr. Thomas Sexton, and published in the Freeman's Journal, as guides to the right understanding by the public of the money-part of the latest land-purchase act : "THE OLD ACTS AND THE NEW " REDUCTIONS COMPARED With the 4 per cent, annuity rate, and decadal reduc- tions, the average price paid under the Ashbourne acts, viz., 17 years' pur- chase, secured an average yearly reduction of the rent by 709 46 per cent., or gs. 2d. in the pound. THE FALL OF FEUDALISM IN IRELAND With the 4 per cent, annuity rate, and decadal reduc- tions, the average price under the Balfour acts — which was a fraction over 17 years' purchase — se- cured an average yearly reduction of the rent by The same 17 years' purchase under the new act, with 3I annuity rate, but no dec- adal reductions, would re- sult in a yearly abatement of the rent by nearly 23 years' purchase under the new act would give a re- duction of only 49 per cent., or 95. gd. in the pound. 45 per cent., or pound 95. in the 25 per cent., or 55. pound. in the !7 years' purchase under the"] new act would give a re- > duction of only J 2 per cent., or 25 pound. 6d. in the " Under the act of 1903 the interest charged to the tenant, 2 1 per cent., remains the same as before, but the sinking fund to pay off the loan has been cut down from 255. to 10s. per cent., so that the whole charge has been altered from ;^4 to £7, 55. per cent., with two results unfavorable to the purchaser: the one, that he must pay his annuity for twenty-six years longer than before; the other, that decadal reductions are abolished, and the full annuity must be paid from the beginning to the end. " The tenant who buys under the new act must pay instal- ments amounting to ;^222 for every ;^ioo lent to him by the treasury, while the purchaser under the act of irt of speech in 1878, 133; suggests the Irishtown meeting, 147; speech at Westport, 155; reads the Declaration of Prin- ciples, ib.; letter to O'Reilly con- cerning his visit to America, 169; transfers balance of money advanced to him by the trustees of the Irish National Fund, 170; the meeting at Gurteen, 184; arrested and carried to Sligo, ib.; is his own advocate, 183; his account of the "battle of Carraroe," 213; he got his first impressions of landlordism at his birthplace, Straide, 222; is hissed in public for the first time, 237; he refuses to sign the programme for easy transfer of land, 244; a party to the adoption of the constitution of American Land League, 248; is central secretary, 251; starts on an organizing tour in Amer- ica, 252; his first night in Chicago, ib.; he meets the Clan- na-Gael in Chicago, 253; meets Mackay, "the Silver King," in Virginia City, who proposes a solution of the Irish question, 254; speech on the boycott question before the special commission, 282; he returns 731 INDEX from America, 2S6; his arrest by the government thought to be a crushing blow to the league, 304; he and Parnell hear of the Phoenix Park murders, 357; agrees not to raise the question of land nationalism, 378; his experiences in Athenry, 421; talks over the new situation with Parnell at Avondale, 478; his exposure of the forger Pigott, 493; the close of his speech after the Parnell trial, 602; he is absolved from the charge of using the money of the " Skirinishing Fund," 608; handles Le Caron most adroitly, 610; compelled Hayes to give up certain letters, 615; a free Ireland would mean a House of Commons free to the British, 723; it would mean a saving of ^3,000,000 a year in British taxes, ib.; the whole solution of the Irish question is the complete severance of the par- liamentary question between Great Britain and Ireland, 724; Ireland has never yet initiated a moveinent that was not in line with true progress and liberty, ib.; this book has a serious reforming purpose, 725. "Defenders," an organization formed to oppose the " Peep-o'- Day-Boys," 16. De Freyne, Lord, institutes pro- ceedings against the league for boycotting, 705. Dclaney, a most unmitigated scoundrel, 616; one of the chief witnesses for Tlie Times, ib. Derby, Lord, violence as an ef- fective instrument in redress- ing wrongs, 9. Devlin, John, working for the United Land League in Amer- ica, 696, 697. Devon Commission, on what con- stitutes improvements on a farm, 6. Devoy, John, his speech in the Park Theatre in Brooklyn in 1878, 125; his proposal pub- lished in the New York Herald, 127; he brought most of the leading members of the Clan- na-Gael round to his views, 128; his cable to Sir William Har- court, ib.; he suggests union be- tween the physical-force and moral-force bodies, 135; sends first monetary assistance from America, a grant from the "Skirmishing Fund," 169; re- ceipt for money from Mr. Davitt, 170. Dillon, John, joins the league movement, 158; elected to Par- liament, 239; he urges young men to come to the league demonstrations "in military style," 269; again arrested un- der the coercion act, 318; while on trial, arranged with a landlord a question of rents, 523; statement of accounts, 529; returns from Avistralia and throws himself into the project to build up a new Tipperary, 627; Balfour resolves on his arrest, ib.; he escapes to France ib.; appeals for a thorough re- union, 676. Dillon, John Blake, warrant for his arrest, 63 ; in command at Callan, 64; he meets Stephens, 74- Disraeli, his opinion of the Irish question in 1S44, 232. Donaldson, J., a name by which Kirby was to be addressed in the matter of The Times busi- ness, 555 ; some of his telegrams, 556, 557- Donoughmore, Viscount, a son of a place - hunter in Dublin, 32- Donovan, Mr., who with his wife, in Omaha, nursed Mr. Davitt back to health, 254. Doyle, Dr., Bishop of Ossory, who denounced "The Whiteboys," 39; he pi"eaches an unrelentless war against tithes, 48. Dufferin, Lord, the source of his title, 30. Duffy, Charles Gavan, twice on trial on treasonable charges, 67; he revolts against O'Connell's plan, ib.; accuses the bishops of wrecking the hopes of the people, 71; leaves for Australia, 72. 732 INDEX DufTy's, Gavan, league, its failure, 42. Duggan, Dr., Bishop of Clonfert, a most valuable recruit, 158; a priest who was always friendly to the league, 192. Dunally, Lord, the title obtained for Henry Prittie by his sons for selling their votes, 29. Dunraven treaty, the, which spoiled a radical and final settle- ment of the Irish land question, was the work of Lord Dunra- ven, who is a descendant of Sir Richard Quin, who betrayed the Irish people in 1800, 29. Dupanloup, Bishop, preaches a sermon in Paris to relieve Irish distress, 146; British ambas- sador protests to the French government against the bish- op's action, ib. " Durham Letter," written by Lord John Russell, 70. Dwyer, of Ballycohey, defends his home, shooting Scully, the evict- ing landlord, 77. Dynamite plots, usually planned by agents in the English secret service, 428; plotters in Paris, 434 ; the lady dynamiter, a young and attractive widow, who gets the secrets of the alleged conspirators, 438-440; plots in London, 472. Easy transfer of land, etc., compulsory registration, pro- posed change of tenure of land, 243; signers of the programme, 244. Egan, Patrick, ex-Fenian leader, 136; treasurer of the league, 226; was at this time the most active and able of the nationalist leaders of Dublin, ib.; he pre- sented counsel for the traversers with a copy of the brief prepared by the prosecution, 289; the Irish World, of New York, cables to him $25,000, 309; tenders his resignation as treasurer of the league, 373; he was cabled to America that it was agreed to accept Mr. Gladstone's ofifer for the final settlement of the Anglo-Irish strife, 490; despatch sent to Nebraska, 553; his reply to Pigott's demand for money, 370; his letters at Tlie Times trial, 579. Ely, Marquis of, a landlord who was made an English peer, 30. Emmet Monument Association, 74-. English invaders, their plans, 10; unwise action of the Norman barons, ib.; King James's plan- tation of Ulster, ib.; war be- tween the Stuarts and the Long Parliament, ib.; the people remorselessly hunted into Con- naught, ib.; irregular insurrec- tions, ib.; "The Tories," 11; application of the term "rob- ber," ib.; Charles II. confirms the act of settlement, ib.; the calling of a " Tory " became that of an outlaw, 12. Ennismore, Lord, a Mr. Hare who was raised to the peerage for his work for the Union, 30. Evictions, they begin on a large scale, 33; one hundred and ninety thousand families in three years, 68; 1849 to 1882, ib.; testimony of Professor Cairnes, 100; Mayo Land League accepts challenge of the landlords, all evictions are to be "witness- ed," 212; they place a social embargo on land-grabbers, ib.; method of service of notices, ib.; the "battle of Carraroe," the first successful encounter, 213; the league to supply legal help, 219; to watch land-grabbers, 220; Malachi Kelly's farm had a line drawn around it, and in twenty- three years no man crossed it to occupy the farm but for a short time, 225; fall of the domineering evictors, 239; first blood drawn at Ballinamore, 263 ; the fight at Ballaghadereen, 316; Dillon attends the funeral of the victims, 317; failures at New Pallas and Ballylanders, 319; brutally carried on, 380; landlordism used the law for the odious task, 450; action under the law of 1361, ib.; obsolete in England, is con- stantly applied in Ireland, 451. 