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IRELAND 
 SINGE THE UNION 
 
 SKETCHES OF IRISH HISTORY 
 
 FROM 1798 TO 1886 
 
 BY 
 
 JUSTIN Hv McCarthy, m.p. 
 
 WITH COPIOUS INDEX. 
 
 Chicago aub ^^cfo ^^xV 
 BELFORD, CLARKE, AND CO. 
 
 1887 
 
1898 
 
 PRINTte AKC 80Uf« ay 
 
 DONOHUE & Henneberry, 
 
 CHICAGO. 
 
IRELAND 
 
 SINCE THE UNION 
 
TO 
 
 THE RIGHT HONOURABLE 
 
 WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE, M.P. 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BEIE¥ RECOED 
 
 OF 
 
 ▲ WRONG HE HAS DONE SO MUCH TO RIGHT AND 
 
 AN ENMITY HE HAS RECONCILED 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Home Rule is the question of the hour. Every one is 
 talkmg of it, thinking about it, writing upon it. The news- 
 papers daily devote leading articles to the consideration 
 of every phase of the subject, couched in the most con- 
 trasting terms of approval and disapproval. Most of them 
 allot a portion of their columns to the reception of outside 
 opinion of the most varied kind upon the problem. States- 
 men of every school seem eager to express their views, on the 
 platform and in print, upon the question whether Ireland is 
 entitled to any form of self-government or not. Mr. Morley, 
 Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Stead, and others write and speak upon 
 the subject with the same cool, keen good sense, and the 
 same steadfast adhesion to Radical principles, which make 
 them the true representatives of a Radical Party in and out- 
 side the House of Commons. The so-called ' Unionist,' on 
 the other hand, fumes and flares. He is consumed by fiery 
 indignation. He is all for an appeal to the god of battles. 
 The good old principle of might meaning right animates and 
 sustains him, and his attitude towards the Irish people appears 
 to be the old-fashioned ' Squelch them, by God ! ' one. 
 
 It is a relief to turn from letters and from speeches which, 
 if uttered to express the other side of the case, and printed 
 in the Freeman's Journal or United Ireland, or spoken on 
 National League platforms by any prominent Nationalist, 
 would have been denounced for their shameless attempt to 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 sow dissension between the two races. It is pleasant to turn 
 from such utterances to the letter from Mr. Eusldn which 
 appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette on Tuesday, January 5, 
 1886. I am glad to be able here to express my gratitude to a 
 great man, to a great Englishman, for having cared to re- 
 member just now, first, that the Irish ' are an artistic people, 
 and can design beautiful things, and execute them with inde- 
 fatigable industry ; ' secondly, that * they are a witty people, 
 and can by no means be governed by witless ones ; ' and, 
 thirdly, that ' they are an affectionate people, and can by no 
 means be governed on scientific principles by heartless persons.' 
 If English statesmen had more often cared to recognise or to 
 remember the truths which Mr. Euskin so opportunely enforces, 
 the question which is called Home Rule would not have so 
 long and so profoundly troubled the minds of politicians and 
 the time of Ministries. 
 
 At last, after a period of infinite pain and infinite patience, 
 that proud patience which the gods are said to love, the Irish 
 people have found their reward. The question of Home Rule 
 has been at last admitted into the charmed circle— as unstable 
 in its circumscription as the enchanted tent of the Eastern 
 Pari Banou — the region of practical politics. It is some years 
 since the words Home Rule became the watchwords of a poli- 
 tical party ; it is some years since they became the recognised 
 war-cry of a devoted and determined minority in the House 
 of Commons. Those years have been years of more than 
 Egyptian trial to the Irish people. During their first days, 
 in the age of what our opponents are now pleased to call 
 the moderate Home Rulers, the Enghsh Press and the mem- 
 bers of all English parties were well-nigh unanimous in their 
 assurances that the question of Home Rule was inadmissible 
 and undebatable, and that if we pleaded till the crack of 
 doom no English statesmen would ever condescend to enter- 
 
PREFA CE ix 
 
 tain any scheme whatever for the restoration of an Irish 
 ParHament. Hearing, indeed, was not refused to us — occa- 
 sionally. In that Sa.turnian epoch of amiable inactivity when 
 Butt and Shaw swayed the destinies of an almost absolutely 
 unimportant section of the House of Commons, the Govern- 
 ment was wont, every session, to allow the Home Bulers a 
 field-night for the exposition of their hateful but harmless 
 doctrines : hateful because they were the expression of any 
 discontent with the perfection of existing rule in Ireland ; 
 hai^mless because they were but the birth of a midsummer 
 madness working on the brains of a few idle or eloquent politi- 
 cians, and were about as serious a contribution to statesman- 
 ship as the desire of the moth for the star and the night for 
 the morrow. So these field-nights came and went, and Mr. 
 Butt made his speech and Mr. P. J. Smyth gave a well- 
 prepared entertainment, in which the ideas of 1848 and the 
 peroratioiis of Henry Grattan formed an ingenious and not 
 unattractive medley, and Mr. Butt's other followers said their 
 permitted say, and were decorously listened to. Then the 
 leaders of the Treasury Bench would make elaborate replies, 
 in which the Irish demands were quietly puffed out of sight 
 in a cloud of compliments to the sincerity and the ability of 
 Mr. Butt, or Mr. Shaw, or Mr. P. J. Smyth. At this rate of 
 progress any recognition of the Irish claim would have been 
 accorded at the time when, according to Rabelais, the 
 Coqcigrues come home — that is to say, never. 
 
 But towards the end of the last Parliament which Lord 
 Beaconsfield presided over, the Home Rule party in the 
 Plouse of Commons began to display signs of unusual ani- 
 mation, of commotion, of agitation. Their languid ranks 
 had been recruited by some new men, and the new men 
 carried on the fight after new methods. This heralds the open- 
 ing of the second period of Home Rule, the period of Parnell. 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 When the Liberal Government entered into office in the 
 early spring of 1880, Mr. Parnell was the chosen leader of 
 the Irish Parliamentary party. That party, in obedience 
 to the wishes of the Irish people, sat in opposition to the new 
 Government, and announced their intention of sitting in' 
 opposition to any Government that refused to recognise the 
 right of Ireland to regulate her own local affairs after her 
 own fashion. That resolve, apparently a slight thing in 
 itself, had a deeper significance in it than many politicians 
 at that time were keen enough to perceive. Up to that hour 
 every Irish party in Parliament had been made the victim of 
 a spurious tradition which forced them into an alliance with 
 the Whigs, and dragged them helpless and hopeless at the tail 
 of every successive Whig Administration or Whig Opposition. 
 The recent elections, which have for the first time severed the 
 connection between the Whigs and the Eadicals by creating 
 the amazing Wliig-Tory alliance, were the fitting sequel to 
 and the fitting justification of the attitude of the followers of 
 Mr. Parnell in 1880. A few fossil members of the old sham 
 Home Eule school persisted for some time in sitting below 
 the gangway on the Government side of the House, but these 
 have all vanished from the field of Irish politics, and their 
 place knows them no more. 
 
 I am not going to tell over again here the history of the 
 past six years as it affected Ireland in and out of Parliament. 
 The Liberal Government, face to face with a small but 
 solid group of Irishmen, who boldly avowed that they 
 placed their own country's interest before the temporary in- 
 terests of either of the two great parties, lost for a time its 
 temper and its head. In defiance of the principles which 
 are most dear to the Liberal mind, the Government deter- 
 miiied at once to grapple with this defiant minority and 
 crush them out of existence. Then be^an one of the most 
 
PREFA CE xi 
 
 marvellous constitutional struggles which the world has ever 
 witnessed. On the one hand was the most powerful Ministry 
 of modern times, numbering in its ranks all the talent of its 
 party, supported by a swollen and certain majority ; on the 
 other, a band of men, all unknown, almost all young, led by 
 a young man who had only been a short time in the House 
 of Commons, but to whom Ascendency already paid the 
 compliments of a cordial dislike. The Irish nation at home, 
 in England, in America, and in Australia, watched the con- 
 test with burning eyes and throbbing hearts. They saw their 
 representatives expelled again and again, for fighting against 
 coercive measures of new and miraculous strictness. They 
 saw their country bound by successive Coercion Acts which 
 recalled, by their ingenious ferocity, the pleasant days of the 
 Penal Laws. They saw their leaders imprisoned for failing to 
 admit that the administration of Mr. Forster was the greatest 
 blessing that heaven could offer them. They saw the de- 
 gradation of Dublin defended by what it seemed not unfair to 
 term executive conspiracy. They saw themselves reproached 
 for crimes and outrages which were the direct fruit of the 
 administrative folly of Mr. Forster. They saw, day by day, 
 how the most influential voices of the English Press kept 
 taunting the party which followed Mr. Parnell with repre* 
 senting in no sense either the Irish people or their wishes, 
 and assuring them that, come what might, they should never,, 
 never have Home Eule. 
 
 Well, they saw all this, but they saw other sights which 
 made their spirits more of comfort. They saw their leaders 
 come out of prison as determined to carry on the struggle as 
 when they went into prison. They saw victim after victim of 
 the coercive laws sent as delegate of the Irish people to take 
 a place by Mr. Parnell, and help him to fight for the cause 
 in the House of Commons. They saw the fall of Mr. Forster. 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 They witnessed the resignation of Mr. Trevelyan. They saw 
 the defeat of the great Ministry. They rejoiced at last in 
 the adoption by Enghind's greatest statesman of the princi- 
 ples for which they had so long struggled. 
 
 The bitter taunt which has been so often levelled at the 
 Irish Parliamentary party, that they do not represent the 
 Irish people, has been satisfactorily answered once for all. The 
 principles which Mr. Parnell advocates have swept Ireland 
 from the centre to the sea, and he returns to Parliament the 
 unquestioned leader of a following of nearly ninety men, of 
 whom no inconsiderable portion are recruited from that pro- 
 vince of Ulster which was for so long the hope, the prop, and 
 the garrison of ' Ascendency ' in Ireland. With Derry and 
 the west division of Belfast represented by Irish Nationalists, 
 arguments based on the hostility of Ulster to Home Rule do 
 not count for much. Lord Hartington finds some cheer in 
 still repeating the old parrot cry. When once Lord Harting- 
 ton gets an idea into his head, it is not very easy to dislodge 
 it, and accordingly Lord Hartington still finds a strange 
 delight in declanng that Ireland cordially detests Mr. Parnell 
 and all his works and pomps, and is only coerced by the 
 terrible National League into returning his lieutenants by 
 enormous majorities. Horror of coercion in the mind of the 
 upholder and the approver of coercive laws for Ireland seems 
 to me as incongruous as the name of honour in the mouth of 
 Joseph Surface seemed to Lady Teazle, or as the name of 
 God seemed on the lips of Margaret to the dying Valentine. 
 If, however. Lord Hartington can really delude himself into 
 the belief that Ireland sends eighty-five men to support Mr. 
 Parnell in Parliament because Ireland distrusts and detests 
 Mr. Parnell, I can only express my sympathy for those who 
 see in Lord Hartington the future leader of the Liberal party. 
 
 The question that is before the English public just now is 
 
PREFA CE xiii 
 
 simply this : * Are you prepared to listen at all to the voice of 
 Ireland, speaking as it does in strict accordance with consti- 
 tutional tradition and usage through the mouths of a vast 
 preponderance of Irish members, duly and constitutionally 
 elected, and supported as it is by so large a proportion of the 
 English people ? or are you determined to deny to Ireland that 
 expression of a national desire and that freedom of national 
 government of which you are so proud to have been the 
 champions in almost every other comitry in Europe ? ' 
 
 What, after all, is the meaning of this demand for Home 
 Rule, of which in one way or another we have heard so much 
 for the last decade ? What is the demand which for so many 
 years the leaders of the two great English parties have agreed 
 in ignoring, and which now the real leader of the Tory party 
 would be willing to satisfy, if by so doing he could deprive the 
 leader of the Liberal party of the honour of carrying out the 
 great work he has begun ? 
 
 The opponents of Home Rule are, roughly speaking, of two 
 kinds : those who refuse even to consider the question at all ; 
 and those who temporise with it, who do their best to dyke it 
 back for the time being, for the hour, even for the minute, and 
 who feel a curious gratification in the most temporary post- 
 ponement of a puzzling problem. The first of these two classes 
 of opponents of Home Rule has at least the merit of simplicity 
 in its arguments. It boldly asseverates that Home Rule means 
 dismemberment of the Empire, and it stubbornly refuses to 
 listen to any argument which would interfere with that as- 
 sumption. * Dismemberment of the Empire ' is its catch- 
 word, its counter sign ; it has even become its war-cry. It 
 repeats it, as the credulous might repeat some wizard's spell, 
 in the hope of dissipating the danger which it believes to 
 menace it. 
 
 In certain of his speeches, most notably that ever-memor- 
 
xiy PREFACE 
 
 able utterance at Newport, Lord Salisbury invoked Home 
 Rule. When the invocation was answered, he seems to have 
 shrunk from the consequences of his own temerity, and to be 
 now nursing a baffled indignation because a stronger states- 
 man than he has stepped boldly forward and prepared to deal 
 righteously with the spirit of Irish discontent. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone lost a great opportunity when, after his 
 visit to Ireland some years back, he failed to perceive the 
 strength of the national demand, the keenness of the national 
 desire for some form of home government. He lost some 
 precious years in the effort to suppress the Irish party in 
 Parliament, and in shutting his senses to the fact that they 
 were strong because they spoke with the voice and acted with 
 the strength of a people. But Mr. Gladstone was too great a 
 statesman to let one lost opportunity prove the precedent for 
 another, or to excuse loss of time in the past by losing more 
 time in the present. The result of the two recent elections 
 proves the strength of Irish Nationalism. That pohtical map 
 of Ireland which the :Pall Mall Gazette published the other 
 day, with its vast surface of white representing the constitu- 
 encies which have returned Mr. Parnell's followers, and its 
 pitiful patch of black in the far north to distinguish all that 
 is left of Ireland which is not national, is the eloquent symbol 
 of a more remarkable change than has ever been represented 
 in any atlas of maps of Europe by treaty. If the voice of a 
 nation is ever to count for anything, tlie voice of a nation has 
 spoken in Ireland, and Mr. Gladstone has been too ardent an 
 advocate of the rights of nationahties abroad to deny their 
 existence at home. 
 
 If, however, any explanation of what Home Rule means 
 is really needed — and I am compelled, to my surprise, to 
 beheve lliat it is, from hearing the question still so often 
 asked, iu ail honesty, ' What do you Home Rulers really want ?' 
 
PMUFA CE XV 
 
 — I can explain wliat I mean by Home Rule easily enougli. I 
 should like to see, I hope soon to see, Ireland placed in much the 
 same relationship to the Imperial Parliament as that in which 
 a State of the American Union stands to the central governing 
 body at Washington. That I consider to be, roughly speak- 
 ing, the length and breadth of the Home Rule demand. It 
 may perhaps, however, be well further to set down a few of 
 the things that Home Rule does not mean. 
 
 It does not mean dismemberment of the Empire, or dis- 
 integration of the Empire, or any injury whatever to the 
 Empire. It does not mean separation or anything like separa- 
 tion. It does not include any control of an army or a navy, 
 or any power of levying what may be called Imperial taxation, 
 or of negotiation with foreign Powers. It does not propose to 
 abrogate in any way the Imperial functions of the English 
 Parliament. It no more proposes to do any of these things 
 than the State of Massachusetts proposes to do them. 
 
 What is there, then, so alarming in the suggestion of Home 
 Rule for Ireland ? Englishmen see with composure some 
 form of Home Rule or other existing in all the dependencies 
 of the Crown, from the great Antipodean colonies to the little . 
 Isle of Man, within almost a stone's throw of these shores, j 
 If Canadians and Australasians and Manx have Home Rule, 
 and having it are happy and contented, and the solidarity of 
 the Empire is in no way injured, but rather greatly strength- 
 ened thereby, why should it be denied to Ireland ? 
 
 But if Home Rule for Ireland, some of our opponents 
 argue, why not Home Rule for Scotland ? why not Home 
 Rule for Wales ? To which I answer, question for question, 
 'Why not, indeed?' If Scotland and Wales desire Home 
 Rule, I can conceive no just or even sane reason for denying 
 it. If the Scotch people were to demand Home Rule to- 
 morrow, with anything likj the imanimity of the Irish pejplj, 
 
xvi PREFACE 
 
 we all know perfectly -well that it would be conceded to tliem 
 immediately, and almost without discussion. The reason 
 why Scotland does not demand Home Rule as yet is because, 
 up to this time, she has practically enjoyed the bulk of its 
 benefits. Scotland has had her own way all along. She 
 has worshipped in freedom at her own shrines ; she has lived 
 beneath the shelter of her own laws. When she wishes for 
 greater freedom than she now enjoys, all she has to do is to 
 ask for it and she will get it immediately. But because Scot- 
 land and Wales do not ask for Home Rule, and presumably 
 do not want it, is no reason why Ireland, who does ask for it, 
 and does want it, should be denied her petition. 
 
 Some writers and speakers have expressed a fear that, in 
 the event of any system of self-government being granted 
 to Ireland, the Protestant minority would suffer, in one way 
 or another, from oppression at the hands of the Catholic 
 majority. Such an apprehension is curiously unfounded. It 
 is scarcely likely that a people, many, indeed most, of whose 
 best beloved heroes were Protestants, and whose present leader 
 is himself a Protestant, would be likely to prove in any sense 
 or degree hostile to their Protestant fellow-countrymen. I 
 may remind my readers that while Protestants have been 
 returned, again and again, as representatives of Catholic con- 
 stituencies in Ireland, that while Irish Catholics have, again 
 and again, entrusted the representation of "their grievances to 
 Protestant delegates, it was until within the last few months 
 practically impossible for any Catholic to find a seat in any 
 English constituency. The present Parliament, upon its new 
 and extended franchise, does contain a few Catholic represen- 
 tatives of Enghsh constituencies, but in the Parliament of 
 1880-1885 there was, I think, only one, and he was regarded 
 as remarkable for having gained that rare and almost un- 
 attainable distinction. It is not long ago since the English 
 
PREFACE xvii 
 
 Press and English public opinion generally seemsd innniraous 
 in agreeing that the career of Lord Ripon as a statesman and 
 politician was closed in England because he had become 
 converted to the Catholic faith. On the other hand, I have 
 heard that Catholic voters in Ireland have expressed regret 
 that some Nationalist candidate was not a Protestant, in order 
 that they might show their tolerance of a creed which was 
 not their own, and in the present Nationalist party several 
 Protestants are enrolled among its most prominent members. 
 It is a matter of statistics, too, that a vast number of Protes- 
 tant Azotes were recorded for the Nationalist and Catholic 
 candidates at the just-passed general elections, a fact which 
 serves to show that a very great number of the Irish Protes- 
 tants do not share the apprehensions expressed for their safety 
 by some writers and thinkers on this side of the Channel. 
 The tolerance which English Protestantism has not always 
 extended to Catholics, the Irish Catholics have always ex- 
 tended, and always will extend, towards their Protestant 
 fellow - countrymen . 
 
 In the following pages I propose to sketch briefly the more 
 salient features of Irish history since the Union, including, 
 of course, certain of the events which heralded the Union. 
 I do not propose in this volume to give a minute and exhaus- 
 tive presentment of the history of eighty-six troubled years. 
 Some parts will be dwelt upon at greater length than others. 
 My aim is to present a sketch, not a complete picture ; a 
 sketch, however, that may be of service to the student of the 
 Home Rule question. 
 
 I hope and believe that the time of Home Rule for Ireland 
 has arrived. I am convinced that it will bring peace and 
 welfare and content to my country. Her manufactures will 
 again rise and flourish ; commerce will once more visit the 
 grass-grown wharves of her sea-cities, and fill the vacant 
 
 a 
 
xviii PREFACE 
 
 spaces of those deserted buildings which now stand in ruined 
 desolation, more melancholy than Karnak or Corinth. A 
 people trained at last to patience and self-reliance will take a 
 just pride in the fulfilment of those duties as citizens of which 
 they have been so long deprived. The Church that has for 
 so long guided the nation through darkness and the valley of 
 the shadow of death will exercise its loftiest duty as the guide 
 and guardian of a regenerated race. The Irish nation has 
 been taking shape under our eyes ; her children need now 
 only the privileges of freedom to exercise those privileges 
 worthily. The activity of the country will be directed into 
 its proper channels. National occupation, and the respon- 
 sibilities of administration, will bring with them those virtues 
 of statesmanship which the Irish race have always shown in 
 lands more happily ruled than their own. That national 
 strength which now is spent, and rightly spent, in agitation 
 for a great end, will be then employed in the fulfilment of 
 those civic duties which the new conditions of political exist- 
 ence will create and establish. 
 
 Not to Ireland alone, however, will the advantages be 
 limited. All that is to be gained from friendship instead of 
 enmity, from trust instead of distrust, from loving fellowship 
 and the heart's alliance instead of suspicion and the heirloom 
 hate, all these may yet be England's if England choose. In 
 God's name, is it not better to have, across that strip of stormy 
 water, a nation of free men who are friends, fellow-workers 
 for the Empire's welfare, firm allies in danger, than to be the 
 most unhappy masters of an island of unconquered and 
 insurgent bondsmen ? 
 
 Justin Huntlt McGabtht. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I. The Penal Laws ••••.••• 1 
 
 II. The Parliament . • 14 
 
 III. The Volunteeks • .29 
 
 IV. Ninety-Eight 38 
 
 V. The Union 56 
 
 VI. Catholic Emancipation 75 
 
 VII. Daniel O'Connell . • .85 
 
 VIII. The Tithe Wak . . . . ... ... 102 
 
 IX. Kepeal 109 
 
 X. The 'Nation' . 117 
 
 XI. Young Ireland • • . . . . . • 125 
 
 XII. Youngest Ireland 133 
 
 XIII. The Irish Brigade . • • 141 
 
 XIV. The Phcenix Conspiracy 148 
 
 XV. John Dillon and John Bright 156 
 
 (XVI. The Land Question 108 
 
 XVII. Fenianism . 177 
 
 XVIII. Disestablishment and Education 194 
 
 f XIX. The Home Eule Movement ...... 211 
 
 XX. The Land League 289 
 
 XXI. Coercion 290 
 
 XXII. Orange and Green , . 311 
 
 XXIII. Home Eule 344 
 
 INDEX 355 
 
IRELAND SINCE THE UNION. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PENAL LAWS. 
 
 In Limerick city there stands a statue of one of the greatest 
 of Irish patriots and one of the most gaUant of Irish soldiers. 
 It is the statue of Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, and seldom 
 was statue more appropriately situated than that of the heroic 
 soldier within the compass of the city of tlie violated treaty. 
 All that a man could do to secure the rights of his country, 
 and the civil and religious liberties of his countrymen, was 
 done by Sarsfield. His conduct of the immortal defence has 
 been told a thousand times, but every fresh repetition of the 
 familiar tale only serves to lend a brighter lustre to the 
 genius and the courage of Sarsfield, and to add a darker stain 
 to the faithlessness of those in whom Sarsfield, with the gener- 
 ous simplicity of a soldier and a gentleman, had been induced 
 to place a mistaken confidence. 
 
 The siege of Limerick is one of the most famous events in 
 history. Seldom have the fortunes of two countries and of 
 two kingly causes depended more definitely upon the result of 
 one single episode in a great campaign. The fight by the 
 Boyne water, the capture of Athlone, the rout of Aughrim — 
 all these defeats and disasters might yet have been repaired if 
 only the siege of Limerick had ended otherwise, or, ending 
 as it did, had been followed by faith from the victors. The 
 cause of King James looked gloomy enough, but the cause of 
 Ireland was hopeful. The Stuart prince had promised much, 
 
 B 
 
2 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 had performed soniewliat. Poynings' Act had been repealed. 
 A measure had been passed restoring the dispossessed Irish 
 to their property. But the king lost heart and head in the 
 hour of adversity, and, abandoning the Irish and the French 
 who had served him so well, he fled with more than royal 
 rapidity to France, and left the last act of the great drama to 
 be played out without him by the Shannon Kiver and behind 
 the walls of Limerick. The Stuart princes, with all their 
 faults, were not wanting in personal courage, although actual 
 heroism was not included among their virtues then or there- 
 after. But James lives in the Irish ballad literature, which 
 has preserved so well and so truly the salient features of her 
 story at a time when any other kind of chronicling was well- 
 nigh impossible, as ' Craven Shemus,' and under the burden 
 of yet more uncomplimentary epithets. 
 
 James had fled and St. Euth was dead, and the last hopes 
 of Ireland were hidden behind the walls of Limerick, where 
 Talbot of Tirconnel and Patrick Sarsfield were making the 
 last stand. The two men were widely different. Richard Tal- 
 bot, Duke of Tirconnel, witnessed as a youth the Cromwellian 
 massacres in Drogheda. The memory of those horrors never 
 left him, we are told. We may easily imagine that the light- 
 hearted Irish nobleman, who plays so considerable a part in 
 the De Grammont ' Memoirs ' of the court of the second 
 Charles, could not easily banish from his memory the fearful 
 political baptism of his boyhood. Even in merriest and 
 maddest hours, at Whitehall, while conversing with the 
 ' languishing Boynton,' whom he afterwards wedded, or 
 jesting with Killegrew and Hamilton and Buckingham, or 
 losing money to his Merry Majesty, we can readily believe 
 that often and often thoughts came across his brain which 
 turned the lustre of the flambeaux to the glare of burning 
 houses, the chatter of the courtiers to the cries of Cromwell's 
 Ironsides, the soft speech of Lely's painted beauties to the 
 groans of murdered women, and the shining Thames beyond 
 to the Boyne, rushing fearful of its bloody foam to the sea. 
 
 Talbot of Tirconnel had always been faithful to the Stuart 
 
THE PENAL LAWS 3 
 
 cause. He had followed the young prince of the house to 
 exile over seas ; the historical ' twenty-mnth of May,' when 
 * the king did enjoy his own again,' was a glorious day in his 
 eyes, as in the eyes of hundreds of other Cavalier gentlemen. 
 Under the restored Stuarts he had been appointed to the 
 Governorship of Ireland, the first Roman Catholic who had 
 held the post since the introduction of the Protestant faith 
 into the country. His rule was characterised by his strenuous 
 efforts to undo the anti- Catholic legislation of the Ormond 
 administration. The fact that he, a Catholic and an Irishman, 
 should wish to see justice and religious liberty allowed to his 
 countrymen and the companions of his faith, has made his 
 name too often the object of the obloquy and the scorn of 
 historians, who are unwilling to see liberty, either political or 
 religious, enjoyed by any but themselves and their own people 
 or party. 
 
 When the war between James and William broke out the 
 Stuart king found his fastest and best ally in the Duke of 
 Tirconnel. Talbot had been the Duke of York's closest friend 
 and confidant ; he was now, in the hour of stress, for a time 
 the prop of his hopes and the buttress of his tottering throne. 
 The Catholics in Ireland fought for the Stuart monarch less 
 for that monarch's sake than for love of Talbot of Tirconnel 
 and the name he bore. But victory went with William ; and 
 so, in course of time, Talbot of Tirconnel found himself shut 
 up in Limerick to make the last stand for a lost cause, with 
 only one man to help him in the inevitable hour. But that 
 one man was worth a hundred, for his name was Sarsfield. 
 
 Sarsfield's courage and daring, his military genius, his 
 ready enterprise and unfailing resource, had kept the flag of 
 Limerick flying in the face of disaster after disaster. His 
 famous midnight raid, which resulted in the destruction of 
 the Williamite siege-train, is one of the most gallant, as it is 
 one of the most desperate, deeds recorded in the history of the 
 war. Perhaps, however, the qualities which most especially 
 deserve our admiration in Sarsfield are the patient dignity 
 and soldierly composure with which he consented again and 
 
 b2 
 
4 IBELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 again to take a secondary place to men of abilities and capa- 
 cities infinitely below his own. The young Duke of Berwick, 
 indeed, might complain that Sarsfield's imperial tongue, like 
 that of Shakespeare's Suffolk, was sometimes ' rough and 
 stern, used to command, untaught to plead for favour ; ' but 
 the marvel rather is, that a man of the military genius of Sars- 
 field should have played so long and so patiently a secondary 
 part to commanders so much his inferiors— and a man might 
 be a very able soldier indeed, and yet remain inferior to 
 Patrick Sarsfield — with no further display of impatience than • 
 an occasional rough word to a royal or semi-royal duke. 
 
 But a little while and Sarsfield was practically alone in 
 Limerick. Tirconnel, whose body had long been wasted by 
 disease, died suddenly of apoplexy. Death behind the walls 
 of Limerick was a not unfitting close to a career that had 
 practically begun behind the walls of Drogheda. Between those 
 two fatal sieges how much that strange, brilliant, fitful life had 
 experienced ! Exile in Flanders, faithful adherence to what 
 seemed a ruined cause, triumphant return, flight from Popish 
 Plot phantasm and Titus Gates' accusations, the glitter and 
 riot of an evil court, rule in Ireland, once again a struggle for 
 the Sfcuart cause, this time going out for ever, and then the 
 end. A month and a half after Tirconnel's death the treaty 
 was signed, the city was surrendered, and Sarsfield marched 
 out with all the honours of war. 
 
 All the world knows the eventful scene which followed. 
 The standards of England and France, set up outside the 
 city, wooed the Irish soldiery with a choice of foreign service. 
 Out of fifteen thousand men only one thousand turned to the 
 banner of the Boyne. The great bulk of the Irish army, with 
 the exception of a few who chose neither service and sought 
 their homes, rallied beneath the flag of France. 
 
 On the October morning of 1691 when the lilies of France 
 and the standard of St. George floated opposite to each other 
 outside the walls of Limerick, one Irish gentleman believed 
 that he had secured for his countrymen something like due 
 recognition of their political rights and their religious liber- 
 
THE PENAL LAWS 5 
 
 ties. Patrick Sarsfield, as he watched the flower of the 
 Jacobite army rallying beneath the French banner, must have 
 rejoiced in his heart to think that his countrymen, who were 
 thus marching with all the honours of war into foreign ser- 
 vice, had left their country under the shame of no inglo- 
 rious defeat and no humiliating subjugation. The Treaty of 
 Limerick was signed and sealed. The first article of that 
 Treaty promised solemnly that the Koman Catholics in Ire- 
 land should enjoy all the privileges in the exercise of their 
 religion which were consistent with the laws of Ireland, or 
 which they had enjoyed in the reign of King Charles II. As 
 this was not precise enough, the article went on to say that, 
 as soon as a Parliament could be summoned, the English 
 sovereigns pledged themselves to procure for the Roman 
 Catholics such further security in that particular as would 
 preserve them from any disturbance upon the account of their 
 religion. The thought of this article must have soothed the 
 mind of Sarsfield on his way to exile. He may well have 
 believed, in the fine words of John Mitchel, that he was 
 leaving behind him as a barrier against oppression of the 
 Catholics at least the honour of a king. 
 
 The honour of a king was as worthless as a dicer's oath. 
 At lovers' perjuries Jove, according to Juliet, is said to laugh, 
 but no poet has ever yet dared to fancy the Power of Heaven 
 smiling upon the treachery of monarchs and the repudiation 
 of solemn covenants entered into between State and State. 
 There is a beautiful Irish ballad, with music melancholy 
 as a caoine, which asks, * Ah, why, Patrick Sarsfield, did we let 
 your ships sail away to French Flanders from Green Innisfail ? " 
 If Sarsfield could have dreamed that the Magna Charta of 
 his faith was but to prove the perjured preface to the Penal 
 Laws, we may well be sure that the twelve thousand men who 
 marched out of Limerick town, with colours flying and drums 
 beating, to take service under Louis of France, would have 
 whitened with their bones no 'far foreign fields from Dunkirk 
 to Belgrade,' and that the blood of Landen would, indeed, have 
 been shed for Ireland. But the hope of Ireland was across the 
 
6 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 seas ; her leaders had kissed James's hand at Brest ; the rank 
 and file of the defenders of Lmierick had become French citi- 
 zens, when the monstrous perfidy of the English Government, 
 in horrible travail, gave birth to the Penal Laws. 
 
 Sarsfield was dead before this. At the great overthrow, in 
 July 1693, of the allies under William by Luxembourg, at the 
 battle of Landen, he received his death-wound. Everyone 
 knows the sad and lovely legend, according to which the dying 
 soldier, putting his hand to his wound and drawing it back 
 wet and red with his best blood, sighed out the heroic aspira- 
 tion that that blood had been shed for L'eland. He died of his 
 wounds a few days after the battle. His wife, Lord Clanri- 
 carde's daughter, married, some two years after his death, 
 that very Duke of Berwick whose hot youth had protested 
 against Sarsfi eld's superior judgment. It is one of the curiosi- 
 ties of history that almost all the women who were loved 
 by the great heroes of Ireland married after the deaths of 
 their lovers — Lady Lucan, Lady Edward Fitzgerald, the wife 
 of Wolfe Tone, and Sarah Carran. 
 
 Historians of all schools agree in praise of Patrick Sars- 
 field. Macaulay, who had little love for Ireland and for any 
 champion of the house of Stuart, admits that he was a * gentle- 
 man of eminent merit, brave, upright, honourable, careful of 
 his men in quarters, and certain to be always found at their 
 head in the day of battle.' A Williamite historian, quoted by 
 Mr. O'Cailaghan, says : ' Arminius was never more j)opular 
 among the Germans than Sarsfield among the Irish. To this 
 day his name is venerated— ca^ii^-z^r adhuc. No man was 
 ever more attached to his country, or more devoted to his 
 king and his religion.' It may, indeed, be declared that all 
 Irish history does not boast a nobler gentleman than the gallant 
 soldier, great of mind as he was gigantic of body, whose brave 
 heart ceased to beat in the little town of Huy in 1693. 
 
 There were, indeed, penal laws existing before ever seal 
 had been set to the Treaty of Limerick. Catholics were de- 
 barred from le'onging to corporations; certain civil offices 
 were closed against them ; they were subject tj fine for non- 
 
THE PENAL LAWS 7 
 
 attendance at the places of worship at the Established Church 
 on Sundays ; and the Chancellor had the power of appointing 
 a guardian to the child of a Catholic parent. But these penal 
 laws were not very oppressively enforced in the days of 
 Charles II. Catholic lawyers and Catholic doctors practised 
 their callings comparatively freely. The very least, therefore, 
 that the stipulations of the Treaty of Limerick could be tor- 
 tured into meaning, guaranteed to the Irish Catholics the 
 degree of toleration accorded to them under Charles II. But 
 the Williamite Government soon showed that they preferred 
 to act with a treachery unparalleled in Occidental history 
 rather than continue to extend to the Catholics of Ireland 
 even this miserable measui:e of toleration. 
 
 The Butch general Ginkel, who had been most eager to 
 swell the ranks of William with the heroic defenders of 
 Limerick, was bitterly disappointed at the failure of his hopes. 
 Be endeavoured in vain to induce Sarsfield to remain in Ire- 
 land. Promises of all kinds were plentifully proferred, but 
 Sarsfield was not to be tempted. He crossed the sea and laid 
 his bright sword at the feet of King Louis. The French 
 monarch, who thoroughly appreciated the value of his Irish 
 adherents, welcomed the hero of Limerick, and immediately 
 appointed him to the command of the second troop of the 
 Irish Guards, the first troop being under the command of the 
 impetuous young Buke of Berwick. 
 
 Up to this time Catholics had sat among the Lords and 
 Commons of the Irish Parliaments. But on the assembly in 
 1692 of the first Irish Parliament held after the surrender of 
 Limerick, an oath was framed by the Protestant majority and 
 presented to all the members of both Houses. It must be 
 remembered that the oath to be administered to Catholics 
 had been specially provided for in the Treaty of Limerick. 
 It called upon the Catholic subjects of William and Mary 
 to swear allegiance to the sovereigns, and it was specially 
 laid down by the famous ninth article of the Treaty that the 
 oath to be administered to Catholics who submitted to the 
 English Government should be this oath and no other. 
 
8 IRELAND SINCE 2 HE UNION 
 
 This ninth article was the first part of the Treaty to be 
 broken. The new Parliamentary octh was fashioned with 
 horrible ingenuity to insult and outrage every Catholic. 
 The Catholic Peers and Commons who had attended the 
 Parliament of 1692 quitted the two Houses in indignation. 
 From that hour, for more than a century, till the Parlia- 
 ment itself ceased to exist, no ^Catholic Irishman sat in his 
 country's Senate. When a National Parliament again meets 
 in Dublin it will be undoing by its presence not merely the 
 evil work of the Act of Union, but the evil work of the Par- 
 liament of 1692. 
 
 All obstacles being thus removed from the National As- 
 sembly by this flagrant violation of the Treaty, the ' Ascend- 
 ency ' party were free to pursue unimpeded their process of 
 repression. In 1695 the Viceroy, Lord Capel, summoned a 
 Parliament, whose business it was to repudiate, one after 
 another, the pledges and stipulations of the Treaty of Limerick, 
 and to persecute the Catholics of Ireland with a ferocity 
 which is without a parallel in the records of Oriental fanaticism. 
 The wild multitudes who followed the conquering generals of 
 Omar and Othman, and who offered the alternative of the 
 Koran or death to the proud and populous cities of Syria, 
 Persia, and Egypt, never attempted to impose upon their 
 subordinated empires any code of laws so ingeniously intole- 
 rant, so fantastically cruel, as those which the Ascendency 
 party in Ireland now levelled at a Catholic people and the 
 Catholic creed. 
 
 In shameless defiance of the obligations of the Treaty of 
 Limerick, and insolent disregard of the pitiful degree of tole- 
 rance towards Catholics which had been observed during the 
 reign of the second Charles, the Parliament of Capel deprived 
 the Catholics of Ireland at one blow of education, of arms, 
 and of their priesthood. Sarsfield was in his soldier's grave 
 wdien that ' honour of a king ' to which he had trusted was 
 thus perfidiously set aside. Certain historians have found 
 some excuse for William of Orange and the part he played in 
 this treachery. The Treaty, we are told, was violated against 
 
THE PENAL LA WS 9 
 
 his will, and in spite of his own strongly-expressed resolution 
 to keep faith with his Catholic subjects in Ireland. 
 
 In these arguments there is no excuse for William. In 
 those days the kingly office was invested with more personal 
 power than belongs to it now. A king still had some of the 
 influence and incurred some of the obligations of his position. 
 If the king's supporters had prized their master's honour at 
 anything more than contempt, they would not have forced 
 him to break his word. Nay, they could not force him. The 
 whole point of the argument against William lies in this : 
 they could but urge him to be untrue ; they could not compel 
 him. If William were unable to make his Ministers respect 
 the royal honour he could have respected it himself and re- 
 signed his sceptre. He was not obliged to wear a dishonoured 
 crown. But if, under no matter what pressure, he consented 
 to be a party to the breaking of the Treaty and the persecution 
 of the Catholics, the ignominy is as much his as if his were 
 the tongue which first prompted the treachery and his the 
 hand which first desecrated the Treaty. 
 
 Yet even Capel's Parliament, with all its hatred of the 
 Catholics, and all the malignant ingenuity which turned that 
 hatred into legal engines of oppression, was not comprehensive 
 enough or thorough enough in its work to satisfy the Govern- 
 ment. Capel and his creatures had done their best, but their 
 work appeared clumsy and half-hearted to the statesmen of 
 Queen Anne. It needed supplementing in the eyes of the poli- 
 ticians of St. James's, and supplemented it accordingly was. 
 The perverted intelligence of Capel's colleagues had not made 
 the life of the Irish Catholic so hopelessly unbearable as to 
 afford any reasonable hope of his disappearing as completely 
 from the valleys of Ireland as the wolf had been made to dis- 
 appear from English forests. Fresh work was done under 
 the viceroyalty of the last Duke of Ormond — he who died years 
 after an exile, who owed his safety to one Catholic country, 
 and a beggar, who owed his daily bread to the bounty of another 
 Catholic country. What was begun under Capel and well-nigh 
 perfected under Ormond, received some further additions 
 
10 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 under the first and even under the third George. Bat it is 
 to the ten years which embrace the last lustre of the seven- 
 teenth century and the first lustre of the eighteenth century 
 that the Penal Laws practically bplong. 
 
 It is not necessary now — it is terrible to think that it ever 
 could have been necessary — to waste any words in condemna- 
 tion of these measures. Eloquence itself cannot add one stain 
 to the shame or one sting to the horror of the bare recital of 
 what these laws sought to do. Not even the genius of Burke, 
 not even the eloquence of him ' on whose burning tongue truth, 
 peace, and freedom hung,' can move the soul with a fiercer 
 indignation than the mere enumeration in all their naked 
 iniquity of what the Penal Laws were and what they were 
 framed to accomplish. 
 
 Under the Penal Laws the Catholic population of a Catholic 
 country were deprived of almost every right that makes life 
 precious. Lopping, Bishop of Meath, had proclaimed from 
 the pulpit that Protestants were not bound to keep faith with 
 Papists, and the violation of the Treaty of Limerick had 
 justified his utterance. Lord Chancellor Bowes and Chief 
 Justice Bobinson had proclaimed from the bench that the law 
 did not suppose any sach person to exist as an Irish Catholic. 
 The Penal Laws certainly did their best to insure that no 
 such person should exist as an Irish Catholic. In their 
 own country Irish Catholics were shut out from every civil 
 or military profession ; from every Government office, from 
 the highest to the lowest ; from almost every duty and every 
 privilege that can be obeyed or enjoyed by citizens. A 
 Catholic could not sit upon the benches of the Lords or 
 Commons of the Irish Parliament. He could not record his 
 vote for the election of a member of Parliament ; he could 
 not serve in the army or the navy ; he could not plead at the 
 bar or give judgment from the bench ; he could not become 
 a magistrate or a member of a corporation, or serve on grand 
 juries or in vestries ; he could not b^a sheriff, gamekeeper or 
 a constable ; he could not give education ; he could not 
 receive education ; he could not send his children abroad to 
 
THE PENAL LAWS 11 
 
 bo educated. If in defiance of the law he, a Catholic, did 
 send his child to receive in Continental colleges that know- 
 ledge wbich was refused at home, be was subjected to a fine 
 of 100/., and the child so educated was excluded from inherit- 
 ing any property in Ireland or England. 
 
 Not only was the Catholic denied the practice of his own 
 religion, but conformity to the Protestant faith was enforced 
 by statute. Every Catholic was liable to a fine of 60Z. a 
 month for not attending a place of Protestant worship, and 
 at any time any two justices of the peace could call a Catholic 
 over sixteen years of age before them and bestow what pro- 
 perty he possessed upon his next of kin if he refused to turn 
 from his faith. ' Any four justices of the peace could, without 
 the formalities of a trial, send any Catholic refusing to attend 
 Protestant service into banishment for life. Every Catholic 
 priest in the country pursued his sacred calling under a 
 penalty of death. Deprived alike of his civil and religious 
 rights, the Catholic was further plundered of his property. 
 No Catholic might buy land, or inherit it, or receive it as a 
 gift from Protestants, or hold life annuities or leases for more 
 than thirty-one years, or any lease on such terms as that the 
 profits of the land exceeded one third the value of the land. 
 Any Protestant discovering that a farm held by a Papist pro- 
 duced a profit greater than one-third of the rent could, imme- 
 diately upon announcing this discovery, dispossess the Catholic 
 owner, and seize the farm for himself. The estate of any 
 Catholic not having a Protestant heir was gavelled, or di\ided 
 in equal parts, between all his children. As cases occurred in 
 which Protestants helped their Catholic fellow-citizens or 
 relations by holding property in trust for them, it was made 
 legal for any Protestant who suspected another Protestant of 
 holdmg property in trust for a Catholic to file a bill against 
 the suspected trustee, and, if he proved the case, to take the 
 property away from him. A Protestant might at any time 
 compel a Catholic to sell him his horse, however valuable, for 
 6Z., and the horses of Catholics could always be seized without 
 payment for the use of the militia. 
 
12 IRELAND SINCE THE UMUN 
 
 j In order to guard against the consequences of any exas- 
 peration into which these laws might goad their victims, they 
 were rigidly prohibited from possessing arms. Any two 
 justices or sheriffs might at any time issue a search warrant 
 for arms against any Catholic household. Any Catholic who 
 was discovered with any kind of weapon in his possession was 
 liable to fines, imprisonment, whipping, and the pillory. / Not 
 content, however, with depriving the Irish Catholic of all the 
 rights of a free man, the Penal Laws aimed insidiously at his 
 destruction by endeavouring to turn his own kin, his flesh 
 and blood, his children, and his very wife against him. The 
 eldest son of a Catholic upon apostatising became heir-at-law 
 to the whole estate of his father, and reduced his father to 
 the position of a mere life-tenant. An apostate wife was 
 immediately freed from her husband's control, and assigned 
 a certain proportion of her husband's property. Any child, 
 however young, who professed the Protestant faith was 
 immediately removed from its parents' care, and a portion of 
 the parental property assigned to it. Furthermore, no mar- 
 riage between a Catholic and a Protestant Avas recognised by 
 the law. The fact that the husband and wife were of opposite 
 faiths in itself rendered the marriage null and void, without 
 any process of law whatever. A man might leave his wife or 
 a woman her husband, after any period, no matter how long, 
 of wedlock, free to marry again and bring a legalised illegiti- 
 macy upon all the offspring of the former marriage. Such is 
 the catalogue of the provisions of the Penal Code. 
 
 The Code was well calculated to destroy for ever the 
 Catholic population of Ireland. But it is the glory of the 
 Irish people that they conquered, and were not conquered by, 
 the Code. That proud patience which, according to the poet, 
 the gods are said to love, was never more loftily displayed 
 under circumstances of more heart-breaking oppression than by 
 the Irish Catholics during the long horror of the eighteenth 
 century. Of course there were some cases in which the 
 tyranny of the law fostered a kind of servile homage to 
 Protestant ascendency. * I knew,' says Mr. O'Neill Damit, 
 
TIIJ^ PENAL LAWS 13 
 
 * one most respectable and very wealthy Catholic merchant 
 who declared that, when a boy at school about the year 1780, 
 he felt overwhelmed and bewildered at the honour of being 
 permitted to play marbles with a Protestant schoolfellow.' 
 But these were exceptional cases. To the majority persecution 
 only stimulated the ardour of their devotion to their faith. 
 The same persecution only lent a fresh courage and heroism 
 to the ministers of that faith. Many and many a time were 
 secret congregations fallen upon by the soldiers ; many and 
 many a time was the Mass-stone, the ' Corrig-an-Aifrion,' 
 reddened with the blood of a martyred priest. 
 
 The ministers of religion were no less active in oifering to 
 their scattered flocks that education which the harsh laws 
 denied them. On the highway and on the hillside, in ditches 
 and behind hedges, in the precarious shelter of the ruined walls 
 of some ancient abbey or under the roof of a peasant's cabin, 
 the priests set up schools and taught the children of their 
 race. With death as the penalty of their daring — a penalty 
 too often paid — they gave to the people of their persecuted 
 faith that precious mental food which triumphantly thwarted 
 the efforts of the Government to brutalise and degrade 
 the Irish Catholic off the face of the earth. In those ' hedo-e- 
 schools,' as they were called in scorn, the principles of re- 
 ligion, of morality, and of patriotism were kept alive, and 
 those elements of education which are the very life-blood of 
 national existence freely dispensed. Eagerly as it was given, 
 it was no less eagerly sought for. The readiness of the 
 priests to teach was only equalled by the readiness of the 
 people to be taught. The proudest place of honour in Irish 
 history belongs to those hedge-schools and their heroic 
 teachers. But for them the national cause and the national 
 existence would have withered away under the blighting curse 
 of the Penal Laws. From those hedge- schools came some of 
 the brightest ornaments of modern Irish history. That great 
 churchman who died a few years ago passed his childhood 
 under the shadow of the Penal Laws. John M'Hale, Arch- 
 bishop of Tuam, received at a hedge-school those early lessons 
 
14 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 which developed into that ecclesiastical scholarship and pro- 
 found piety which would have done lionour to the proudest 
 epoch in the history of the Church of the West. 
 
 But though the 'unparalleled oppression,' as Burke called 
 it, of the Penal Code might and did outrage and oppress, hang 
 and scourge, fine and imprison, it could not succeed in 
 degrading its victims. With all the bribes that it offered to 
 apostasy, to family feud, and to infidelity in wedlock, it 
 wholly failed to shake the loyalty of the Irish people to their 
 ■ faith and their affections. Few, indeed, were the renegades 
 from their creed, few the unfilial sons, few the faithless 
 husbands or the unworthy wives. The law might sanction 
 and encourage the basest treachery and set a premium upon 
 shame, but there was one thing it could not do — it could 
 not make its victims treacherous or shake the unalterable 
 firmness of their honour. 
 
 CHAPTEB II. 
 
 THE PABLIAMENT. 
 
 It has been happily said that Ireland has no history during 
 the greater part of the eighteenth century. Wliat Burke 
 called ' the ferocious legislation of Queen Anne ' had done its 
 work of humiliation to the full. For a hundred years the 
 country was crushed into quiescent misery. Against the 
 tyranny which made war at once upon their creed, their 
 intellect, and their trade, the Irish had no strength to struggle ; 
 neither in 1715 nor in 1745 did the Irish Catholics raise a 
 hand for the Pretenders. The evidence of Arthur Young 
 shows how terribly the condition of the peasantry had sunk, 
 when he is able to state that ' Landlords of consequence have 
 assured me that many of their cottars would think themselves 
 honoured by having their wives and daughterE" sent for to the 
 bed of their masters ; a mark of slavery which proves the 
 oppres ion under which such people must live.' 
 
THE PARLIAMENT 15 
 
 To add to the wretchedness of the people, a terrible famine 
 ravaged the country in 1741, the horrors of which almost 
 rival in ghastliness those of the famine of 1847. Great 
 numbers died ; great numbers fled from the seemingly accursed 
 country to recruit the armies of the Continent, and found 
 death less dreadful on many well-fought fields than in the 
 shape of plague or famine in their own land. Such elements 
 of degradation and despair naturally begot all sorts of secret 
 societies amongst the peasantry from north to south. White- 
 boys, Oakboys, and Hearts of Steel banded against the land 
 tyranny, and held together for long enough in spite of the 
 strenuous efforts of the Government to put them down. If 
 the military force,' said Lord Chesterfield, ' had killed half as 
 many landlords as it had Whiteboys, it would have contributed 
 more effectually to restore quiet ; for the poor people in Ireland 
 are worse used than negroes by their masters, and deputies of 
 deputies of deputies.' 
 
 Bad as the condition of Ireland was, the English in 
 Ireland proposed to make it worse by depriving it of what 
 poor remains of legislative independence it still possessed. So 
 early as 1703 a petition in favour of Union with England, and 
 the abolition of the Irish Parliament, was presented to Queen 
 Anne ; its prayer Avas rejected for the time, but the idea was 
 working in the minds of those— and they were many — who 
 wished to see Ireland stripped of all pretence at independence 
 afforded by the existence of a separate Parliament, even 
 though that Parliament were entirely Protestant. Seventeen 
 years later, in the sixth year of George I., a vigorous blow 
 was dealt at the independence of the Irish Parliament by an 
 Act which not only deprived the Irish House of Lords of any 
 appellate jurisdiction, but declared that the English Parliament 
 had the right to make laws to bind the people of the kingdom 
 of Ireland. The ' heads of a Bill ' might indeed be brought 
 in in either House. If agreed to, tliey were carried to the 
 Viceroy, who gave them to his Privy Council to alter if they 
 chose, and send to England. They were subject to altera- 
 tion by the English Attorney-General, and, when approved by 
 
16 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 the English Privy Council, sent back to Ireland, where the 
 Irish Houses could either accept or reject them in toto, but 
 had no power to change them. 
 
 The condition of the Irish Parliament all through the 
 eighteenth century is truly pitiable. Its existence as a legis- 
 lative body is a huge sham, a ghastly simulacrum. The Par- 
 liament was one of the most eccentrically composed, most 
 circumscribed, most corrupt legislative assemblies that the in- 
 genuity of man has ever devised. To begin with : no Catholic 
 could sit in Parliament ; no Catholic could even record his 
 vote for a Protestant member. The Catholics were as abso- 
 lutely unrepresented as if they did not exist ; and yet they 
 made up the vast majority of the population which the Irish 
 Parliament tried to govern or misgovern, and by an amazing 
 fiction was supposed to represent. ' The borough system,' 
 says Mr. Lecky, ' which had been chiefly the work of the 
 Stuarts — no less than forty boroughs have been created by 
 James I. alone— had been developed to such an extent that 
 out of the 300 members who composed the Parliament ' — Mr. 
 Lecky is, of course, speaking of the Lower House — ' 216 were 
 returned for boroughs or manors. Of these borough mem- 
 bers 200 were elected by 100 individuals, and nearly 50 by 10. 
 According to a secret report drawn up by the Irish Govern- 
 ment for Pitt in 1784, Lord Shannon at that time returned 
 no less than 16 members, the Ponsonby family 14, Lord 
 Hillsborough 9, and the Duke of Leinster 7.' 
 
 That borough system was the successful means of corrupt- 
 ing both Houses. James I. had been earnestly remonstrated 
 with for calling forty boroughs into existence at one blow, and 
 we have it on the authority of Hely Hutchinson that the 
 king replied : ' I have made forty boroughs, suppose I had 
 made 400 — the more the merrier.' A pleasant, statesmanlike, 
 truly Stuart way of looking at all things, which was destined 
 to prove fatal to the Stuarts and to nobler hearts and heads 
 than theirs. Borough -owners who returned supple lieges to 
 the Irish Parliament generally found their reward in a peerage. 
 Thus, with a simplicity of corruption, the two Houses were 
 
THE PARLIAMENT 17 
 
 undermined at once, for it is said that some half a hundred 
 peers nominated no less than one hundred and twenty-three 
 members of the Lower House. 
 
 The Irish Parliament was like one of those buried cities 
 dear to Irish legend which lie beneath the waters of some 
 legend-haunted lake. The dark waters of corruption covered 
 it ; there came a moment when those waters fell away and 
 revealed an ancient institution, defaced, indeed, but still 
 honourable and imposing ; then the engulfing waves closed 
 over it again, and it vanished — but not for ever. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone has summed up very happily the nature of 
 Grattan's Parliament in words which apply appropriately 
 enough to the condition of the Parliament which Grattan 
 entered. 
 
 * I know,' says Mr. Gladstone, 'that it is exceedingly diffi- 
 cult to arrive at a clear and also a simple view of the state of 
 Ireland under Grattan's Parliament. Ireland was at that 
 time sharply and variously divided. Just let us consider the 
 multitude of various and powerful interests that worked upon 
 her destinies and fortunes. First of all there was a small 
 section of the population who conducted the Government 
 mainly with a view to jobbing and to personal interests — a 
 very important section, on account of the power which they 
 not uniformly, but frequently, exercised upon the English 
 Government with regard to its policy in Ireland. Then there 
 was the Presbyterian party. Though they were not less 
 Protestant than the other, they had little or nothing to do 
 with the Government. They, on the contrary, had at that 
 period a strong inclination to Kepublicanism. Then there 
 was the Executive Government and the British interest con- 
 centrated in Dublin Castle, which has ever since, and certainly 
 recently, become a proverbial expression, conveying but little 
 to the minds of Englishmen, but conveying a great deal to 
 the minds of Irishmen. It exercised a great and powerful 
 influence. Then I look at the Eoman Catholic majority, but 
 I cannot treat the Eoman Catholic majority of that period as 
 being entirely one. It is quite clear that both the Eoman 
 
 
 
18 IRELAND SIITCE T3B UNIOIT 
 
 Catliolic aristocracy and prelates stood in a position distinct 
 from the mass of the Eoman Catholic people, and were liable 
 to act on inducements held out to them from this side of the 
 water. Then there was the great interest of the landlords. 
 The Irish landlord of that time was a character not entirely 
 devoid of certain attractive features. He was hospitable, he 
 was high-spirited, he was bold ; but still he had his interests 
 as a landlord, and he worked for them pretty generally, 
 although not with that rigour and severity in all cases 
 towards the tenant of which I am inclined to believe that the 
 nineteenth century in a measure has seen more than the 
 eighteenth century. Then there was a body of Irish repre- 
 sented by Grattan and Ponsonby in Parliament, and by the 
 greatest of Irishmen, Edmund Burke, on this side of the water. 
 It is very difficult to get at the truth of Irish history with 
 regard to this Irish Parliament. It was lamentably corrupt ; 
 it was liable beyond anything to influence, and to sinister 
 influence ; but there are certain things to be said in its favour. 
 It made great and beneficial changes in the laws of your 
 country. The distmction is to be drawn between the Irish 
 Parliament before 1795 and the Irish Parliament after 1795, 
 when a spirit of what may be called ferocious alarmism, 
 instilled by the British Government and by the jobbing clique 
 who called themselves Protestants, that is the Episcopalians 
 in Ireland, took possession in the main of that Parliament. 
 Before that time it had done many good things. Another 
 good thing that maybe said of it, I believe with truth, is this — 
 I am not aware that upon any occasion it refused to do any 
 good act for Ireland which the British Government and which 
 the Executive of the country were willing and desirous that it 
 should do. But I have to give it one other credit. Whatever 
 vices it had, and whatever defects it had, it had a true and 
 genuine sentiment of nationality ; and, gentlemen, the loss of 
 the spirit of nationality is the heaviest and the most deplorable 
 and the most degrading loss that any country can undergo. 
 In the Irish ParUament, with all its faults, the spirit of 
 nationality subsisted, and I say with grief and shame that it 
 
TBE PAUZIAMENT 19 
 
 is my 0"\vn conclusion and my own conviction that the main 
 object of the Irish Legislative Union on the part of those who 
 planned it and brought it about was to depress and weaken, 
 and if possible to extinguish, that spirit of Irish nationality. 
 So much for Grattan's Parliament.' 
 
 It slowly drifted into the custom of sitting but once in 
 every two years to vote the Money Bills for the next two 
 twelvemonths. The Irish Exchequer derived half its receipts 
 from the Eestoration grant of the ExciSe and Customs ; and the 
 greater part of this money was wasted upon royal mistresses, 
 upon royal bastards, and upon royal nominees. In the Upper 
 House many of the temporal peers were Scotchmen or Eng- 
 lishmen, some of whom had never even set foot in Ireland. 
 The actual Irishmen on its roll were mostly the corrupt 
 purchasers of degraded titles. Its Spiritual Peers, foreign to 
 the country by religion and by race, were so obnoxious even to 
 men of that religion and that race, as to wring from Swift 
 the satirical declaration that all the Irish bishops appointed 
 in England must have been murdered on their way by high- 
 waymen who stole their garments, and filled their offices in 
 Dublin. The Lower House was torn by factions, which the 
 English Government ingeniously played off against each 
 other ; it was crowded with the supple placemen of the 
 Government, who were well rewarded for their obedient votes ; 
 the bulk of the House was made up of nominees of the 
 Protestant landlords. The Opposition could never turn out 
 the Administration, for the Administration was composed of 
 the irremovable and irresponsible Lords Justices of the Privy 
 Council and certain officers of State. The Opposition, such 
 as it was, was composed mainly of more or less ardent Jacob- 
 ites, and of a few men animated by a patriotic belief in 
 their country's rights. These men were imbued with the 
 principles which had been set forth in the end of the seven- 
 teenth century by William Molyneux, the friend of Locke, 
 who, in his ' Case of Ireland,' was the first to formulate 
 Ireland's constitutional claim to independent existence. His 
 book was burnt by the English Parliament, but the doctrines 
 
 02 
 
20 tRELAND SINCE THE XJNtON 
 
 it set forth were in themselves a living fire, and unquench- 
 able. 
 
 During the reigns of the first two Georges, the Patriot 
 party had the support of the gloomy genius and the fierce 
 indignation of the man whose name is coupled with that of 
 Molyneux in the opening sentences of Grattan's famous 
 speech on the triumph of Irish independence. Swift, weary of 
 English parties, full of melancholy memories of St. John and 
 Harley and the scattered Tory chiefs, had come back to 
 Ireland to try his fighting soul in the troublous confusion of 
 Irish politics. It has been asserted over and over again that 
 Swift had very little real love for the country of his birth. 
 Whether he loved Ireland or no is little to the purpose, for 
 he did her very sterling service. He was the first to exhort 
 Ireland to use her own manufactures, and he was unsuccess- 
 fully prosecuted by the State for the pamphlet in which he 
 gave this advice. When Wood received the authority of the 
 English Parliament to deluge Ireland with copper money of 
 his own making, it was Swift's ' Drapier's Letters ' which 
 made Wood and his friends the laughing-stock of the world 
 and averted the evil. In Swift's ' Modest Proposal,' we have 
 the most valuable evidence of the misery of the country. He 
 suggests, with savage earnestness, that the children of the 
 Irish peasant should be reared for food ; and urges that the 
 best of these should be reserved for the landlords, who, as 
 they had already devoured the substance of the people, had 
 the best right to devour the flesh of their children. 
 
 The year that Swift died, 1745, was the first year of the 
 viceroyalty of Lord Chesterfield, one of the few bright spots 
 in the dark account of Ireland in the eighteenth century. If 
 all viceroys had been as calm, as reasonable, and as conside- 
 rate as the author of the famous ' Letters ' showed himself to 
 be in his dealings with the people over whom he was placed, 
 the history of the succeeding century and a half might have 
 been very different. But v.hen Chesterfield's viceroyalty 
 passed away, the temperate policy he pursued passed away as 
 well, and if we except Lord Fitzwilliam in 1795 and Lord Aber- 
 
THE PARLIAMENT 21 
 
 deen in 1886, has seldom been resumed by the long succession 
 of viceroys who have governed and misgoverned the country 
 since. 
 
 In the meanwhile a new spirit was gradually coming over 
 the country. Lucas, the first Irishman, in the words of the 
 younger Grattan, ' who, after Swift, dared to write freedom,' 
 had founded the Freeman's Journal, a journal which ven- 
 tured in dangerous times to advocate the cause of the Irish 
 people, and to defy the anger of the English ' interest.' In 
 the first number, which appeared on Saturday, September 10, 
 1768, and which bore an engraving of Hibernia with a wreath 
 in her right hand and a rod in her left, Lucas loudly advo- 
 cated the duty and dignity of a free press, and denounced 
 under the guise of 'Turkish Tyranny,' 'The Tyranny of 
 French Despotism,' and ' The Ten Tyrants of Kome,' the 
 Ministries and the creature whom his unsparing eloquence 
 assailed. The Patriot party, too, was rapidly increasing its 
 following and its influence in the country. The Patriotic 
 party in Parliament had found a brilliant leader in Henry 
 Flood, a gifted politician, who thought himself a poet, and 
 who was certainly an orator. 
 
 Henry Flood was born near Kilkenny in the year 1732, an 
 uneventful year which his birth makes eventful. Like Grattan 
 he shone for a season within the walls of Trinity, but he 
 chose to complete his education by the Isis instead of by the 
 Liffey, and coming to England he passed some time in that 
 scholastic region where ' the warm, green-muffled Cumnor 
 hills ' behold the towers of Oxford, and Bagley Wood, and 
 Hinksey Eidge, and distant Wychwood, and ' the forest ground 
 called Thessaly.' While Flood was at Trinity, a wealthy 
 young man, of good family and influential connections, with 
 a future opening easily and attractively out before him, there 
 was a young sizar on the books of the college of whom he 
 probably knew nothing and of whom the world was destined 
 to hear much. There could hardly be two careers more 
 widely separated by destiny than that of the son of the Chief 
 Justice of the King's Bench in Ireland, rich, well-favoured, 
 
22 IRELAND SINGE THE UNION 
 
 surrounded by friends and admirers, and the poor, wild, reck- 
 less, good-humoured lad from the pleasant plain of Longford, 
 who was always penniless and always merry and always idle, 
 and whose face, so grimly seamed with smallpox, was always 
 bright with humour and tender with pathos. 
 
 While Henry Flood was enriching his mind and ennobling 
 his style in the classic shades of Oxford or the learned retire- 
 ment of the Temple, Oliver Goldsmith was enjoying that 
 ' thirty shilling ' revel which was so disastrously interrupted, 
 or dreaming of American emigration, or listening with an 
 author's pride in his heart and an author's very scant remune- 
 ration in his pocket to his own songs sung by itinerant ballad- 
 mongers at the college gates. Fortune was all smiles and 
 roses for the one, all frowns for the other. Their lots were 
 unlike in all particulars ; but the goal of both was the same, 
 and both attained it, for both alike had, if nothing else in 
 common, the common privilege of genius. The rich young 
 gentleman and the poor young sizar had no connection within 
 the confines of Trinity, but they were destined alike to attain 
 in widely-differing ways to fame and honour and an abiding- 
 place in the memory of their country. Destiny has reversed 
 their two positions, and the poor sizar is more famous than 
 the colleague who seemed so high above him. 
 
 In 1759, while Goldsmith was struggling in London, 
 writing ' The Life of Voltaire ' and bringing out the Bee in 
 miserable lodgings, Flood entered Parliament as member for 
 Kilkenny. He was then but twenty-seven years of age, singu- 
 larly good-looking, well-trained in mind and body for the 
 pohtical life on which he was launched. His Oxford hours 
 had been devoted chiefly to the study of oratory, varied by the 
 somewhat ineffectual pursuit of poetry. 
 
 He wrote an ode to ' Fame,' which was perhaps as unlucky 
 in reaching its address as that poem to posterity of which poor 
 Jean Baptiste Eousseau was so proud. But his oratory was a 
 genuine gift, which he carefully cultivated. We hear of his 
 learning speeches of Cicero by heart, and writing out long 
 passages of Demosthenes and iEschines. His character was 
 
THE PARLIAMENT 23 
 
 kindly, sweet-tempered, and truthful. He was ambitious be- 
 cause he was a man of genius, but his ambition was for his 
 country rather than for himself, and he served her with a 
 daring spirit, which only the profoundly statesmanlike qualities 
 of his intellect prevented from becoming reckless. Two years 
 after his election he married Lady Frances Maria Beresford, 
 a wealthy match, which secured to him absolute independence 
 to follow out his political career. 
 
 Flood soon found himself the most conspicuous man in 
 the Parliament and the head of what may be called the Oppo- 
 sition in the Irish Parliament. The Parliament, thanks in a 
 great degree to his genius and his labours, was destined to 
 rise for a time out of its slough, and shine for a while resplen- 
 dent in the eyes of all men. The Opposition hardly existed 
 as a serious Opposition until Flood's genius and capacity for 
 leadership welded it together into something like a homoge- 
 neous whole. Before Flood's time the nominal Opposition 
 was made up chiefly of Jacobite adherents still dreaming 
 in a dim kind of purposeless way dreams of a possible Stuart 
 restoration, which the lessons of 1715 and 1745 had not quite 
 cured them of, and of a small number of disinterested and 
 patriotic men who struggled as best they might against the 
 overwhelming injustice and corruption which they faced 
 These men Flood rallied. These men, proudly accepting the 
 title which their enemies scornfully gave them of the * Pa- 
 triots,' followed Flood zealously, and some of the oldest and 
 basest privileges of the Parliament began to reel under the 
 sturdy blows of the newly-inspired Opposition. Flood's best 
 ally in his efforts was the man whose addresses a few years 
 before had been burnt by the common hangman, who had 
 been obliged to fly for safety into England, whom Johnson 
 had hailed as ' the confessor of liberty,' and who now by 
 Flood's side in Parliament was about to render the cause of 
 Irish liberty sterling service by the publication of the Free- 
 marl's Journal, Samuel Lucas. 
 
 The first person against whom Hercules Flood flung him- 
 self in his effort with the Augean stable of the Legion Club 
 
U IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 was that strange ecclesiastic, famous among the infamous, 
 Primate Stone. 
 
 Even as the most conspicuous supporter of the Irish inte- 
 rest during the first half of the century was the Dean of St. 
 Patrick's, the two most remarkable supporters of the English 
 * interest ' in Ireland in the eighteenth century were both 
 Churchmen, the Primate Boulter and the Primate Stone. 
 Compared to Stone, Boulter appears an honest and an honour- 
 able man. He was only shallow, arrogant, and capricious, 
 quite incapable of the slightest sympathy with any people or 
 party but his own — a man of some statesmanship, which was 
 entirely at the service of the Government, and which never 
 allowed him to make any consideration for the wants, the 
 wishes, or the sufferings of the Irish people. Perhaps the 
 best that can be said of him is that, while belonging to the 
 English Church, he did not wholly neglect its teachings and 
 its duties, or live a life in direct defiance of its commands — 
 which is saying a good deal for such a man in such a time. 
 So much cannot be said of his successor in the headship of 
 the Irish ecclesiastical system. Primate Stone. The grandson 
 of a jailer, he might have deserved admiration for his rise, if 
 he had not carried with him into the high places of the Church 
 a spirit stained by most of the crimes over which his ancestor 
 was appointed warder. In an age of corrupt politics he was 
 conspicuous as a corrupt politician ; in a profligate epoch he 
 was eminent for profligacy. In the basest days of the Eoman 
 Empire he would have been remarkable for the variety of his 
 sins ; and the grace of his person, which caused him to be 
 styled in savage mockery the ' Beauty of Holiness,' coupled 
 with his ingenuity in pandering to the passions of his friends, 
 would have made him a serious rival to Petronius at the 
 court of Nero. 
 
 Some ten years of persistent but unsuccessful struggling 
 -against the evils of the Irish Parliament resulted at last under 
 the viceroyalty of Lord Townshend in a distinct triumph for 
 the Patriotic party. Up to that time the Irish Parliament, 
 unless specially dissolved by the sovereign, lasted for the 
 
THE PARLIAMENT 25 
 
 whole reign, and George II. 's Parliament was in existence 
 for no less than three-and- thirty years — more than a gene- 
 ration of men. In 1768, however, the duration of Parlia- 
 ment was limited to eight years, and the enthusiasm which 
 the measure provoked lent a temporary lustre to Lord Town- 
 shend's administration. Lord Townshend — he was the 
 brother of that Townshend who made the celebrated ' cham- 
 pagne ' speech— had an important mission to fulfil, and a 
 measure of popularity was of great importance to aid him in 
 fulfilling it. The Irish nobility, with all their faults — and 
 they had many and grievous — formed what was in a measure 
 an independent Irish party. They might be hungry of gain, 
 avaricious of place and profit, corrupt, but they in a measure 
 held together and maintained the independence of the Irish 
 Parliament. That independence Lord Townshend was com- 
 missioned to break up and destroy, but his efforts only broke 
 up his own administration and destroyed his short popularity. 
 * Baratariana ' literally blew him out of the island. Flood's 
 ready pen counted for much in the merits of ' Baratariana.' 
 His style was so much admired that his name has been in- 
 cluded amongst the many candidates for the honour of having 
 written the * Letters of Junius.' It is certain that Flood did 
 not write the ' Letters of Junius,' but he rendered his country 
 a far greater service in writing the ' Letters of Syndercombe * 
 in the 'Baratariana Papers,' which pulverised Lord Town- 
 shend. 
 
 In the construction of * Baratariana ' Flood had two col- 
 leagues : one, Sir Hercules Langrishe, a man of much merit, 
 chiefly remembered as the recipient of Burke's famous letter ; 
 the other, the greatest Irish statesman of his age, Henry 
 Grattan. Grattan and Flood were at the ' Baratariana ' epoch 
 the closest friends. In spite of the disparity between their 
 ages, for Flood was some fourteen years older than Grattan, 
 they had formed a warm attachment, based upon the simi- 
 larity of their tastes, the kinship of their genius, their com- 
 mon political ambition, and their common love for their 
 country. But what might have been one of the most famous 
 
26 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 friendships in the world became shortly after the ' Baratariana * 
 epoch one of the most famous enmities in the world. 
 
 Mr. Lecky tells in his essay upon Grattan an affecting 
 anecdote. After the death of Swift a paper was found in his 
 desk containing a list of the Dean's friends, a list which 
 Swift, with the melancholy irony of his nature, had classified 
 as grateful, ungrateful, and indifferent. It is gratifying, 
 though it is not surprising, to learn that the name of Henry 
 Grattan occurs three times, and on each occasion it is marked 
 as grateful. The verdict of history and the sentiments of his 
 country endorse the judgment of the Dean of St. Patrick's, 
 There is no man whose name is more truly ' grateful ' to the 
 Irish people, and if we cared to pursue the fanciful parallel 
 further, we might even assume that there are three special 
 episodes in Grattan's life, corresponding with the three entries 
 in the list of Swift, which especially endear him to his nation 
 — his connection with the Volunteers, his advocacy of the 
 claims of his disabled fellow-citizens, and his heroic battle 
 against the Act of Union. 
 