733 INDEX Fair rent, Lord Justice Walker declined to give any definition of a, 324; Lord Justice Fitz- gibbon declined to go into the question of the definition of a fair rent, ib. Famine and fever years, the number of deaths in 1846-47- 48, 66. Fenianism, the seeming collapse of, 42; in 1878, took little note of Irish landlordism, 117. Ferguson, John, his speech at the Irishtown meeting, 150; de- clined to enter Parliament, 240; his work for Ireland has been most valuable and continuous, 714. Fiscal injustice, the anomalies of Irish taxation under an English regime, 689; the motion for remedial action defeated by a ministerial vote, 691. Fitzgibbon, John, a political rene- gade who became Lord Clare, for his Union services, 31. Ford, Ellen A., assists in forming an organization in New York, 256. Ford, Patrick, editor of the Irish World, i6q; its marvelloiis help to the cause. 256; actively and constantly the most powerful support, 716. Forster, W. E., chief secretary for Ireland under Gladstone's ad- ministration, 258; active in re- lieving victims of the famine of 1847-48, ib.; suggests the use of buckshot in driving off the evicted tenants, 265; the name "Buckshot" Forster stuck to him to the end of his career, ib.; declares the Land League illegal and orders its suppression, 338; in daily peril of his life, 342; imprisons one thousand and eighty - three leaguers as "suspects," 344; asks to be permitted to resign his office, 348; explains to the House the reasons for his res- ignation, 353; accuses Parnell of complicity in the Phcenix Park murders, 457. Freeman's journal, acknowledges itself beaten, and promises the league a fair support, 227. Froude, James A., indifference of the landlords for the welfare of the people, 6; predicts that the assassination of Lord Mont- morres would lead to civil war, 270. Galbraith, Rev. Joseph A., of Trinity College, author of the political phrase "Home Rule," 87. "Galtee Boy, the," Mr. Sarsfield Casey's nom de plume, 142. George, Henry, brings a telegram to Davitt confirming the report of the Phoenix Park murders, 357; his search for a collar- button leads to his arrest, 423; he pleads his own case and is discharged, 426. Giffen, Sir Robert, his letter in TJie Economi.st on the land-pur- chase scheme, 508; he explains further, 510; he points out what England loses in maintain- ing the Union, 719; he was the ablest economist of our time, ib.; Ireland is so poor in resources that the loss of it positively would hardly count, 720; Eng- land would gain ;^3,ooo,ooo a year, now lost on an expensive Irish government, ib. Gladstone, W. E., the question of tenure of land, 8; an unsettled question, ib.; "the intensity of Fenianism," 77; Fenianism taught the intensity of Irish disaffection, 84; a powerful majority at his back, 260; he looked upon the "Compensation for Disturbance Bill" as a wise and expedient concession, 261; appoints a committee in regard to the Land Act of 1870, 264; he ri-ses to explain new rules, 305 ; introduces his remedial set- off to coercion, 317; he strikes a mortal blow at landlordism, ib.; the land bill as a peace offering, 318; the necessity for hisland bill, 321 ; his bill omitted many of the most important recommendations of the Toya\ commission of 1881, 322; said the tenant's improvements were the tenant's own property, 325; 734 INDEX he acknowledges the abihty of Mr. T. M. Healy, 329; he speaks at Leeds on the alarming state of affairs in Ireland, and at the Guildhall, London, on learning of the arrest of Parnell, S33' he acknowledges, in the House of Commons, that the conditions in Ireland had no parallel in fifty years, 342; he seeks an ally in Rome, 343; he gets the report of O'Shea's interview with Parnell, 350; his letter to Cardinal Newinan, 404; he re- fuses to "reopen the question" concerning the measure of 1881 , 463; his plans for an elective basis, 473; in advance of the Chamberlain attitude on the Irish question, 476; he resigns to make way for Lord Salisbury, 477; his first Home- Rule bill, its scope and character, 488; its financial portion unfair to Ire- land, 489; champion of Home Rule against the foes of Ire- land's claims, 491 ; his withering invectives against the member for Birmingham, 496; his bill defeated because the English were not prepared for a sepa- rate Parliament, 498; religioixs bigotry and racial hate, 499; proposes to buy out the Irish landlords, 504; this sealed the fate of the Home- Rule bill, ib.; now "the one and only hope for Ireland," 518; offered a motion to put on record in the House of Comtnons a condemnation of the atrocious charges against Irish members, 614; he said "that without the agitation Ireland would never have had the Land Act of 1881," 625; he writes a letter concerning Par- nell's position after the divorce trial, 639; he succeeds Lord Salisbury in 1893, 666; he sup- ported the second Home-Rule bill with unrivalled parliamen- tary power, but after passing the Commons it is killed by the Lords, with savage contempt for the bill and the author, 669; this virtually ended his political career, ib.; his efforts to carry through the House of Commons a Home- Rule constitution will e\er he gratefully remembered by the Irish race, 671. Gordon, General, on the oppressed condition of the Irish people, 8. Grattan's Parliament, in 1782, the utmost measure of Anglo- Norman-Irish patriotism, 114. Gray, E. Dwyer, who was severely critical upon the "raw theories " of land reform, 156; he informs Mr. Davitt that he is to be ar- rested for his Gurteen speech, 178; the league's real quarrel with him, 226; acknowledges that the Freeman's Journal was beaten, and that henceforth he would gi\e the league a fair sup- port, 227; elected by the league movement to Parliament, 240. Gros\'enor, Richard, his relations and correspondence with the forger Pigott, 563. Habeas Corpus Act suspended under the government of Glad- stone, 42. Handcock, Mr., member for Ath- lone, turned traitor to Ireland and was rewarded by being made Lord Castlemaine, 29. Hare, William, who was made Lord Ennismore for services for the Union, 30. Harrington, Timothy, imprisoned under the Coercion Act, 313; arrested for intimidating, 465; nine days afterwards he was elected a member of Parliament for the county in which the crime was committed, ib. Harris, Matthew, a leading or- ganizer in Connaught, 15S. Harrison, Carter H., his cable to the league, 296. Hartland, Lord, a Mr. Maurice Mahon who turned traitor to his people and was made a peer as his reward, 29. Hayes, John P., another Times spy, 614; a hulking scoundrel and desperado, ib. Healy, Maurice, a skilful debater with an accurate knowledge of the complex land laws of Ire- land, 684. 735 INDEX Healy, T. M., comes to the rescue of the American mission, 207; charged with intimidating a land-grabber, 272; the author of Clause IV. of the act of 1881, 329; his scathing on- slaught on Mr. Trevelyan, 462; characterized Balfour's Irish local government bill as " The- Put- 'em -in -the- Dock Bill," a name that stuck, 664. Hely-Hutchinson, John, a success- ful place-hunter and founder of the house of Donoughmore, 32. Hennessy, Sir John Pope, de- feats Mr. Pamell's candidate at a parliamentary election, 39. Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, chief secretary for Ireland, 514; again a resort to the stereotyped English policy of kicks and half - pence, ib.; succeeds Churchill as chancellor of the exchequer, 522. Historical Apology for tlie , Irish Catholics, A, a work by Sir John Parnell, 105. "Hold the Harvest!" Fanny Par- nell 's stirring poem read at the state trials, 291. Home- Rule bill, the second, sup- ported by Gladstone with con- summate eloquence, 667 ; it pass- es the House of Commons, but is rejected by the House of Lords, 669. Home- Rule Confederation of Great Britain, 136; Parnell elected president of, 228; Edward Mc- Hugh forms a Scottish branch among the crofters, ib. Home Rule failed to enlist popular confidence, 88. Houston, Edward Caulfield, who negotiated the purchase of the forged Parnell letters, 500; the employer of the forger Pigott, 561; preliminary correspond- ence, 561, 562; he contributes parliamentary money to the for- ger, 563; pays Pigott £s<^o for the alleged Parnell letters, 574; sells them to The Times for ;^j2ooo, ib. Hughes, Archbishop, he vehement- ly protests against calling the famine in Ireland God's famine. 51; he declares the causes of the farnine multitudinous, 52. Hurlbert, William Henry, frees his mind in a letter to P. J . Sheridan, 560. Independent Ireland, the only grounds that can be advanced by Englishmen against, 71S. " Invincible " conspiracy, the, 452; the Invincibles' connection with the Phanix Park murders, ib. ; ;^i 0,000 offered for the murder- ers, ib.; the attack upon Judge Lawson, ib.; two informers, ib.; Carey di.scloses facts, 453; ar- rangements "to meet Burke," ib.; Lord Cavendish killed in shielding Burke, 454; live ex- ecuted for the murder, ib. ; Carey, the informer, killed on his way to Cape Town, ib.; O'Donnell arrested for the murder and sent to London for trial, ib.; O'Don- nell is executed in Newgate in 1883, 455; most of them had been Fenians, 456; Forster ac- cuses Parnell of complicity in the Phtxnix Park mvirders, 457; Parnell's noble reply to Forster's attack in the House of Com- mons, 459; O'Brien contests the seat of a Castle lawj-er, 462; overwhelming victory, ib. Ireland, what she received from the British Parliament from 1830 to 1875, 103. Irish electioneering contests, mon- ey difficulties of, 233; sheriffs' fees must be paid first, ib. Irish in the United States, steadily climbing upward, socially and politically, 116. Irish land-pvirchase scheme, sub- mitted by Mr. W. H. Smith in 1882, 328. Irish landlord Parliament, the laws fashioned against Whiteboyism, 1 7 ; Wolfe Tone sees its sham nationalism, 28; Pitt and Cas- tlereagh chief actors in its destruction, ib.; Sir Jonah Bar- rington gi\cs a list of the traitors, ib.; list of traitors, 28, 29. 31- Irish landlords, their conduct dur- ing the famine of 1846-47,53. I 736 INDEX Irish National League, its forma- tion to supplant the Irish National Land League, 372; report of money in the treasury in 1S82, 373; programme and articles of the national con- ference, 375. Irish Parliamentary Fund As- sociation, of New York, re- mitted vS78,ooo to Parnell, 629. Irish party, address by the com- mittee of the, in 1893, 666; ap- proves of the suggestion of the Archbishop of Toronto, 676. Irish - race convention meets at Leinster Hall, Dublin, 677; list of the delegates, ih.; a complete and splendid success, 680. Irish Republican Brotherhood, 7^. Irish World, the, a New York journal conducted by Patrick Ford, backs the revolt against landlordism, 169. Irishtown meeting, members of the committee protest against the action of Canon Burke, 147; the resolutions offered, 148; Brennan's address, ib.; O'Con- ner's speech, 149; Ferguson's speech, 150. Jebb, Mr. Justice, defines the policy of the Whiteboys, 38. Jones, Bence, refuses to redvice rents and is boycotted, 312. Joyce, Dr., author of Deirdre, 130. Joyce, Father, the first priest to join the Land League, 192. Kane, Dr. J. J., his kindness to Mr. Davitt in St. Louis, 254. Kasey, a blatant "refugee" who lived in Paris, with a leaning towards dynamite and a de- cided taste for absinthe, 435; the sham plot for the rescue of Daly, 438. Keefe, Rev. Matthew, a friend of the poor tenants, 68. Kelly, Colonel Thomas, 76. Keogh, a political traitor favored by the Archbishop of Dublin, 70. Kettle, Andrew J., a veteran land reformer, 158; a most loyal, energetic, and able ad- vocate, 714. Kickham, Charles J., one of Ste- phens's lieutenants in the Fenian movement in 1865, 134; he scouts the proposed new depart- ure, ib. Kilconnell, Lord, a Mr. Trench who was raised to the peerage for fomenting the rebellion of 1798, Kilmaine, Lord, a title purchased by Sir John Brown with money got for services to the Union, 3 1 . King, Robert, was made Baron Erris and received ;^i5,ooo for the disfranchisement of the town of Boyle, 30. Kinshela, Gerald, of Carlow, a "Tory" hero who was an ac- tive resistant, 14. Kirby, J. F., The Times agent who reported that he could secure Sheridan as a witness for ;^20,ooo, 553; he has an inter- view with him at his ranch in Colorado, 554; he tells Sheridan that he was to be assassinated, 557- Ladies' Land League, objections urged against it, 299; the duty of providing accommodation for evicted families to be their work, 300 ; boycotting their chief weapon, 340. "Lady Clares, The," 37. Lalor, James Fintan, his letters to The Nation, 55; he contributes to Tlie Felon, 57; his arrest, 65 ; the prophet of Irish rev- olutionary land reform, 79; his revolutionary writings on the Irish land question, 82; seeds sown for another genera- tion, ib. Lalor, Richard, elected by the league movement to Parlia- ment, 239. Land Act, power to acquire owner- ship of any estate. 246. Land Act Law, the administration of the act in the hands of John O'Hagan, a sound lawyer, but a weak and pliant judge, 323; what the act purported to give, 324; an improvement defined by, 325; it left the tenant's interests unprotected, 326; the 737 INDEX tenant had no chance in the appeal court, 327. Land Act of 1S70, the, a concession to "the intensity of Fenianism," 77- Land League, the, the Freeman s yonrnal antagonistic to it, 226; a huge demonstration arranged to protest against the prosecu- tion of the arrested members, 227; makes a clean sweep in three Irish provinces in the general election, 238; over- whelming triumph over the landlord power, 239; members elected as upholders of Mr. Par- nell's policy, ib.; some trouble- some members, 245; its mem- bers are indicted on nineteen counts, 272; the executive mem- bers of the Land League meet in Paris, 306; the aggressive moral force, 311; the branch became the committee of public safety, ib.; official judgment on the bill of i88i, 328; the manifesto issued by Parnell and others from Kilmainham jail, 335; "This Land-League Court is now declared open," a blunder of the court crier, 340. Land-League convention at Castle- bar, report of meeting in the Dublin Freeman s Journal, 160 Land - purchase Act of 1902, in- troduced by Mr. George Wynd- ham, 703; a drop takes place in the guaranteed land stock, ib.; the tenant to be coerced into buying his holding, 704; a combative plan of anti-land- lordism put forward, ib.; the landlords strike back at this still-bom scheme, ib.; Lord De Freyne institutes proceedings against members of the league, 705; Wyndham says the ques- tion of settlement lies with Irishmen, ib.; Shawe- Taylor invites the Duke of Abercom, on behalf of the landlords, to meet members of the leagtie, ib. ; the landlords decline, ib.; the chief secretary carries the meas- ure through Parliament without a single division, 708; tables and calculations bearing on the 738 new land law, 709; landlords' bonuses, 710; summary, 711. Land-purchase scheme, letter in The Times from Sir James Caird, 506; that newspaper's comments, 507; Sir Robert Gif- fen's letter in The Economist, 508; Dr. Croke in The Statist, 509; the Freeman's Journal ap- proves, ib.; the Fortnightly Re- view discusses the question, ib. Landlordism, the prelates and priests failed to back Duffy and Father Croke against the evils in 1852, 70; it stood for the menace of eviction, 120; backed by the law, put its hand often to eviction, 450. Landlords in the West of Ire- land clamoring for their rents, despite the great distress of the peasantry, 211. Langford, Lord, a Mr. Rowley who was created a peer as a reward for his vote in favor of the Union, 29. Lavelle, Father, attacks from his pulpit the rack - renting land- lords in County Mayo, 145; his work Irish Landlordism Since the Revolution, 146. Law of Edward III. of 1361, re- vived by Wyndham to imprison political opponents in Ireland, 699. Lawless, Nicholas, became Lord Cloncurry for services to the Union, 30. Leamy, Edmund, elected by the league movement to Parliament, 239- Le Caron, Major Henri, in the Clan-na-Gael circles in Chicago, 253; practising as a doctor, he treated Mr. Davitt for insomnia. 254; one of the most theatrical of all TJie Times witnesses, 609; a spy in the secret-service em- ploy for twenty years, ib.; his expected reward was ;^io,- 000, 610; never once suspected of being a spy, 612. Lecky , Mr. , on the rapacity of mid- dlemen, 5; declares that the presence of the Irish in the British Parliament has proved the most powerful of all agents INDEX in accelerating the democratic transformation of English poli- tics, 726. Leitrim, Lord, assassination of, in revenge for debauching a farmer's daughter, 142, 143. "Levellers," a name applied to the Whiteboy agrarians, be- cause they destroyed fences around landlord commonages, 17- Lewis, Sir Franklin, contrasts rents in Ireland and England, 7. Lewis, Sir George Cornwall, his idea of the motives impelling the Whiteboys, 38; quotes from Wyse's history to show the lack of control of the clergy over the lower classes, 40. Limerick, Earl of, a Mr. Perry who was raised to the peerage by his renegade brother, who was speaker of the House of Com- mons, 31. Listowel, Earl of, a Mr. Hare who was raised to the peerage for services to the Union, 30. Litchfield House Plot, 122. Local Government bill of 1898, the greatest of all victories won by the Irish forces, 686 ; con- tained the usual restrictions and limitations, showing the anti- Irish bias, 687; this concession invited the usual number of "boodlers," 688. Londonderry, Lord, a descendant of Robert Stewart, who was an enemy of Irish nationhood, 31. Lowther, James, secretary for Ireland, 157; his ill-tempered letter, 159. Luttrell, Henry, a mercenary renegade, the last member of whose family recently died, a convicted thief, in a German prison, 32. Maamtrasna crime, two bailiffs killed and thrown into the lake, 381; it brought to Ireland Arnold Toynbee, ib. McCabe, Archbishop, assails the league in a pastoral letter, 189; calls the Land-Leaguers the ene- mies of religion, 190; again at- tacks the league, 27 1 ; is troubled about the "modesty" of the Ladies' Land League, 314; is contemptuously crushed by the Archbishop of Cashel, 315; makes his customary impotent intervention, 341. McCarthy, Justin, elected by the league movement to Parliament, 239; denounces the increasing imprisonment of "suspects" in 1 88 1, 331 ; he was suspended by the prime-minister and left the House of Commons amid the cheers of his party, ib.; he re- linquishes the leadership of the Irish party, 685; a singular- ly lovable man, who probably ne\-er had an enemy, ib. MacCormick, Dr., allowed his priests to take part in the Land- League agitation, 192. McDermott, Red Jim, a man in the pay of the English secret ser- vice, who planned the alleged dynamite plots in Cork, Liver- pool, and London, and tried to fasten them on Pamell, 428- 433 ; he turns up in Paris, 435. Macdonough, Mr., he ably defends the league at the state trials, 293- McHugh, P. A., goes to the United States to proclaim the glad tidings of a reunited Ireland, 696. Mackay, J. W., he makes Mr. Davitt his guest at his hotel, 254; he offers his solution of the Irish question, ib. McKnight, S., editor of The Banner of Ulster, in the interest of the Tenant League, 69. Madden, Dr., he tells the story of Father Sheehy and "The White- boys," 17. Maginn, Bishop of Derry, his indignant protest, 50. Mahon, Maurice, became Lord Hartland as the price of his vote, 29. "Major Yellow," he foregathers with the alleged dynamiters in Paris and gets their secrets, 436; his book. The Repeal of the Union Conspiracy, anticipated the " Parnellism and Crime" articles in 'The rimes, 613; he 739 INDEX shadowed Davitt during his visit to America, ib.; he wrote a report concerning the "secret" societies, which he gave to the home secretary and Ttie Times, 614; at the trial he appeared as a witness for Tlie Times, ib. Mansion-House meeting, in 1902, Lord Dunraven in the chair, to settle the question between landlord and tenant, 705; start- ling proposals submitted, 706; the immediate effect was to inflate the value of landlord property over thirty per cent., 707. Martin, John, he starts The Felon after the suppression of Tlte United Irishman, 57; he is sent to Tasmania, 58; extract from his letters on the national ownership of land, ib. Marum, Mr., he deludes the tenants of evicted farms, 39; he is shot in the open day, ib ; his son is an earnest tenant- righter and one of the followers of Mr. Pamell, ib. Massey, General, was made Lord Clarina as a reward for the sup- port of the Union, and his brother was created Baron Massey, 30. May, Lord Chief-Justice, delivers a violent political harangue, 288; he retires from participa- tion in the state trials, 289. Mayo conspiracy in 1884, 471. Mayo, County of, chief sufferer of the landlord system, 144; her people were always found in the fray, 145. Mayo, Earl of, was a Mr. Burke, owner of a nomination borough, 32. Meagher, Thomas Francis, his protest against the policy of the Repeal Association, 50; warrant for his arrest, 63. Mechanics' Hall, Boston, meeting, resolutions offered at, 130. Miltown meeting, Mr. Lowther's report to the House of Commons on, 157; Mr. O'Connor Power objects to the tone of the report, 158; Mr. Bright reprimands Mr. Lowther for his language, ib. Mitchel, John, his revolt against the whole Repeal movement, 5 5 ; he proposes a strike against the payment of poor rates, ib.; shows England's perfidy in 1 847 , 56; he starts The United Irish- man, ib.; which is suppressed by Dublin Castle, 57; his trial and sentence in 1848, ib.; he blames the priests for the appalling condition of the tenants, 64. " Mitchelstown Massacre," one of the results of Balfour's policy, 523; at which the constabulary are put to flight, 525. "Molly Maguires," the, become a rival society to the Ribbon Society, 43. Monaco, Cardinal, issues a mani- festo against the Irish methods, 406. Money, contributed to the league, 713; from America, 320. Montmorres, Lord, his assassina- tion a cold-blooded crime, 270; Mr. Froude, in a letter in The Times, predicts civil war on account of, ib. "Moonlighters," the, 43. Moore, George Henry, a liberal landlord, 145. Moran, his Eminence Cardinal, of Sydney, New South Wales, sends words of encouragement, 676. Morley, John, becomes Irish secre- tary in the Home-Rule cabinet, a convert for national rule in Ireland, 487; warns Pamell, 641; gives a touching account of Gladstone's last cabinet meet- ing and his farewell to his colleagues, 670; proposes to have a select committee ap- pointed to inquire into the work- ings of the land acts, 671. Morres, Lodge, made Lord Frank- fort, and later becomes Vis- count Frankfort de Montmor- ency, for services, 30. Movement against English power, 121. Muldoon, John, a faithful ofhcer, an able advocate and sterling supporter, 695. Mulhn, John, paid for killing Loughlin O'H anion, 13. I 740 INDEX Mullins, Thomas, made a peer and his name changed to De Moleyns, 30. Mulqueeny, his evidence before Tlie Times commission, 633. Municipal elections, objection in Irish extreme circles to par- ticipation in, 1 1 8. Murdoch, John, a stanch ally of the Irish Land League, 229; Pro- fessor Blaikie's lines to, ib. Murphy, N. D.,runs for the borough of Cork against Pamell, with the open support of the bishop. 