 Henry Grattan was born in Dublin, on July 3, 1746. His 
 father, who was Eecorder of Dublin, and member of the Irish 
 Parliament, was a fierce-tempered, narrow-minded man, of a 
 temperament always ready to entertain violent animosities, 
 and to adhere stubbornly to them. Such an animosity he 
 displayed towards Lucas ; such an animosity he displayed to- 
 wards his own son, Henry Grattan, for venturing to entertain 
 opinions whose Liberal tendency was highly distasteful to the 
 stern Eecorder. When Grattan's father died, his animosity 
 towards his son survived him, and manifested itself in his will, 
 in which the family mansion was bequeathed to another. A 
 small provision was, however, secured for Grattan through 
 the influence of his mother, which enabled him to devote 
 himself to the career he had marked out for himself. From 
 his very boyhood he had distinguished himself by a passionate 
 devotion to letters, and of all branches of human art that 
 of oratory appeared at an early age to have the most attractions 
 for him. After a shining record at Trinity he was called to 
 
THE PARLIAMENT 27 
 
 the Bar, and crossed St. George's Channel to devote himself 
 in London, in the Temple, to the profession which in the 
 eighteenth century offered the most prizes to its disciples, the 
 legal profession. But it seems certain that his rooms echoed 
 more often to the sound of lofty passages of ancient and 
 modern eloquence than to the dry repetition of leading cases. 
 Oratory was the young man's passion, and in London he was 
 able to gratify his passion to the full. London, in the middle 
 of the eighteenth century, was a pleasant place enough for 
 the stranger — even a dangerously pleasant place for the im- 
 prudent and unwary. But to Grattan the chief charm of 
 London lay in its suburb of Westminster. He preferred the 
 debates in the House of Lords to the attractions of the play- 
 house, the ambitions of the great man's levee, or the intrigues 
 of the masquerade. The genius of Chatham taught him that 
 oratory was as powerful as it had been on the Bema or the 
 Eostra, and he listened with a breathless fascination to the 
 majestic periods and glowing language of the foremost states- 
 man of his time. 
 
 What he heard at Westminster Grattan studied, imitated, 
 exercised himself upon in all manner of likely and unhkely 
 places. We hear of an alarmed landlady imploring Grattan's 
 friends to look after the wild young man who paced his room 
 of nights when decent folk were abed, muttering to himself 
 and apostrophising some mysterious individual whom he 
 hailed as Mr. Speaker. Another even more fantastic story is 
 recorded of him. Wandering one day in Windsor Forest he 
 came upon an abandoned gibbet. His moody imagination — 
 at that time his mind was strangely moody — fired by the 
 strange scene, inspired him, and he was declaiming to himself 
 energetically before the deserted gallows when his eloquence 
 was interrupted by someone touching him on the shoulder, 
 and on looking round he was addressed by a passer-by, whom 
 the strange spectacle had attracted, with the whimsical query : 
 ' Pray, sir, how did you get down ? ' a query significantly pointed 
 by a gesture in the direction of the tenantless gibbet. 
 
 In 17G8 he returned to Ireland to become the close friend 
 
28 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 of Henry Flood, and, more gradually, of all the eminent 
 men of the day. Charlemont, scholarly, travelled, urbane ; 
 Hercules Langrishe, whose services, says Burke, * will never be 
 forgotten by a grateful country ' ; Hussey Burgh, eloquent and 
 eager ; these and many others were in the nearest circle 
 of Grattan's friendships. In such company his political zeal 
 could not fail to flourish and his political ambition to in- 
 crease. His rare talents were well known ; his friends were 
 influential ; a Parliamentary career was essential. In 1775 
 he entered Parliament as member for the borough of Charle- 
 mont, to which he had been nominated by Lord Charlemont. 
 He entered Parliament at a peculiar time — a time which 
 afforded him an opportunity of immediately distinguishing 
 himself, and his enemies of accusing him of acting ungener- 
 ously towards a friend. 
 
 Flood, most unfortunately for his fame, had gratified the 
 natural desire of Lord Harcourt by accepting a lucrative 
 office. As Vice-Treasurer he was practically muzzled, and 
 the indignant Patriots found themselves without a leader. 
 Grattan, by natural right stepped into the vacant leadership. 
 It is probable that, even if Flood had not accepted office and 
 alienated his party, Grattan's superior genius would have 
 given him the leadership ; but with Flood swathed and 
 silenced by ofhce, Grattan's only possible course and duty 
 was to take the lead of the Patriot party, and he can in no 
 sense be said to have acted unfairly towards Flood. Flood 
 lost the confidence of his followers and his friends by his own 
 fault ; he could no longer lead his party, nor would the party 
 longer submit to be led by him. Grattan came upon the 
 scene in a timely hour to rally the Patriots and carry on the 
 important work of opposition. 
 
 It is indeed deeply to be regretted that one result of Flood's 
 action was the quarrel which followed between Grattan and 
 him. Undoubtedly Flood's action in accepting the Vice- 
 Treasurership seemed to Grattan an act of base political 
 apostasy. On the other hand. Flood, striving eagerly to 
 justify to his own mind his action, smarted at the swift sue- 
 
THE PARLIAMENT 29 
 
 cess with which Grattan took his place as leader of the Patriots. 
 The alliance between the two orators was definitely broken off. 
 They had been the closest friends ; they had worked jointly 
 on that marvellous ' Baratariana ' which upset Lord Town- 
 shend. They had seemed destined by their common genius 
 and their common aims to be comrades for life. But the hot 
 friendship cooled after Flood's acceptance of office ; it was 
 finally severed in the fierce discussion that took place between 
 them some years later in the House of Commons, when Flood 
 tauntingly described Grattan as a mendicant patriot, and 
 Grattan retorted by painting Flood as a traitor in one of the 
 most crushing and pitiless pieces of invective that have ever 
 belonged to oratory. 
 
 CHAPTER m. 
 
 THE VOLUNTEER S. 
 
 England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity. Over in the 
 American colonies Mr. Washington and his rebels were pressing 
 hard upon the troops of King George. More than one garri- 
 son had been compelled to surrender, more than one general 
 had given up his bright sword to a revolutionary leader. On 
 the hither side of the Atlantic the American Hag was scarcely 
 less dreaded than at Yorktown and Saratoga. Paul Jones 
 had found his world beyond the sapphire promontory of St. 
 Bees, and the Bon Homme Bichard was a name of terror still 
 by Flamborough and elsewhere. Ireland, drained of troops, 
 lay open to invasion. The terrible Paul Jones was drifting 
 about the seas ; descents upon Ireland were dreaded ; if such 
 descents had been made the island was practically defence- 
 less. An alarmed Mayor of Belfast, appealing to the Govern- 
 ment for military aid, was informed that no more serious 
 and more formidable assistance could be rendered to the 
 chief city of the North than might be given by half a troop of 
 dismounted cavalry and half a troop of invalids. If the 
 
30 IRELAND 8TNCB THE VNlON 
 
 Frencli-American enemy would consent to be scared by such a 
 muster, well and good ; if not Belfast, and for the matter of 
 that, all Ireland, must look to itself. Thereupon Ireland, very 
 promptly and decisively, did look to itself. A Militia Act was 
 passed empowering the formation of volunteer corps — consist- 
 ing, of course, solely of Protestants — for the defence of the 
 island. A fever of military enthusiasm swept over the country ; 
 north and south and east and west men caught up arms, nomi- 
 nally to resist the French, really, though they knew it not, to 
 effect one of the greatest constitutional revolutions in history. 
 Before a startled Government could realise what was occurring 
 sixty thousand men were under arms. For the first time 
 since the surrender of Limerick there was an armed force in 
 Ireland able and willing to support a national cause. 
 
 Suddenly, almost in the twinkling of an eye, Ireland found 
 herself for the first time for generations in the possession of 
 a well-armed, well-disciplined, and well-generalled military 
 force. The armament that was organised to insure the safety 
 of England was destined to achieve the liberties of Ireland. 
 England, in the fine words of Hussey Burgh, had sown her 
 laws like dragons' teeth, and they had sprung up as armed 
 men. All talk of organisation to resist foreign invasion was 
 silenced ; in its place the voice of the nation was heard loudly 
 calling for the redress of its domestic grievances. Their 
 leader was Cbarlemont ; Grattan and Flood were their princi- 
 pal colonels ; one of their chief patrons was Frederick Hervey, 
 Earl of Bristol and Bishop of Derry. 
 
 James Caulfield, Earl of Cbarlemont, whose name will be 
 for ever associated with the struggle of the Volunteers for 
 liberty, was a high-minded and accomplished gentleman, 
 scholar and statesman. His grave, handsome face, in which 
 the air of sternness imparted by the intensely dark eyebrows, 
 is softened by the kindly grace of the mouth, is as familiar 
 to students of Irish history as the countenance of a friend. 
 At the time when the volunteer movement gave him his pro- 
 minent place in Irish history he was fifty-four years old. He 
 had travelled much in his youth — much, that is, for an age 
 
THE VOTMNTEBRS 31 
 
 in which the traditions of the Grand Tour still taught men to 
 regard the circle of a few Continental towns as extended 
 travel. He had been in Sicily ; he had been in Greece, then 
 almost an ultima Thule to travellers ; he had been in Constan- 
 tinople, and had formed a more favourable notion of the 
 ' unspeakable Turk ' than was then fashionable ; he had been 
 in Egypt — ' that land of wonders,' as he called it— at a time 
 when the ' Mille et Une Nuits ' of the ingenious Galland was 
 still almost a new book. He numbered among his close per- 
 sonal friends in London all that was cultivated, all that was 
 brilliant and attractive of that strangely brilliant society. To 
 read some of his correspondence is to live over again the age 
 of Johnson, and to join fellowship with the famous shades of 
 Boswell's biography. Querulous Italian Baretti, dashing 
 Topham Beauclerk, Horace Walpole, Dr. Johnson, Goldsmith, 
 Burke, Sir Joshua Pieynolds— in a word, all that matchless 
 world of men of letters, wits, statesmen, and artists were 
 his closest personal friends. He was himself well fitted to 
 take his place amongst them as a scholar and an author. His 
 favourite study was Italian literature, of which he had a pro- 
 found knowledge, and his translations of Petrarch may be 
 found pleasing by the most enthusiastic admirer of the lover 
 of Laura. ' One of the most accomplished persons of the 
 time,' his biographer, Mr. Francis Hardy, calls him, ' and 
 certainly as amiable, as patriotic, and truly honest man as 
 ever yet existed in any age or in any country.' Such was the 
 man whom destiny now called upon to take the lead in one of 
 the most remarkable military movements in history, and to 
 write his name indelibly in the roll of those who have laboured 
 for Irish liberty. 
 
 Seldom, perhaps, has a more eccentric figure strutted upon 
 the stage of history than the Earl of Bristol, who was also 
 Bishop of Berry. The Bishop was a son of the famous Lord 
 Hervey, who wrote those memoirs of the reign of George II. 
 which give us so living a picture of the stupidity and brutality 
 of the Hanoverian king, and the corruption of his court. The 
 memoir- writing Lord Hervey was not a very admirable speci- 
 
32 IRELAND SINCE THE VNION 
 
 men of the last century gentleman. Pope has gibbeted him 
 for ever under the nickname of ' Sporus,' and there is little 
 that is either honourable or attractive in the whole of his 
 record. His marriage with the beautiful Molly Lepell, for 
 whom Chesterfield wrote some famous verses, his absurd duel 
 with Pulteney, his quarrel with Pope, his sickly effeminacy, 
 which would have better fitted him for some place in the court 
 of Heliogabalus than in last century London, which, with all 
 its faults, was not unmanly — all these facts are familiar to us 
 from the memoirs and the scandals of the Georgian age. 
 
 The son was worthy of the father. As unprincipled, as 
 eccentric, as ridiculous as his sire, the Lord Bishop of Derry 
 affected to be, on the one hand, a consummate dandy, and, 
 on the other, to be not merely a profoundly cultured scholar 
 but a great statesman. He had not, however, the physical 
 feebleness, nor did he affect the contemptible effeminacy of 
 his father. He seemed rather a combination of the typical 
 Parisian dbhe of the last century and the conventional soldier 
 of fortune. If there were something in him of De Choisy, 
 there was something in him also of Dougall Dalgetty, or Sir 
 John Hawks wood. He loved splendour of all kinds ; he loved 
 gorgeous dresses ; he loved to make himself conspicuous by 
 any means and in any manner. He fancied himself to be the 
 type of man who can dash off an epigram to a lady's lap-dog 
 at one moment and direct the movement of an army at the 
 next ; who can sit up all night in a revel with boon com- 
 panions and reel from the supper-table to dictate the terms of 
 a treaty, or lay down the principles for some new scheme of 
 mental or moral philosophy. He thought himself the Csesar 
 of the English peerage and the English Church ; he was, in 
 fact, a sort of vulgar caricature of Bolingbroke, with all 
 Bolingbroke's most besetting weaknesses, and none whatever 
 of Bolingbroke's ability. Such was the man who saw in the 
 volunteer movement the opportunity for making himself 
 especially prominent — who is said to have seen in it the 
 opportunity for exchanging the mitre of a bishop for the crown 
 of a king. 
 
THE VOLUNTEERS 83 
 
 On a day early in the October of 1779 three men walked 
 by the seashore at Bray, and talked of the strange fortune 
 of then country while the autumn haze hung over the grey 
 slopes of * the year grown old.' There are few fairer sea- 
 views within the compass of the world than that which 
 presents itself to the wanderer along the Wicklow coast. 
 Not where Parthenope sleeps in the blue embrace of the tide- 
 less sea, not where the rock of Palamedes overlooks the 
 town of Nauplia, nor where the citadel of the Byzantine 
 emperors frowns over the smooth waters of Smyrna Bay can 
 a fairer prospect be found, or a nobler theatre for a scene in 
 the arenas of freedom. The three men who trod that enchanted 
 ground were Grattan, Hussey Burgh, and Daly, and their 
 talk was of the Volunteers and the new power they gave to the 
 Patriots, and of the coming session of Parliament. That 
 morning gave birth to the resolve to demand free trade for 
 Ireland, which found its realisation a little later when the 
 Irish Parliament accorded its thanks to the volunteers for 
 their exertions in ' defence of their country.' From that 
 same morning's walk by the sea may be traced the steady 
 progress of events which culminated at last in the Convention 
 at Dungannon on February 15, 1782, when the Volunteers 
 formed themselves into an organised convention for the pur- 
 pose of agitating the national wrongs. Graitan was not, in- 
 deed, a member of this Convention, but he was heart and soul 
 in sympathy with it. With statesmanlike sagacity he saw 
 that with the existence of the Volunteers had come the hour 
 to heal the hurts of the Irish Parliament, and he seized 
 upon the opportunity. He had an army at his back ; the 
 Government was still striving with Mr. Washington and his 
 rebels ; it was out-manoeuvred and had to give way, and to 
 the formal national demand for liberty formulated by Grattan 
 in his immortal appeal to the spirit of Swift and the spirit of 
 Molyneux. All that Grattan asked for was granted ; the 
 hateful sixth Act of George I. was repealed. Grattan had, 
 indeed, traced the progress of his country from injury to arms 
 
 D 
 
34 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION- 
 
 and from arms to liberty, and it was witla no faltering voice 
 that he wished her as a nation a perpetual existence. 
 
 Unfortunately for Ireland, the history of her Volunteers 
 comes to an end with the opening of the brief chapter of her 
 national existence. Unfortunately for Ireland, the genius of 
 Grattan was not able to perfect the work it had so nearly ac- 
 complished. Grattan, backed by the Volunteers, had obtained 
 the repeal of the famous Declaratory Act asserting the depen- 
 dence of the Irish Parliament upon the English Parliament. 
 In the accomplishment of this repeal Grattan and his friends 
 saw the completion of their task ; while Flood and his allies 
 saw in it only the preface to a fresh and greater task. Repeal 
 of the Declaratory Act was not enough, Flood urged ; they 
 must seek to win, while they still had the power to dictate 
 terms, a full and formal renunciation of the usurped authority 
 over the Irish Parliament. Flood, therefore, was eager for the 
 retention of the Volunteers in armed existence to force the 
 hand of England's tardy and reluctant justice. Grattan, who 
 maintained that England had conceded all that could rightly 
 be demanded of her, was no less eager for the immediate dis- 
 bandment and dispersal of the Volunteers. He believed that 
 their duty was done, and he saw in their further existence a 
 Praetorian menace to the newly-acquired liberties which they 
 had been so powerful in obtaining. Grattan carried his point ; 
 the full and complete renunciation which Flood desired was 
 not won. Flood failed, too, in carrying the Volunteer Reform 
 Bill for enlarging the franchise, and the Volunteers disbanded 
 and dispersed. Wonderful as was the way in which they had 
 come into existence, their dispersal was almost as wonder- 
 ful. That vast body of men who yesterday were in arms to 
 achieve their country's freedom, to-day had vanished, and left 
 * not a wrack behind.' The citizen army had been absorbed 
 into civil life. * The earth has bubbles as the water has, 
 and these are of them,' we may imagine some English states- 
 man saying, as the formidable array that had proved so 
 threatening for a season melted out of existence at the bidding 
 of Grattan. 
 
THE VOLUNTEERS 35 
 
 The rise of the Volunteers and the repeal of the sixth Act 
 of George I. had given triumph into Grattan's hands. But 
 at the moment when the desires of the Patriot party had 
 been apparently fulfilled the popularity of Grattan, by a 
 curious example of the law of historical reaction, began to 
 wane, and that of Flood, which had clouded over ever since 
 his acceptance of office from Lord Harcourt's hands, began to 
 wax anew. The difference of opinion between the two great 
 leaders is eminently characteristic of their respective natures. 
 Grattan maintained that by the repeal of the Declaratory Act 
 England had sufficiently and practically abandoned her supre- 
 macy over the Irish Parliament. Flood maintained that the 
 mere repeal of the Declaratory Act was not enough without a 
 formal renunciation of the principle upon which that Declara- 
 tory Act had been based. Here Gratian showed a certain 
 generous confidence in his opponents which Flood believed to 
 be misplaced. Grattan, too, was convinced of the imperative 
 necessity of immediately dissolving and dispersing the Volun- 
 teers. Their work, he contended, had been happily accom- 
 plished ; their further existence would be a standing peril to 
 the independence of Parliament and the liberties of the people. 
 Flood, on the other hand, urged that Ireland had not yet 
 accomplished much, that her independent Parliament was in 
 sore need of reform, and that a nation in cnns Avas in the 
 only position in which it could reasonably hope to accom- 
 plish that reform in the face of so many and so powerful 
 antagonists. Here, again, Grattan's was the more generous, 
 Flood's the shrewder view of the situation. 
 
 Reviewing the opinions of the two men, it is difficult to 
 avoid the impression that it would have been happier for 
 Ireland if Flood had carried his point, while it is scarcely less 
 difficult not to feel greater admiration for the loftier theories of 
 Grattan. If the world had been all Grattans, then Grattan's 
 pure and high-minded principles would have been best for the 
 welfare of the country. But, as the world concained only one 
 Grattan, it is ten thousand pities that the advice of Flood was 
 not followed, and that the Volunteers were not kept in exist- 
 
36 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 ence, at least until some of the most crying needs of reform 
 were satisfied. It is one of those cases in which, while the 
 event proved Flood to have been in the right, we could wish 
 for the honour of humanity that time should have justified 
 Grattan. 
 
 Mr. Lecky thoroughly supports Flood. ' Had he succeeded,' 
 he says, ' he would have placed the independence of Ireland 
 on the broad basis of the people's will ; he would have forti- 
 fied and completed the glorious work that he had himself 
 begun, and he would have averted a series of calamities which 
 have not even yet spent their force. We should never have 
 known the long night of corruption that overcast the splendour 
 of Irish liberty. The blood of 1798 might never have flowed. 
 The Legislative Union would never have been consummated, 
 or, if there had been a Union, it would have been effected by 
 the will of the people, and not by the treachery of their re- 
 presentatives, and it would have been remembered only with 
 gratitude or with content.' 
 
 After the failure of his Eeform Bill and the disbandment 
 of the Volunteers, Flood retired from the Irish Parliament in 
 despair, and, crossing the sea, sought and found a seat in the 
 English Parliament. But, as Grattan said, * he was an oak 
 of the forest too great and too old to be transplanted at fifty.' 
 The prematurely-aged man, with his countenance disfigured 
 by disease, and his temperament embittered by long years of 
 unpopularity, misunderstanding, and strife, was a very dif- 
 ferent being from the handsome, easy-tempered, happy-minded 
 young man who, a quarter of a century before, had entered 
 the Irish Parliament under such favourable auspices. His 
 first speech in the English House of Commons was, unhappily, 
 made in an Indian debate upon a theme of which he knew 
 little, and though the House soon crowded to hear the renowned 
 orator, the effect was disappointing, and Flood's discomfiture 
 was rendered more painful by a fierce and contemptuous attack 
 which was made upon him by another member the moment 
 he sat down. After that Flood spoke seldom in Parliament, 
 and after a while he retired from political life altogether, a 
 
THE VOLUNTEERS 37 
 
 disappointed, broken man. He died at his estate at Farmley, 
 near Kilkenny, on December 2, 1791. He may be considered 
 happy in escaping, even by this too early death, from the 
 horrors of ninety-eight and the degradation of the Union, 
 horrors and degradation which his shrewdness foresaw, and 
 which his policy would have avoided. 
 
 When Grattan lay upon his death-bed, after his last heroic 
 attempt to plead the cause of the Catholics at Westminster, 
 some of his latest words were uttered in generous praise of 
 the man who had been his closest friend and fiercest enemy ; 
 who had been for long his rival in oratory and in the affections 
 of the Irish people ; who was almost his peer in genius — 
 Henry Flood. Grattan had outlived Flood by the length of 
 nearly a generation of men ; unlike too many statesmen, he 
 had outlived also the passions and animosities of his hot man- 
 hood, and could afford, in his ultimate hour, to speak with 
 decorous admiration of the man whom he had once confronted 
 pistol in hand, whom he had more than once believed it his 
 duty to denounce with all the vehemence and all the vigour 
 of which he was capable. 
 
 The wild Bishop of Derry was very indignant at the dis- 
 persal of the Volunteers. His occuToation was gone. He had 
 little or no influence with the Volunteers, but it delighted him 
 to believe that he was all-potent in the councih that directed 
 them. He saw in himself the chosen leader of a great 
 rebellion, holding in the hollow of his hand the destinies of 
 nations, arbitrating between peace and war, and settling the 
 Parliamentary independence of Ireland as easily as the 
 appointment to a living. He drifted in disgust out of Dublin 
 and out of history. He lived for a while in Naples a mad, 
 foolish life, and died in Eome in 1803. Wiser heads and 
 better hearts than the Bishop of Derry regretted the disband- 
 ment of the Volunteers, Flood was more far-seeing than 
 Grattan in his policy. Englishmen and Irishmen, who are 
 learning to agree upon so many great questions, may very well 
 be agreed upon this point, that it would have been well to 
 keep the Volunteers in existence yet a while. Had Flood's 
 
38 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 advice been followed it is possible that Ireland and England 
 might at this moment be proud of the reformed Parliament; 
 that Irishmen and Englishmen would have had no need to 
 speak of ninety- eight. 
 
 Certain English statesmen are fond of asserting in the 
 present day that Ireland is in reality devotedly attached to 
 the English connection in its present form ; that it is only 
 the harsh voices of a discontented few which make themselves 
 heard with the greater distinctness because of the general peace 
 and contentment of the country/ Yet the statesmen who 
 deceive their followers, if not themselves, by such pitiful 
 pretences, would be horrified at the bare idea of allowing 
 Irishmen again to organise a volunteer force, to publicly arm 
 and drill, to unite in vast bodies at great military conventions. 
 Luckily for Ireland, she no longer needs such volunteers to 
 accomplish her purpose of a restored Parliament. In the 
 unconquerable nationality of her children, in her friendship 
 with true English Liberalism, in the determination and 
 fidehty of her delegates to the Enghsh Parliament, in the 
 wisdom of her leader, in the genius of the great English 
 statesman who has eclipsed the fame of Fox and made him- 
 self the founder of a true union between the two divided 
 countries, in the sympathy and the honest desire for justice 
 of the English people, lie Ireland's hope and Ireland's cer- 
 tainty of perfecting the work of constitutional freedom which 
 was begun by the Volunteers of 1782. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 NINETY-EIGHT. 
 
 The Parliament which Grattan and the Volunteers had 
 created did much that was worthy of its founders, but the 
 difficulties against which it had to struggle were too severe to 
 allow the liberty-tree which had been planted to come to any- 
 thiiig like a full maturity. Viceroy after viceroy was sent 
 
NINETY-EIGHT 39 
 
 over to counteract by all the means in his power — and a 
 viceroy in those days had many means — the gradual revival 
 of Irish independence. The vast system of corruption which 
 then existed rendered such efforts on the part of the viceroy 
 comparatively easy, and practically placed the majority in the 
 House of Commons in the hollow of his hand. Discontent 
 and distress reigned over the greater part of the country. 
 Beligious feuds had broken out in the North, owing to the 
 continued oppression of the supporters of the Ascendency 
 party, who could not be induced to recognise the new spirit 
 of toleration for the Catholic majority, which was gradually 
 making its way into the political creed of the day. The feud, 
 which gradually spread, was augmented and intensified by 
 the existing system of tithes. The unpopular clergy of the 
 Established Church paid little heed to their benefices. They 
 left their very scanty congregations to be looked after by some 
 unhappy curate, and followed themselves the majority of the 
 landlord party in becoming absentees, and leaving to the 
 middlemen and tithe-proctors the odious task of extorting 
 from the suffering and reluctant Catholic population the 
 heavy tithes enforced for the maintenance of the dominant 
 Church. 
 
 It is small wonder that under circumstances like these 
 there were disturbances in various parts of the country, and 
 that secret and mysterious organisations came into existence 
 under the guidance of an occult and potent Captain Eock, to 
 protect the peasant against the tithe-proctor and the absentee 
 clergyman. The Government, as usual, met the discontent 
 and disaffection, which was engendered by misery, with 
 coercion, and not with redress. Savage restrictive enact- 
 ments were called into existence to curb the agitation which 
 want and oppression had created. Under such circumstances, 
 those Irish politicians who loved their country may well have 
 thought that the work accomplished by the Volunteers was 
 not sufficient, and it was time again to make an effort to 
 protect the threatened rights and liberties of their country. 
 
 There was much to encourage a hopeful belief in the 
 
40 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 success of any cause which had Eight and Liberty for its watch- 
 words. Just then France was giving, as she gave half a 
 century later, the signal to Ireland to make an effort for self- 
 redress. The French Eevolution had just broken out. Its 
 brilliant success had fascinated the minds of ardent politicians, 
 whose better natures had not yet been revolted by the 
 atrocities which later on disgraced and degraded it. When 
 politicians of no very advanced temper, like Lord Charlemont 
 and the members of the Whig Club, were celebrating with 
 triumphant banquets the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, 
 and sending round such toasts as ' The Eevolution ' and ' The 
 Eights of Man,' it is scarcely matter for marvel that younger 
 and more impetuous spirits should have been fired by the 
 example of democratic Paris, and thought that what the 
 revolutionary clubs had accomplished across the Channel 
 could be accomplished equally well in Dublin. 
 
 Grattan's first dream had been to obtain a free Parliament ; 
 his second was to make that Parhament worthy of its own 
 freedom by recognising the right to liberty of the Catholics 
 of Ireland. Catholic Emancipation was now the object of 
 Grattan's ambition. The horrors of the Penal Code were no 
 longer, indeed, enforced in all their naked brutality against 
 the majority of the people of Ireland. In the words of Mr. 
 Lecky, ' the Code perished at last by its own atrocity.' Its 
 malignant ingenuity in the end defeated itself ; to carry out 
 with perfection and persistence the full clauses of that Code 
 would have required the strength of a whole community as 
 perverted as the original framers of the laws. Happily for 
 human nature, no such corrupt community was to be found. 
 The Irish Protestants sickened of the provisions of the Penal 
 Code. Through the strength of public opinion most of its 
 provisions fell into disuse, and only lingered in nominal 
 existence on the pages of the statute-book. Even from the 
 statute-book the clauses of the Penal Code were one by one 
 being slowly effaced. In 1768 a Bill to modify the provisions 
 of the Penal Code was passed in the Irish House of Commons 
 and defeated in the English House, PvOliof Bills cf various 
 
NINETY-EIGHT 41 
 
 kinds were passed in 1774, 1778, 1782, and 1792. The effect 
 of these measures was to restore to the Irish Cathohcs a large 
 number of those rights and privileges of citizenship of which 
 they had been so ruthlessly deprived. Most — but not all, nor 
 the most important. The right to vote for representatives in 
 Parliament, the right to enter Parliament, and the right to ad- 
 vancement in law or in arms were still sternly denied to them. 
 
 There was at this time a young barrister in Ireland who 
 was looked upon by his family and by his frierjds as rather a 
 ■ hopeless kind of person. He had not employed his time at 
 the University with that diligence which leads to the capture 
 of academic honours, he had not devoted himself to his pro- 
 fession of the Bar with that patience and endurance which 
 afforded any prospects of a Lord Chancellorship. He seemed 
 to the sensible, prudent people with whom he came in contact 
 to be a hopelessly lazy, impracticable young man, a dreamer 
 of absurd dreams, with his head stuffed with fantastic political 
 notions which no right-minded person could tolerate, or, 
 indeed, understand ; the sort of young man, in fact, who never 
 would come to anything, or bring credit upon his people. 
 His name was Theobald Wolfe Tone. To Theobald Wolfe 
 Tone, discontented with his lot, conscious, no doubt, of the 
 waste of his fine genius in the narrow pursuits and possibilities 
 of his daily life, and indignant at the oppression and injustice 
 endured by his countrymen, the new ideas that were in the 
 air very naturally commended themselves. It occurred to 
 him that a union effected between the rising democracy in tlie 
 North of Ireland with the long down-trodden and ignored 
 Catholic interest might result in the creation of a formidable 
 political party. He sketched out this idea in a pamphlet, and 
 then went to Belfast and founded there a small association — 
 destined to become one of the most famous organisations for 
 political purposes ever founded — called the Society of United 
 Irishmen. 
 
 Tone's pamphlet and Tone's organisation were the be- 
 ginning of a nevN^ era. A branch society was immediately 
 formed in Dublin, and joined by many conspicuous poHticians. 
 
42 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Branches, too, were established in various parts of Ulster, and 
 adherents came in with great rapidity. The objects of the 
 Society would not seem to us of to-day to be very revolutionary, 
 although they sounded horridly in the ears of the Ascendency. 
 Every member of the United Irishmen pledged himself to use 
 all his abilities to obtain an impartial and adequate represen- 
 tation of the Irish nation in Parliament, and to do all that lay 
 in his power to forward a union of affection and of interest 
 among Irishmen of all religious persuasions. 
 
 It must not be supposed, though it is too often imagined, 
 that Wolfe Tone started with the desire of severing his coun- 
 try from all connection with England. Mr. Gladstone, in a 
 recent remarkable speech, said very truly : ' If there is an Irish 
 name associated with the idea of separation more than any 
 other name, it is the name of Wolfe Tone ; but in the year 
 1791 Wolfe Tone declared that he was not favourable to sepa- 
 ration from the British Crown. He declared then, what 
 O'Connell declared afterwards in very clear terms, that the 
 two countries were in his view to be united by the golden link 
 of the Crown.' 
 
 It was at once resolved to hold a convention in Dublin 
 after the fashion of the Volunteer Convention. On December 
 2, 1792, the convention met in Taylor's Hall, Back Lane, 
 Dublin, and five delegates were chosen to present a petition 
 to the king, praying for the restoration of his Koman Catholic 
 subjects to the rights and privileges of the constitution. A 
 month later the five delegates gave their petition into the 
 hands of his Majesty, and the result was the Eoman Catholic 
 Relief Bill of 1793. So much the Government conceded to the 
 new organisation, and to the feeling of alarm and insecurity 
 caused by the rapid strides of the Ee volution in France. But 
 if the Government conceded something to the Back Lane Par- 
 liament, as it was called, with one hand, it struck at the exis- 
 tence of that body with the other. 
 
 A relief measure of any kind is always accompanied in the 
 history of Ireland with a coercion measure ; and on this occa- 
 sion the Catholic Belief Bill came into the world accompanied 
 
NINETY-EIGHT 43 
 
 by three coercive measures, one of wliicli — the Convention 
 Act— was specially framed to prevent the possibility of any 
 fm'ther Back Lane Parliaments dictating terms to the Govern- 
 ment. As usual, coercive measures increased the disturbances 
 in the country. United Irishmen became more active than 
 ever in spreading their propaganda. And then the Govern- 
 ment struck a decided blow at the new and dangerous body. 
 Mr. Simon Butler, a brother of Lord Mountgarret and chair- 
 man of the United Irishmen, and Oliver Bond, were arrested, 
 imprisoned, and fined. Hamilton Eowan, the secretary of the 
 body, was arrested, imprisoned, and fined, but succeeded in 
 escaping from prison to America. Wolfe Tone was to have 
 been prosecuted, but, through the influence of powerful 
 friends, he was allowed to go to America with his wife and 
 family. Taylor's Hall, the Back Lane Parliament, was broken 
 into by the police, and all the papers and United Irishmen 
 were seized. An English clergyman named Jackson, who 
 had joined the United Irishmen, was tried for treason in 
 attempting to bring about an alliance with France. He 
 would have been convicted on the evidence of the usual, and, 
 indeed, inevitable informer, but he anticipated his judgment 
 by committing suicide. The Government was under the fond 
 impression that it had stamped out United Irishmen for good 
 and all. 
 
 The very effort to suppress the United Irishmen, however, 
 only gave it a newer and more dangerous existence. It had 
 hitherto been a legal and constitutional body, acting, in accord- 
 ance with the rights of every citizen, for the amelioration of 
 the constitution ; it was now to become a great secret society, 
 spreading its influence into every part of Ireland, and having 
 for its object the definite destruction of English dominion in 
 Ireland, and the establishment of an Irish republic. Wolfe 
 Tone, indeed, had gone away, in temporary exile, into the 
 United States ; but other and no less important leaders had 
 joined the movement and filled his place. Wolfe Tone's 
 absence was only temporary. He had said to a friend, as he 
 was leaving Ireland, that he was going to France by way of 
 
44 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 America. To Richard Lalor Sheil, it seems surprising that 
 Tone should have cherished in the security and prosperity of 
 his American home the revolutionary doctrines which drove 
 him into exile. ' There,' says Sheil, 'in the bosom of his 
 family, with a wife whom he adored, and children who shared 
 in his idolatry for their incomparable mother, he might have 
 had a long and prosperous life, if he knew how to form a just 
 estimate of felicity, and could have appreciated the opportu- 
 nities of happiness with which he was encompassed.' Sheil 
 was a great orator, but he was not capable of understanding 
 the principles which animated the nature of a man like Wolfe 
 Tone. It evidently surprised him that an Irishman, with the 
 opportunity of a comfortable and peaceful home in a foreign 
 country, should really risk his welfare and his life for such 
 a dream as patriotism— ' perverted patriotism,' he calls the 
 generous heroism which sent Wolfe Tone back from America 
 to France, to Ireland and to his death. 
 
 Tone might well, however, have found encouragement for 
 his action in the treatment received by Irish statesmanship of 
 the most constitutional type. Grattan made himself the 
 mouthpiece of a movement organised by the Irish Catholics 
 in 1793, and having for its object the removal of these final 
 disabilities. One of them Grattan succeeded in abolishing. 
 In 1793, thanks to his efforts and his eloquence, the Catholics 
 were admitted to the elective franchise. But in his second 
 effort to allow Catholics to be elected to Parliament, Grattan 
 failed. That failure and the recall of Lord Fitzwilliam pre- 
 cipitated the rebellion of ninety-eight. Despairing of the 
 condition of his country, unable to sympathise either with the 
 party of rebellion or the party of repression, Grattan retired 
 from political life. 
 
 The United Irishmen had found other leaders during 
 Wolfe Tone's absence. Of these the most conspicuous and 
 the most famous was ' the gallant and seditious Geraldine,' 
 who is dear to so many Irish national songs as ' Lord Edward.' 
 Lord Edward Fitzgerald came of an ancient family, which 
 on one side traced its descent from a proud Italian house, and 
 
NINETY- ETGHT 45 
 
 on the other was hnked with the Hne of the Stuarts. The 
 courtly poet, Surrey, who had the misfortune to Hve under a 
 monarch hke Henry VIII., had loved a daughter of the house 
 of Geraldine, and has devoted to her praise sonnets almost as 
 sweetas those that were written in the native Tuscan of herrace. 
 It was of the Irish Geraldines that the phrase had come into 
 existence that they were * more Irish than the Irish them- 
 selves ; ' and more than one member of that brave and illus- 
 trious household had borne testimony to the truth of the say- 
 ing with his blood. Latterly, however, the Geraldines had 
 fallen away from their fame, and had ceased to play a con- 
 spicuous part in history. It was reserved for a young man, 
 a soldier in the service of England, who had fought and bled 
 in the American war, to revive the old glories of his race, and 
 to lend them a brighter lustre. 
 
 Lord Edward Fitzgerald was almost the ideal hero of 
 romance : young, handsoixe, brilliant, gallant, he shines in 
 the darkness of the darkest pages in Irish history like the 
 creation of a poet. It is easy to understand how Lord Byron 
 was captivated by his story and by his untimely fate, and saw 
 in him a magnificent subject for some future historical novel. 
 There is a story, but we do not believe it, that Lord Edward 
 Fitzgerald's beauty, bravery, and genius, were the means of 
 inflicting a pang upon one of the most charming women of 
 her time, and of causing a wrong to one of the greatest and 
 most gifted of Irishmen. The legend is that Sheridan's 
 beautiful and devoted wife fell hopelessly in love with Lord 
 Edward Fitzgerald, and that her ill-fated passion hastened 
 her death. . Moore, however, denies the story strongly, and 
 there is no reason for us to believe that the woman who was 
 fortunate enough to have secured the homage and affection of 
 Richard Brinsley Sheridan should have ever turned her heart 
 towards another object, even were that another Irishman so 
 handsome, so heroic, so accomplished as Edward Fitzgerald. 
 Lord Edward Fitzgerald himself fell deeply in love with and 
 married the fair and mysterious Pamela, who, in spite of 
 the statements of Madame de Genlis, there is no reason 
 
46 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 now to doubt was indeed the daughter of PhiHppe EgaHte. 
 Fitzgerald adored his young and beautiful wife, who was, per- 
 haps, hardly worthy of the devotion of that noble heart. It 
 is curious to reflect that the three women whose names are 
 associated with the three greatest figures of that revolutionary 
 movement — the wife of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the wife of 
 Wolfe Tone, and the affianced bride of Kobert Emmet- 
 should each have injured the memory of the great men with 
 whose lives they were associated by consenting to accept the 
 love and names of others. The widow of Fitzgerald, the 
 widow of Tone, and the betrothed of Emmet might well have 
 been proud to have carried to their graves the names by which 
 they were known to their patriot lovers. 
 
 The French Eevolution had captivated Fitzgerald as it 
 attracted Wolfe Tone. One small fact illustrates in a curious 
 way the difference in the character of the two revolutionary 
 leaders. When the United Irishmen in their early days 
 insisted upon addressing one another after the fashion of 
 republican Paris as ' citizen,' Wolfe Tone protested strongly 
 against the innovation, very much as Mirabeau had himself 
 protested against it. ' With your citizen, Eiquetti,' said 
 Mirabeau, ' you have perplexed all Europe.' Wolfe Tone 
 protested scarcely less vehemently against the use of a title 
 which did not really alter the relative positions of those who 
 used it. But the imagination of Fitzgerald, on the other 
 hand, was seized by the picturesque and poetic notions of 
 equality, and he insisted at once upon dropping his own 
 courtesy title and being greeted and addressed merely as 
 Citizen Edward Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's republicanism, his 
 admiration of the Revolution, and his alliance with the 
 daughter of Philippe Egalite earned for him the anger of his 
 kinsmen and of his class, and the removal of his name from 
 the roll of the British army. He threw himself with enthu- 
 siasm into the cause of the United Irishmen, worked vigorously 
 with Oliver Bond and Thomas Addis Emmet and MacNevin 
 and the other leaders of the movement, and went over to 
 France on a mission to the Republican Directory. 
 
NINETY-EIGHT 47 
 
 Once again his alliance with the House of Orleans was 
 injurious to him. The French Directory prohibited him from 
 entering France, and he remained at Hamburg while other 
 emissaries went to point out to the Eepublican Government 
 the possibility of a French invasion of Ireland. Wolfe Tone, 
 true to his promise of going to France by America, had now 
 once more made his appearance in Europe. The eloquence 
 and the arguments of the United Irishmen impressed the 
 French Directory, and an army of invasion was organised 
 under the command of General Hoche. But disaster attended 
 upon all the attempts to land a French army in Ireland. The 
 winds and waves, which had protected England against the 
 Invincible Armada, protected her now against two successive 
 expeditions. A third expedition was destined to be turned, 
 not against England, but against Egypt. 
 
 In Ireland, in the meantime, things were going from bad 
 to worse ; the country was being administered by a system of 
 savage repression which recalled the worst atrocities of the 
 Cromwellian occupation. Martial law was made the excuse 
 for every system of lawlessness, and the Catholic population 
 were subjected to every species of outrage, of insult, and of 
 injury. The actions of the United Irishmen were perfectly 
 familiar to the Government. The organisation was literally 
 infested with spies. Every needy placeman, every broken- 
 down officer, every desperate adventurer, every scoundrel who 
 could find no other occupation, joined the association, and 
 made himself a hateful livelihood by selling its secrets to the 
 Government. The Government could at any time have 
 seized upon the principal leaders of the organisation ; but the 
 Government was playing a deeper game. It was determined 
 to force the movement into open insurrection, in order that 
 it might be justified in crushing it out more completely. 
 Other Governments since that time have pursued the same 
 policy, in days much nearer to our own. The policy was 
 completely successful in the case of the United Irishmen. 
 
 Visitors to Dublin to-day, who wander within Trinity, may 
 often have pointed out to them by their friends an elderly 
 
48 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 man of scholastic appearance and academic garb, authpr of 
 
 * Who Fears to Speak of Ninety-eight ? ' There is something 
 very cmdous about the cloistered life of a man who gave to a 
 national movement one of its most powerful inspirations, 
 who enriched the literature of Irish discontent with one of 
 the most famous of rebellious ballads. For more than forty 
 years ' The Memory of the Dead ' has been dear to the 
 hearts of Irishmen in every part of the world. When it was 
 written, when it first appeared in the pages of the Nation, 
 some of the ' brave, the faithful, and the few ' still lived and 
 looked upon the sun. In foreign exile the hearts of Arthur 
 O'Connor, and Miles Byrne, of Wexford, still beat responsive 
 to the aspirations of Irish liberty. In the long interval two 
 fresh revolutionary efforts have been made. Through all this 
 great gap of time the author of the seditious ballad which has 
 
 * played so brave a part ' has lived his quiet, studious life, in 
 self-chosen exile from the great world of politics, oblivious of 
 the fierce emotions and strong passions which he did so much 
 to stimulate. A Tyrtasus for ten minutes, he gave Ireland 
 an anthem, and then retired for ever into scholastic obscurity. 
 Eouget de Lisle, singing his one wild war song, which was 
 destined to become the voice not of one, but of a hundred 
 revolutions, and straightway sliding back again into nothing- 
 ness, an idle writer of foolish verses, known now only to the 
 curious, finds his historical parallel in this professor of 
 Trinity who was once the poet of rebellion. ' The Memory 
 of the Dead ' was only a tour de force to him ; it was destined 
 to become the hymn, the anthem, and the dirge of millions 
 of his countrymen. 
 
 Certainly the Government did everything in its power to 
 make ' Ninety-eight ' an abiding memory wdth the Irish people. 
 It had bided its time patiently until it thought the moment had 
 come for swooping upon the United Irishmen and forcing a 
 futile insurrection. It nursed revolution with the cruel care 
 of the step-mother of a fairy tale. The country was ripe for 
 revolt. The infamies of Major Sirr's gang had roused the 
 anger and the indignation of others than revolutionary leaders. 
 
NINETY-EIGHT 49 
 
 The words, * Kemember Orr ! ' lingered on the hps of men who 
 had never taken a secret oath. Men who might have been 
 supposed to be friendly to the English Government were forced 
 into horrified protestations against the atrocities which were 
 being committed in the Government's name. Lord Moira, an 
 Irish nobleman, who afterwards rose to high distinction in 
 the English colonial service, spoke vehemently and earnestly 
 against the way in which Ireland was being goaded into revo- 
 lution. But Iris protest was met and answered by Black Jack 
 Fitzgibbon, the hated Lord Clare, perhaps the basest of the 
 many base tools that Pitt chose to employ against the Irish 
 people. Sir Ralph Abercrombie was sent over to take com- 
 mand of the troops in Ireland, and was so disgusted with the 
 disorder, the riot, and the undisciplined rutijanism of the 
 soldiers placed under him, that he made a strong effort to 
 curb their brutality ; and when his action was not supported 
 by the Home Government, he promptly resigned his command. 
 The Government found a readier instrument in his successor, 
 General Lake ; and the picketing, the flogging, the torturing, 
 and the bloodshed went on merrily as before. A recipe to 
 make a rebel, which was popular in those days among 
 Nationalists, ran thus : ' Take a loyal subject, uninfluenced 
 by title, place, or pension : burn his house over his head ; let 
 the soldiery exercise every species of insult and barbarity 
 towards his helpless family, and march away with the plunder 
 of every part of his property they choose to save from the 
 flames.' The recipe was excellent, and effected the purpose 
 of the Government in enforcing the rebellion. 
 
 The Government now prepared to strike their final blow. 
 Their favourite spy at the time was Thomas Reynolds, of 
 Kilkea, the brother-in-law of Tone's wife, a man deep in the 
 secrets of the United Irishmen. On March 12, 1798, the 
 Dublm authorities, acting on the information of Reynolds, 
 made a descent upon Oliver Bond's house, got in by means of 
 the password supplied by the traitor, and seized Bond and 
 thirteen delegates, with the most important papers of the 
 United Irishmen. Lord Edward Fitzgerald was on his way 
 
 E 
 
50 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 to Bond's house when he received wEtrning, and hid himself 
 until he could head the general rising which was now resolved 
 upon. But the Government spies were more than a match 
 for the United Irishmen. Captain Armstrong, of the King's 
 County Militia, who afterwards sent the brothers Sheares to 
 the gallows, was, like Reynolds, deep in the councils of the 
 United Irishmen, and faithfully transmitted to the Govern- 
 ment all the plans of the proposed rising. Another traitor, 
 Francis Higgins, the owner of the Freemaii's Journal, sent 
 word to the Castle that Fitzgerald was hiding in a house in 
 Thomas Street. Major Sirr and a body of soldiers surrounded 
 the house, and forced their way into the bedroom where Lord 
 Edward was waiting unsuspicious of danger. Lord Edward 
 knew well enough that there was small hope for a revolutionary 
 leader who fell into the hands of the Government, and he 
 offered a desperate resistance. In the narrow room he 
 struggled with his assailants till the walls and the floor were 
 splashed with his blood, and the blood of his enemies ; and it 
 w^as not until he had wounded one of his adversaries to the 
 death, and was himself wounded in many places, that the 
 soldiers were enabled to overpower him, and carry him to 
 prison. In the prison Lord Edward Fitzgerald died of his 
 wounds, and the revolutionary movement lost in him one of 
 the bravest, the noblest, and the ablest of its leaders. To this 
 day strangers in Dublin seek eagerly for the place where he 
 met his death. Thomas Francis Meagher, in one of the finest 
 of his speeches, speaks of ' the ducal palace in this city, where 
 the memory of the gallant and seditious Geraldine enhances 
 more than royal favour the splendour of his race.' The 
 memory of Edward Fitzgerald, however, is more closely 
 associated with that small, dismal room in Thomas Street, in 
 which the last Geraldine who played any part in Irish history 
 met his death. 
 
 The great insurrection which had been schemed out in the 
 brain of Fitzgerald and his friends was destined to be dissi- 
 pated in a series of untimely and unsuccessful local risings, 
 the chief of which took place in Wexford. The rebels fought 
 
NINETY-EIGHT 51 
 
 bravely, and in some parts, for a time, with something Hke 
 success ; but the odds against them were too heavy, and the 
 revolution was crushed out with pitiless severity. The Catho- 
 lic clergy played a conspicuous part in the rising. Many of 
 them entered the rebel ranks, and led the rebel bands to 
 action. Father John Murphy, Father Philip Eoche, and 
 Father Michael Murphy, were conspicuous among the revo- 
 lutionary priesthood. The men who followed Father Michael 
 Murphy believed him to be invulnerable ; but he was killed at 
 last by a cannon-ball at the fight of Arklow. Father Philip 
 Eoche also fell in battle. Father John Murphy, more famous 
 perhaps than either of the others, and less fortunate in his 
 fate, was captured and hanged. The assistance which the 
 revolutionary party had hoped for from France came to 
 nothing. A few troops, indeed, under General Humbert, did 
 land in Killala Bay ; but they were surrounded by the English 
 at Ballynamuck, and compelled to surrender at discretion. 
 The French soldiers were made prisoners of war ; the unhappy 
 peasants who were with them were slaughtered without mercy. 
 The rebellion of ninety-eight was over. Many of its leaders 
 died on the gallows. Bagenal Harvey, of Bargy Castle, and 
 Anthony Perry, both Protestant gentlemen of fortune and 
 position, who had been forced into the rebellion by the perse- 
 cution of Government, were hanged. The two brothers 
 Sheares were hanged. M'Cann was hanged. Of the other 
 leaders, Oliver Bond died in Newgate ; Arthiu^ O'Connor, 
 Thomas Addis Emmet, and MacNevin were banished. Arthur 
 O'Connor entered the French service, and lived long enough 
 to send, nearly half a century later, kindly messages of sym- 
 pathy and encouragement to a subsequent body of revolution- 
 aries—the Young Irelanders. 
 
 Great and unjust use has been made by the enemies of 
 Ireland of some unhappy episodes in the history of the 
 rising. It has surprised certain English historians beyond 
 measure that a people goaded into frenzy by outrage, torture, 
 insult, and oppression of every kind, should when their hour 
 came have attempted some reprisals. The marvel rather is 
 
 E 2 
 
52 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 that so few reprisals have to be recorded. The Irish historian 
 would be, indeed, happy who could say that rebel cause was 
 unstained by other than the inevitable bloodshed of war. 
 Unfortunately this cannot be said. ' Blood will have blood,' 
 says Macbeth. It is not surprising that some fierce revenge 
 was taken for the men who had been flogged, tortured, and 
 murdered ; for the women who had been outraged by a 
 licentious and brutal soldiery. 
 
 Mr. Froude, who is at once the most famous and the 
 most unfair of anti-Irish historians, seems almost paralysed 
 with amazement because ignorant and unhappy men treated 
 with merciless cruelty should have been cruel in their turn 
 to their oppressors. Another historian of a very different 
 temper from Mr. Froude has criticised Mr. Froude in 
 language which it will be well to borrow. He sternly and 
 justly condemns the atrocities that were committed by some 
 of the rebels, but he goes on : ' An impartial historian would 
 not have forgotten that they were perpetrated by undisciplined 
 men, driven to madness by a long course of savage cruelties, 
 and in most cases without the knowledge or approval of their 
 leaders ; and from the beginning of the struggle the yeomen 
 rarely gave quarter to the rebels ; that with the one horrible 
 exception of Scullabogue, the rebels in their treatment of 
 women contrasted most favourably and most remarkably with 
 the troops, and that one of the earliest episodes of the struggle 
 was the butchery, near Kildare, of 350 insurgents who had 
 surrendered on the express promise that their lives should 
 be spared.' 
 
 Even of Scullabogue itself another writer, the Honourable 
 Lewis Wingfield, has written in his powerful novel, ' My 
 Lords of Strogue,' after a fashion and with a temperance rare 
 in those who write for an English audience—' the three hun- 
 dred innocent women and children had been consumed as a 
 holocaust on the altar of his Majesty King George, who, large- 
 minded man, was consistently without mercy for the Isle 
 which God had given to his keeping ; who was pitiless for the 
 professors of a faith which did not agree with his own fancy ; 
 
NINETY-Ei GHi 53 
 
 who, by reason of his policy regarding Ireland, must be held 
 accountable for the tragedy which took place on June 5 
 within the barn of Scullabogue.' 
 
 If there had been during the last eighty- five years more 
 thinkers and writers in England like Mr. Lewis Wingfield and 
 like Mr. Lecky, in the temper in which he wrote ' Leaders of 
 Public Opinion in Ireland,' and less like Mr. Froude, the 
 quarrel between the two nations would not be where it is 
 to-day. 
 
 It must never be forgotten by the serious student of ninety- 
 eight that the rising was in no sense a religious war. The 
 United Irishmen were organised openly first, and secretly 
 afterwards, by Protestants ; the most conspicuous leaders of 
 the revolution were Protestants ; some of its most famous 
 martyrs were Protestants. Not only was the struggle not one 
 of creed against creed, of Catholic against Protestant, but 
 large numbers of Catholics were strongly opposed to the 
 rebellion, and in many cases took active measures against it. 
 Something of the character of a religious war was lent to the 
 struggle in Wexford by the efforts of the Orangemen, but the 
 movement as a whole was never of this complexion. The 
 Irish Catholic race have never shown the slightest intolerance 
 for the professors of the creed under whose special sanction 
 the Penal Laws were promulgated. They have welcomed 
 Protestant leaders in successive struggles, from the days of 
 Grattan to the days of Parnell. The liberty of conscience 
 which they asked for themselves, they have never sought to 
 deny others. Ninety-eight, like the movements which suc- 
 ceeded it, was a national movement, an uprising against 
 burdens too bitter to bear, and it was sympathised with and 
 supported by Irishmen of all religious denominations, bound 
 together by common injuries and a common desire to redress 
 them. 
 
 There was still one more scene to be played out in the 
 melancholy drama of ninety-eight. Some French ships were 
 sent to Ireland, but were attacked by an English squadron 
 before a landing could be effected. After a long and desperate 
 
54 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 battle the French were hopelessly defeated. A large number 
 of French officers who were taken prisoners were brought to 
 Lord Cavan's house on Lough Swilly. Among the guests there 
 was Sir (i-eorge Hill. Looking into the faces of the French 
 officers Sir George Hill discerned one face very familiar 
 to him — the face of an old college friend ; the face of Eng- 
 land's most dangerous enemy ; of the most prominent of the 
 L^sh rebels— the face of Theobald Wolfe Tone. No one else 
 had recognised Wolfe Tone. He was habited as a French 
 officer, he spoke French easily, and everyone present assumed 
 him to be a Frenchman— everyone with the exception of Sir 
 George Hill. An honourable man would scarcely have cared 
 to betray even his bitterest enemy under such circumstances ; 
 but Sir George Hill chose to play the Judas part. He went 
 up to Wolfe Tone and addressed him openly by his name. 
 Tone was too proud to affect further concealment. * I am 
 Theobald Wolfe Tone,' he answered to the greeting of his 
 treacherous friend. He was immediately seized, and sent 
 heavily ironed to Dublin. Li Dublin he was tried by court- 
 martial, and sentenced to death. As an officer in the French 
 Eepublic he claimed his right to a soldier's death ; he asked 
 to be shot by a platoon of grenadiers. The members of the 
 court-martial were inexorable. They had got their rebel, and 
 they meant to show him no mercy. He was sentenced to be 
 hanged. 
 
 On the morning fixed for the execution Wolfe Tone was 
 found in his cell with his throat cut. There is some mystery 
 hanging over these later hours of Wolfe Tone's life. It is 
 said, and generally believed, that he strove to commit suicide 
 in order to escape the indignity of being hanged like a dog, 
 and to preserve the uniform of which he was so proud from 
 disgrace. On the other hand, there are not wanting voices to 
 maintain that Wolfe Tone was murdered in prison by those 
 who feared that even yet he might escape the vengeance of the 
 law. Indeed there was a chance of escape. Curran, heroically 
 fighting his desperate fight single-handed for the men of ninety- 
 eight, moved in the King's Bench for a writ of habeas corpus, 
 
NIAETY-EIGHT 55 
 
 on the ground that the civil law was still in force in Dublin, and 
 that as Wolfe Tone held no commission in the English army, 
 the court-martial had no jurisdiction. The point was an im- 
 portant one, and Curran carried, and obtained his writ. It 
 came too late to save Wolfe Tone's life, but it saved him from 
 a shameful death. His wound had not proved mortal, and he 
 would have been hanged but for the arrival of the writ. He 
 died of his wound in prison. 
 
 Some eighteen miles from Dublin, not far from the little 
 village of Sallins, there is a little churchyard, the churchyard 
 of Bodenstown. In that churchyard there is a little grave to 
 which Irishmen make pilgrimages from all parts of the world. 
 It is the grave of Theobald AVolfe Tone. Thomas Davis has 
 devoted one of the noblest of his lyrics to the green grave in 
 Bodenstown churchyard, with the winter wind raving about 
 it, and the storm sweeping down on the plains of Kildare. 
 Those see Wolfe Tone's grave best who see it under such 
 aspects of earth, and air, and sky as Davis has immortalised 
 in his poem. The desolate and deserted grass-grown grave- 
 yard of the little lonely church, ruined and roofless, the 
 crumbling walls thickly grown with ivy, the mouldering tombs, 
 are seen in their most fitting aspect on a sombre day, and 
 under weeping heavens. When Davis wrote the poem no 
 stone marked the grave. Since then the patriotic spirit of 
 neighbouring Clongowes has railed it in with iron rails, 
 wrought at the top into the shape of shamrocks; and tie 
 stone slab bears an inscription setting forth the name and 
 the deeds of the man who lies beneath, and ending with 
 ' God save Ireland ! ' 
 
 The rebellion of the United Irishmen had drawn into its 
 eddies none of the leaders of the constitutional agitation. 
 Neither Grattan nor Flood had ever belonged to the body, 
 even in the days when it was an open organisation ; and 
 neither of them had any sympathy with its efforts, or had 
 believed in its possible success. While the desperate struggle 
 to which it gave rise was raging, they stood aside, dropped 
 for the moment from the page of history, and their places 
 
56 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 were taken by a man no less gifted, no less eloquent, no less 
 patriotic than either of them — JohnPhilpot Curran. Curran, 
 like Grattan and like Flood, had begmi his career by trying 
 to play on the double pipes of poetry and oratory, and like 
 Grattan and Flood he soon discovered the superiority of his 
 prose to his verse, and abandoned rhymes for rhetoric. Unlike 
 Grattan, however, and unlike Flood, Curran might perhaps 
 have been a poet. He has at least left behind him some 
 verse which deserves to be, and will be remembered, while 
 nothing of Flood or Grattan can seriously be said to have 
 remained in literature. Curran's poem of ' The Deserter ' is 
 one of the most pathetic, and one of the most beautiful pieces 
 of work in Irish literature. 
 
 Curran rose from very humble origin, by the sheer strength 
 of his genius, to a high position in Parliament and at the Bar ; 
 and his patriotism was never sulhed by the shghtest pohtical 
 subservience. He had been remarkable before the rebellion 
 broke cut for his courageous defence of men unpopular with 
 the Government. He had been threatened, like a new Cicero, 
 with armed menaces, in his defence of Hamilton Eowan, but 
 unlike Cicero he had faced the menaces undismayed. Afte]' 
 the rebellion had broken out and been crushed, he made him- 
 self the mouthpiece of freedom, and championed one after 
 another the causes of all the leading political prisoners with 
 an eloquence, a courage, and an ability which have earned 
 him immortal honour. It is one of the proudest features in 
 the struggle of ninety-eight that it produced men of the robe 
 W-io were worthy of its men of the sword. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE UNION. 
 
 * Hov^ did they pass the Union ? ' asked an indignant poet in 
 the pages of the Nation more than thirty years ago ; and 
 he answered his own question very eloquently : 
 
THE UNION 67 
 
 By perjury and fraud ; 
 
 By slaves who sold their land for gold. 
 As Judas sold his God ; 
 
 By all the savage acts that yet 
 Have followed England's track — 
 
 The pitchcap and the bayonet, 
 The gibbet and the rack, 
 
 And thus was passed the Union, 
 By Pitt and Castlereagh ; 
 
 Could Satan send for such an end 
 More worthy tools than they ? 
 
 The poet who penned that denunciation of the Union, of 
 its agents and its accomphces, is now an eminent land com- 
 missioner and a graceful and cultivated man of letters, whose 
 translation of the ' Chanson de Roland ' has almost made that 
 fine old epic a possession of the English language. Only the 
 other day, in the House of Commons, England was reminded 
 that Mr. O'Hagan, when this century was in its forties, 
 uttered flaming treason under the signature of ' Sliabli Cuilinn,' 
 and assured the supporters of foreign rule in Ireland that — 
 
 We conquered once before, and now 
 We'll conquer once again, 
 And rend the cursed Union, 
 
 And fling it to the wind — 
 And Ireland's laws in Ireland's cause 
 
 Alone our hearts shall bind ! 
 
 The description of the Union, fiery, impetuous, and youthful 
 though it be, is a sufficiently accurate presentment of the 
 feeling which the Union inspired, and still inspires, in the 
 minds of most Irishmen, which the Union now inspires in the 
 minds of most Englishmen. 
 
 Bloodshed and bribery were the means by which the Eng- 
 lish Government accomplished the legislative ruin of Ireland. 
 They had forced on a futile revolution in order that by crush- 
 ing it out they might remove from their paths all the more 
 dangerous obstacles to their scheme of destruction of Irish inde- 
 pendence. The crimson year of ninety-eight had extinguished 
 all possibility of active opposition to anything the Government 
 might choose to attempt. The leaders of the national party 
 were gone. Edward Fitzgerald was dead, the Sheares were 
 
58 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 dead, Wolfe Tone was dead, Bagenal Harvey was dead, Oliver 
 Bond was dead. Some still lived, like Arthur O'Connor 
 and Addis Emmet, but exiled for ever from Ireland. The 
 spirit of the people, goaded for a moment into mad insurrec- 
 tion, was crushed by merciless retaliation. Blood had done 
 one-half of the Government's work ; it was now left for 
 bribery to accomplish the other. All that was necessary was 
 to obtain a Government majority in the Irish Parliament. 
 That majority was to be obtained, like any other useful com- 
 modity, by purchase. 
 
 All the resources of the Treasury were employed to corrupt 
 the corruptible. The flood-gates of the Exchequer were 
 opened, and a very Pactolus drowned with its golden current 
 the few dying sparks of patriotism and honour which may have 
 lingered somewhere in the hearts of the majority of Ireland's 
 representatives. The Parliament was a Danae and Corn- 
 wallis a new Jupiter, dissolving himself into gold in order to 
 work her ruin. 
 
 It must be recognised that Cornwallis, who, with all his 
 faults, was a soldier and a gentleman, took no great delight 
 in his part of Jove the Corrupter. Destiny was a little hard 
 upon Cornwallis. Not many years before he had been com- 
 pelled to strike his flag and surrender his bright sword to those 
 hated American revolutionaries, who were driving out their 
 masters in the name of the Continental Congress and the great 
 Jehovah. Surrender was bad enough ; but surely the part 
 that Cornwallis was now called upon to play was infinitely 
 worse. Better to surrender as a soldier than to succeed as 
 the profligate buyer of a iiation's liberty, ' I am kept here,' 
 he complains in 1799, ' to manage matters of most disgusting- 
 nature to my feelings.' . . . 'My occupation is now of the most 
 unpleasant nature, negotiating and jobbing with the most 
 corrupt people under heaven. I despise and hate myself every 
 hour,' he declares, 'for engaging in such dirty work.' And 
 again the soldier spirit gets the better of him, and he cries 
 out :, ' I trust I shall live to get out of this most accursed of 
 
THE UNION 59 
 
 all situations, and most repugnant to my feelings. How I 
 long to kick those whom my public duties oblige me to 
 court.' 
 
 Cornwallis could not, however, afford to gratify his desire 
 to kick the supple and servile majority whom he was employed 
 to manipulate. With Lord Clare at his right hand and 
 Castlereagh at his left, he went his way against the Irish 
 Parliameiit, and won her as the Sabines won Tarpeia — with 
 gold. It is said that when Castlereagh offered direct bribes 
 to Shapland Carew, member for Wexford county, Carew 
 threatened to expose Castlereagh's corruption in the House 
 of Commons. Castlereagh answered the threat as Wilkes 
 answered a similar threat of Luttrell's, by declaring that 
 he should in that case promptly deny the charge. The 
 story is characteristic of the man ; Carew did not make his 
 accusation. 
 
 When the Irish Parliament met in the January of 1799, 
 the first hint at the desirability of Union was to be found in 
 the speech from the throne. It was immediately and earnestly 
 opposed by a man whose name was destined to become famous 
 well-nigh a century later in the same struggle against the 
 Union, Sir John Parnell. He held high office in the Irish 
 Government when the attempt to effect the Union was first 
 tentatively made. Sir John Parnell was resolute in his oppo- 
 sition. His determination immediately cost him his office. 
 The Government was determined to strike, whenever they 
 safely could, at all who resisted their overtures ; and as 
 Parnell was not to be influenced by the highest allurements 
 that Cornwallis could hold out, he was promptly removed from 
 his position as Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 
 But, though the Government could deprive Parnell of his 
 place, they could not silence him. The debate which he had 
 inaugurated was carried on for two-and-twenty hours, and 
 ended at last by giving the Government a majority of one. 
 Such a majority was in reality a victory for Parnell and the 
 Opposition ; and on report, a fresh motion against the para- 
 
60 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 graph approving of Union was carried against ttie Government 
 by a majority of five. For the moment it seemed as if the 
 scheme of Union was defeated. But, though the Government 
 was alarmed and annoyed by its failure, it was not seriously 
 dismayed. It had evidently not been generous enough in its 
 offers. It had not scattered its largesse with sufficiently com- 
 prehensive discretion and liberality. Heavy pressure was put 
 upon all the placemen who seemed inclined to prove recalci- 
 trant. Obedience to the Government, or immediate dismissal 
 were the alternatives laid before them. For those who were 
 not already in the Government pay, and in the Government 
 power, no price was deemed too heavy. Place and office were 
 lavishly distributed. Peerages secured the hii^hcst, and secret- 
 service money won the lowest of those who were to be bought. 
 Vast sums changed hands in the enormous bribery which, in 
 the end, conquered the Parliament. The whole sum amounted 
 to much more than a million ; and in many cases the fortu- 
 nate masters of many seats in the House of Commons received 
 no less than 50,000/. as their share of the booty. 
 
 I have seen a very interesting letter from James Fitzgerald, 
 dated Dublin, January 5, 1799, and addressed to ' Edward 
 Malone, Esq., Queen Anne Street East, London.' It is en- 
 dorsed by its recipient with a certain dry humour with these 
 words : ' Overcharged, as almost every letter coming through 
 the Irish Post Office is. E. M.' This ktter was given to Mr. 
 Parnell by a distinguished Irishman, an author and colonial 
 official, on account of an allusion it contains to his ancestor 
 Sir John Parnell' s place being given to James Corry. It is 
 sealed in red wax with an altar and a fiery heart. It begins: 
 * My dear Malone, — I am sure no circumstances within 
 human foresight can prevent the alarming proposition of an 
 Union. It is, I believe, determined to recur to every instru- 
 ment short of the bayonet to carry it.' This sentence might 
 be taken as the text for the history of the Union. The 
 Government were prepared to use every instrument to carry 
 their point. They might very well except the bayonet. It 
 had been used to such bloody purpose already that there was 
 
THE XINION 61 
 
 little apparent chance of their being immediately called upon 
 to resume it. 
 
 In the January of 1800 an Irish Parliament met for the 
 last time for nearly a century. Its assembling found the 
 Government party confident of victory, the Opposition despe- 
 rate and despairing. It would seem that for a moment the Oppo- 
 sition dreamed of making that appeal to arms which they had 
 regarded with such horror when it was made by the United 
 Irishmen. But they made no such attempt. The Govern- 
 ment was far too well prepared, and any effort of the kind 
 would have been hopeless. Nothing was to be done but to 
 discuss the merits of the Bill which was to deprive Ireland of 
 her representative assembly, and to hope against hope that 
 they might be able to defeat it. The tactics of the Govern- 
 ment were ingenious. The address from the Crown contained 
 no allusion to the threatened and dreaded Union. The very 
 omission alarmed the Opposition, and a debate immediately 
 sprang up upon a motion directly asserting the independence 
 which had been obtained for the Parliament by the Volunteers 
 in 1782. 
 
 It was curiously appropriate that in the very middle of 
 this debate the man who had done more than any other to 
 obtain the independence of the Irish Parliament should make 
 his appearance, coming from his. sick bed to f.ght once more 
 for the liberties which were themselves in the throes of death. 
 Grattan had faded for some time out of public view. He had 
 no sympathy for the movement which Wolfe Tone had begun, 
 and which ended with Wolfe Tone's death in a Dublin prison. 
 But when the independence of that Parliament of which he 
 was the parent was threatened, he came out of his self-chosen 
 obscurity to fight one last fight in its favour. He came too 
 late. The silver voice which had so proudly hailed the re- 
 generated assembly, and wished it a perpetual existence, had 
 no power to touch the hardened hearts or charm the deafened 
 ears of the purchased Senate of Cornwallis and Castlereagh. 
 Grattan himself was in some degree the cause of the disaster 
 which was now about to fall upon his country. Animated by 
 
62 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 a too generous belief in the fidelity of his opponents' pledges, 
 he had counselled the disarmament of the Volunteers, and his 
 counsels had conquered the more prudent advice and the more 
 far-seeing statesmanship of Flood. It was too late now to 
 redress the mischief caused by this misplaced confidence. 
 
 Hussey Burgh's fine simile, taken from the legend of 
 Jason, in which he compared the laws of England to the 
 dragon's teeth which brought forth armed men, had, unfortu- 
 nately, been completed into a more perfect parallel with the 
 antique story. The armed men who sprang from the crop 
 sown by Jason were compelled by subtle enchantments to turn 
 their arms against themselves, and to destroy each other. 
 The enchantments of Grattan's persuasive eloquence had 
 destroyed the armed strength of Ireland, and had dissipated 
 the legions which might have preserved her independence, 
 and left her helpless and defenceless to the menaces of a 
 triumphant Government. 
 
 Secure although the Government believed themselves to 
 be, and confident as they were of victory, Grattan's appear- 
 ance was none the less disquieting, and even alarming. The 
 Castle turned Corry, one of the ablest of their tools, and one 
 of the bitterest enemies of Grattan, against the returned Tri- 
 bune. Corry had once played the part of a patriot, and had 
 afterwards transferred himself and his services to the Govern- 
 ment, for which he had been but lately rewarded by the 
 Chancellorship of the Exchequer, from which Parnell had been 
 driven. Corry might have believed that advancing years and 
 ill-health had weakened the powers of Grattan's mind. He 
 might for the moment have fondly imagined that he was a 
 match for the great orator, and that the fierceness and the 
 brutality of his attack would discredit and possibly discomfit 
 his adversary. Corry was grievously mistaken. Grattan had 
 once before assailed Flood in terms of almost unsurpassable 
 bitterness. That speech against Flood might have been re- 
 garded as almost the high- water mark of triumphant Parlia- 
 mentary vituperation ; but if no one save Grattan could have 
 surpassed that effort, it was in Grattan's own power to sur- 
 
THE TTNION 63 
 
 pass Grattan. The savage vehemence of the assault upon 
 Flood pales almost into compUrnent and courtesy when con- 
 trasted with the merciless invective which he now launched 
 against Corry. Even through the thick skin and deadened 
 conscience of the Castle placeman the insults of Grattan's 
 speech burned and eat like a corrosive acid. The speech is 
 short, but it is a masterpiece of its kind. Every blow stings 
 like the blow of a whip ; every sentence draws blood. 
 