238. Nally, p. W., an organizer of the Irishtown meeting, 147; arrest- ed for complicity in the Mayo conspiracy and dies in prison, 471. Nangle, Cornet, of Longford, who was an active resistant, 14. Naoroje Dadabhai, an East- India - man whom it was pro- posed to elect to the Commons, 447- Nation, The, leaves the mass of the people under the absolute leadership of the bishops and priests, 49. National Federation, the, born in a storm, 665; has to fight op- posing forces of landlordism and Dublin Castle, ib.; New York branch supported by Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet, 672; the co-operators, 673; Dillon be- comes leader of, 685. National Land League of Ireland, 160; rules and objects of, 162; its purpose to unite the whole country in the movement, 164; its intention to defend persons who might be evicted, 165; Pamell's invitation to the con- ference of, 172; its meeting at the Imperial Hotel in Dublin, ib.; members present, ib.; the committee appointed by, 173; its new quarters in Abbey Street, Dublin, 177. National League in America, its first meeting at Trenor Hall, New York, 365; the second at Buffalo, ib. ; the third in Boston, ib.; T. P. O'Connor and T. M. Healy as envoys,, ib.; declares English rule in Ireland without moral sanction, 366; its fourth meeting in Washington, ib.; the Irish envoys return to Ireland, ib.; resolutions passed by the conference, 367; its fifth con- vention held in Philadelphia, 391; remarks of Mr. James Mooney in retiring from the presidency of, ib.; receives mes- sage from Pamell, 392 ; its name changed to Irish National League of America, ib. ; Alexan- der Sullivan elected president of the new-named league, 393. National League in Australia, un- der the presidency of Rev. M. Horan, 383; names of his assistants, ib.; its meeting in Melbourne, in 1881, ib.; Walshe, John W., sent as an organizer, 384; league conventions in 1883, 385; names of its delegates, ib.; report of Joseph Winter to ob- tain monetary assistance for Ireland, 388; officers and reg- ulations of, 389; Dr. O'Doherty's address in dismissing the dele- gates, 390. National League of the United States and Canada, an off- spring of the National League of America and the Irish Na- tional League of America, 393; officers elected, ib.; head-lines of the New York Herald in its report of the convention, 394; the spicy report of the Chicago Times, 395. New Pallas, five thousand peas- ants prevented an eviction at, 319. New York World and the New York Sun assist in raising large sums of money for Pamell, 629. Nobility and gentry, Thomas Moore's contempt for a certain class of, 27; men who could be bought, ib. Nolan, John, a prominent Fenian leader, 86; Butt's most powerful ally, 97; his scheme to raise money for the cause, ib.; he leaves Dublin for New York, and dies in St. Vincent's Hospital, 99. 741 INDEX Norbury, Lord, a John Toler, a most infamous character, who tried Robert Emmet in 1803, 30- No-rent manifesto, effects of the, 330; two men killed in County Clare, 331; Father Eugene Sheehy arrested, ib.; Mr. Justin McCarthy denounces the increas- ing arrests of suspects, ib.; Forster urges the arrest of the central leaders, 339; arrest of Miss Hodnett in County Kerry for exhibiting a no-rent mani- festo in her window, 341; the cost of providing for the families of "suspects," 344. "Oakbo'V'S," the, an organization formed to oppose special claims of landlords, 20. O'Brien, Barry, on "The New Departure," 123. O'Brien, Smith, his warning to Sir Robert Peel, 48; a moderate land reformer, 55; warrant for his arrest, 63; he marches on Callan, 64. O'Brien, William, becomes editor of United Ireland, 333, threat- ened with arrest by Balfour, he escapes to France with Dillon, 627. O'Connell, Daniel, his dream and ambition, 35; founder of moral- force nationalism, ib.; his early education, 36; a colossus who impressed the world with his personality, ib.; he denounces the Whiteboys, 39 ; on the " Prot- estant tyranny" of the Es- tablished Church, 48; he and some of his chief supporters imprisoned, 49; his collapse, ib.; his unheeded demand that food should not be exported, 52; the friction between him and the Young Irelanders, 553; his death, ib. O'Connell, John, his atrocious sentiments, 47; the curse of his leadership, 49. O'Connor, Arthur, elected to Par- liament, 239. O'Connor, Father, of Achill, a friend of the league, 192. O'Connor Power introduces the Compensation for Disturbance Bill, 260. O'Connor, T. P., elected to Par- liament, 239; returned both from Galway city and the Scot- land Ward division of Liver- pool, 502; he chooses to sit for Liverpool, ib. O'Donnell, kills Carey, the inform- er, on his way to Cape Town, 455; is arrested and hanged at Newgate in 1883, ib. O'Donnell, F. H., on the policy concerning the Transvaal, 109; elected to Parliament, 239. O'Donnell, Dr. Nicholas, of Mel- bourne, Australia, the heart and soul of everything pro-Celtic, 630. O'Donnell, Thomas, goes to the United States to tell of reunited Ireland, 696. O'Hanlon, Count Redmond, leader of the Ulster "Tories," 12; the price paid for his assassina- tion, ib.; his grave in the parish of Killevy, County Armagh, 13; the title of count conferred for bravery in the French army, ib. O'Hara, Father Dennis, a speaker at the Gurteen meeting, and a stalwart friend of the poor, 192. O'Keefife, Daniel, head of a clan of that name, 13; he fought against Cromwell, ib.; he took possession of the castle and lands of Dromagh, ib.; fought at the Boyne, ib. ; and became an outlaw again, ib. O' Kelly, James, a worker in na- tional movements, 128; elected to Parliament, 239. O'Kelly, Mary, O'Keeffe's mis- tress, who was bribed to betray him, 14. O'Leary, John, he tells the storj' of the "insurrection," 64; a distinguished author, who made John Mitchel an agrarian rev- olutionist, 65. O'Mahony, Mrs. Anne, a widow, proprietor of the Waterford Star, sent to jail for the crime of refusing to gi\-e the names of some leaguers who sent to her a series of resolutions for pub- lication in her paper, 701. 742 INDEX O'Mahony, John, 73, 74; head centre of the Fenian I3rother- hood in the United States, 75- O'Malley, Father John, of County Mayo, who invented the word "Boycott," and suggested its apphcation, 274; his facetious rebuke of a poor old woman at Lough Mask, 278. O'Neill, General, his raid into Canada in 1867, 120. O'Neill, Owen Roe, an officer under the Duke of York, 13; a leader of the Celtic people, 35. O'Reilly, John Boyle, chief in- spiration of the meeting in Boston in 1878, 129; his lovable character, ib.; his idea of the basis of the national fight, 130; temporary chairman of the American Land League, 247; a conservative, 257; supports the stand made by the people against coercion in Ireland, 366. O'Shea, Captain, interviews Par- nell and reports to Gladstone, 350; he gives his views to Fos- ter concerning further coercive legislation, 352; a dangerous in- triguer, 501; his petition for divorce heard before a London jury, 637; verdict in his favor, 638. O'Shea, Rev. Thomas, a friend of the poor tenants, 68. O'SuUivan, W. H., on the execu- tive committee of the Land League, 240. '"Orangemen," an organization evolved from the Peep-o '-Day- Boys, 16; the "Battle of the Diamond," 21; still remember- ed on Orange festivals, 22; a typical product of English rule over the Irish, ib. Ormonde, the black - hearted scoundrel who bribed a relative to kill O'Hanlon, 12. Osservatore Romano, the leading organ of the Vatican, calls Big- gar a bacon-seller, and makes lying statements about Parnell : says that "forty miscreants" are in jail in Ireland for "mur- dering priests," 191. Outlaw's Cave, on the Blackwater River, Daniel O'Keeflfe's place of retreat, 13. Ownership of the soil the basis of the fight for self-government, 121. Paris Funds, The, the quarrel over the distribution of, 672. Parliament of the Irish race, an- other name for the Irish - race convention, 678. Parnell, Anna, in favor of the Ladies' Land League, 299; makes admirable addresses in the provinces, uttering extreme Land-League principles, 314. Parnell, Charles Stewart, born at Avondale, County Wicklow, in June, 1846, 106; youthful ad- ventures and rustication from Cambridge University, 107; his action concerning the policy to destroy the independence of the Transvaal, 109; assailed by the English press and mobs, no; refuses to join any political secret society, 112; in accord with Grattan, 115; The Times prefers false charges against, 123; promoted to leadership, 124; his speech at Traleeon the land question, 137; learns the facts of the Irishtown meeting, 150; speech at Westport, 154; at the Limerick demonstration, 168; agrees to the consolidation of several organizations, 170; his letter of invitation to a meeting to form the National Land League of Ireland, 171; his growth in popularity, 174; quotes John Stuart Mill, 175; the Tory squire in the House of Commons, 176; arouses popular feeling in favor of Mr. Davitt, 179; a fighting speech at Balla, ib.; postpones his visit to America, on account of the Castle coup, 188; de- mands an autumn session of Parliament, 192; asks assistance from friends in America, ib.; sails for America, 193; gen- eral reception in New York, ib.; addresses a great meeting at Madison Square Garden, ib.; tour through the country, 194- 743 INDEX 197; he addresses Congress, 198; his '"last-link speech," 204; he replies to an attack in the New York Herald, 205; his early love- aflfairs, 207; his even temper up- set by a six-foot female elocu- tionist, ib.; he misquotes Moore, 228; elected president of the Home- Rule Confederation, ib.; the object of his mission to America, 234; he attends the meeting at Enniscorthy, and is attacked by the mob, led by two priests, 235; his life is saved by Jack Hall, a reporter for the Freeman's Journal, 236; is roughly handled on his way to the hotel, 237; he is nominated for Cork City and elected, 238; elected to three separate con- stituencies, 240; proposed Mr. Butt's land bill to conference, 241; he attends the anniversary meeting at Irishtown, 245; his stirring speech at Galway, 271; cables to New York, 1881, con- cerning the result of the state trials, 297; his letter to the American press concerning Mr. Davitt's arrest, 304; he and his entire party expelled from the House, 305 ; issues a manifesto from Paris in 1881, 306; cord- ially welcomed by Victor Hugo, 308; the expelled Irish party resolve to return to the House, 309; he advised the complete uprooting of landlordism, 318; his "retort courteous" to the premier's speech and Forster's despotic proceeding, 337; pro- poses a practical settlement of the land question, 351; hearing of the Pho?nix Park murders he decides to retire to private life, 358; he is advised not to do so by Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, Sir Charles Dilke, and Mr. Gladstone, 358, 359; explains Forster's downfall, 36 1 ; requests Mr. Davitt not to address meet- ings in Manchester and Liver- pool, 363 ; refuses to be iden- tified with any more Land Leagueism, 368; his "iron dic- tatorship " a carefully construct- ed legend, 380; savage attack on him by Forster in the House of Commons, 397; attacked by the Propaganda Fide, 398; pro- poses to invite the co-operation of the English working-classes, 448 ; his speech in reply to For- ster's attack on him in the House of Commons, 459; in- troduces a bill to amend the defects of the law of 1881, 463; is credited with the appointing power, 466 ; his powers as a lead- er, 469; angling for concessions, 470; he finds himself master of the situation, 477; handicapped by a new power that it had come to his fortune to wield, 480; a serious error in tactics, 481; his great parliamentary triumph, 484; clean sweep by the Pamellites, 4S4; declares that Irishmen in America and those at home would accept the Gladstone proposals as a final settlement of the Anglo-Irish strife, 490; his speech on the Gladstone bill, 494; pronounces the first Times letter a forgery, 534; decides to put the onus of proof on the House of Commons, 537; W. H. Smith refuses to accept the challenge, or to permit Parnell to expose the fraud of the forged letters, ib.; his extraordinary compos- ure during the trial, 596; the judge said: "We entirely acquit Parnell," 605 ; after his acquittal he became immensely popular in England, 625; the city of Edinburgh voted him the free- dom of the city, ib.; visits Gladstone at Hawarden, 630; an amusing incident, ib.; is a corespondent in O'Shea's suit for divorce, 631; thinks trades- unionism nothing but land- lordism of labor, 636; he is asked to resign his leadership for a time, 639; he refuses, 642; his handsome tribute to Gladstone, 645; his speech at the Eighty Club, ib.; eulogizes the genius and services of Gladstone, 646; dies at Brighton, October 6, 1891, 656; his speeches in Dublin and Navan, ib.; looked upon by 744 INDEX Gladstone as "an invaluable man," 657 ; faults do not conceal his greatness, 658; his pedigree, 659- Pamell, Fanny, she enkindles Irish-American feeling for the league, 256; her proposal to form a Ladies' Land League, ib.; her stirring poem "Coercion — Hold the Rent," 266; her poem "Hold the Harvest," read at the state trials, 291. Pamell, John, brother of Thomas, the poet, a Dublin barrister, succeeds to his father's estate and enters the Irish House of Commons, 104. Pamell, John Henry, son of William Parnell, the first travel- ler in the family, 106; married Miss Stewart in Boston, Massa- chusetts, in 1834, ib. Pamell, Sir Henry, a prominent figure in the Whig party, 105. Pamell, Sir John, a statesman of the highest probity, 105; he receives the estate of Avondale, ib. Pamell, Thomas, an adherent of Oliver Cromwell, 104; fixes his residence in Dublin, ib. Parnell, Thomas, poet, eldest son of the above, a friend of Pope, Goldsmith, and Samuel John- son. 104. Parnell, William, the head of the Avondale branch of the family, educated in Cambridge Uni- versity, 105; author of .4 Historical Apology for tlie Irish Catholics, ib. Pamellism, a name invented by T. M. Healy or T. P. O'Connor, 378. Peel, Sir Robert, attempts to pass a coercion act to enforce pay- ment of rents, 49; his reply to O'Connor's motion for repeal, 446. " Peep-o'-Day-Boys," a body of a mixed religious and labor character, opposed to the "De- fenders," 16. People of Roxbury, America, in 1770, agree not to purchase British goods, 279. Perry, Sexton, a renegade who was raised to the position of speaker of the House of Commons, 31. Phillips, Wendel, said Pamell was the Irishman who compelled John Bull to listen, 652. Phoenix Park murders, the killing of Lord Frederick Cavendish was the result of his defending Mr. Burke, who was the object of the attack, 360. Pigott, Richard, of forgery fame, ^ii\ owner of The Irishman and The Flag of Ireland, ib. ; he at- tacks Mr. Davitt, 135; as proprietor of Tlie Irishman he got hold of many of the secrets of the Fenians, which he used for his personal advantage, 565; Isaac Butt was the first victim of his blackmailing scheme, ib.; all Dublin knew of his scheming and blackmailing practices, 566; a special order of the Irish Re- publican Brotherhood, in which his life is threatened, written by himself, 567; gets ;£25o from Egan, 568; more money from Egan, 569; more hush money asked for, 570; his attacks on the leaders in many anti-Irish papers, 571; extracts from his diary showing articles contrib- uted to the St. James's Gazette and London Evening News, 571, 572; he is engaged as a salaried agent of the anti-Land-League combination, 572; his discovery of the black bag in Paris con- taining letters from Parnell and others, ib.; the first note of alarm, 575; he is entrapped by Sir Charles Russell, 577; one of the forged letters and a lesson in spelling, 581; he confesses the forgeries, 582, 583: he flies to Paris, 584; he sends to Mr. Lewis a copy of the con- fession he made at Mr. Labou- chere's, 586; the text of Pigott's confession, 588, 589; Parnell, through his attorneys, returns the confession to Pigott, 590; he commits suicide in Madrid, 591 ; his letter to his housekeeper, 593. "Plan of Campaign, The," T. Harrington the author of, 514; 745 INDEX unanimous decision in favor of Pamell's position, 515; the Tipperary fight a grave mistake, 521; Mitchelstown massacre, 523; the trouble at a town in Tipperary and at Timoleague, 525; all complaints against the constabulary dismissed, ib. ; chil- dren arrested for the most trivial ofifences, 526; Sheehy, Dillon, Harris, and O'Brien summoned to appear at two widely separated places at the same hour and day, 527; Dr. Tanner delivers his speech from a boat in the lake, 528; a trick on the warder, 529. Political ballad-singers, a familiar feature in all Irish movements, 166; "An Irish Peasant's La- ment," ib. Power, John O'Connor, one of Parnell's obstructionist party, 146; speech at the Irishtown meeting, 149; elected by the league movement to Parliament, 239- Power, Richard, elected by the league movement to Parlia- ment, 239. Prendergast, Mr., gives a brief history of Redmond Count O'Hanlon, the Irish Robin Hood, in his Tory War of Ulster, 12. Preston, John, sold his vote for ;£750o and was made Lord Tara, as a reward for betraying his countrymen, 29. "Primrose Dames," aristocratic ladies who banded together to kill Home Rule, 500. Prittie, Henry, became Lord Dun- ally and one of his sons be- came Viscount Charleville as the price of their votes, 29. Programme for consideration of Land-League conference, 241. Proposals for permanent reform of land tenure in Ireland, 242. Provisional nieasure for suspen- sion of power of ejectment, etc., for two years, 241. Purposes for which assistance is asked by the Land League from America, 248; signatures of the Central Council, 249. QuiN, Sir Richard, became Lord Adare as a reward for his treachery, and in 1822 was created Earl of