 ' The limited talents of some men,' said Grattan, in 
 fierce scorn of his antagonist's clumsy attack, * render it im- 
 possible for them to be severe without being unparliamentary.' 
 But Grattan promised Corry, and he kept his word, that 
 he would show him how to be severe and parliamentary at 
 the same time. The charge of treason which Corry had 
 levelled against Grattan he treated with defiant scorn. It 
 would have been in no sense dishonourable but only honour- 
 able for Grattan to have been guilty of treason in the sense 
 that Wolfe Tone, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and Arthur O'Con- 
 nor were guilty of treason. The sting of the accusation lay 
 in the suggestion that Grattan was a traitor who had saved 
 himself discreetly from the consequences of his treachery. It 
 was perfectly well known that Grattan never had any sympathy 
 whatever with the movement of the United Irishmen, and it 
 was perfectly easy for him to disprove the clumsy falsehoods 
 of Corry. ' I despise the falsehood,' said Grattan. ' If such 
 a charge were made by an honest man I should answer it in 
 the manner I shall do before I sit down ; but I shall first 
 reply to it when not made by an honest man.' Then came a 
 succession of sentences glowing like living lava. The fool 
 had awakened the sleeping volcano, and it answered him with 
 annihilation. 
 
 The speech is familiar to every student of Irish history, 
 and yet there are sentences of it which bear incessant quota- 
 tion. When he declared that he scorns ' to answer any wizard 
 of the Castle, throwing himself into fantastical airs ; ' when 
 he described him as ' deserting the occupation of a barrister 
 for that of a parasite and pander ; ' when he said, ' I will not 
 
64 IB FLAN D SINCE THE UNION 
 
 call him villain, because it would be unparliamentary, and 
 he is a Privy Councillor ; I will not call him fool, because he 
 happens to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer ; ' when he 
 asserted ' that the treason of the IMinister against the liberties 
 of the people was intinitely worse than the rebellion of the 
 people against the Minister,' he conferred on Corry a kind 
 of infamous immortality. 
 
 The Castle parasite sent a challenge to Grattan. The op- 
 ponents met next morning in the Phctuiix Park. Grattan was 
 as ready with his pistol as with his tongue, and he wounded 
 Corry in the arm. The physical injury to Corry was slight ; 
 morally he was pulverised. Grattan had not taken his life, 
 but he had ruined his reputation. No further attempt was 
 made by any of the creatures of the Government to draw 
 upon themselves the destruction of Grattan's eloquence. 
 
 But the eloquence of Grattan could not save the constitu- 
 tion or the country. The resolutions in favour of the Union 
 of the two kingdoms were carried by successive majorities, 
 and on May 21, Lord Castlereagh's Bill, based on the resolu- 
 tions, was carried on its first reading by the majority which 
 the Government had calculated upon — a majority of sixty. 
 On May 26, the second reading of the Bill was carried, after 
 the House had listened to the last of Grattan's anti-Union 
 speeches. There need be no apology for quoting here again 
 the immortal peroration of that final speech. Like the 
 passage from Shakespeare which it enshrines, as a relic is 
 enshrined in a frame scarcely less precious than the sacred 
 inclosure, it is eternally fresh and eternally beautiful. 
 
 ' Yet I do not give up the country : I see her in a swoon, 
 but she is not dead ; though in her tomb she lies helpless 
 and motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and 
 on her cheek a glow of beauty — 
 
 Thou art not conquered, beauty's ensign yet 
 Is crimson in thy hps, and in thy cheeks, 
 And death's pale flag is not advanced there. 
 
 While a plank of the vessel sticks together, I will not leave 
 her. Let the courtier present his flimsy sail, and carry the 
 
THE UNION 65 
 
 light bark of his faith with every new breath of wind ; I will 
 remain anchored here with fidelity to my country, faitliful to 
 lier freedom, faithful to her fall.' 
 
 It was fitting that Grattan should pronounce the funeral 
 elegy for the liberties whose birth he had hailed. That 
 liberty which he had hoped might be perpetual endured 
 exactly eighteen years. Grattan had traced the career in 
 Ireland from injuries to arms, and fiom arms to liberty. He 
 had now in his old age to witness the reverse process — to 
 watch the progress from liberty to arms, and from arms 
 to injuries. Sir Jonah Barrington has described with an 
 eloquence beyond his wont, and worthy of the solemn 
 occasion, the scene inside the House of Commons when the 
 fatal moment came which deprived Ireland for nearly a 
 century of her constitutional liberty. The scene outside the 
 House when all was over was even more impressive. The 
 Speaker of the House, followed by a small body of the faithful 
 and honourable Opposition, passed out into the crowded 
 streets. The people uncovered as people uncover in the 
 presence of the dead, and followed in august silence the 
 Speaker and his companions to the Speaker's house in Moles- 
 worth Street. There the Speaker faced for a moment the 
 still silent people, the death of whose liberty he had so 
 unwillingly witnessed, and passed without a word into his 
 dwelling. 
 
 So ended the Parliament of the Volunteers. As a legis- 
 lative body it was not an ideal assembly. It had many faults, 
 many weaknesses, and it perished in the end through its ov/n 
 unworthiness. But it still was, however insufficiently, the 
 representative body of the nation. In time it would have 
 grown more liberal ; in time Catholics would have been 
 admitted to its deliberations ; in time it would have proved 
 the true head of a free state. Such as it was, with all its 
 imperfections, it preserved for Ireland that proud privilege of 
 legislative independence which now, for eighty-six years, she 
 has mourned without cessation. The Parliament which is 
 destined speedily to take the place of the lost Parliament will 
 
 F 
 
66 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 be a very different body from that which Grattan welcomed 
 into existence, and lamented over in its fall. It will be a 
 body worthy of the Irish nation, which, in the long lapse of 
 years since the beginning of this century, has been steadily 
 forming itself and training itself for the restoration of its 
 liberties. It will be a free Parliament in the sense that 
 Grattan's never was ; for in it for the first time the represen- 
 tatives of the national faith will find their rightful place. It 
 is to be hoped, it is to be beheved, that the orator who hails 
 the inauguration of this Parliament may say, addressing it 
 with a greater confidence even than that of Grattan —Esto 
 perpetica. 
 
 But though die Union was accomplished it was not 
 acquiesced in by the Irish people without one final struggle. 
 At the time wlien the plans of the United Irishmen were 
 slowly ripening towards revolution, and when Wolfe Tone and 
 Edward Fitzgerald still believed in the immediate regeneration 
 of their country, there were two young men in Dublin 
 University — close personal friends — who were watching with 
 peculiar interest the progress of events. Both were excep- 
 tionally gifted young men, and both were destined to leave 
 behind them names that will live for ever in the history of 
 the Irish nation. One was Thomas Moore ; the other, his 
 junior by a year and his senior by one class in the University, 
 was Eobert Emmet. It is especially natural that two such 
 young men should take the keenest interest in the national 
 movement that was going on about them. It was a move- 
 ment calculated to attract all the generous and impassioned 
 impulses of youth. Both Moore and Emmet were profoundly 
 ambitious for their nation's welfare ; both of them, we may 
 well assume, felt conscious of the possession of abilities 
 beyond the average ; and both were animated by a desire to 
 be of active service to their people. The desire, however, 
 which merely led Moore to become the poetical voice of Ireland's 
 aspirations and regrets, urged Emmet into directer and more 
 decided action. Robert Emmet was a brother of Thomas 
 Addis Emmet. He was, therefore, closely in connection with 
 
THE UNION 67 
 
 the revolutionary movement, and did all that lay in his power 
 to advance it by his speeches in the Debating Society and in 
 the Historical Society of the College. Political speeches were, 
 of course, forbidden in such bodies as these two societies ; but 
 Emmet always contrived to introduce into his utterances upon 
 any of the themes set down for debate some burning words, 
 which those who listened to him, and loved him, could readily 
 interpret into justification of the United Irishmen, and eil- 
 couragement of their efforts. 
 
 Between the young orator and the young poet the closest 
 friendship and affection existed. The genius of Moore was 
 naturally captivated by the pure and lofty enthusiasm of 
 Eobert Emmet, and it is almost surprising that under the 
 circumstances Moore did not become more deeply involved in 
 the conspiracy that spread all round him. Moore had not, 
 however, the nature of the conspirator, or of the very active 
 politician. He was called upon to do other work in this 
 world, and he did that work so worthily that he may well 
 be forgiven for having been so little of a rebel at a time when 
 rebellion seemed the duty of every Irishman. Moore tells a 
 touching little story of himself and of his friend, which in 
 itself illustrates the different natures of the two young men. 
 Moore had become possessed of that precious volume in which 
 the labours of Mr. Bunting had collected so much of the 
 national music of Ireland ; and he delighted in passing long 
 hours in playing over to himself the airs which he was de- 
 stined later on to make so famous by his verses. Emmet 
 often sat by him while he played, and Moore records how, one 
 evening, just as he had finished playing the spirited tune 
 called ' The Eed Fox,' Emmet sprang up as from a reverie, 
 and exclaimed, ' Oh, that I were at the head of twenty thou- 
 sand men marching to that air ! ' The air which awakened 
 in Emmet the gallant hope, which he was never destined to 
 see realised, had probably started in the brain of Moore dim 
 memories of the lost glories of Ireland ; of the Knights of the 
 Red Branch of Malachi with the gold torque, and of the 
 buried city of Lough Neagh. The music which Emmet had 
 
 f2 
 
68 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 desired to hear as the marching song of victory is familiar to 
 every Irishman as, 'Let Erin remember the days of old.' 
 * How little did I think,' said the poet, ' that in one of the 
 most touching of the sweet airs I used to play to him, his own 
 dying words would find an interpreter so worthy of their sad 
 but proud feeling ; or that another of those mournful strains 
 would long be associated in the hearts of his countrymen with 
 the memory of her who shared with Ireland his last blessing 
 and prayer.' 
 
 Ninety-eight had come and gone like a dream. The 
 leaders of the United Irishmen were dead, in exile, or hiding 
 from the law. The Irish Parhament had passed from exist- 
 ence, and the hated Union had become an accomplished fact. 
 The promises of the British Minister, which had done so 
 much to facihtate the passing of the Act of Union, had boen 
 shamefully violated. One of the most important factors in 
 securing the Union was the pledge entered into by Pitt, and 
 promulgated all over Ireland in the form of a printed speech, 
 that legislation upon Catholic Emancipation and the Tithe 
 question would immediately follow the legal union of the two 
 countries. It cannot be denied that such a promise, made 
 in so solemn a manner, and by so responsible a Minister, 
 must have had the greatest effect in winning support to 
 the Union ; and in many cases where it did not win actual 
 support, at least it must have prevented energetic opposition. 
 
 To the vast bulk of the Irish people the question of Catholic 
 Emancipation was so immediately important, on so large a 
 number the grievous burden of the Tithe question pressed 
 heavily, that it can scarcely be a matter of surprise if many 
 men were ready, or, at least, not unwilling, to welcome any 
 measure which offered to grant the one and relieve the other. 
 But Pitt had pledged himself to more than he could perform. 
 The bigoted and incapable monarch, whose peculiar privilege 
 it was to cause more injuries to his own country — that is, to 
 his own kingdom— than any other English monarch, and who 
 had always consistently and steadily hated the Irish people 
 because of their religious behef, obstinately refused to give 
 
THE UNION 69 
 
 his consent to any measure for the relief of Catholics. Pitt 
 immediately resigned his office, just eleven days after the 
 Union had become law. The stubborn folly of the Third 
 George does not excuse the Minister who had done his best 
 to delude Ireland by raising hopes which he was not certain 
 of gratifying, and making pledges which he was unable to 
 fulfil. 
 
 The Union brought with it nothing whatever that bettered 
 the condition of Ireland. The system of political corruption, 
 which had engendered the Union, continued in full force after 
 the Union had come into existence. Every place of profit, 
 every post of importance, was held by Englishmen. Lord 
 Clare, the hated Fitzgibbon, had died, indeed, soon after the 
 Union— died it was said of disappointment at discovering that 
 his own power acid influence had vanished with the political 
 change of which he had been one of the most active causes. 
 Castlereagh had gone back to England, to end some years 
 later his dishonourable life by a desperate death. But the 
 removal of one enemy only left room for the admission of 
 another. Tlie places of Castlereagh and Fitzgibbon were 
 filled by politicians no less devoted to Ascendency, no less 
 inimical to anything approaching to patriotism or to nation- 
 alism. 
 
 Although the prospect of Catholic Emancipation seemed 
 as far off as ever, there was, however, a change in the attitude 
 of the Castle circle towards the Irish Catholics, at least to- 
 wards the rich and influential among them. A policy of con- 
 ciliation was the order of the day, and conciliation meant 
 treating the more eminent among the Catholics with some- 
 thing approaching to the ordinary courtesy of civilised exist- 
 ence. The vast bulk of the Catholic population was, however, 
 as badly oft' as ever. Ireland was labouring under heavy 
 coercive legislation, and the policy of coercion which began 
 with the Union Ijas existed almost without intermission ever 
 since. It could be said almost without exaggeration in 1885 
 that Ireland had not been governed by ordinary law for a single 
 year of all the eighty-five years that had elapsed since the 
 
70 IBELA^L SINCE THE UNION 
 
 two islands were linked together in unholy and unreal union. 
 Coercion, as it always did, begot disturbance and outrage. 
 There were desperate riots in Limerick, Waterford, and Tip- 
 perary in the year of the Union — smouldering embers of the 
 revolution of ninety-eight, which were destined still to .break 
 out into one final, fitful conflagration. 
 
 Eobert Emmot saw the sufferings of his country with in- 
 dignation, but not with despair. He conceived the possibility 
 of reviving the spirit of ninety-eight. In his eyes revolution 
 was not dead, but only asleep ; and he proudly fancied that 
 his might be the voice to wake rebellion from its trance, and 
 lead it to its triumph. He had some personal fortune of his 
 own, which he unselfishly devoted to the purpose he had in 
 view. Gradually he began to gather around him a cluster of 
 the disaffected — survivors of ninety-eight who had escaped the 
 grave, the gibbet, or exile — men like the heroic Myles Byrne, 
 of Wexford, who had evaded the clutch of tlie law, and was 
 lying hidden in Dublin, as assistant in a timber-yard, and 
 waiting upon fortune. In Myles Byrne Emmet found a ready 
 and a daring colleague, and each found others no less ready, 
 no less daring, and no less devoted to their country, to aid in 
 the new revolutionary movement. Like the United Irishmen, 
 Emmet was willing to avail himself of French arms ; but he 
 trusted France less than the United Irishmen had done. He 
 had been in Paris ; he had had interviews with Napoleon ; he 
 had distrusted the First Consul, and, as we know from his dying 
 speech, he never for a moment entertained the slightest idea 
 of exchanging the dominion of England for the dominion of 
 France. His scheme was desperate, but it was by no means 
 hopeless. Large sto] es of arms and gunpowder were accumu- 
 lated in the various depots in Dublin. Thousands of men 
 were pledged to the cause, and were prepared to risk their lives 
 for it. The means of estabhshing a provisional Government 
 had been carefully thought out, and had been given effect to 
 in an elaborate document, of which a vast quantity was printed, 
 ready to be sown broadcast through the city and the country 
 as soon as the green flag floated over Dublin Castle. 
 
THE UNION 71 
 
 That was Emmet's chief purpose. Once master of the 
 Castle, and Dubhn would be practically in his power ; and 
 Dubhn once in the hands of revolution, why, then rebellion 
 would spread through the country like fire in a jungle, and 
 Ireland might indeed be free. The plot was daring ; but the 
 brain that conceived it was keen and bold ; the hands and 
 hearts that were pledged to it were true and gallant. Every- 
 thing seemed to promise, if not a successful revolution, at 
 least a rising which should come so near success as to shake the 
 power of the Government, and practically compel great con- 
 cessions, if not the Repeal of the Union. It all ended in a 
 street scuffle, and a small and abortive provincial rising. 
 Treachery, which has always been at the right hand of 
 Authority in Ireland, was, as usual, at work : and although 
 the Executive appear to have made light at first of the infor- 
 mation that was daily conveyed to them of Emmet's purposes, 
 it is certain that the carefully-matured plot failed disastrously 
 at the moment of execution. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to recapitulate the events of that 
 memorable evening of July 23, 1808. At ten o'clock a rocket 
 sent up from Thomas Street blazed for a moment, the meteor 
 of insurrection, in the unwonted darkness of that summer 
 night. But the signal that was to have been the herald of 
 freedom was only the herald of failure. A small mob of men 
 hastened to the depot in Marshalsea Lane, which was the prin- 
 cipal store of arms. There pikes were hurriedly ha jded out 
 to the crowd, and there Emmet, who had hoped to head an 
 army, found himself the centre of an undisciplined rabble. 
 His hopes must have sunk low as he stood there in the dim 
 and dismal street, in his glittering uniform of green and gold ; 
 but his heart did not fail him for a moment. He turned to- 
 wards the Castle at the head of his turbulent horde as com- 
 posedly as if he had been marshalling the largest army in 
 Europe. But the crowd lacked cohesion, lacked purpose, 
 lacked determination. It fell away from its leader loosely* 
 even aimlessly. Some rushed wildly towards the Castle ; 
 others, at the moment when unity and concentration were of 
 
72 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 the utmost importance, hurried off in another direction to sack 
 a debtor's prison and set the inmates free. 
 
 While the disorganised crowd was still in Thomas Street, 
 while Emmet was vainly trying to rally his forces and accom- 
 plish something, a carriage came slowly down the street — the 
 carriage of Lord Kilwarden, Lord Chief Justice of the King's 
 Bench. Liside the carriage were Lord Kilwarden, his daughter, 
 and his nephew, the Rev. Mr. Wolfe. The mob surrounded 
 the carriage ; Lord Kilwarden and his nephew were drag- 
 ged from the carriage, and killed with innumerable thrusts. 
 The girl was left untouched, was, it is said, carried out of 
 danger by Robert Emmet himself, who had vainly attempted 
 to stop the purposeless slaughter. Before the Chief Justice 
 was quite dead Major Sirr and a large body of his soldiers 
 made their appearance, and the mob vanished almost without 
 resistance, leaving several prisoners in the hands of the mili- 
 tary. The stores of arms were seized, the prisoners safely 
 put under lock and key, and in a few hours Dublin was as 
 quiet as if no effort at insurrection had ever disturbed the 
 tranquillity of its streets. Emmet had disappeared, no one 
 knew where. Upon the following day a small insurrection 
 took place in Ulster under Thomas Russell, which came to 
 nothing. Russell made his escape, but was captured a few 
 months later, tried, and hanged. Two of his co-revolutionists, 
 Andrew Hunter and David Porter, shared his fate. 
 
 Emmet had disappeared, no one knew where — no one, 
 that is, except some dozen of his followers and some farmers 
 in the Wicklow mountains, whose hospitality and protection 
 were extended to the fugitive patriot. Emmet might easily 
 have escaped to France if he had chosen, but he delayed till 
 too late. Emmet was a young man, and Emmet was in love. 
 * The idol of his heart,' as he calls her in his dying speech, 
 was Sarah Curran, the daughter of John Philpot Curran, the 
 great orator who had pLiyed so important a part in defending 
 the State prisoners of ninety-eight. Emmet was determined 
 to see her before he went. He placed his life upon the cast, 
 and lost it. He returned to Dublin, and was hiding at 
 
THE UJSION 73 
 
 Harold's Cross when his place of refuge was betrayed, and 
 he was arrested by Major Sirr, the same who had brought 
 ^it'?v^rald to his death, and who now, strangely enough, 
 occupies a corner of the same graveyard with the * gallant 
 and seditious Geraldine.' 
 
 Curran very bitterly opposed Emmet's love for Sarah, and 
 the voice which had been raised so often and so eloquently in 
 defence of the other heroes and martyrs of Irish revolution 
 was not lifted up in defence of Emmet. Cunan has been 
 often and severely censured for not undertaking Emmet's de- 
 fence, and he has been accused, in consequence, of being at 
 least indirectly the cause of his death. But we may safely 
 assume that no advocacy either of men or of angels could by 
 any possibility have stirred the hearts of those in authority, 
 and saved the life of the man who was presumptuous enough 
 to rebel against the Union. The trial was hurried through. 
 Every Irish schoolboy knows the impassioned and eloquent 
 address which Emmet delivered — an address which even the 
 tragic circumstances could not save from the brutal interrup- 
 tions of Judge Norbury. On the altar of truth and liberty, 
 Emmet had extinguished the torch of friendship, had offered 
 up the idol of his soul and the object of his affections. With 
 the shadow of death upon him, the doomed patriot addressed 
 his country in words of well-nigh prophetic import, forbidding 
 them to write his epitaph until his country had taken her 
 place among the nations of the earth. The words did not 
 pass his lips long before his death. He was found guilty late 
 in the night of September 19, and he was hanged the next 
 morning in Thomas Street, on the spot where the gloomy 
 church of St, Catherine looks down Bridgefoot Street, where 
 his principal stores of arms had been found. 
 
 Just before his death he wrote a letter to Eichard, Curran's 
 son, full of melancholy tenderness, regret for his lost love, 
 and resignation for his untimely death. 
 
 * If there was anyone in the world in whose breast my 
 death might be supposed not to stifle every spark of resent- 
 ment, it might be you. I have deeply injured you — I have 
 
74 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 deeply injured the happiness of a sister that you love, and 
 who was formed to give happiness to everyone about her, 
 instead of having her own mind a prey to affliction. Oh, 
 Eichard ! I have no excuse to offer, but that I meant the re- 
 verse ; I intended as much happiness for Sarah as the most 
 ardent love could have given her. I never did tell you how I 
 idolised her ; it was not with a wild or unfounded passion, 
 but it was an attachment increasing every hour, from an ad- 
 miration of the purity of her mind and respect for her talents. 
 I did dwell in secret upon the prospect of our union. I did 
 hope that success, while it afforded the opportunity of our 
 union, might be the means of confirming an attachment which 
 misfortune had called forth. I did not look to honours for 
 myself — praise I would have asked from the lips of no man ; 
 but I could have wished to read in the glow of Sarah's coun- 
 tenance that her husband was respected. My love, Sarah ! 
 It was not thus that I thought to have requited your affection. 
 I had hoped to be a prop round which your affections might 
 have clung, and which would never have been shaken : but 
 a rude blast has snapped it, and they have fallen over a 
 grave ! ' 
 
 Such was the fate of Robert Emmet. His dying request 
 has been faithfully obeyed by his countrymen ; no tombstone 
 bears his name, no statue typifies his memory. His old 
 friend, the companion of his youth, the poet who had loved 
 him, has honoured his memory with two of his noblest lyrics, 
 and has devoted a third to the girl whom- Emmet's love has 
 made immortal. Curran never forgave his daughter for 
 having given her affections to Emmet ; he practically dis- 
 owned her, and did not, it is said, even extend his forgive- 
 ness to her at the hour of her death some years later. It 
 is melancholy to have to record the fact that the betrothed 
 wife of Robert Emmet was not entirely faithful to his memory. 
 She married, at the instance, it is said, of her friends, and did 
 not long survive her marriage. 
 
76 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION. 
 
 The White Terror which followed upon the failure of Emmet's 
 rising was accompanied by almost all the horrors which 
 marked the hours of repression after the rebellion of ninety- 
 eight. As soon as the news of Emmet's daring attempt reached 
 London, a royal message was sent to Parliament, imploring 
 fresh powers to deal with the mutinous island. The two 
 Houses displayed all the alacrity usual with them when 
 their business is coercion for Ireland. There was not then, 
 nor for more than two ge aerations later, an Irish party in the 
 English House of Commons, to warn an indifferent majority 
 that coercion could only be won with bitter travail and by yet 
 further violation of constitutional rights. The measures 
 which the king demanded were rattled through the two 
 Houses at breakneck speed. A Habeas Corpus Act Suspen- 
 sion Bill and a Bill enforcing military law in Ireland were 
 passed through all their stages in the Lower House before ten 
 o'clock of the evening on which they were introduced. By 
 eleven o'clock the same night they had received the assent of 
 the Lords and become part of the law of the land. Then the 
 old brutal business began again ; the old devil's dance of spies 
 and informers went merrily forward; the prisons were choked 
 with prisoners. The spies and informers received liberal re- 
 wards for each arrest, and took good care to keep the prison 
 market well stocked with victims. 
 
 It is simply horrible to read of the treatment endured by 
 these unhappy prisoners The Russian Nihilist, Stepniak, has 
 lately given, in his grim record of ' Russia under the Tzars,' 
 ghastly accounts of the way in which political prisoners were 
 treated in the dominions of the Tzar. All that Russian political 
 prisoners are said to have suffered, Irish political prisoners 
 suffered under the gentle rule of the Third George in the 
 early part of the present century. Men who were arresled 
 
76 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 immediately after Emmet's rising were in many cases kept in 
 prison for no less than three years, and subjected to inhuman 
 indignities without any kind of trial or any kind of investiga- 
 tion into their guilt or innocence. * If anything,' says an 
 English writer who cannot be accused of undue sympathy with 
 Irish aspirations, ' if anything could extend a show of reason, 
 or the colour of an excuse, to the insurrectionary movements 
 of Emmet and Eussell, it was the subsequent barbarity of the 
 Government to every person accused or suspected of sympathy 
 with their designs or the will to aid them.' 
 
 The Government acted in blind panic. The fear of a 
 French invasion was eternally before their eyes, and they 
 could conceive of no better means of linking the sympathies 
 of the Irish people to the English Crown than the jail and 
 the gallows. They guarded themselves against further insur- 
 rections with ferocious ingenuity, but they took not a single 
 step towards allaying the discontent which animated and kept 
 alive the spirit of revolution. The juggle of the Union had 
 been successfully accomplished by deluding the Catholics with 
 pledges of emancipation, but the moment that the Union was 
 passed the covenant with the Catholics was broken. Pitt re- 
 tired from office eleven days after the passing of the Act of 
 Union, because the king would make no concessions to the 
 Catholic claims ; he returned to office in 1804 on the distinct 
 understanding that he was no longer to weary his intolerant 
 monarch with suggestions of relief for the Irish Catholics. 
 The Minister accepted the terms and kept the engagement. 
 The royal ears were unvexed by any importunities from his 
 obedient Cabinet about the wrongs of Irish Catholics. 
 
 The supporters of Pitt's policy urge that there is the 
 clearest proof of his anxiety to legislate upon three great ques- 
 tions — Catholic Emancipation, the Tithes of the Established 
 Church, and the support of the Roman Catholic clergy. They 
 rest mainly upon Pitt's speech, which was showered like 
 autumn leaves all over Ireland — which by its promises, in- 
 deed by its pledges, did so much to facilitate the Union. A 
 former secretary to the Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer has 
 
CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 77 
 
 declared that Pitt had actually prepared a Bill for the commu- 
 tation of tithes. This may be ; the certainty is that nothing 
 was done. The stolid and bigoted king was obstinate in his 
 refusal to sanction any measures of Catliolic toleration, and 
 Pitt, exculpating himself by ingenious distinctions between 
 expediency and right, gave way, after a comparatively brief 
 interval of absence from office. 
 
 Outraged by the law, detested by the Sovereign, abandoned 
 by the Minister, the position of Irish Catholicity was bad 
 enough, but it had not merely to contend with the harshness 
 of the law, the hatred of the king, and the treason of the 
 statesman. A fresh enemy swelled the ranks against it — an 
 enemy growing more powerful and more hostile with the 
 failure of every fresh effort for Catholic relief— the enemy that 
 was known by the name of the Orange Society. ' The Orange 
 Society,' says an English author, ' grew out of the violent 
 spirit into which the selfishness of Protestant monopoly now 
 precipitated its animosity. Lured by the lust of power and 
 the avarice of self-interest, the Protestants began to band 
 -themselves together by secret oaths ; and in many places 
 committed themselves with the blind fury of zealots to the 
 trammels of their leaders.' The Orange Society first came 
 into existence immediately after what is known as the ' Battle 
 of the Diamond.' 
 
 On September 21, 1795, a violent conflict took place 
 between the Protestant ' Peep-o'-day Boys ' and the Catholic 
 ' Defenders ' at the Diamond, a place where four roads meet 
 in Loughall, not far from Armagh. After a desperate struggle 
 the * Defenders ' were defeated, and many of their number 
 killed. In commemoration of this event the first Orange 
 lodge was formed in Armagh on the same date, on September 
 21, 1795, at Timaekell ; and soon after another lodge was 
 established in Dublin. 
 
 It has been said, ho"wever, that the first Orange lodge was 
 founded in the camp of William of Orange at Exeter, early in 
 November 1688. There is no evidence to support this claim, 
 which is not alluded to by Sir Kichard Musgrave. Musgrave, 
 
78 TBELAND SIJVCM THE VNION^ 
 
 the dedication of whose work on the Eebellion of 1798 was 
 coldly and decisively declined by the nobleman to whom it was 
 proffered, says : ' In commemoration of that victory ' (the 
 battle of the Diamond) * the first Orange lodge was formed in 
 the county of Armagh, though the name of Orangemen existed 
 some time before.' Furthermore, in 1835 Lieutenant-Colonel 
 Vernon, M.P., said before a Select Committee of the House of 
 Commons, that there was no Orange institution in any other 
 form in existence before 1795. In the January of 1798 a 
 solemn manifesto was issued by the members of the Dublin 
 lodge, declaring that the principles of their existence were 
 the maintenance of Church and State — that is to say, the 
 maintenance of the Protestant faith, and the imposition of 
 the Protestant faith upon Catholic Ireland. For some time 
 the society made but little progress, and it was not until 
 after the passing of the Act of Union that it began to make 
 sensible advances in number and in influence. According 
 to Francis Plowden its purpose was to uphold the Crown so 
 long as the Crown upheld Protestant ascendency — and no 
 longer. He even goes further and declares : * It has been 
 asserted by well-informed though anonymous authors that the 
 original obligation or oath of Orangemen was to the follow- 
 ing effect : I, A. B., do swear that I will be true to king and 
 Government, and that I will exterminate the Catholics of 
 Ireland so far as in my power lies.' This oath, it must be 
 admitted, has been denied by the Orange lodges, but it is not 
 apparently denied that their oath of allegiance was only con- 
 ditional on the Crown supporting Protestant ascendency. 
 
 The Orange Society gained from its very earliest days 
 much support and encouragement from the ostentatious pat- 
 ronage of the Duke of York. The Duke of York was not an 
 estimable person. • In a family that was rarely remarkable 
 for the moral qualities of its members, he was conspicuous 
 for his indifference to all the restraints that religion and 
 civilisation impose upon humanity. But it pleased him to 
 come forward on all possible occasions as the patron and 
 champion of the Church of England, whenever that patronage 
 
CATHOLIC T: MANCIPATION 79 
 
 and championship might be calculated to inflict an injury 
 upon the professors of some other creed. In the Orange 
 Society he saw an excellent opportunity for striking a blow 
 at the Catholics of Ireland, whose claims, as he and the 
 fiercer fanatics of Ascendency began to dread, were upon the 
 eve of obtaining some recognition from the English Govern- 
 ment. In the year 1797 he became a prominent patron of 
 the Orange lodges in Ireland, and he seems to have made 
 use of his power as Commander-in-Chief to encourage the 
 formation of Orange- lodges in the regiments stationed in' 
 Ireland, in direct defiance of military regulations. So bitter 
 was his animosity to the Irish Catholics that more than a 
 generation after the formation of the Orange lodges he called 
 upon God to witness that he would never assent to the en- 
 franchisement of the Irish people. This saying inspired 
 Sheil with a fierce attack upon the Duke of York when the 
 Duke's health was proposed at a public dinner at Mullingar. 
 Naturally incensed by the proposal of such a toast in a 
 Catholic assembly, the orator inveighed against the ducal 
 patron of the Orange lodges with a vehemence which, for 
 long enough, was prejudicial to his own career. 
 
 When the Duke lay dying, a little later, Sheil, in a public' 
 speech, gave utterance to what has been called an apology 
 for his attack upon the Duke of York. He did, indeed, 
 express some regret at the terms he had employed, but the 
 manner in which he expressed that regret was scarcely likely 
 to win his pardon in high quarters. 
 
 ' It is right,' exclaimed Sheil, ' that the offence which the 
 Duke of York committed against our country should be com- 
 mitted to forgetfulness. Indeed, it is almost unnecessary to 
 express a desire which the natural oblivion that must befall 
 the greatest as well as the humblest of mankind cannot fail 
 to accomplish. In a month hence the Duke of York will be 
 forgotten. The pomp of death will for a few nights fill the 
 gilded apartments in which his body will lie in state. The 
 artist will endeavour to avert the decay to wliich even princes 
 are doomed, and embalm him with odours which may resist 
 
80 TRELA^D STIVOJE THE VNTOlSr 
 
 the cadaverous scent for a while. He will be laid in a wind- 
 ing-sheet fringed with silver and with gold ; he will be enclosed 
 in spicy wood, and his illustrious descent and withered hopes 
 will be inscribed upon his glittering coffin. The bell of St. 
 Paul's will toll, and London — rich, luxurious, Babylonic 
 London — will start at the recollection tliat even kings must 
 die. . . . The coffin will go sadly and slowly down : its pon- 
 derous mass will strike on the remains of its regal kindred ; 
 the chant will be resumed, a moment's awful pause will take 
 place — the marble vault, of which none but the Archangel 
 shall disturb the slumbers, will be closed — the songs of death 
 will cease — the procession will wind through the aisles again 
 and restore them to their loneliness. The torches will fade 
 again in the open daylight — the multitude of the great will 
 gradually disperse ; they will roll back in their gilded chariots 
 into the din and tumult of the great metropolis ; the business 
 and the pursuits and the frivolities of life will be resumed, 
 and the heir to the Three Kingdoms will be in a week for- 
 gotten. We, too, shall forget ; but let us before we forget 
 forgive him ! ' 
 
 Such a speech, anim_ated with all the scorn and all the 
 passion of Hebrew prophecy, and spoken as it was while the 
 object of its scorn was still lingering in life, will serve to show 
 the hatred which the fanatic and vindictive bigotry of a 
 foreign prince could inspire in the mind of a statesman and 
 an orator like Shell. 
 
 While, however, the Duke of York had still more than 
 twenty years to live, and the Orange Society was yet in its 
 infancy, the position of the Catholics was pitiable in the 
 extreme. The statesmen of the Union who had promised 
 much had performed nothing ; the law still held nothing 
 but terrors, the Government had nothing but hostility for 
 Eoman Catlsolics. Under the benign Lord Lieutenantship of 
 Lord Hardwicke all the judicial offences which had darkened 
 the close of the eighteenth century and compelled insurrection 
 were in full force. The vile old policy of shameless corruption 
 on the one hand and shameless oppression on the other wag 
 
CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 81 
 
 followed out Avith stubborn persistence. A purchased Press 
 and a place-hunting minority strengthened the hands of the 
 Executive and gave it full force and sanction for the hangings, 
 the floggings, the transportations, and imprisonment which 
 were so lavishly employed in order to make the Irish appreciate 
 the blessings of the Act of Union. 
 
 It is one of the most remarkable features of Ireland's 
 history, however, that no oppression has ever retarded her 
 steady and persistent advance towards freedom. The desire 
 for liberty, like the torch in the old Greek game, is handed 
 over from hand to hand. One runner may fail, grow faint 
 and fall off, but there are always others ready to snatch the 
 torch from his loosening grasp and carry it a further stage 
 nearer to the goal. Emmet's insurrection had been only just 
 crushed out ; the blood of the young leader was scarcely dry ; 
 his body scarcely cold in the nameless grave which his dying 
 bequest had left without an epitaph, when the new movement 
 began which was destined to gratify one of the greatest and 
 justest of Irish ambitions in a quarter of a century, and to 
 culminate in unavailing revolution nearly half a century lattr. 
 
 Pitt, the Prime Minister who had promised the Catholics 
 their emancipation, was Prin:e Minister again, on the distinct 
 understanding that he should make no concessions to the 
 Catholics. The Irish Catholics resolved to combat this under- 
 standing. The old Catholic Committee met in Dublin, drew 
 up a petition and entrusted it to Lord Fingall and some other 
 Catholic noblemen and gentlemen to place in the hands of 
 Mr. Pitt. Pitt received the deputation with courtesy, and 
 listened to their appeal with that unalterable composure 
 which ' had produced so irritating an effect upon Edward 
 Gibbon many a long year before when Pitt was little more 
 than a lad, and had ventured to traverse some opinion of the 
 historian of Rome. He absolutely refused to support the 
 Catholic claims in anyway. Previous promises, early pledges 
 he graciously admitted ; he was still, it seemed, an ardent 
 advocate of Catholic relief; but just then Catholic relief was 
 inexpedient, in fact, impossible. The deputation wasted its 
 
 G 
 
82 T BEL AND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 words and its wits upon the Minister. He was civil, smooth- 
 spoken, and immovable. Pitt had in his hands the greatest 
 chance ever offered to a statesman of ameliorating the condition 
 of Ireland, and of damming a sea of troubles from many 
 generations of men. But he had come into office on the con- 
 dition that he was to be deaf to the voice of the Irish Catho- 
 lics, and he preferred office to honour. Other ministers since 
 Pitt have pursued a like policy, and with a like disastrous result. 
 
 The disappointed deputation then turned from the Minister 
 to the Opposition, and placed their petition in the hands of 
 Lord Grenville and Mr. Fox. The question was the cause of 
 long and eloquent debates in both houses, which ended in re- 
 cording the vote of a small minority in favour of the Catholic 
 claims and of an overwhelming majority against them. The 
 debate is memorable especially because it was the occasion cf 
 Grattan's first appearance in the English House of Commons. 
 In spite of all the disadvantages of his voice and manner, in spite 
 of the still greater disadvantage of a great reputation gained 
 in another country and another assembly, Grattan's oratory 
 earned an unqualified triumph. It was applauded by the 
 Minister against whom it was levelled, and whose secret 
 opinions it, no doubt, expressed while it censured his pubUc 
 action. In vain, however, Grattan contended that the prin- 
 ciple of religious liberty was equally sound whether apphed ' to 
 constitution where it is freedom, or to empire where it is 
 strength, or to religion where it is light.' In vain he con- 
 demned the proscription which ' made in Ireland not only war 
 but peace calamities.' In vain he told the attentive senate 
 that ' what the best men in Ireland wished to do but could not 
 do, the patriot courtier and the patriot oppositionist, you may 
 accomplish.' Neither the genius of Grattan nor the genius 
 of Fox could move or reduce the anti-Catholic majority, and 
 the hopes of the Catholics were lowered to be raised again 
 unexpectedly by an unforeseen accident, only to be dashed to 
 earth again by another accident yet more unforeseen. 
 
 On the 2nd of December, 1805, Napoleon defeated the 
 armies of the allies at Austerlitz. On the 26th of January, 
 
CATHOLIC E3IANCIPATI0N 83 
 
 in the following year, Pitt had ceased to live. Not for a moment 
 before his death, it is said, did the ' Austerlitz look ' leave his 
 face. His fears foresaw the unrestrained trimnph of Napoleon 
 and the ruin of England ; his genius could not predict Mos- 
 cow and Waterloo. The death of Pitt was immediately fol- 
 lowed by the fall of the Pitt Administration and by the 
 accession of the Opposition to power, nominally under Lord 
 Grenville, but actually under the commanding influence of 
 Fox. The hopes of the Catholics rose high. Pitt had been 
 their most dangerous enemy ; Fox had promised to be, and 
 seemed like to prove himself, their fastest friend. 
 
 But the ingenious combination of the followers of Gren- 
 ville, the followers of Fox, and the friends of Lord Sidmouth, 
 which its friends proudly and its foes contemptuously styled the 
 Ministry * of all the talents,' was not destined to do much for 
 the Irish Catholics or for Ireland. Lord Hardwicke, indeed, 
 freed Ireland from his obnoxious presence, and a Duke of 
 Bedford held sway at the Castle in his stead — the same Duke 
 who has earned a dishonourable immortality by his attack 
 upon Burke, and by the magnificent reply with which Burke 
 held his name up for ever to the contempt of posterity. 
 
 But a change of viceroys meant little in Ireland. It was 
 simply an Amurath succeeding to an Amurath. To this Duke 
 the Catholics of Dublin presented an address expressing the 
 hope that the new Government was prepared to accomplish 
 Catholic relief. The Duke gave a guarded answer, but let it be 
 noised abroad that as soon as Fox could convert his king the 
 Catholics should reap the reward of their patience. Whether 
 even Fox could ever have converted such a king must remain 
 one of the most unanswerable speculations of history. At 
 least, he did not convert him. We may well believe in the 
 integrity of Fox's intentions, and in his loyalty to his convic- 
 tions and his promises, but he was not allowed the time to 
 ratify his pledges or to verify the hopes of those who depended 
 upon him. In the September of that same year, 1806, which 
 had opened with the death of Pitt, Fox himself was carried 
 to Westminster Abbey. The two great rivals slept in neigh- 
 
 g2 
 
84 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 bour graves, and the hopes of the Irish Catholics seemed to 
 be buried in Fox's monument. 
 
 The prophetic wisdom of Fox had warned the CathoHcs, 
 on his accession to power, that the unpopukirity of their cause 
 might mean the ruin of the Ministry that advocated it, and 
 the accession of a Ministry formed on the avowed principle of 
 defeating the Catholic claims, and so put all hope further off 
 than ever. What he expected came to pass. The Ministry 
 ' of all the talents ' showed some signs of sympathy with the 
 Roman Catholics. The grant to Maynooth was increased by 
 5,000/. An effort was made to pass a Bill admitting Catho- 
 lics to hold commissions in the army and the navy. Even 
 this small concession to justice roused the passions of the 
 bigot king. After it had passed the Commons he declared 
 himself against it, and attempted to extort from his new 
 Ministers the pledge he had successfully imposed upon Pitt, 
 never again to importune his kingly ears with proposals to 
 relieve the Catholics. The Ministers refused to make this 
 humiliating concession, pushed their Bill through the Lords, 
 and placed their resignation in the hands of the monarch. 
 George immediately sent for Mr. Spencer Perceval, a man 
 more after his own heart than Grey or Grenville, and en- 
 trusted him with the task of forming the Ministry which, from 
 its supple acceptance of the royal bigotry, came to be known 
 by the nickname of the ' No-Popery Ministry.' Catholic relief 
 was postponed for twenty years. 
 
 The new Ministry began its work in no spirit of compro- 
 mise or conciliation. It had come into office on the strength 
 of its anti- Catholic pledges, and it was determined to retain 
 its power by a thorough-going fulfilment of those pledges. 
 New measures of coercion signalised their entrance into office, 
 and the new measures of coercion were as usual followed by 
 fresh outbreaks. In 1807 we hear for the first time of two 
 desperate local factions, the Shanavests and Caravats, who 
 seem to have agitated for a time very fiercely before they dis- 
 appeared under the pressure of the law. Patronage, corrup- 
 tion, and coercion held their familiar carnival. The grant to 
 
CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 80 
 
 Maynooth was reduced, and in every possible way the Catho- 
 lics were made to feel the enmity of the king and of his 
 Ministers. But, though the hopes of the Catholics seemed to 
 be dashed to the ground, they did not despair. They still 
 agitated, still petitioned, still united. It was their darkest 
 hour, but it heralded the dawn. The hour which had come 
 had brought the man with it. The leader for whom Ireland 
 was waiting was at hand. There was a young man in Dublin 
 taking an active part in the work of the Catholic Com^^ittee 
 whose name Ireland, England, and the world were destined 
 to hear a great deal of. That name was Daniel O'Connell. 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 DANIEL O'CONNELIi. 
 
 The new leader in Irish politics was one of the strangest and 
 most remarkable figures that had ever moved across its stormy 
 scene. Unlike most of the later leaders of Irish national move- 
 ments, Daniel O'Connell was a Catholic. The men of ninety- 
 eight, Fitzgerald, O'Connor, Wolfe Tone, and Emmet, had 
 all been members of the Protestant faith. Daniel O'Connell 
 came of an old Catholic Kerry family. As Catholics, the 
 O'Connells experienced the pressure of the Penal Laws. 
 Morris O'Connell, the eldest son of the liberator's grandfather, 
 held an estate that was not ' discoverable ' — that is to say, 
 was not liable to be seized by any Protestant that chose to 
 claim it, because it was held by leases conveyed prior to the 
 enactment of the Penal Laws. Morgan O'Connell, Daniel 
 O'Connell's father, though he was a rather large landowner, 
 ruled his estate at his own risk, and through the forbearance 
 of his Protestant neighbours. He held his lands through a 
 trustee, who was, of course, a Protestant, and who would have 
 been perfectly within his legal rights in violating his trust and 
 seizing Morgan O'Connell's property. Nor was the mere 
 fidelity of the trustee in itself a safeguard. Any other Pi'o- 
 
86 IBELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 testaiit who eliose to file a Bill of Discovery could compel the 
 trust to be disclosed, and could seize the estate without making 
 any payment or compensation whatever to its Catholic pro- 
 prietor. 
 
 The O'Connell family was, in many ways, a remarkable 
 one. Daniel O'Connell, the liberator's namesake and uncle, 
 had liimself a story which reads like some of the most brilliant 
 pages from the romance of adventure. The two-and- twentieth 
 child, he entered tlie French service at an age when most boys 
 are at school, and raised himself to high rank by his own 
 merit. He served with signal distinction in many parts of the 
 w^orld. He was in command of a large lumiber of foreign 
 troops in Paris in 1789, and used often to declare, in his later 
 years, that, if Louis XVI. had allowed him to act, the revolu- 
 tion might have been crushed almost at its inception. After 
 a long life of battle and adventure, he died as colonel in the 
 British army in 1834, in his ninety-first year. 
 
 The more famous Daniel O'Connell appears to have in- 
 herited the courageous spirit and magnificent constitution of 
 his warlike uncle, as well as his name. All his early years 
 belonged to a time of great European excitement. While he 
 was still but a child, his youthful ears were filled with the 
 fame and fear of Paul Jones's name, and wdtli the desperate 
 doings of the Bon Homme Bichard. Later on, he was at school 
 in France at the very time wdien the Keign of Terror began, 
 and it w^as only wdth considerable danger that he and his 
 brother w^ere able to make their way back from France to 
 Ireland. The packet-boat that conveyed them from Calais 
 conveyed to England the tidings of the death of Louis XVI., 
 and it also carried among its passengers two men whose names 
 are famous in Irish history, tw^o men who were destined to 
 play a prominent part in the insurrectionary movement of 
 ninety-eight — the brothers John and Henry Sheares. It is 
 said that John Sheares declared to those on board that he 
 and his brother had been actually present at the execution of 
 Louis XVI., having bribed two soldiers of the national guard 
 to let them wear their uniforms, and take their places.. That 
 
DANIEL O'CONNELL 87 
 
 was surely an ominous and fateful vessel which left France with 
 such strange tidings and such a strange company. 
 
 The tidings that France, in the words of Danton, * had 
 answered Europe's challenge with the head of a king,' were but 
 the bloody preface to a long series of terrible events which were 
 destined at last to end in empire, after the revolution, like 
 Saturn, had consumed its own children. The company was 
 one of the strangest that chance had ever brought together 
 on shipboard, for it included two men who were yet to stir up 
 desperate rebellion against the foreign dominion, and who 
 were doomed to die for the attempt, and included, too, the 
 lad just fresh from college, who was fated to accomplish one 
 portion of the freedom of his country, and to be himself the 
 cause of another unsuccessful revolution. 
 
 Daniel O'Connell's young manhood was passed chiefly in 
 Dublin, at first studying for, and afterwards gradually work- 
 i]ig his way to eminence at, the Bar. It is possible that his 
 eager and active patriotism might have included him, too, 
 in the struggle and ruin of ninety-eight but for an accident in a 
 .street scuffle. The injuries received therein kept him in con- 
 iinement during some of the most critical days in the history 
 of the rebellion, and during this confinement he received 
 sure and trusty warning of the Government's intimate know- 
 ledge with every detail of the conspiracy. Whatever sympathy 
 J'Connell might have felt for the United Irishmen then, he 
 certainly felt none in his later days. He could not, we are 
 told, forgive them for helping Pitt to pass the Union ; and in 
 his eyes and in his words the heroes of the Irish people — 
 Fitzgerald, Emmet, Tone — were only ' a gang of scoundrels.' 
 When 1803 arrived, O'Connell had nothing to do with the 
 revolutionary movement of Emmet. He was a prominent 
 member of the lawyers' corps, and seems to have played an 
 honourable part in attempting to defend the hves of unoffend- 
 ing citizens against the panic-stricken excesses of the citizen 
 soldiery. 
 
 One of the chief characteristics of O'Connell's early life 
 was courage. It neeced no small courage for a young man, 
 
88 IRELAND SINGE THE UNION 
 
 and a Catholic, to lift up his voice loudly and eloquently 
 against the Union at a meeting well-nigh overawed by the 
 presence of an armed soldiery, under the command of the 
 detested Major Sirr. At a time when the insurrection of 
 Emmet was but an event of yesterday, and when the savage 
 repression of obnoxious political opinions was the creed and 
 the principle of the Irish Executive, the unknown young 
 lawyer, who had at one time, according to his own words, 
 ' been almost a Tory,' dared to express himself as an eloquent 
 and indignant opponent of the Union. It needed no small 
 courage, too, for such a man to take upon himself, as he did 
 a little later, the part of the champion of the Catholics of 
 Ireland. At the time when O'Connell was rapidly making his 
 way into the front rank of his profession, the Irish Catholics 
 were reduced by oppression, by privation, and the Penal Laws 
 to a condition of almost despairing apathy. They had no 
 ambitions which they could hope to gratify ; they had no 
 privileges as citizens ; they had almost no rights as human 
 beings. 
 
 Their attitude in most cases was not unnaturally that of 
 the oppressed towards the oppressor, of the subjected to the 
 conqueror, of the slave to the master. To be a Protestant 
 meant, then, to belong to a dominant, privileged, and power- 
 ful minority ; to be a Catholic meant to belcng to a degraded 
 and outraged and an insulted majority. The liberties, tlm 
 possessions, the very life of the Irish Catholic could hardly 
 be called his own, and he had fallen in many cases into 
 that listless torpor which is one of the most fatal symbols of 
 vassalage. The intolerable cruelties of the Orange Society 
 had here and there aroused a certain spirit of retaliation. 
 The Eibbonmen sometimes met and met successfully the 
 attacks upon their kin and their creed. But in the 
 majority of cases Orangeism was all powerful. If a Lord- 
 Lieutenant administered the law after a fashion displeasing to 
 them, as Wellesley did, he was made the victim of an organised 
 attack for which the offenders were never brought to book. 
 Conviction of an Orangeman was practically impossible, as he 
 
BANIEL aCONNELL 89 
 
 was sure to be tried before an Orange jury ; conviction of 
 a Catholic was certain, for the same reason. No wonder if 
 the Irish CathoKcs as a class were broken-spirited and 
 apathetic. It was for this class, which had for so long been 
 silent, that a young man of their own faith now dared to come 
 forward, not merely as their defender, but as their vindicator 
 and justifier. The tone of plaintive apology which had been 
 so familiar in the mouths of some advocates of the Catholic 
 cause was never adopted by O'Connell. From the first he 
 held his head high, and cared for no man. From the first he 
 adopted an attitude of defiance, and a tone of even aggressive 
 scorn of his opponents. He fought the Catholic cause in 
 all places and in all seasons, on the public platform and 
 in the crowded court-room, with an eloquence which was 
 not less remarkable for its power than for its passion, for its 
 beauty than for its bitterness, for its admirable arguments 
 in favour of its cause, than for its merciless attacks upon his 
 powerful adversaries. 
 
 It was a new thing for the Irish Catholics to see a man of 
 their own creed rising up from their midst to assail the As- 
 cendency with all the weapons of wit, and scorn, and satire, 
 and invective of which O'Connell was then and always so 
 complete a master. Fearless and serene, he assailed the 
 dominant class after a fashion to which they were indeed un- 
 accustomed, and the surprise of the Catholics, on discovering 
 such a defender, can scarcely have been greater than that of 
 the Ascendency in finding that the despised Catholics had 
 found at last a tongue that was more terrible to them than 
 the sword. A Spartan gentleman of some twenty centuries 
 since, or a Virginian gentleman of one century ago, would 
 scarcely have been more amazed if Helot or Blackamoor had 
 risen up to agitate against them, and to hold them up to con- 
 tempt and derision, than the Castle clique must have been 
 when they gradually awoke to the growing influence of 
 O'Connell. 
 
 Sometimes when Irishmen are disposed, and not unnatu- 
 rally, to deal somewhat hardly with various passages in 
 
90 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 O'Connell's life, when they think of his more than servile 
 homage to royalty, when they remember how he waded into the 
 waters of Kingstown Harbour to greet with servile welcome 
 the basest of the Georges, when they reflect upon his unjust 
 denunciation of the United Irishmen, and his unbridled and 
 unhappy animosity to Young Ireland, when they think of him 
 as the patron of a little army of placemen, they would do 
 well to season their indignation by dwelling upon the great 
 things he did accomplish for Ireland. The strength of a 
 chain may lie in its weakest part ; but the career of a great 
 man must be tested not where it has failed but where it 
 has succeeded. We should not, in the words of the dying 
 Antony, lament nor sorrow too much over some passages 
 in O'Connell's life, but please our thoughts by feeding them 
 on those of his former fortunes, wherein he lived the greatest 
 of Irishmen, the noblest. He dared the hatred of England. 
 He courted poverty, he abandoned all the highways of per- 
 sonal success for the sake of the cause he honoured, and the 
 country from which he sprang. He could not have foreseen 
 that the cause would carry him to greatness, and give him an 
 immortal memory. 
 
 It was a favourite taunt of his English opponents in later 
 years to call him ' the big beggarman,' and to point the finger 
 of scorn at him because he accepted a tribute from the nation 
 he redeemed. If such a taunt needed any answer at all, i\, 
 v>^as answered by O'Connell himself in the pathetic words in 
 which he speaks of his early toils and hardships, of his labor- 
 ious youth and its incessant studies, and of the promising and 
 lucrative career from which he always found time, when time 
 was as precious as gold, to labour for the Catholic cause, and 
 which in the end he gave up altogether, in order to devote 
 himself with greater singleness of purpose to the service of his 
 country. 
 
 In the Conservative press of to-day, O'Connell is exalted 
 at the expense of Mr. Parnell. Eloquent tributes are paid to 
 the genius, the integrity, and the honour of the great orator ; 
 melancholy regrets expressed for the leader of the past who 
 
DANIEL a CONN ELL 91 
 
 contrasts so worthily with the leader of the present. Irish- 
 men are assured that if only Ireland had such a man as 
 O'Connell at her head, her demands would be more readily 
 listened to by her appreciative rulers. Yet if Irishmen took 
 the trouble to refer back to the dusty files of the newspapers 
 of O'Connell's time, they would not find there any evidence 
 of this latter-day admiration. Then no epithet was strong 
 enough, no adjective sufficiently offensive to fling at O'Con- 
 nell's name. It is an undoubted reputable fact that a 
 hostile press raved itself into sheer hysterics of hatred against 
 him. Writers who would have been sane and sensible enough 
 in treating of the political life of old Eome or modern Paris, 
 lost their heads completely when they came to speak of O'Con- 
 nell, and could do nothing better than to bellow at him in 
 blind fury of abuse. The coarsest vituperation was daily poured 
 upon O'Connell by a generation certain of whose children to- 
 day point to him in admiration, and appeal to his memory as 
 to a holy spell, with which to conjure hence the modern spirit 
 of Irish patriotism. 
 
 Upon O'Connell this whirlwind of objurgations had little or 
 no effect. Those who assailed him he could assail again ; 
 those who abused him he could abuse yet more roundly. He 
 could meet the ferocity of his opponents with a ferocity of his 
 own, far more acrid and far more galling. His marvellous 
 eloquence made him more than a match for the ablest of his 
 opponents. It is not easy for us of to-day to judge of the 
 effects of that eloquence. O'Connell's speeches are not such 
 delightful reading as the speeches of Grattan, or of Slieil, or 
 of Meagher. We, as we read, can hear no echo of that mar- 
 vellous voice which all who ever heard it agree in pronouncing 
 well-nigh unsurpassable in its beauty. Other speakers, far 
 greater than O'Connell in their mastery of words, in the ful- 
 ness of their thoughts, in the splendours of their literary form, 
 seemed to dwindle into insignificance as orators beside him, 
 when their feeble voices, harsh delivery, and uncouth gestures 
 were contrasted with the magnificence of his voice and the 
 majesty of his presence. 
 
92 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Men of the most varied types, and of the most differing 
 political opinions, agreed in a common admiration of 
 O'Connell's oratorical powers. Lord Jeffrey, Mr. Roebuck, 
 Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Lytton, and Charles Dickens, have 
 all borne impressive testimony to the spell of O'Connell's 
 eloquence. Charles Dickens tells how, when he was once 
 reporting a speech of O'Connell's in the House of Commons 
 on one of the tithe-riots, he was so touched and moved by its 
 exquisite pathos, that he was compelled to hold his hand, to 
 lay down his pencil, and to listen motionless. The late Lord 
 Lytton, in his poem, ' St. Stephen's,' has given a very poetic 
 description of the impression produced on him by hearing 
 O'Connell speak at a great public meeting in Ireland. * Then,' 
 says Lord Lytton, ' did I know what spells of infinite choice 
 
 To rouse or lull, has the sweet human voice ; 
 Then did I seem to seize the sudden clue 
 To the grand troublous life antique — to view 
 Under the rock-stand of Demosthenes, 
 Mutable Athens heave her noisy seas.' 
 
 Such was the man who had now come forward to take the 
 lead in Lish politics, and to press upon the English Govern- 
 ment the twin national demand for Catholic Emancipation 
 and for the repeal of the Union. The repeal of the Union 
 had been one of the earliest themes of O'Connell's eloquence ; 
 but it was to Catholic Emancipation that he devoted himself 
 actively in the earlier period of his career, and it was over 
 Catholic Emancipation that he achieved his greatest triumph, 
 and rendered the greatest service to his country. 
 
 He was not unnaturally hated — and feared as well as 
 hated — by the Ascendency. They suddenly saw their rule, 
 which had been preserved so successfully from the dangers of 
 more than one revolution, now threatened by a danger more 
 deadly to their privileges than revolution itself. The power of 
 eloquence, which has upset thrones and exiled princes in 
 all the cities and empires of the world, the eloquence that 
 appeals to and animates and unites a vast body of the people 
 in one common purpose, was now levelled against them* 
 
DANIEL 0' CONN ELL 93 
 
 O'Connell's was no mere eloquence of the senate or of tlie 
 school ; it was as much at home on the hillside as in the 
 council-chamber, upon the hustings as in the hall. It did 
 not need for its audience a chosen group of cultivated, 
 educated men. It stirred the blood and fired the mind of the 
 humblest peasant with the same national pulsations and 
 aspirations that it gave to the statesman and to the scholar. 
 
 His opponents had no eloquence of their own to pit 
 against that of this people's tribune ; but there still existed a 
 tradition of another means of silencing a too eloquent oppo- 
 nent. The duel was still one of the cherished institutions of 
 political life in the early part of the present century. A duel 
 was forced upon O'Connell. His opponent, Mr. D'Esterre, 
 appears to have been an unconscious tool of party faction. 
 O'Connell and he met, and exchanged shots ; and O'Connell 
 wounded his adversary so severely that he died a few days 
 after. That practically ended any idea of silencing O'Connell 
 by wager of battle. It left, however, a profoundly-lasting, 
 melancholy impression upon the mind of O'Connell himself. 
 He bitterly regretted the death of his adversary ; and that 
 life-long regret must be taken very largely into account in 
 considering the strong and unchanged opposition always 
 offered by O'Connell to any struggle for freedom which could 
 possibly involve the shedding of human blood or the loss of 
 human life. 
 
 In the May of 1829 the English House of Commons was 
 the theatre of the last act in a great religious and political 
 movement. A man had made his appearance on the floor of 
 the House as the chosen representative of an Irish county, 
 who was the object of the keenest curiosity to an assembly 
 crowded beyond its custom. The galleries and the avenues 
 of the House were filled with individuals anxious to learn as 
 soon as possible the result of a certain event. Every eye in 
 the Chamber was riveted on the stranger who waited with 
 grave unmoved countenance for the moment when Mr. 
 Speaker rising from his seat should desire new members to 
 come to the table ; the name of the stranger and the name of 
 
94 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 the constituency which he came there to represent were on 
 every lip. The name of the constituency was the County 
 Clare, and of its representative Daniel O'Connell. Well 
 might the members of that thronged Senate gaze with eager 
 interest on the stranger within their gates. He stood there 
 as the champion of a cause and of a creed which had long 
 been championless ; he came as a conqueror in the name of 
 those who had been conquered. Centuiies of pain and 
 passion, of injustice and of degradation worse than death, had 
 found in this man their apostle and their vindicator. The 
 Catholics of Ireland, so long the last among the nations, so 
 long the outcasts of the law, the scorn of power and the sport 
 of princes, were entering at last into the dearest of all human 
 inheritances, and they owed their disenthrallment to the man 
 of genius who waited in Westminster on that afternoon of 
 early summer with the eyes of the world upon him. 
 
 How much this man had accomplished ! Against the 
 hostility of the Ascendency ; against the apathy of his own 
 people steeped in the Lethe of long oppression ; against the 
 soldiers of Sirr and the pistol of D'Esterre ; against Veto and 
 the friends of Veto ; against Quarantotti advocating conces- 
 sion over in Kome, and Fingall counselling compromise at 
 liome in Dublin ; against Canning aiid Castlereagli resolu- 
 tions ; against Government prosecutions and State proscrip- 
 tions, this man had fought his way. A new Titan, he had 
 scaled Olympus and demanded admission into tlie councils of 
 the Immortals. A Catholic, he came to the British House of 
 Commons to champion the rights of his co-religionists, which 
 at that very moment the Government had granted, owing in 
 no small degree to his labours, toils, and energy. 
 
 When O'Connell stood below the bar of the House, the 
 House was but fresh from the discussions on the Catholic 
 Emancipation I^ill, Avhieh had been introduced in order to 
 avoid civil war. That Ireland was raised from the stagnation 
 of slavery to a mood in which she was ready to fight for her 
 faith and freedom of conscience was in a great degree due to 
 O'Connell. It is, of course, certain that in course of time 
 
DANIEL O'CONNELL 93 
 
 Catholic Emancipation must have been conceded if there had 
 been no O'Connell— if O'Connell had died of that fever which 
 threatened his young manhood. But it would not have been 
 conceded so soon. His indomitable energy, his unwearying 
 patience, his marvellous eloquence had stimulated his friends, 
 had formed a following, had frightened his foes, and now in 
 this mid-May of 1829, Catholic Emancipation was an accom- 
 plished fact of some few days old. The Clare election was 
 the immediate cause of Emancipation, and it was as the 
 chosen of that struggle that O'Connell now waited to take his 
 place in the House of Commons. 
 
 The Clare election was the great event of the day. The 
 Duke of Wellington was at the head of the Tory Ministry 
 which had just succeeded to the temporary and trumpery 
 Goderich Administration. Lord John Kussell had carried 
 the Kepeal of the Test Act and the Corporation Act, and this 
 moderate measure of reform had offended Sir Kobert Peel's 
 supporters, and there were several secessions from the Cabinet. 
 The vacant place of President of the Board of Trade was 
 offered to Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, member for the county of 
 Clare. Mr. Fitzgerald accepted the offer, and as the assump- 
 tion of office necessitated re-election, he immediately issued 
 his address to his constituents. It is possible that he did not 
 expect opposition ; it is practically certain that the idea of his 
 not being returned never occurred either to himself or to his 
 friends. He considered his seat for Clare County to be as 
 much his personal property as his hat. 
 
 The Catholics, it is true, had passed a resolution pledging 
 themselves to oppose every candidate who was not sworn to 
 oppose the Duke of Wellington's Government. Even this 
 pledge did not at first appear very inimical to Mr. Fitzgerald's 
 peaceful return. The Whigs as well as the Tories were 
 desirous to see him re-elected. Lord John Russell had the 
 audacity to suggest to O'Connell that Mr. Fitzgerald should 
 be allowed to be returned unopposed, and for a short time 
 O'Connell had the weakness to hesitate as to his line of con- 
 duct. But if the leader for a moment faltered or paltered the 
 
96 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION • 
 
 country was in no compromising temper. O'Connell soon 
 saw that Clare must be contested, and the only question left 
 to answer was, ' By whom ? ' A Major M'Namara was sug- 
 gested, but Major M'Namara declined to trouble the peace of 
 Mr. Fitzgei^ald. There was a brief period of suspense, and 
 then the three kingdoms were startled by the intelligence 
 that O'Connell himself was coming forward to contest Clare. 
 
 At that time it was impossible for a Catholic to enter 
 Parliament. The law did not indeed prohibit him from 
 standing, from being returned, from crossing the seas to 
 Westminster ; but on the threshold of St. Stephen's he was 
 called upon to take an infamous oath, and by a shameful 
 shibboleth he was excluded from his rights. O'Connell could 
 not take this oath, but he saw that the hour had come when 
 the appearance of an Irish Catholic at the bar of the English 
 House of Commons, demanding to be sworn according to his 
 conscience and his creed, and supported in his demand by 
 millions of fellow-countrymen and fellow-believers, would have 
 an effect well-nigh irresistible upon the Government. He was 
 making a bold stroke, and he knew it. The Government 
 knew it too, and both sides strained every nerve for victory. 
 
 O'Connell, like Toussaint L'Ouverture in Wordsworth's 
 poem, had great allies— with him were exaltations, agonies, 
 and love ; and man's unconquerable mind. The sympathies 
 of the people, newly awakened to a sense of their power, were 
 with him. He had aroused a nation and made himself its 
 leader. The whole story of the fight in the County Clare is 
 one of the most exciting, as it is one of the most important, 
 in the record of contested elections in Ireland. O'Connell was 
 aided in his campaign by able and remarkable lieutenants, two 
 of them especially remarkable. The Clare election seems a 
 thing of the past, seems to belong to ancient history. More 
 than half a century has since gone by, a half century big with 
 importance to the Irish people. Well-nigh two generations of 
 men have come and gone since O'Connell came forward on the 
 Clare hustings, and no generation of Irishmen has ever wit- 
 nessed or taken part in events more fateful to their country- 
 
DANIEL O'CONNELL 97 
 
 It is a lialf-century wliicli has witnessed two armed risings in 
 Ireland, a half-century of incessant coercive laws, a half- 
 century that has seen the Irish race dwindle by millions 
 through famine and emigration, a half-century that has seen 
 a new Irish race grow-up on the other side of the Atlantic, no 
 less patriotic, no less determined than their kindred in the 
 parent island ; a half-century that has seen extorted from re- 
 luctant Ministers concession after concession, and piecemeal 
 measures of reform. Such a half-century lies between us of 
 to-day and the men of the Clare election. The big events of 
 such an interval in themselves seem well-nigh to double the 
 actual length of time, and O'Connell and his compeers appear 
 almost as far from us, almost as much the mighty ghosts of 
 heroes as Emmet, or Grattan, or the men of ninety- eight. 
 
 Yet there is a man now living, a man lately sitting in the 
 English Parliament for that same county of Clare, a follower 
 of Mr. Parnell to-day, who, more than fifty years ago, was 
 most conspicuous among the champions and supporters of 
 O'Connell during the stormy days of the Clare election. 
 Colonel The O'Gorman Mahon was one of the most remarkable 
 figures in the Parliament of 1880-1885. The historic muse, ob- 
 serving with admiration his stahvart form, his stately presence 
 and youthful carriage, holds her breath, and refuses to whisper 
 the age of the veteran politician. The vv^ildest rumours cir- 
 culate as to the years and the adventures of a man who played 
 a prominent part in Irish politics long before most of his 
 recent colleagues v/ere born ; who brought O'Connell forward 
 for Clare and who was in Parliament some fifty years before 
 his connection with Mr. Parnell's party. The intervening 
 half-century he spent in all parts of the world, soldiering, 
 sailoring, travelling, enjoying adventure for its own sake. He 
 took a considerable share in making the history of one of the 
 South American republics. Eumour says of him that at one 
 time he was not merely Lord High Admiral of its fleet, but 
 Generalissimo of its army as well, a di\aded duty which may, 
 however, be regarded as savouring of exaggeration. He was 
 in Parliament again from 1847 to 1852 ; he came in for the 
 
 H 
 
98 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 third time in 1879. In 1885 he did not present himself for 
 re-election. His parliamentary friends were fond of rallying 
 him for his supposed antiquity, but there was no young man 
 in the Irish party, or, indeed, in the House of Commons, 
 who carried his head more erect, walked with a firmer step, 
 or showed less evidence of the weight of years than The 
 O'Gorman Mahon. 
 
 Such is The O'Gorman Mahon to-day ; here is what The 
 O'Gorman Mahon was more than fifty years ago : ' He would 
 deserve to stand apart in a port'-ait. Nature has been peculi- 
 arly favourable to him. He has a very striking physiognomy, 
 of the Corsair character, which the Protestant Gulnares and 
 the Catholic Medoras find it equally difficult to resist. His 
 figure is tall, and he is particularly free and degage in all his 
 attitudes and movements. In any other his attire would 
 appear singularly fantastical. His manners are exceedingly 
 frank and natural, and have a character of kindliness as well 
 as of self-reliance imprinted upon them. He is wholly free 
 from embarrassment, and carries a well-founded consciousness 
 of his personal merit ; which is, however, so well united with 
 urbanity, that it is not in the slightest degree offensive. His 
 talents as a popular speaker are considerable. He derives 
 from external qualifications an influence over the multitude, 
 which men of diminutive stature are somewhat slow in ob- 
 taining. A small man is at first regarded by the great body 
 of spectators with disrelish ; and it is only by force of phrase, 
 and by the charm of speech, that he can at length succeed in 
 inducing his auditors to overlook any infelicity of configura- 
 tion ; but when O'Gorman Mahon throws himself out before 
 the people, and touching his whiskers with one hand brandishes 
 the other, an enthusiasm is at once produced to which the 
 fair portion of the spectators lend their tender contribution. 
 Such a man was exactly adapted to the excitement of the 
 people of Clare, and it must be admitted that, by his indefati- 
 gable exertions, his unremitting activity, and his devoted zeal, 
 he most materially assisted in the election of Mr. O'Connell.' 
 
 The words which we have quoted are the words of another 
 
DANIEL O'CONNELL 99 
 
 of the lieutenants of O'Connell, of Richard Lalor Sheih The 
 name and the fame of Sheil have been too much suffered to 
 fade into obscurity of late. Ireland has produced a long and 
 illustrious succession of famous orators. The names of 
 Grattan, of Plunket, of Meagher — not to mention the names of 
 living men— shine like stars, but in the splendid galaxy no 
 name is more luminous than the name of Sheil. His oratory 
 deserves something of the careful study which is given to 
 Cicero or to Mirabeau. Few public speakers have been 
 masters of a more glowing style, have shown such a rich 
 command of words, have made such gorgious use of ornament 
 which never became trivial because it never ceased to be 
 majestic. 
 
 English statesmen of both parties have combined to pay 
 striking tribute to the eloquence and to the genius of Sheil. 
 Lord Beaconsfield, in one of the most famous of his novels, 
 awards to Sheil enthusiastic praise, and contrasts him 
 favourably with the great English orator Canning. Mr. 
 Gladstone described Sheil not very long ago as one of the 
 three great speakers who had come to success in spite of 
 conspicuous personal defects of manner and of voice. Dr. 
 Chalmers and Dr. Newman were the two examples chosen 
 by Mr. Gladstone. Of Sheil he wrote that ' his voice 
 resembled the sound produced by a tin-kettle battered about 
 from place to place.' * In anybody else,' Mr. Gladstone went 
 on to say, * I would not, if it had been my choice, like to have 
 listened to that voice ; but in him I would not have changed 
 it, for it was part of a most remarkable whole, and nobody 
 ever felt it painful while listening to it. He was a great 
 orator, and an orator of much preparation, I believe, carried 
 even to words, with a very vivid imagination, and an enor- 
 mous power of language and of strong feeling. There was a 
 peculiar character, a sort of half-wildness in his aspect and 
 delivery ; his whole figure, and his delivery, and his voice, 
 and his matter were all in such perfect keeping with one 
 another that they formed a great Parliamentary picture ; and, 
 although it is now thirty-five years since I heard Mr. Sheil, 
 
 h2 
 
100 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 my recollection of him is just as vivid as if I had been listen- 
 ing to him to-day.' Such was the man and such the eloquence 
 which was enabled to render O'Connell sterling service in the 
 fight of Clare, a fight of which the most brilliant and fascina- 
 ting picture has been left us by the pen of Shell himself. 
 