Dunraven, 29. Raid in Canada, by Fenians, in 1867, 120. Rea, John, the eccentric barrister, 181 ; his bill-of-fare while in jail, ib.; he badgers the court at the trial of Killeen, 1S3. Rebellion of '98. the cause of, 121. Redmond, John E., elected by the league movement to Parlia- ment, 239; becomes sessional chairman of the United Irish League, 694. Redmond, W. K., goes to the United States on a lecturing tour, 696. Redpath, James, correspondent for the New York Tribune, attends the Knockaroe demon- stration, 224; makes a speech concerning eviction, 268; as- sists in coining the word boy- cott, 274. Repeal Association, its crawling political creed, 49. "Ribbonmen," an organization evolved from the "Defenders," 16; had its origin in the De- fenders and became the most powerful of the Irish secret societies, 41; it admitted onl}* Catholics to its ranks, ib.; it was an oath-bound society, ib.; its members very loyal, ib.; they carried their organiza- tion to the United States, 42; from this sprang the Ancient Order of Hibernians, ib.; it is now mainly a benevolent society, ib.; great activity in Wcstmeath, ib.; they follow the lead of new developments in America, 43; the name of Hibernian is now substituted for the old name, ib.; an act to suppress the or- ganization, ib.; put down by the government and the Church, 50- " Right Boys," they opposed land- lord cruelties and exactions of tithes, 23; denoimced by Dr. Troy, the Bishop of Ossory, ib.; they refuse supplies to their 746 INDEX enemies, ib.; alleged that the landlords joined with them to avoid paying tithes to the min- isters, 24; marked tribute paid to them by John Philpot Cur- ran, 25. Rise and Fall of the Irish Nation, containing a list of the landlord traitors, 28. Riversdale, Lord, was a Mr. William Tonson, and for ser- vices was raised to the peerage, 32- " Rockites," a branch of The Whiteboys, 37. Rome and Ireland, a letter from the prefect of the Propaganda Fide, 397; an attack on Parnell, 398; the whole country took fire, 399; "Make Peter's pence into Parnell's pounds," ib.; the at- tack most fortunate for the lan- guishing funds, ib.; unfriendly reception in Rome of Dr. Croke, accused of being a kind of Irish Garibaldi, 400; the interference of Rome in Irish affairs had always been un- fortunate, 401; O'Connell's dic- tum, that while he would accept his faith from Rome he would as soon look to Stamboul for his politics, 402; the Vatican policy always in- fluenced by English ecclesiastics resident in Rome, ib.; the Er- rington mission sanctioned by the English government, 404; his intrigue with the Pope, 405 ; English agents in Rome always anti-Irish, i6.; Cardinal Monaco issues a manifesto against Irish methods, ib. Rosecrans, General W. S., cables from San Francisco to the Land League, 268. Rossmore, Lord, a Mr. Robert Cunningham, who was raised to the peerage and given ;^i 5,000 to boot, for services to the Union, 31- Rowley, Clotworthy, sold his vote, and was made Lord Langford, 29. Royal commission of 1881, pre- sided over by Lord Bessborough, reported that the Land Act of 1870 had failed to protect ten- ants' rights, 322; Gladstone's bill omitted many reported rec- ommendations of the commis- sion, ib. Russell, Lord John, on the con- dition of the peasantry in Ire- land, 48; dilatory and heartless policy, ib.; author of the historic "Durham Letter," 70. Russell, Sir Charles, is engaged to defend Parnell in the ' ' Great Inquisition," 543; he became a Home- Ruler when Gladstone did, 547; Sir James Hannen pronounced his opening as "a great speech worthy of a great occasion," 548; his clever cross- exainination of Pigott, 577; his speUing-lesson, 581 ; his speech a convincing and crushing counter indictinent against The Times, 599; his fine peroration, 600; he demands the papers, to prove his counter charge, and the judges refuse, 601. Sadlier, apolitical traitor favored by the Archbishop of Dublin, 70; known in Parliament as one of the Pope's Brass Band, 71. Salisbury, Lord, his policy of "twenty years of resolute Castle government," 514; his cabinet the ministerial embodiment of anti-Irish prejudice, 531 ; a vote of no confidence in his govern- ment was carried and he resigns, 1893, 666. Sandford, Henry, was made Lord Mount Sandford for services in the disfranchisement of the town of Roscommon, 30. Scott, John, became Earl of Clonmel, 32; he was one of the most unscrupulous of men, 32. Senate and House of Representa- tives provide for vessel to carry provisions to the starving poor of Ireland, 204. Sexton, Thomas, opens a cam- paign at Rathdrum, near Avon- dale, 221; elected by the league movement to Parliament, 239; demands the release of Parnell, Dillon, and O' Kelly from jail, 347; his speech on the second INDEX reading of the bill declared by Gladstone to be the most elo- quent he had heard in a genera- tion, 497; the ablest Irish dele- gate retires from Parliament on account of the friction in the ranks of the majority, 675; tables he prepared bearing upon the financial character of the new land law of 1903, 709. "Shanavats," an organization in sympathy with the general policy of the reformers, 37. Shaw, William, his leadership of the Irish party, 174. Shawe- Taylor invites the Duke of Abercom and others to meet Redmond and others in behalf of the tenants, 705. Sheehy, Father Eugene, of Lim- erick, a friend of the league, 192. Sheehy, Father, friend of the Whiteboys, who was hanged in 1766, on the most tainted evidence, 17. Sheridan, Patrick J., The Times attempts to bribe him, 552; his statement concerning the call on him of The Times emis- sary, at his ranch in Colorado, 553; plays with Kirby, 559; his detailed account of the meet- ings with the agents, 554-559; receives a letter from William Henry Hurlbert, 560. Sinclair, a university man who became another spy for The Times, 617; he went to the United States and to Chili on fruitless errands for his em- ployers, 618; letters found among his papers, 620-623. "Skirmishing Fund," the ques- tion as to what uses it should be put, 169. Smart, M., the name by which The Times was to address Sheridan, 555; some of the telegrams, 556, 557- . , ^ Smith, Sydney, oppression of the people. 4. Smith, W. H., and the home secre- tary privy to the first publica- tion of the forged Parnell letters, 533; amended the scope of in- quiry and added "other per- sons," 538; introduces a bill to indict Parnell and others. 542; the members of the commission, 543; Pamell's lawyers, ib.; re- sisted Gladstone's motion to put on record the House's con- demnation of the atrocious charges against Irish members, 624; succeeds Balfour as secre- tary of Ireland, 661. Soames, Mr., The Times solicitor, 550; sends cipher messages to Colorado, 551. Soldiers in the Fight: Andrew J. Kettle, of Dublin, 714; John Ferguson, of Glasgow, ib.; Alfred Webb, of Dublin, ib.; T. D. O'Sullivan. Dr. Sigerson, Barry O'Brien, T. P. O'Connor, T. M. Hcaly, Justin McCarthy, 715; John Boyle O'Reilly, P. J. Flatky, Fanny Parnell, James Redpath, Austen E. Ford, Jr., Eugene Kelly, Dr. Wallace, Daniel Corkery, James Sullivan. John J. Fitzgibbon, Dr. Thomas O'Reilly, John Fitzgerald, Judge Cooney, Dr. O'Toole, Thaddeus Flanagan. James F. X. O'Brien, and Hugh Murphy, 716. Some league anecdotes, 409-420. Spencer. Edmund, unfortunate conditions in Ireland, 3. State trials, the, no jury fairly empanelled in Dublin would convict national leaders. 