 These events and this man were in the minds of that 
 crowded assembly as they watched O'Connell standing below 
 the bar of the House between Lord Ebrington and Lord 
 Duncannon. Presently, the Speaker rose, and called upon 
 new members desirous of taking the oath to come fco the table. 
 O'Connell advanced between his mtroducers to take the oath. 
 It had been O'Connell's intention, when originally he stood 
 for Clare, to come to the House of Commons and to refuse 
 to take the shameful oath then tendered to Catholics. He 
 believed that the result of such a daring step would be to 
 advance materially the cause of Catholic Emancipation. But 
 the cause of Catholic Emancipation had not to wait for that. 
 The Clare election settled the matter, and between the time 
 when O'Connell came forward to contest the county and the 
 time when he stood at the bar of the House waiting to be 
 sworn. Catholic Emancipation had become the law of the 
 land. 
 
 With petty ingenuity, however, Sir Eobert Peel had pro- 
 vided that only those who should be returned as members to 
 the House of Commons ' after the commencement of that Act ' 
 should be allowed to take their seats under the new oaths. 
 O'Connell had been returned before the Bill became law, and 
 against him this retrospective clause was levelled. He, of 
 course, refused to take the infamous form of oath which, 
 except to him, was never again to be offered to a Catholic. 
 He was directed to withdraw, and he did so. An animated 
 discussion at once sprang up as to whether or not he should 
 be heard at the bar of the House in his own defence. The 
 debate was continued upon another day, and for three days 
 in all this matter occupied the attention of the House. 
 O'Connell was finally allowed to speak in his own defence at 
 the bar. He made a long and eloquent speech. The old 
 
BANIEL O'CONNELL 101 
 
 offensive oath was again tendered to him, and again he refused 
 to take it in words which are now historic. He dechned to 
 take the oath because ' one part of it he knew to be false, and 
 another he did not beheve to be true.' A new writ was 
 issued for the County Clare. But the action of Sir Robert 
 Peel had no further effect than of allowing O'Connell a further 
 triumph. He was, of course, immediately re-elected. 
 
 If the party that opposed O'Connell then are inclined to 
 laud him now they are not alone. The Whigs, who feared 
 or hated him in his life, who reviled him in their press and 
 in their speeches, who alternately cajoled and calumniated 
 him, as their fear or their hate rose uppermost ; the fossil 
 Whigs, the ruined remnant of a great party whose power is 
 gone, and whose principles are as extinct as the dodo or the 
 dynasties of the Shepherd- Kings ; the Whigs whom O'Connell 
 himself bitterly satirized are not now unwilling to pay 
 O'Connell some empty honours, and to offer to his memory the 
 respect which they denied him in the flesh. It is no com- 
 mendation to O'Connell in the eyes of his sincere admirers 
 that his merits are extolled at the expense of his political 
 successors ; it is to the supporter of the Melbourne Govern- 
 ment, it is to O'Coiniell the enemy of Young Ireland, it is to 
 the O'Connell of his later and failing years that his latter-day 
 enthusiasts offer their unneeded tribute. 
 
 The Irish people owe much to O'Connell. They owe to 
 him the privilege of professing in freedom the faith of their 
 fathers ; they owe to him the long agitation against the 
 Union which kept alive the spirit of patriotism, and obeyed 
 the commands of Grattan to keep knocking at the Union. They 
 can forgive him for his falling off, for his unwise alliance with 
 the Whigs ; they ca.n forgive him for the praise with which 
 Tory politicians now load his memory, in consideration of 
 the contumely which Tory politicians heaped upon the living 
 man. As they think of O'Connell they hear rather the 
 echoing crash of the sword which fell from the hands of the 
 effigy of Walker on the day when the Act of CathoUc Emanci- 
 pation received the royal signature, than the voice of Young 
 
J 02 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Ireland protesting against the inaction that was betraying 
 them. 
 
 The Clare election was the last act of the long struggle 
 for Catholic Emancipation. It may be regarded as the preface 
 or prelude to a struggle equally great, equally arduous, but 
 not equally successful — the struggle for Eepeal. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE TITHE WAE. 
 
 It has already been mentioned that on one occasion, when 
 Daniel O'Connell was speaking in the English House of Com- 
 mons, his eloquence was so touching that Charles Dickens, who 
 was reporting in the gallery of the House, laid down his pen, 
 and was unable from very emotion to proceed with his work. 
 The speech which so powerfully affected the great English 
 novelist was one of the many speeches uttered by O'Connell 
 with regard to what is now known in history as the Tithe 
 War. O'Connell was giving an account of a tithe riot. 
 He described how, during the struggle between the people on 
 the one side and the police who were collecting parsons' tithes 
 on tlie other, a blind man was led near to the scene of strife 
 by his little daughter. A police man's bullet, recklessly dis- 
 charged, found its billet in the body of the child and killed 
 licv ; and the blind man suddenly discovered that his little 
 ruide and com.panion had fallen lifeless in his arms, with her 
 waim blood running over him. It is not surprising that the 
 picture of such a scene, told as O'Connell could tell it, should 
 have compelled one who was destined himself to be one of the 
 greatest masters of pathos in the English language to stay his 
 hand and drop his pen, and find himself unable to proceed 
 with his task. 
 
 Such scenes as that described by O'Connell were only too 
 common, only too frequent, during that terrible Tithe War. 
 k^ucli events have been neither uncommon nor unfrequent 
 
THE TITHE WAR 103 
 
 since, whenever the people have come into conflict with 
 the ministers of oppressive laws. But, during the fearful 
 years of the Tithe War, scenes of bloodshed and of death were 
 of such ordinary occurrence that their recital in the end 
 became part of the commonplaces of parliamentary debate, 
 and Ministerialists listened at last almost with indifference to 
 details that must have shocked them deeply when they were first 
 recounted. I know of hardly any more melancholy reading in 
 the world than to take down the volumes of Hansard for these 
 early years of the decade of 1830, and to read in them the 
 debates on the question of tithes. O'Connell's genius never 
 reached loftier heights of eloquence, and was never devoted to a 
 nobler purpose than in those burning words with which, again 
 and again, he sought to impress upon a hostile assembly and 
 an inimical Ministry the terrible injuries and injustice under 
 which the Irish peasant was suffering. 
 
 The Tithe question was the natural — or rather the un- 
 natural — offspring of the system of the Penal Laws. The 
 I'ulers of Ireland had done their best for generations to crush 
 out the national faith of the country by a code of which 
 it has been well said that it could never have been prac- 
 tised in hell, or it would have overturned the kingdom of 
 ikelzebub. When, at length, after generations of patient 
 agony, the Penal Code became a thing of the past, and its 
 obnoxious principles were dissipated to the free air ; when at 
 last the common rights of humanity and citizenship were 
 granted to Catholics, and Irish Catholics sat and spoke and 
 voted in the English House of Commons, even then As- 
 cendency did its best to oppress and outrage the national 
 creed. The Catholic Church was no longer directly persecuted, 
 but the English Protestant Church was still the State Church 
 of Ireland, supported by contributions exacted at the point of 
 the bayonet from a people who did not believe the tenets of 
 their Church, and to whom that Church had been for centuries 
 the symbol of a relentless oppression. 
 
 It is scarcely surprising that the Irish people should have 
 protested against being compelled to pay tithes to the pro- 
 
104 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 fessors of a creed which was not their creed, and for the 
 support of churches over whose thresholds their feet never 
 passed. Against this extraordinary imposition, justifiable by 
 no principle whatever beyond the old blunt, brutal principle 
 of the might that maketh right, the Irish peasant protested 
 bitterly. Sometimes he carried his protest farther than mere 
 words, and refused to pay the hateful tribute. Then the 
 followers of the foreign Church called in the aid of arms. 
 The tithes demanded in the name of religion were enforced by 
 soldiers, and by police. If the peasant resisted, he was shot 
 down. 
 
 A great English writer, Sydney Smith, had the courage to 
 protest against the infamous exactions of the so-called Irish 
 Church. ' There is no cruelty like it in all Europe, in all 
 Asia, in all the discovered parts of Africa, and in all we have 
 ever heard of Timbuctoo.' Sydney Smith draws a powerful 
 and vigorous contrast between the influence of the Esta- 
 blished Church and the National Church on the Irish peasantry. 
 ' On the Irish Sabbath, the bell of a neat parish church often 
 summons to church only the parson and an occasionally con- 
 forming clerk ; while, a hundred yards off, a thousand 
 Catholics are huddled together in a miserable hovel, and pelted 
 by all the storms of heaven.' To support that parson and his 
 * occasionally conforming clerk,' the bayonets and the bullets 
 of a military force were employed against the impoverished 
 Catholic peasantry. The stones of that ' neat parish church ' 
 were too often cemented by the blood of its victims. The 
 Tithe question v/as the cause of a kind of perpetually-smould- 
 ering civil war. To the collection of tithes in Ireland Sydney 
 Smith concluded that in all probability a million of lives may 
 have been sacrificed. 
 
 The Tithe question practically came to a head in conse- 
 quence of a controversy in the county of Kildare. A Protes- 
 tant curate of a Kildare parish obtained a rate for the purpose 
 of rebuilding the parish church, by packing the vestry with 
 Protestants. The example thus afforded, Protestant curates 
 in other parts of the country were not slow to follow. The 
 
THU TITHE WAR 105 
 
 vast body of Catholic parishioners, justly incensed by this un- 
 fair additional levy, bound themselves into a solemn league 
 and covenant against the payment of tithes and church cess. 
 They resolved never again to meet these impositions with a 
 voluntary money payment. The anti-tithe feeling ran high 
 in Kildare. For many reasons the Catholic clergy — though, 
 no doubt, as legally liable to pay tithes as any other parish- 
 ioners — were usually, by a kind of half-hearted courtesy, 
 exempted from the imposition. One of the Protestant clergy- 
 men in Kildare broke through this rule, and called upon a 
 Catholic priest to pay his tithes, and, in default, seized upon 
 the priest's horse. From the pulpit the priest condemned the 
 whole disgraceful tithe system. The people began to offer 
 more and more opposition to the imposition. The Protestant 
 clergymen attempted to seize the cattle of Catholic fanners 
 who refused to pay tithes. They called the police to their aid, 
 and turned them, for the time being, into a force of cattle- 
 lifters, or rather of would-be cattle lifters, for in most cases 
 the police were unable to seize the beasts of the rebellious 
 farmers. 
 
 As soon as it became noised abroad that a Protestant 
 clergyman had appealed to the police, and that the police were 
 going to make a descent upon the fields of some farmer, the 
 cattle were locked up ; and the law did not allow the police 
 to break an entrance into barn or stable in order to seize 
 upon them. In the rare cases in which the police were quick 
 enough to lay hands upon the cattle in the fields, their triumph 
 was merely nominal. When the beasts were put up for public 
 sale no one thought of bidding for them except the owner, 
 who, in consequence, got his beasts back again at a merely 
 nominal price. 
 
 The organised opposition to the paying of tithes began to 
 spread rapidly from county to county over the whole of Ireland. 
 Under the amiable legislative system then in force, it was not 
 legal for the Irish people to hold public meetings in their own 
 country. But the law, which was clumsy as well as cruel, 
 could be evaded. It was illegal to summon public meetings, 
 
106 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 and so no public meeting was summoned. But it was not 
 illegal for the people of a particular town or parish to announce 
 that on a certain day they were going to have ahurhng match, 
 and it was not illegal for the people of other counties and 
 towns and parishes to come and take part in the national 
 sport. It was perfectly plain, however, that the large assem- 
 blages that thus came together met not for the purpose of 
 ball-playing, but for the purpose of opposing a strong front 
 to the hated tithe system. Men came to these hurling 
 matches to talk of other topics than balls and sticks. 
 These hurling matches became the recognised medium of 
 public opinion, and the public opinion of Ireland was dead 
 against the payment of tithes. That public opinion hinted 
 pretty plainly to those who were willing, for peace and quietness, 
 to pay tithes to their Protestant masters, that such payment 
 would not necessarily secure to them peace and quietness. 
 
 The organised opposition spread and flourished. The 
 Government, with all its strength, was powerless against it. 
 When a man was put into prison for refusing to pay his tithes, 
 or for refusing to pay his rent — for the agitation against tithes 
 was beginning to grow into an agitation against rent as well — 
 the Government were unable to obtain a conviction against 
 him. At last even the Government began to see that further 
 struggle was futile, and that concession and compromise were 
 inevitable. Not all the king's horses nor all the king's men 
 could enforce an unwilling and united people to pay the 
 detested tribute. ' The loss of life in exacting the tribute was 
 terrible. That in itself was beginning to have a great effect 
 upon the public mind. But the loss of money was also 
 very heavy indeed. More money was spent in some petty 
 parish in the attempt to enforce payment, and in the military 
 movement consequent upon that attempt, than perhaps the 
 tithes for a whole generation were worth. The Protestant 
 clergymen, too, were growing heartily sick of the whole 
 business. Many of them— indeed, most of them — came to 
 hate the system which extorted, or tried to extort, their tithes 
 with such a waste of blood and loss of life. 
 
TRE TITHE WAR 107 
 
 Moreover, their own interests were suffering severely. The 
 tithes were not paid ; and they took care to let the Govern- 
 ment know that they would offer no opposition to some other 
 method which would make them more securely masters of 
 their means of livelihood. Then the Government set its 
 usual machinery to work. Committees of Lords and Com- 
 mons met and reported ; and their reports were submitted to 
 Parliament, and Parliament read them, and debated over them, 
 and wrangled over them ; and did little or nothing for long 
 enough to settle the question satisfactorily. Temporary mea- 
 sures were brought in, which relieved the wants of the Pro- 
 testant clergymen, and which left the task of collecting the 
 tithes sometimes to compounding landlords, and sometimes to 
 the Irish Executive. 
 
 But the Executive found it no easier to obtain the tithes 
 than the parsons had found it. The arrears of tithes grew 
 and grew till, in 1833, they amounted to considerably over a 
 million of money. Ministries came and went, year succeeded 
 year, and still found the English Parliament perplexed by the 
 Tithe question, the Irish Executive helplessly attempting to 
 enforce tithes, and the Irish people stubbornly resolved not to 
 pay them. The country was growmg more and more disturbed. 
 The cost of the quarrel was growing heavier and heavier to 
 the Government, and it was made plain in one of the debates 
 in Parliament in 1834, that for some eight years England was 
 compelled to maintain in Ireland an army well-nigh as 
 strong as that which they thought to be necessary to support 
 their will in India. In the year 1833 this military force had 
 cost mere tha.n a million of money : 26,000L had been spent 
 in collecting 12,000Z. worth of tithes. It was clear that the 
 tithe system was too costly a luxury even for so wealthy a 
 kingdom as England. But they indulged in the luxury for 
 some years, still losing large sums annually, and striving by 
 fierce coercive enactments to break the popular spirit, and to 
 mould the popular will. 
 
 But the tithe agitation in Ireland had begun to rouse a 
 tithe agitation in England as well. England had its Tithe ques- 
 
108 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 tion, too, and the action of the Irish people had awakened the 
 English people to an appreciation of that fact ; and an agita- 
 tion was at once set on foot against it. This brought the matter 
 nearer home. In 1836 Lord John Eussell introduced a Tithe 
 Bill that settled the question for England. Two years later, 
 in 1888, he introduced a Bill that settled the question for Ire- 
 land. The advances made to the tithe-owners were considered 
 in the nature of a gift, and a quarter of a million of money 
 was voted for the extinction of the remainder of the arrears. 
 Such was, for the moment, the end of the great and pressing 
 difficulty. 
 
 Like most English measures passed for Ireland under the 
 false and unnatural system of government which then existed 
 and which still exists, it was only of a temporary nature, 
 only a reform introductory of a far greater and more sweeping 
 one which had to be accomplished in later years. Ever 
 since the passing of the Act of Union the efforts of Irish 
 politicians have been directed to extorting from unwilling 
 Governments reforms which would have come naturally, 
 simply, and far sooner, if the country had been left free to govern 
 itself. The Tithe War struck a blow at the ascendency of the 
 Established Church from which it never recovered. From the 
 day when Lord John Eussell's Bill was passed- -nay more, from 
 the day when the first Catholic priest denounced tithes from 
 the pulpit, and the first Catholic farmer refused to pay his 
 tribute — the fate of the Established Church was sealed. The 
 long and bitter struggle, the years of agitation, the incessant 
 debates in Parliament, and the many Ministerial attempts to 
 arrive at some kind of compromise, by solving the difficulty 
 after some fashion which should be most pleasing to Ascen- 
 dency and least pleasing to the Irish people, all these, as they 
 are now regarded after the lapse of more than a generation, 
 may be seen to have been but the prelude to a greater agita- 
 tion, and a greater reform, which had for its result the dis- 
 establishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland. 
 
109 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EEPEAL. 
 
 The Government acted on its usual give-and-take principle 
 in passing the Catholic Emancipation Act — that is to say, 
 it gave with one hand and took away with the other. It 
 had been forced by O'Connell, and the gigantic movement 
 which O'Connell had created and fostered, to concede to its 
 Catholic subjects the rights of which they had been so long 
 and unjustly deprived. It endeavoured to obtain some small 
 set-off" to the concession which was thus wrung from it. 
 
 Between O'Connell's first and second election a change 
 had been made in the composition of the electors. By an 
 Act of Henry VIII. , which had been confirmed in 1795, 
 freeholders to the value of forty shillings, over and above 
 all charges, were entitled to vote, a system which naturally 
 created a large number of small land-owners, who were 
 expected to vote in obedience to the landlords who created 
 them. O'Connell's election showed that the landlords would 
 not always command the forty-shilling voters. It was clear 
 that they might be won over to any popular movement, and 
 it was decided to abolish them, which was accordingly done 
 by an Act passed on the same day with the Catholic Emanci- 
 pation Act. The new Act raised the county franchise to 10?. ; 
 and freeholders of 10/., but under 201. , were subjected to a 
 complicated system of registration, well calculated to bewilder 
 the unhappy tenant, and render his chance of voting more 
 difficult. But all these precautions did not prevent the return 
 of O'Connell the second time he appealed to the electors of 
 Clare, nor did it even prove of much service in hindering the 
 tenants from voting with the leaders of the popular movements. 
 
 The disfranchisement produced intense discontent through- 
 out the whole country, and disorder followed close upon dis- 
 content. O'Connell now began to remind Ireland of his pro- 
 
no IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 mise that Catholic Emancipation was a means towards an 
 end — and that end, the Eepeal of the Union. He started a 
 society called the ' Friends of Ireland,' which the Government 
 at once put down. He started another, ' The Anti- Union 
 Association.' It was put down, too, and O'Connell was 
 arrested for sedition, tried, and found guilty. Judgment was 
 deferred, and never pronounced, and O'Connell was released 
 to carry on his agitation more vigorously than ever. 
 
 With Ireland torn by disorders against which the Insur- 
 rection Acts found it hard to cope, with the country aflame 
 with anger at the extinction of the forty -shilling vote, the 
 Government judged it wise and prudent to bring in a Bill for 
 Ireland in January 1832, effecting still further disfranchise- 
 ment. The new BiU abolished the forty- shilling vote in 
 boroughs as well as in counties, and the lowest rate for 
 boroughs and counties was lOZ. But for the next few years all 
 recollection of Emancipation on the one hand, and Disfran- 
 chisement on the other, was to be swallowed up in the struggle 
 which has passed into history as the Irish Tithe War. What 
 the Tithe War was, and how it ended, has been already told. 
 While it was going on, during the long years in which it 
 alternately blazed and smouldered, there was little time for 
 Irish politicians to think of Eepeal. 
 
 But O'Connell still kept the great purpose in his mind, 
 still agitated, still planned, still schemed. It did not seem to 
 him and to his followers that the difficulties in the way of 
 Eepeal were in reality any greater than those which had 
 menaced the movements in favour of Catholic Emancipation. 
 The advocates of Catholic Emancipation had boldly faced all 
 the obstacles that were brought against them, had overcome 
 them all in turn, and Catholic Emancipation was now an 
 accomplished fact. 
 
 To O'Connell, and O'Connell's allies, it seemed as if the 
 difficulties which were in the way of Eepeal might be as suc- 
 cessfully struggled with, and as triumphantly overthrown. 
 There was a great deal against the agitation. To begin with, 
 the country was very poor. * Every class of the community, 
 
REPEAL 111 
 
 says Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, ' was poorer than the corre- 
 sponding class in any country in Europe.' The merchants, 
 who had played a prominent part in political life since the 
 Union, were now wearied and despairing of all agitation, and 
 held aloof ; the Protestant gentry were, for the most part, 
 devoted to the Union ; many of the Catholic gentry disliked 
 O'Connell himself, and his rough, wild ways ; many of O'Con- 
 nell's old associates in the Catholic Emancipation movement 
 had withdrawn from him to join the Whigs. 
 
 In England the most active dislike of O'Connell prevailed. 
 The Pericles or the Socrates of Aristophanes, the Eoyalists 
 drawn by Camille Desmoulins, were not grotesquer caricatures 
 than the representation of O'Connell by English opinion and 
 the English press. O'Connell himself was not so powerful 
 with the people as he had been immediately after the triumph 
 of the Emancipation struggle. He had paid the inevitable 
 price of power in making many enemies. He used his power 
 with an absolute indifference to appearances or public opinion, 
 and that indifference made him many more enemies, who 
 might well have been kept as friends, and alienated friends 
 whose friendship was of value. The Catholic clergy, too, who 
 had been his strongest allies in the Emancipation movement, 
 were by no means to be counted on as supporters in the new 
 Repeal movement. Many of them regarded the so-called 
 settlement of the Tithe War, not as a victory, but as a pitiable 
 compromise ; and they held O'Connell responsible for having 
 yielded to the compromise and for sacrificing the interests of 
 Ireland to the convenience of the Whigs. 
 
 Under such conditions it must be admitted that the pros- 
 pects of O'Connell's new movement were scarcely promising. 
 But O'Connell was never a man to be frightened by stormy 
 weather. He opened an Association on Burgh Quay, and he 
 held meetings there regularly every week, at which he ad- 
 dressed exceedingly small audiences with as much impassioned 
 enthusiasm as though he were swaying by his eloquence the 
 gigantic gatherings of the Clare election. At Burgh Quay 
 he tauofht the doctrines of the Association. The Association 
 
112 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 proposed, first of all, to dissolve the Union ; but the dissolu- 
 tion of the Union was not its only object. It further proposed 
 to abolish tithes, to give fixity of tenure to land-holders, and 
 it called for extension of the suffrage, for shorter Parliaments, 
 for the abolition of the property qualification for members of 
 Parliament, and for equal electoral districts. These latter 
 points were taken from the great Chartist movement in Eng- 
 land, to which O'Connell had given its name, and to which he 
 had given such earnest support. 
 
 The proud patience which the gods are said to love stood 
 O'Connell in good stead now. For more than a year he 
 laboured patiently at the hall on Burgh Quay, telling his 
 scanty audiences again and again the shameful story of the 
 Union, and appealing to all that was best and noblest in the 
 national spirit to unite in breaking the hard bondage. But 
 the audience did not increase. 'Conciliation Hall,' as O'Con- 
 nell named his place of meeting on Burgh Quay, was sparsely 
 filled witli audiences which did not readily take fire at his 
 glowing periods and passionate appeals. But O'Connell 
 never for a moment lost heart, or appeared dismayed. He 
 went on as if he had the whole country with him. The 
 movement gradually spread. The Kepeal agitation, Avhich 
 had first languished, suddenly began to swell up and assume 
 large proportions. 
 
 O'Connell was always remarkable for the manner in which 
 he contrived to utilise every national force for the great purposes 
 to which he was devoted. While the Eepeal movement was 
 going on, another movement of a different kind was started in 
 Ireland, and met with remarkable success. A good, pure- 
 hearted Franciscan friar began a great crusade against intem- 
 perance, which proved strangely and unexpectedly successful, 
 and which made the name of Father Mathew, the inaugurator 
 of the temperance movement, very famous. O'Connell imme- 
 diately saw what a strength such a movement would have if it 
 were incorporated with his own movement, and he immediately 
 gave all the support of his great authority and of his great 
 name to the new crusade. He praised it enthusiastically: he 
 
REPEAL 113 
 
 influenced many of his followers to join it, and he always spoke 
 with the greatest pride of his noble army of teatotallers. 
 
 Father Mathew himself was not an active politician. His 
 duty in life was to wrestle with and to overthrow one of the 
 greatest evils that can afflict humanity, and with the actual 
 workings of political agitation he had little or no concern. 
 His own personal opinions were, if anything, of a Conservative 
 type, and he certainly had no kind of sympath}^ with any 
 violent or demonstrative agitation of any sort. But he could 
 not afford to decline the enormous assistance to the temper- 
 ance movement which O'Conuell's support and O'Connell's 
 encouragement gave. So it came about that the temperance 
 movement became, as it weve, amalgamated with and absorbed 
 into the Repeal movement, and Father Mathew's trimperance 
 recruits swelled the ranks of the army that O'Connell was 
 levying to wage war against the Union. No, not to wage war 
 against the Union. Nothing was further from O'Connell's 
 thoughts than any kind of active demonstration against op- 
 pression. By peace, and peace only — by orderly, quiet, con^ ti- 
 tutional measures — was the Repeal of the Union to be obtained. 
 O'Connell liad a most cordial hatred of the revolutionaries of 
 1798 and 1803, and he was destined a little later to express the 
 bitterest animosity to the revolutionaries of the Young Ireland 
 movement. 
 
 ' The year 1843,' said O'Connell, ' is, and shall be, the 
 great Repeal year.' At the time when O'Connell uttered that 
 prophecy, which was destined not to be fulfilled, it did indeed 
 seem as if the Repeal of the Union was one of the contingen- 
 cies — indeed one of the probabilities — of the immediate future. 
 O'Connell had worked up his organisation and made it im- 
 mensely powerful. Over in England he had established in 
 the House of Commons an elaborate parliamentary system of 
 his own. By his own influence he had secured seats in Par- 
 liament for his sons and for a great many of his relatives, and 
 for a large number of his followers and supporters. The 
 Repeal party in the House of Commons was yearly growing 
 stronger and more numerous. O'Connell's influence was 
 
 I 
 
114 IB EL A KB SIXCE THE UNION 
 
 almost all-powerful with the Irish constituencies ; and when- 
 ever a vacancy occurred O'Connell sent down a Eepeal candi- 
 date to contest the seat, and the Eepeal candidate was in 
 most cases successfully returned. 
 
 But what O'Connell chiefly relied on for effecting his 
 puipose were the now historic moxister meetings. Nothing 
 showed O'Connell's strength as much as these monster meet- 
 higs. They were held usually on a Sunday, and they were 
 attended by thousands of people who came to the place of 
 meeting, not merely from the immediate vicinity, but often 
 from other localities miles and miles away. The roads lead- 
 ing to the fields or hall where the meeting was to take place 
 would be choked for hours and hours previously, with the 
 streams of people all making for a common centre. These 
 vast meetings were addressed by O'Connell with the ever- 
 ready eloquence which endeared him to the popular mind. 
 His marvellous voice would carry to the farthest end of these 
 great assemblies ; and the peasant on the farthest verge of 
 the crowd was as much stirred and swayed by O'Connell's 
 fiery moods of passion, patriotism, and humour, as those who 
 stood by his side on the platform. 
 
 O'Connell had another and most important ally in the 
 Nation newspaper, which was destined, however, to turn 
 against him in later years. But at the time of the monster 
 meetings, the brilliant young men who wrote for the Nation 
 were in complete accord with O'Connell, and gave him all the 
 support of their varied gifts, genius, and eloquence. For a 
 raan who had no intention of ever attempting to attain his 
 ends by any other than the most strictly constitutional means, 
 O'Connell's actions and utterances had sometimes a very 
 curious appearance. The vast crowds who assembled to listen 
 to O'Connell's eloquence began to attend the meetings in 
 something like military order, and with a decided appearance 
 of military discipline. They listened to language from O'Con- 
 nell which certainly did not always sound like the language 
 of peace. O'Connell addressed these vast bodies of men— at 
 one meeting, held at Tara, a quarter of a million persons are 
 
REPEAL 115 
 
 said to have been present — in terms of the bitterest denuncia- 
 tion of England, and made the most glowing appeals to the 
 most painful memories of Irish history. 
 
 O'Connell had never any intention of making any attempt 
 to repeal the Union by force ; but English statesmen, witness- 
 ing these vast meetings, and reading the fiery words with 
 which O'Connell addressed them, may well have thought that 
 O'Connell was not prepared to keep his agitation strictly 
 inside the limits of peace and order. There were others 
 besides English statesmen who thought so, too. The young 
 men who wrote for the Natio7i found it hard to believe that 
 such great meetings were to be convened, and such inflamma- 
 tory harangues to be delivered, if the whole thing were simply 
 to be regarded as an imposing pageant, no more serious in its 
 purpose, nor more dangerous to British rule in Ireland, than 
 a Lord Mayor's show. 
 
 The Government thought that O'Connell meant rebellion. 
 Many of O'Connell's immediate followers and supporters 
 thought, too, that he meant rebellion in the last instance, 
 if nothing could be done without it. O'Connell, it is clear, 
 never for a moment dreamt of rebellion ; but he was not un- 
 willing to let the English Government see what forces he had 
 at his command ; he was not even unwilling that they should 
 imagine that if they were deaf to his demands he might answer 
 by an armed rising. But he was so convinced that the 
 Government would give way, that Eepeal would be conceded 
 as Catholic Emancipation had been conceded, that he seems 
 to have believed himself justified in making menaces which 
 were meaningless, and in holding up to the English Govern- 
 ment the symbols of danger, where no danger existed. 
 
 O'Connell's plan was, of course, a failure. The Govern- 
 ment did not grant Eepeal. They struck, instead, very sharply 
 and decisively at O'Connell's movement. A great meeting 
 was summoned by O'Connell, to be held at Clontarf, on Sun- 
 day, October 8, 1843. The meeting was proclaimed by the 
 Lord-Lieutenant on the very morning before it was announced 
 to take place. For the moment it seemed as if a collision 
 
 z2 
 
116 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 between authority and agitation was inevitable. Masses of 
 people were coming into Clontarf from all directions at the 
 very time ^^hen the proclamation was issued. The Govern- 
 ment, it was clear, were determined to prevent the meeting, 
 if necessary by force of arms ; and large bodies of police and 
 soldiery were massed in readiness. It was said that the 
 Government wished to provoke a collision ; and a collision 
 would have meant much bloodshed, and consequences which 
 it was impossible to foresee. But no collision took place- 
 O'Connell immediately issued a proclamation of his own 
 declaring that the orders of the Irish Executive must be 
 obeyed ; that no meeting would be held ; and that the people 
 were to return to their homes at once. The order was im- 
 plicitly obeyed. The people, who would have resisted the 
 authority of the Lord-Lieutenant, did not dream of resisting 
 the voice of their leader. The meeting was not held, and the 
 people went to their homes in peace. 
 
 But with the dispersal of that meeting ended all the 
 strength that the Eepeal movement had ; and ended too, prac- 
 tically, O'Connell's power in Ireland. Once it was clear that, 
 under no circumstances, he liad any intention of resorting to 
 force, it was equally clear that his agitation oftered no serious 
 danger to the English Government. The Government im- 
 mediately prosecuted O'Connell, and put him in prison. 
 O'Connell issued another proclamation to the people, calling 
 upon them to remain perfectly quiet ; and the people again 
 obeyed him. There was an appeal to the House of Lords, 
 and the House of Lords gave the appeal in O'Connell's favour, 
 and he was let out of prison. But he came out of prison 
 practically a broken man. His agitation had failed hopelessly. 
 All his young allies who had long believed in him were falling 
 away from him, combining themselves into an alliance having 
 far other objects than those dreamt of by O'Connell. 
 
 Other causes, too, combined to tell against O'Connell. 
 He was an old man now, and his old age was, it is said, 
 tortured by a hopeless passion for a young girl whom he was 
 eager to make his wife. It is melancholy to thmk of the great 
 
REPEAL 117 
 
 Tribune, the leader of a nation, the man whose words were 
 hstened to with reverence and almost with adoration by the 
 vast body of his fellow-countrymen ; who had occupied a 
 position almost unique in modern history, being vexed in his 
 latest years, and in the time of his sorest trial, by the pangs 
 of misprised love. O'Connell may have been the uncrowned 
 king of Ireland ; the adored of his countrymen, and the dread 
 of the English Government ; but he could not succeed in 
 winning the affections of one young girl, or in shaking himself 
 free from his unhappy passion. 
 
 The last years of O'Connell's life are profoundly touching. 
 The broken-down old man who had done so much for Ireland 
 lingered for a few years after his imprisonment in fitful 
 struggles with the Young Ireland Party, and in fitful appear- 
 ances in the House of Commons, where the dying giant was 
 listened to with a silent respect, which was in itself the most 
 melancholy of homages. At last he resolved to go away to 
 Italy. The one wish now left to him was to end his days in 
 the sacred circle of the Eternal City ; but that wish, like so 
 many others that he had so fondly cherished, was not destined 
 to be gratified. He died at Genoa, on his way to Kome, on 
 May 15, 1847. This long, stormy, brilliant career ended in 
 the saddest of shadows. Failure is the most melancholy 
 epitaph for a great man, and the end of O'Connell's life was, 
 indeed, failure ; but he remains one of the greatest figures in 
 Irish history. He has done great things for his country : 
 what he failed to do he left as an inheritance to his country- 
 men to be accomplished by his successors. 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 THE * NATION.' 
 
 One autumn afternoon in 1842, three men were walking 
 together in the Phoenix Park, in Dublin. They sat on a seat 
 aud proceeded to discuss together a project which was destined 
 
118 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 to prove one of the most remarkable events in Irish history, 
 and to leave a lasting impression upon the country. The 
 three men Avere Thomas Davis, John Dillon, and Charles 
 Gavan Duffy. The project they were discussing was the 
 founding of a newspaper to represent properly the national 
 feeling of Ireland, and to be the organ and the mouthpiece of 
 the new ideas, hopes, and ambitions that were coming into 
 being under the influence of O'ConnoIl's movement. The 
 three young men were themselves sufficiently characteristic 
 types of the party which was soon destined to be known as 
 Young Ireland. All three were young ; all three w^ere gifted ; 
 all three Avere profoundly imbued with the loftiest s|)irit of 
 patriotism, and all three were convinced to their hearts' cores 
 that the hour for the regeneration of their country was at 
 hand. 
 
 Physically there was not much resemblance between the 
 men. Thomas Davis, then the best known of the three, and the 
 man whom the only living member of that triple brotherhood 
 would be the first to salute as the most remarkably gifted, 
 was not remarkable in his personal appearance. He was 
 described once by a brutal opponent, who at one time had 
 promisings of a fair career, which came to a close disastrously 
 a few years ago — the late Dr. Kenealy — as the * dog-faced 
 demagogue.' He looked, it is said, more like a young English 
 man than a young Irishman ; but he had what an Englisli 
 poet has called ' the brave Irish eyes,' and they were lit by 
 the fire of genius. 'Davis,' says Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, 
 ' was a man of middle stature, strongly but not coarsely built 
 — a broad brow and a strong jaw stamped his face with a 
 character of power ; but except when it was lighted by thought 
 or feeling it was plain, and even rugged.' In his boyhood he 
 was * shy, retiring, unready, and self-absorbed,' and was even 
 described as ' a dull child ' by unappreciative kinsfolk. At 
 Trinity College he was a wide and steady reader, who was 
 chiefly noted by his fellow- students for his indifference to 
 rhetorical display. He was auditor of the Dublin Historical 
 Society, had made some name for himself by his contributions 
 
THE 'NATION' 119 
 
 to a magazine called the Citizen, and was a member of the 
 Repeal Association. 
 
 John Dillon was a man of a very different appearance. 
 Every Irishman or Englishman who knows his son, the present 
 ■lohn Dillon, knows how singularly impressive his appearance 
 is. That dark, melancholy, handsome face, with its deep, 
 Spanish eyes, its olive complexion, and the midnight darkness 
 of its hair, might have smiled in stately gravity from one of 
 tliose canvases of Velasquez which are the glory of Madrid. 
 Yet those who knew the father assure a later generation that 
 he was even handsomer than his son. * In person,' says Gavan 
 Duffy, * he was tall and strikingly handsome, with eyes like 
 a thoughtful woman's, and the clear, olive complexion and 
 stately bearing of a Spanish noble.' He had been designed 
 for the priesthood, but had decided to adopt the Bar. Like 
 Davis, he loved intellectual pursuits, and was a man of wide 
 and varied learning. * Under a stately and somewhat reserved 
 demeanour lay latent the simplicity and joyfulness of a boy ; 
 no one was readier to laugh with frank cordiality, or to give 
 and take the pleasant banter which lends a relish to the 
 friendship of young men.' Long years after, Tha :kei'ay said 
 cf him to Gavan Duffy, that the modest and wholesome 
 sweetness of John Dillon gave him a foremost place among 
 the half-dozen men in the Unitv^d States whom he loved to 
 remember. Dillon was at no time what we should call a very 
 extreme politician. He never had much belief in the benefits 
 to be gained by the warlike spirit which was so soon to 
 animate Young Ireland ; and that fact should be borne in 
 mind as one additional mark of honour in a career that was 
 all honourable ; for when the end did come, and the die was 
 cast, Dillon, without a moment's hesitation, flung himself 
 into the struggle, prepared to stand or fall with the comrades 
 whose actions he did not believe to be opportune or well 
 advised. 
 