287; Lord Chief- Justice May delivers a violent political harangue, 288 ; he retires from participation in the state trials, 289; the lead- ing lawyers engaged, ib.; opens in the Four Courts, Dublin, ib.; the jury, 290; Fanny Pamell's poem read, 291; Mr. Mac- donough an able vindicator of the league, 293; the verdict of the jury, 295. "Steelboys," an organization formed to resist evictions and unjust increases of rent, 21; juries would not convict men accused of being Steelboys, which caused the government to enact a law for change of venue, which law is still in force, ib. Stephens, James, escapes to France, 73; organizes the great 748 INDEX conspiracy of 1858 and 1859, 75; visits the United States, jb.; dramatic escape from Rich- mond prison, 76; escapes to Paris, ib.; returns to Ireland and peaceably ends his days, 77- Stewart, Admiral Charles, joined the United States navy when twenty years old, 106; led the United States forces in the first naval war with Tripoli, ib.; commanded the Constituiion, ib.; father of Parnell's mother, ib. Stewart, Robert, became Lord Castlereagh as a reward for his enmity to Irish nationhood, 31- Sullivan, A. M., elected by the league movement to Parliament, 239- Sullivan, Mrs. Margaret T., a distinguished journalist of Chicago, who rendered services of the highest value to Ireland, 716. Sullivan, T. D., elected by the league movement to Parliament, 239; in his ballads and stirring lyrics, he rendered a conspic- uous service to the people of Ireland, 715. Swift, Dean, "Rents squeezed out of the blood and vitals," 3. Tablet, The, a newspaper trans- ferred from London to Dublin, in the interests of the Tenant League, 69. Tanner, Dr. Charles, much in- terested in the workings of the agricultural laborers' act, 465; announced to speak in County Clare, outwits the police, who were to arrest him, by approach- ing in a boat on the lake, and delivers his speech twenty feet from the shore, 328. Tenants' Defence Clubs, 168. "Tenants' League of North and South," organized by Gavan Duffy, Crawford, Lucas, and Moore, 68; destroyed by the opposition of Archbishop Cullen and others, ib.; the reason of its failure, 72. Tenants' relief bill, what it proposed, 516; paid the "plan rent" into the hands of a com- mittee, 520. "Terry Alts," a branch of the Whiteboys, 37. "Thrashers," a branch of the Right Boys in Connaught, to resist the tithe laws, 23. "Three acres and a cow," a suggestion for the relief of English agricultural laborers, 486. Times, The, London, its attitude in the matter of the famine of 1846, 54. Times plot, the, its first article, "Pamellism and Crime," 532; a forged letter in facsimile, with Parnell's name attached, ib.; the home secretary was privy to the publication, 533; Parnell pronounces the letter a forgery, 534; O'Shea the object of suspicion, 535; Egan picks out the forger, ib.; general charges and allegations, 539; additional charges embraced in the forged letters, and the names of those implicated, 540, 541; a trial without a jury, 544; Pigott told The Times people that he could not prove the Parnell letters to be genuine, 545; The Titnes spends thousands of pounds to bribe men in Irish, English, and American cities, 546; all the secret agents of the government and of Scotland Yard were at the disposal of The Times, 549; some of the secret agents gave the Parnellites the Soames code, by which they were en- abled to decipher the secret despatches, 550; they load a detective with champagne and unload him of all the in- formation in his possession, ib.; attempt of The Times to bribe Patrick J. Sheridan, 552; the story as told in the New York Herald, ib. ; The Times makes no objection to the issuance of a warrant for Pigott's arrest, 586; it must now lend its aid in detecting instead of bolstering up manufactured crime, 587; 749 INDEX it continues to fling mud at Parnell, 598; "literary assassin," Richard' Cobden called The Times, 604; the judges' report: "We entirely acquit Parnell and the other respondents," 605; they acquit Mr. Davitt of using the league's money for person- al use, 608; Le Caron was to receive ;gi 0,000 if he proved certain allegations against Par- nell, 610; "Major Yellow" ap- pears as a Times witness, 614; Delaney, another prison-bird, in the service of The Times, 616; The Times cipher code of names, 619; Captain O'Shea before the commission, 632. Toler, John, created Lord Nor- bury, 30; one of the most in- famovis men that ever disgraced the Irish race, ib. Tone's, Wolfe, United Irishmen, 15; he sees through the sham nationalism of the Irish land- lord Parliament, 28. Tonson, William, becomes Lord Riversdale, for services ren- dered, 32. Tory War of Ulster gives an ac- count of the great daring of Redmond Count O'Hanlon, 12. Townsend, Lord, on the rapacious- ness of the unfeeling landlords, 4- Toynbee, Arthur, his idea of the Maamtrasna crime was that it was due to prevailing conditions, 381; his letters to Mr. Davitt, 382. Trench, William, sold his vote and was created Lord Ash town, 29; was made Lord Kilconnell for fomenting the rebellion of 1798, 31. Trevelyan, Sir George, his state- ment concerning the situation in Ireland in 1882, 369; a potent recruiting influence for the league, 380. Troy, Dr., Catholic Bishop of Ossory, conspicuovis in his de- nunciations of Right-Boyism, 23. Tyrawley, Lord, a Mr. Cufi"e, who gained his title as a reward for questionable services, 32. United Ireland purchased from Richard Pigott under the name of the Flag of Ireland, thus end- ing Pigott's career as a Dublin journalist, 332. United Irish League, the meeting of, at Limerick, 692; proposals adopted by, 693; Dillon resigns chairmanship of, to facilitate matters at a meeting at the Man- sion House, Dublin, 7'6. ,• complete reunion accomplished, February 7,1900,694; O'Brien the origina- tor and organizer of the move- ment, ih.; its example followed in Great Britain, Australia, and to a great extent in the United States, 695; a steady revival of practical interest in the move- ment in the United States, 696: Redmond goes to the United States to proclaim the glad tidings of a reunited Ireland, ib.; the financial results of the mission, 697; proposes a plan of anti - landlord agitation, 704; recommends a more vigorous boycotting of land-grabbers, ib.; the landlords strike back, 705; summons a convention to con- sider the startling proposals of the Mansion - House, Dublin, meeting in 1902, in the matter of the relations between land- lord and tenant, 707. United Irishman, under O'Brien's direction, assailed the Spencer regime with unsparing vitupera- tion, 380. Ventry, Baron, Sir Dayrolles Blakeney Eveleigh de Moleyns, the present - day name of the descendant of John Mullins, who sold his vote, 30. Walsh, Archbishop of Toronto, appeals to the disputants at home to end their quarrels, 676; his sviggestion approved of by the Irish parliamentary party, ib. Walsh, Dr., Archbishop of Dub- lin, proposes a gathering to consider the question of land- lord and tenant, 705. Walshe, John W., sent to Austra- INDEX lia on an organizing mission, 384- Welib, Alfred, tlie skilful manager of the finances of the electoral campaign, 698; as treasurer of the league he was an ab- S')lute guarantee of faithfulness and rectitude, 715. Webster, Sir Richard, declares that " we are not entitled to say that the Parnell letters are genuine," 587. Wellesley, Lord, his letter to Lord Melbourne concerning the White- boys, 38. Wellington, Duke of, on periods of starvation, 5. Westmoreland, Lord, forced by public opinion to limit the grant of Irish pensions to ;^i2oo per year, 27. Westport meeting. Archbishop of Tuam's letter against, 153; Par- nell's speech at, 154; Mr. Dav- itt's speech at, 155; the Free- man's Journal comments on its "raw theories," 156. "Whiteboys," the, so called from a covering they adopted for disguise, 15; they strike the first effective blow in Ireland, 16; laws fashioned against them, 17; Professor Goldwin Smith sums up their case, 18; they wage a righteous war, 19; guilty of some atrocities, ib.; the causes, ib.; they survive the Draconian code of savage laws, 22; branches of, 37; their programme as defined by Mr. Justice Jebb, 38; Sir George Cornwall Lewis's idea of their motives, ib.; deluded by Mr. Marum, 39; denounced by the Bishop of Ossory, ib.; put down by the government and the . Church, 50. "Whitefeet," a branch of the Whiteboys, 37. Wiseman, Dr., Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, on the question as to whether such a title should be recognized in Protestant Eng- land, 70. Wyndham, George, succeeds Ger- ald Balfour as chief secretary of Ireland, 698; begins well for the league organizations, and badly for the Castle, ib.; list of the names of gentlemen im- prisoned by him in 190 1-2 imder the law of Edward III. of 1361, 699; in 1902 he introduces yet another Irish land bill, 703; three powerful influences com- bine to make this step expe- dient, ib.; it coerced the ten- ant, in a sense, to buy his holding, 704; he declares that the settlement of the Irish land question lay with Irish- men in a friendly arrangement of terms, and not with the English government, 705; he discards the bill of 1902, 707; he succeeds in carrying the measure through Parliament without a division, 708. Young, Arthur, on the harsh treatment of the laboring poor, 4- THE END DATE DUE JAN 1 8 li IW' MW 15 ri so JUN 2 B 2007 jnp 1 ? 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