 Of those three young men who walked in the Phoenix 
 Park that day, and schemed out the starting of the Nation 
 iiewspapcr, one is still alive among us, and has lived to 
 
120 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 be the brilliant and eloquent historian of the movement in 
 which he took part, of the paper which he edited, and of 
 the allies of his youth. Sir Charles Gavan Duffy and Kevin 
 Izod O'Doherty are almost the last of the conspicuous Young 
 Irelanders who now live and look upon the earth. At the 
 time when he walked with Davis and Dillon in the Phoenix 
 Park, Duffy was only twenty-six years of age ; Dil'on was a 
 year older, and Davis was twenty-eight. The first number 
 of the Nation was published on October 15, 1842. It took 
 for its motto the words of an answer made by Stephen Woulfe 
 to Peel's contemptuous inquiry in Parliament as to what 
 good corporations would do a country so poor as Ireland. * I 
 will tell the honourable gentleman,' said Woulfe ; ' they will 
 go far to create and foster public opinion, and make it racy of 
 the soil.' The motto of the Nation was to ' create and foster 
 public opinion, and to make it racy of the soil.' It succeeded 
 probably beyond the fondest expectations of its founders. 
 The first number was sold out almost as soon as it was 
 printed, and a copy of that first number to-day is one of the 
 treasures of the It-ish bibliophile. 
 
 The success of the Nation was extraordinary. Its political 
 teachings, its inspiring and vigorous songs and ballads, the 
 new lessons of courage and hope that it taught, the wide 
 knowledge of history possessed by its writers — all combined 
 to make it welcome to thousands. The tradesmen in towns, 
 and the country peasants, read it, and were animated with the 
 story of their old historic island into the belief that she had a 
 future, and that the future was close at hand, and that they 
 were to help to make it. It was denounced by the Tory press 
 as the organ of a hidden ' FrencJ] party.' From France it- 
 self came words of praise worth having from the Irish officers 
 in the French service. One was Arthur O'Connor, the Arthur 
 O'Connor of 1798 ; the other was Miles Byrne, who had fought 
 at Wexford. 
 
 O'Connell became alarmed at the growing popularity of 
 the Nation. x\t first it had strongly suppoited him; he had 
 even written a Eepeal Catechism in its pages ; 1 ut its young 
 
THE 'NATION' 121 
 
 men had the courage to think for themselves, and to criticise 
 even the deeds and the words of the Liberator. More and 
 more young men clustered round the writers of the Nation , 
 brilliant young essayists, politicians, poets. Gifted women 
 wrote for the Nation, too — Lady Wilde, ' Speranza,' chief 
 among them. The songs published in a volume called ' The 
 Spirit of the Nation ' became immediately very popular. As 
 the agitation grew, Peel's Government became more threaten- 
 ing. O'Connell, in most of his defiant declarations, evidently 
 thought that Peel did not dare to put down the organisation 
 for Repeal, or he would never have challenged him as he did ; 
 for O'Connell never really meant to resort to force at any 
 time. 
 
 But the few young men who wrote for the Nation, and 
 the many young men who read the Nation, were really pre- 
 pared to fight if need be for their liberties. Nor did they 
 want foreign sympathy to encourage them. In the United 
 States vast meetings, organised and directed by men like 
 Seward and Horace Greeley, threatened England with * the 
 assured loss of Canada by American arms ' if she suppressed 
 the Repeal agitation by force ; and later Horace Greeley was 
 one of a Directory in New York for sending officers and arms 
 to Ireland. In France the Republican party were loud in 
 their sympathy for the Irish, and Ledru Rollin had declared 
 that France was ready to lend her strength to the support of 
 an oppressed nation. No wonder the leaders of the national 
 party were encouraged in the belief that their cause was 
 pleasing to tlie Fates. 
 
 The establishment of the Nation newspaper marked a new 
 stage in the resurrection of Irish nationalism. With O'Con- 
 nel's name the emancipation of a nation of Catholics from 
 the Penal Laws will always be triumphantly associated ; and 
 his name lends a lustre to the agitation in favour of the 
 Repeal of the Union. But the warm breath of patriotism 
 which in 1842 inspired the Irish nation with a new pur- 
 pose and a new hope, and which with its afflatus has given 
 a quicker vitality to every national movement since, is 
 
122 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 due, not to O'Connell, but to the young men wlio founded 
 the Nation, who wrote for the Nation, and who made a 
 nation. 
 
 Critics — even friendly critics — are accustomed to say, too 
 hghtly, that the Young Ireland movement failed in its object. 
 If, because it did not add a successful revolution to the 
 year of revolutions ; if, because it did not overthrow British 
 rule in Ireland and set up the green flag on Dublin Castle, it 
 deserves to be called a failure, then, of course, it did fail, for 
 it accomplished none of these things. It was not a revolution ; 
 it was hardly a rival rising. Its leaders were exiled almost 
 without a struggle ; its flag never showed upon a single field. 
 But it gave a new impulse to the Irish cause ; it gave the Irish 
 new martyrs and a new tradition ; it carried to Irishmen in 
 every corner of the earth a stronger hope and a firmer convic- 
 tion of the duty of nationality. 
 
 The Nation filled a great want in Ireland at the time that 
 it appeared. The position of literature in the country was 
 low indeed. The newspapers were few, and represented no 
 national spirit. Literature was scantily cultivated in these 
 newspapers ; and any knowledge of foreign literature and 
 foreign politics was only to be obtained through the medium of 
 the English Press. Books were few and dear. There was not 
 at that time in existence any of those many cheap libraries which 
 now make the masterpieces of Irish literature so easily acces- 
 sible even to the poorest. Such literature as came readily in 
 the way of the vast bulk of the Irish people was pitiful in the 
 extreme, only stuff of the worst cheap-book style, or anti-national 
 bombast, like the ' Battle of Aughrim.' Irish history was no- 
 where taught. English hist jry alone was recognised in the 
 schools. It is probable that he national spirit has seldom been 
 at so low an ebb as when tl Nation first came out. The 
 Nation promptly remedied i^h. .^ate of things. In its columns 
 week after week the Irish n ople began to be made acquainted 
 with glowing articles on own history, with thrilling ballads 
 
 devoted to the deeds and ^ the memory of Irish heroes, with 
 animated appeals to the shmen of the present to be worthy 
 
THE 'X ATI ON' 123 
 
 of the Irishmen of that past which was now ahiiost for the 
 first time revealed to them. 
 
 The young men who wrote for the Nation were well 
 qualified to make their organ powerful and impressive. It 
 would have been difficult to find anywhere a more brilliant or 
 more gifted company. Thomas Davis was the leader and 
 master of them all. The most genuine poet Ireland had seen 
 since Thomas Moore, he was inspired by a far more national 
 spirit than Moore's, and the songs of Davis were adored by 
 Young Ireland. None of the Young Irelanders adored Davis 
 more than did John Pigot, the dark-haired, dark-eyed boy, 
 whose winning sweetness and chivalrous bearing made him, 
 according to Duffy, ' the woman's ideal of a patriot,' and also 
 made him, not unnaturally, the appropriate hero for the novel 
 of a satirical novelist who took Young Ireland for his theme. 
 His closest friend was John O'Hagan, whom Davis declared 
 to have been * the safest in council, the most moderate in 
 opinion, the most considerate in temper, of the young men.' 
 His moderation of opinion did not prevent him, however, from 
 writing some of the most impassioned aiiti-English poems that 
 appeared in the Nation ; but it preserved him from the later 
 schemes of Young Ireland to take service years after under 
 the English Government, and to translate * The Song of 
 Roland.' 
 
 Amongst the other men who wrote for the Nation in its 
 early days, some of the most conspicuous were Denis Florence 
 MacCarthy, MacNevin, and Clarence Mangan. Of these 
 three, Clarence Mangan was blest with the most brilliant and 
 the most unhappy genius. With a lyric power and fanciful 
 imagination which have only t^een rivalled by Edgar Allan 
 Poe, he was cursed by a fate as ;t melancholy as that which 
 pursued the author of ' The oKven.' To each, too — the 
 Irishman and the American-i.ifeigUtbe applied those lines of 
 Poe's masterpiece, which speak o;t9Spme 
 
 Unhappy mas . ^ 
 Whom unmerciful disr ' ix 
 Followed fast and folic i^. faster. 
 
124 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Gavan Duffy gives a picture of liim wliicli reads like the frag- 
 ment from one of the weird stories of Hoffmann — some de- 
 scription, it might be, of the student Ansehnus in the en- 
 chantmg * Golden Jar ' — ' He lived a secluded, unwholesome 
 life, and when he emerged into daylight he was dressed in a 
 blue cloak, midsummer or midwinter, and a hat of fantastic 
 shape, under which golden hair as fine and silky as a woman's 
 hung in unkempt tangles, and deep blue eyes lighted a face as 
 colourless as parchment. He looked like the spectre of some 
 German romance rather than a living creature.' 
 
 Mangan's career ended like that of Edgar Allan Poe, and 
 of another brilliant man of genius, Henri Murgen, in the 
 hospital. A fatal and unfortunate taste gradually sapped and 
 shattered his fine intellect and fantastic genius ; but he has left 
 behind him an imperishable monument in the songs which 
 bear his name. It was one of Mangan's quaint humours to 
 assume himself to be an Oriental scholar ; and among his 
 verses are many pieces claiming to be taken from the Turkish, 
 the Arabic, or Persian. As a matter of fact, it seems that 
 Maiigan had no acquaintance whatever with the strange lan- 
 guages of the East. But he had what was far better — a mind 
 that was perfectly able to appreciate the Oriental spirit, and 
 his Eastern poems have in them that power of making the 
 reader appreciate the gorgeous colouring of fancy and splen- 
 dour of the East, which is worth the most intimate acquaint- 
 ance with the lexicons of Kichardson and Redhouse. The 
 poem, which is called * The Time of the Barmecides,' I have, 
 for my own part, no hesitation in pronouncing to be one of 
 the most stirring and beautiful ballads of our time ; and the 
 melancholy, dirge-like music of ' Karaman,' and the poem on 
 the Bosphorus, with all its marvellous ingenuity of rhyming 
 power, are two other proofs of the way in which Mangan 
 was imbued, or appeared to be imbued, with the Oriental 
 spirit. He might not read a line of Persian, but he was a poet 
 worthy to have set up his tent in the company of Hafiz, near 
 the pleasant waters of Rocknabad, and under the groves of 
 Mosella. 
 
TIJE 'NATION' 125 
 
 Denis Florence MacCartliy long outlived his poetic col- 
 leagues of the Nation, but he, too, has now passed away, after 
 enriching Irish literature with many beautiful poems and 
 some admirable translations. The prose of MacNevin and 
 the poetry of Williams are as familiar to-day to Irishmen as 
 they were in the years when the Nation first became famous. 
 
 Seldom in the history of any nation has a more remarkable 
 body of young men been banded together. Like O'Connell, 
 they have experienced that curious Conservative canon- 
 isation Avhich is represented by the exaltation and laudation 
 of any body of Irishmen who are passed away, at the ex- 
 pense of any body of living Irishmen who are working 
 heart and soul for the cause of the country. The Young 
 Irelanders, who were the abomination of all Toryism at the 
 time when they were trying to educate their countrymen, 
 have suddenly become something like heroes in the eyes of 
 Conservatism. They are held up to the men of to-day as 
 honourable models, as a glaring and conspicuous contrast. 
 The men of to-day are told that if they were as the Young 
 Irelanders, they would be regarded with very different eyes, 
 and so on. All of which is of no concern to Irish or English 
 Liberalism, and can in nowise injure the memories of the 
 young men who founded the Nation. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 YOUNG IRELAND. 
 
 While O'Connell was still the recognised head of the Irish 
 national movement, a young man came forward as a promi- 
 nent figure in Irish politics, Mr. William Smith O'Brien, 
 member of Parliament for Limerick County. He was a country 
 gentleman, of stately descent, a direct descendant of Brian 
 Boroimhe, a brother of Lord Inchiquin. He was a high- 
 minded and hunourable gentleman, with his country's cause 
 deeply at heart. Davis described him as ' the most extrava- 
 
126 IRELAND SINCE TEE UNION 
 
 gant admirer of the Nation I have ever met.' Smith O'Brien 
 made his first appearance in Conciliation Hall on Jmie 2, 
 1844, and for some time he was a constant attendant at its 
 meetings. His views, however, were by no means entirely 
 in accordance with those of O'Connell's. O'Counell was em- 
 phatically and definitely opposed to any appeal at any time 
 or mider any consideration to physical force. Smith O'Brien 
 was of opinion that, under certain circumstances, it was the 
 duty of the nation to defend its rights in arms. 
 
 O'Connell at first welcomed O'Brien cordially. ' I find it 
 impossible,' he said, ' to give a proper expression to the feel- 
 ings of delight I have in hailing Mr. William Smith O'Brien 
 to the ranks of the Association. He now is in his true 
 position — the position which was occupied centuries ago by 
 his ancestor, Brian Boroimlie. Whatever may become of me, 
 it is a consolation and a pleasure to remember that Ireland 
 will have a true friend in William Smith O'Brien— a man who 
 has a well cultivated mind, with intellectual endowments of 
 the very highest order, powerful eloquence, untiring energy, 
 constant love for his country, and every other true qualifica- 
 tion of a popular leader ; and I delight to hail him to his right 
 place among his friends, at the post at which every true 
 Irishman would wish to see him — at the head of the Irisl.' 
 people.' 
 
 But the alliance between O'Connell and O'Brien, between 
 Old Ireland and Young Ireland, could not be, and was not, 
 of long duration. The great majority of the Young Irelanders 
 entertained a scarcely concealed contempt for the policy of 
 O'Connell's old age. The great majority of the Young 
 Irelanders talked, read, and thought revolution. In passionate 
 poems and eloquent speeches they expressed their hatred of 
 tyranny and their stern resolve to free their country by brave 
 deeds ratker than by arguments. They had now a brilliant 
 orator amoi g them, Thomas Francis Meagher, ' a young man,' 
 says Mr. Le ky, * whose eloquence was beyond comparison 
 superior to that of any other rising speaker in the country, 
 and who, had he been placed in circumstances favourable to 
 
YOUNO IRELAND 127 
 
 the development of his talent, might, perhaps, at length have 
 taken his place among the great orators of Ireland.' 
 
 Meagher had early endeared himself to the impetuous and 
 gifted young men with whom he was allied, by a brilliant 
 speech against O'Connell's doctrine of passive resistance. 
 This speech of Meagher's, like all Meagher's speeches, is — or, 
 at least, ought to be — familiar to every Irish nationalist ; but 
 its rare beauty and eloquence not merely justify, but prescribe 
 its quotation here again. ' I am not one of those tame moral- 
 ists,' the young man exclaimed, * who say that liberty is not 
 worth one drop of blood. . . . Against this miserable maxim 
 the noble virtue that has saved and sanctified humanity 
 appears in judgment. From the blue waters of the Bay of 
 Salamis ; from the valley over which the sun stood still and 
 lit the Israelites to victory ; from the cathedral in which the 
 sword of Poland has been sheathed in the shroud of Kosciusko ; 
 from the Convent of St. Isidore, where the fiery hand that 
 rent the standard of St. George upon the plains of Ulster has 
 mouldered into dust ; from the sands of the desert, where the 
 wild genius of the Algerine so long has scared the eagle of the 
 Pyrenees ; from the ducal palace in this kingdom where the 
 memory of the gallant and seditious Geraldine enhances more 
 than royal favour the splendour of his race ; from the solitary 
 grave within this mute city, which a dying bequest has left 
 without an epitaph — oh ! from every spot where heroism has 
 had a sacrifice or a triumph, a voice breaks in upon the cring- 
 ing crowd that cherishes this maxim, crying, '* Away with it ! 
 — away with it ! " ' 
 
 There are few passages in the ornate oratory of the world, 
 in the glowing prose of some of the earlier Greek orators or 
 in the stately magnificence of Cicero, in the richly-coloured 
 periods of Burke, or in the shining sentences of Mirabeau or 
 Vergniaud, which can be unhesitatingly declared superior to 
 the brilliant utterances of the young Waterford gentleman of 
 three-and-twenty. There is reason to believe, and to regret in 
 believing, that Meagher's speeches are not studied in Ireland 
 to-day with the attention and with the devotion which they 
 
128 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 deserve. Some few months ago a student made repeated 
 and unsuccessful attempts, in Dublin, to obtain a copy of 
 Meagher's speeches ; but he searched in vain the bookshops of 
 the quays, and searched in vain in the bookshops elsewhere, 
 for a copy of the speeches of one of the greatest orators 
 and truest patriots that Ireland has yet produced. He could 
 not come across an example of the Lives and Speeches pub- 
 lished in Ireland in the days when the memory of Young 
 Ireland was the memory of yesterday, he could not obtain an 
 example of the American edition of 1853. The shilling 
 volume published by Cameron & Ferguson, which gives the life 
 of Meagher, with selections from his speeches and writings, 
 confines these selections almost entirely to his American 
 speeches, which, how^ever valuable in themselves, are not the 
 speeches that made his name famous. 
 
 Luckily, many of his best speeches are preserved in the 
 admii'able series of Penny Readings which are issued from 
 the Nation office. But it is hard to avoid feeling deep 
 regret that it should not be possible for any patriotic Irishman 
 to become at any time the possessor of the speeches of one 
 of the most gifted of his countrymen. Speeches such as the 
 one which has been quoted were not calculated to cement 
 the alliance between Old and Young Ireland. Another speech 
 of Meagher's was the direct cause of severing the alliance. 
 In a speech at Conciliation Hall Meagher declared that ' the 
 King of Heaven — the Lord of Hosts ! the God of Battles ! — - 
 bestows His benediction upon those who unsheath the sword 
 in the hour of a nation's ]3eril. From that evening on which, 
 in the valley of Bethulia, He nerved the arm of the Jewish 
 girl to smite the drunken tyrant in his tent, down to this our 
 day, in which He has blessed the insurgent cavalry of the 
 Belgian priest. His Almighty hand has ever been stretched 
 forth from His throne of light to consecrate the flag of freedom 
 — to bless the patriot's sword.' The speech was interrupted 
 by John O'Connell, Daniel O'Cdnnell's son. Smith O'Brien 
 rose to defend Meagher. The quarrel was complete ; the 
 severance inevitable. 
 
YOUNG IRELAND 129 
 
 The Young Irelanders seceded from O'Connell. A second 
 secession was yet to be made from the ranks of the Young 
 Irelanders themselves. One of the most prominent men in 
 tlie movement was John Mitchel, the son of an Ulster Uni- 
 tarian minister. Thomas Davis, the sweet chief singer of 
 the movement, died suddenly before tbe movement which he 
 had done so much for had taken up revolution in any shape. 
 Mitchel came on the Nation in his place, and advocated revo- 
 lution and republicanism. He followed the traditions of 
 Emmet and the men of ninety-eight ; he was in favour of 
 independence. His doctrines attracted the more ardent of 
 the Young Irelanders, and what was known as a war party 
 was formed. 
 
 There were now three sections of Irish agitators. There 
 were the Tepealers, who were opposed to all physical force ; 
 there were the moderate Young Irelanders, only recognising 
 physical force when all else had failed in the last instance ; 
 and there was now this new party, who saw in revolution the 
 only remedy for Ireland. Smith O'Brien was bitterly opposed 
 to Mitchel's doctrines. Mitchel withdrew from the Nation 
 and siarted a paper of his own, the United Irishman, in 
 which he advocated them more fiercely than ever. Mitchel 
 was a powerful writer. He had, perhaps, the strongest mind 
 of all the men oi his time. He almost alone, perhaps, saw 
 clearly his way before him. He devoted himself and his 
 paper to preaching ' the holy hatred of foreign dominion.' 
 ' To educate,' he said, ' that holy hatred ; to make it know 
 itself, and avow itself, and at last fill itself full, I hereby 
 devote the columns of the United Irishman.'' His vehement 
 genius overshadowed the name of a man to whom he owed 
 much, Fintan Lalor. 
 
 The Young Irelanders and the Mitchelites were at least 
 agreed in recognising revolution. Some regarded it as a pos- 
 sibility ; more held it to be inevitable ; all openly advocated 
 it. Unfortunately for the success of the movement, most of 
 the time and genius of the party was spent in advocating revo- 
 lution; little or no time was devoted to preparation for it. The 
 
 K 
 
IBO IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 year 1848, the year of unfulfilled revolutions, when crowns 
 were falling and kings flying about in all directions, might well 
 have seemed a year of happy omen for a new Irish rebellion. But 
 the Young Irelanders were not ready for rebellion when their 
 plans were made known to Government ; and the Government 
 struck at them before they could do anything. Mitchel was 
 arrested, tried, and transported to Bermuda. That was the 
 turning-point of the revolution. The Mitchelites wished to 
 rise in rescue. They urged, and rightly urged, that if 
 revolution was meant at all, then was the time. But the 
 less extreme men held back. An autumnal rising had been 
 decided upon, and they were unwilling to anticipate the 
 struggle. They carried their point. 
 
 Mitchel was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation. 
 When the verdict was delivered he declared that, like the 
 Eoman Sc^vola, he could promise hundreds who would follow 
 his example, and as he spoke he pointed to Meagher, John 
 Martin, and others of the associates who were thronging the 
 galleries of the court. A wild cry came up from all his friends, 
 ' Promise for me, Mitchel — promise for me ! ' With that cry 
 ringing in his ears, he was hurried from the court, heavily 
 ironed and encircled by a little army of dragoons, to the war- 
 sloop * Shearwater,' that had been waiting for the verdict and 
 the man. As the war-sloop steamed out of Dublin Harbour, 
 the hopes of the Young Irelanders went with her, vain and 
 evanescent, from that hour forth, as the smoke that floated 
 in the steamer's wake. There is a pathetic little story which 
 records Mitchel's looking out of the prison-van that drove him 
 from the court, and seeing a great crowd, and asking where 
 they were going, and being told that they were going to a 
 flower show. There were plenty of men in the movement 
 who would have gladly risked everything to try and rescue 
 Mitchel. But nothing could have been done without unan- 
 imity, and the too great caution of the leaders prevented the 
 effort at the moment when it could have had the faintest hope 
 of success. 
 
 From that moment the movement was doomed. Men who 
 
YOUNG IRELAND 131 
 
 had gone into the revohition heart and soul might have said 
 of Smith 0'r>iien as Menas, in ' Antony and Cleopatra,' says 
 to Pompey : 'For this I'll never follow thy pall'd forlanes 
 more. Who seeks and will not take when once 'tis offered, 
 shall never find it more.' The supreme moment of danger 
 thus passed over, the Government lost no time in crushing 
 out all that was left of the insurrection. Smith O'Brien, 
 Meagher, and Dillon went down into the country, and tried 
 to raise an armed rebellion. There was a small scuffle with 
 the police at Ballingarry, in Tipperary ; the rebels were dis- 
 persed, and the rebellion was over. 
 
 Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and others were arrested, and 
 condemned to death. Meagher's speech from the dock was 
 worthy of his rhetorical genius : ' I am not here to crave with 
 faltering lip the life I have consecrated to the independence 
 of my country. ... I offer to my country, as some proof of 
 the* sincerity with which I have thought and spoken and 
 struggled for her, the life of a young heart. . . , The history 
 of Ireland explains my crime, and justifies it. . . . Even here, 
 where the shadows of death surround me, and from which I 
 see my early grave opening for me in no consecrated soil, the 
 hope which beckoned me forth on that perilous sea, whereon 
 I have been wrecked, animates, consoles, enraptures me. No, 
 I do not daspair of my poor old country, her peace, her liberty, 
 her glory ! ' 
 
 The death-sentence was commuted to transportation for 
 life, and, in a little while, John Martin, Thomas Francis 
 Meagher, Smith O'Brien, Kevin Izod O'Dohertyand Terence 
 Bellew M'Manus found themselves in Van Diemen's Land with 
 John Mitchel. In 1853 a scheme was organised by the Irish- 
 men in America to effect the release of the political prisoners, 
 and the attempt was entrusted to Mr. P. J. Smyth. Mr. P. J. 
 Smyth was, at that time, an earnest and active Nationalist, 
 inspired by a passionate admiration for the greater abilities of 
 his colleagues in Young Ireland. It was so much to his credit 
 that he attempted and succeeded in effecting the rescue of his 
 imprisoned brethren, that it must be a matter of regret to every 
 
132 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Irish Nationalist that his career did not end on the day after 
 he had accompHshed his purpose. His later life is only 
 melancholy. He never outgrew the traditions of his youth. 
 He lived and breathed in the air of 1848 at a time when the 
 principles of 1848 were further removed from the immediate 
 needs of the national cause than the old Brehon laws. He 
 hated the young men because they were not content to be 
 limited in the circle of an earlier generation, and he died a 
 placeman. 
 
 The rescue of Mitchel was the first effected. The ques- 
 tion of Mitchel's conduct in making his escape under the 
 conditions in which it was made has often been debated. It 
 is certain that he effected his escape while he was a prisoner 
 on parole. The terms of parole would certainly imply that 
 the prisoner who intends to effect his escape should put him- 
 self in the same position as he was in before the parole was 
 granted to him. This undoubtedly Mitchel did not do. 
 
 It may be urged, it has been urged, that it is not necessary 
 to keep faith with a hostile Government. To such an argu- 
 ment it is impossible to agree. It is the duty of a patriot to 
 keep his faith and his word unsullied, and to make his rule 
 of life an example to his country and the world. Undoubtedly, 
 no leniency of parole would have been shown to the Irish 
 political prisoners if it had become an understood thing that 
 the parole so granted was to be made use of to facilitate the 
 prisoners' escape. However, Mitchel, who was certainly an 
 honourable man, believed himself justified in making his 
 escape ; and the method of his escape was approved of by 
 Smith O'Brien, who, however, did not avail himself of the 
 same means of effecting his release, as he knew that by so 
 doing he would prevent his returning to Ireland. 
 
 Meagher and some of the other exiles succeeded in getting 
 away later on, and most of them followed Mitchel to America. 
 In the great American civil war, Mitchel and Meagher were 
 found on opposite sides. Mitchel became a tremendous advo- 
 cate of the South ; and two of his sons fell in battle in the 
 Confederate uniform. Meagher fought bravely at the head 
 
YOUNG IIIKLISD 138 
 
 of his historic Irish Brigade. His end was a curiously and 
 grimly inappropriate conclusion to that brilliant and varied 
 career. He fell one night from the deck of a steamer, and 
 the dark waters of the Missouri stifled one of the bravest and 
 purest spirits that have ever been devoted to the cause of Irish 
 independence. 
 
 Smith O'Brien received his pardon in the course of time, 
 and he died in Wales in 1864. Mitchel came back to Ireland 
 years and years after, and was put forward for Parliament and 
 elected. The House of Commons refused to recognise the 
 right of the Irish patriot, whom English law condemned a 
 felon, to sit in the House of Commons. A new writ was 
 issued ; Mitchel's name was brought forward again, and he 
 would undoubtedly have been re-elected, but in the midst of all 
 the excitement and turmoil the grim Sergeant Death came 
 and ended Mitchel's troubled life. He was followed to the 
 grave soon after by his friend, John Martin, who had long 
 occupied a seat in the British Parliament. 
 
 Most of the other Young Ireland leaders and exiles died 
 abroad. Kevin Izod O'Doherty is still alive ; he sat as a 
 Nationalist member in the Parliament of 1885-1886. Gavan 
 Duffy was tried three times, but could not be convicted. He 
 afterwards sat some time in Parliament, and then went into 
 voluntary exile, to find title and fortune in Victoria. 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 YOUNGEST IRELAND. 
 
 * Youngest Ireland ' might well be the title of a little known 
 chapter in Irish history — the story of an episode which had 
 one city for its theatre, and which had its fellows and its rivals 
 in other parts of Ireland. One day, in the summer of 1848, 
 a group of young men waited about the post-house in Cork for 
 the arrival of the coach which was to bring the news from 
 Dublin. At that time the railway did not run aU the way 
 
134 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 from Dublin to Cork. It broke off, if we remember rightly, 
 at Tipperar}' , and from that point the mail and the passengers 
 were conveyed by public coach. Presently the coach came in, 
 and was surrounded by the w^aiting group, eager for news. 
 One amongst them was especially eager. He hurriedly ques- 
 tioned as to all that had happened in the Viceregal city within 
 the last few days, and he was told that John Mitchel had been 
 tried, sentenced, and transported. 
 
 ' Was there no attempt at rescue ? ' asked the young Cork- 
 man, impulsively. ' No,' was the answer, ' none whatever.' 
 The young Corkman shrugged his shoulders. * Bravo, my 
 country ! you will be a nation by-and-by,' he said, and so 
 walked off. And from that hour he could never be induced 
 to play any part or evince the slightest interest in Irish poli- 
 tics. To his mind, the fact that John Mitchel was allowed to 
 go into exile without a hand being lifted to save him, was in 
 itself sufficient proof of the hopelessness of the national cause. 
 Happily for Ireland, this pessimistic mocd was not generally 
 shared. There were young men in that city by the Lee who 
 did not think that even because the men of forty-eight had made 
 no attempt to rescue John Mitchel from his sentence, that 
 therefore the fires of patriotism were necessarily extinguished 
 upon the altars of liberty. Forty-eight had failed ; but there 
 was no reason why forty-nine should fail. 
 
 In this very year, when the Queen was in Dublin listening 
 to the fervid protests of loyal citizens, and while she was 
 being assured by Ascendency that the Young Ireland move- 
 ment meant nothing, and that Ireland was heart and soul 
 devoted to Ascendency and its works, in that year a young 
 man came down on a special visit from Dublin to Cork. The 
 young man bore a name which is deservedly dear to Irishmen 
 — Joseph Brenan, better known to his friends and better 
 known to us to-day as Joe Brenan. Those who knew Joe 
 Brenan are not likely to forget his wonderful dark eyes, his 
 brilliant talk, and, what was better than either, one of the 
 most national hearts that ever beat for Ireland. Joe Brenan 
 was a young Corkman who had gone to Dubhn and became 
 
YOUNGEST IRELAND 135 
 
 a writer on Mitcliel's paper, and who, when Mitchel was 
 exiled, had started a paper of his own. He came down to 
 Cork with the deUberate purpose of trying if he could not 
 do something to stir into blaze again the revolutionary fires 
 v.'liich seemed to have been extinguished when Meagher, and 
 O'Doherty, and Smith O'Brien, and the others were sentenced 
 to transportation. 
 
 Brenan was a man of many and varied gifts. If he was 
 a brilliant talker, he was also a brilliant writer in prose and 
 in verse. There is one of his early compositions, well remem- 
 bered by all those who knew him, written on his eighteenth 
 birthday, in which the young Irishman expresses his bitter 
 regret that he has as yet accomplished nothing that is likely 
 to make his name immortal : 
 
 Eighteen ! why Chatterton was mighty then, 
 And Keats had glimpses into fairyland ! 
 
 And the young poet was almost inclined to regard himself as 
 utterly worthless because he, too, was eighteen, and was not 
 mighty, and had had no glimpses into fairyland which the 
 world at large cared anything about. He had, however, no 
 reason to complain. His youth was destined to be better 
 spent than in peering into fairyland, or in writing verses like 
 those of Piowley. He was inspirited by an unconquerable 
 devotion to his country ; by an unswerving ambition to serve 
 her ; and he did serve her, not ineffectively. One of the most 
 romantic passages in his romantic life is that he was loved by 
 a gentle poetess who is dear to all Irishmen as ' Mary of 
 the Nation.' 
 
 Brenan came down to Cork, and entered into negotiations 
 with two men, both young men, and about his own age. One 
 of them is a member of the present Irish parliamentary party, 
 and his name is not altogether unknown in literature. The 
 other is now the editor of the most influential paper in the 
 South of Ireland. There was, at this time, a kind of eating- 
 house at Cork, in a street off Patrick Street, kept by a Mrs, 
 Heron, which was an establishment distinguished for its sanded 
 
136 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 floors, the simplicity of its appointments, and for the excel- 
 lence of its cookery. It was a great place for suppers cf a 
 simple kind, and it was very popular with the young men of 
 Cork. At Mrs. Heron's Joe Brenan and his two friends 
 often met in conclave. Joe Brenan's plan was simple and 
 not unpractical ; and, of course, his purpose was revolutionary. 
 He had no great hope of a successful revolution. His idea 
 was that a number of small risings should take place on the 
 very same day, hour, and minute, in different parts of Ireland ; 
 that their suddenness and unanimity might serve to distract 
 authority ; that at least there would be a struggle ; that 
 some brave men would die for Ireland ; and that something 
 good for the country must happen out of that. 
 
 ' Who knows but the world may end to-night ? ' says the 
 lover in Browning's poem. Something of the same desperate 
 mood seemed to possess Joe Brenan's men at that time. 
 Let it at least be shown to Ascendency that there were 
 young men in Ireland ready to die for their country, and 
 
 then ? Well, the world might end; or Ascendency 
 
 might grow humane ; or any other strange and exceedingly 
 milikely thing might come to pass. It was the dream of a 
 young man ; and Joe Brenan was a young man, and his 
 friends were all young men — many of them very young men. 
 For the little group of three had soon increased, had spread 
 in many directions, and had drawn into its charmed orbit 
 many allies and comrades, and was widening and extending 
 like the circles of a pool where a stone has fallen. 
 
 Soon m Cork alone there were a very large number of 
 generous, high-souled, pure-hearted young men, whose one 
 dream, hope, and ambition was to give their lives for the sake 
 of their comitry. To do them justice, their scheme was not 
 unpractical, and was by no means without sense or hope. 
 They had plenty of arms, to begin with. There were few 
 young men in Cork in 1848 who could not boast the posses- 
 sion of a rifle, or a sabre, or a pike ; and when '48 failed, 
 these rifles, and sabres, and pikes were hidden away in all 
 sorts of unlikely places — buried in back gardens, or stored 
 
YOUNG EST IRELAND 187 
 
 away in unsuspicious-looking barrels, or put out of sight, if 
 not out of mind, somehow. 
 
 The young men who gathered about Joe Brenan, and 
 who looked up to him as the prophet of a new creed of revo- 
 lution, could all, at' any moment, have laid their hands upon 
 a weapon of some kind or another. Then, too, it must be 
 remembered that their desire was not very difficult to gratify. 
 They did not hope of themselves to win the freedom of Ireland. 
 They only hoped to make a series of desperate efforts, to die 
 if needs were, gallantly, and by their deaths to stimulate the 
 national feeling of their country, and to convince the oppressor 
 of their earnestness of purpose, and of their hatred of his rule. 
 They set to work with all seriousness of purpose, and with a 
 right good- will. It was the duty of every one of Joe Brenan's 
 friends to swear in as many recruits as he could, and to get 
 these recruits to bring in others to swell the total of insurrec- 
 tion. There were incessant nightly drillings in out-of-the-way 
 places. There were incessant meetings of the revolutionary 
 leaders and of their followers, organised under the pretence of 
 temperance meetings, literary associations and the like. One 
 spot in especial was a favourite place for secret drillings — the 
 place known as CorkPark,inthe region where the Cork and Ban- 
 don Railway now is, then slob land. Here there were continual 
 drillings, where the great object was to get large bodies of 
 men to obey readily the word of command, and to go through 
 military evolutions swiftly and silently. Here, too, was a great 
 advantage, that if at any time unwelcome persons — police or 
 others — did make their appearance, any body of men could 
 immediately and easily disperse, and be lost to sight in a few 
 moments. 
 
 Many men were active in the movement whose names are 
 still remembered in * rebel Cork.' There was a smith named 
 Bowes, a very Hercules in a leather apron, whose forge was a 
 special centre of disaffection. There was a cobbler of the 
 name of Mountain, a name grimly appropriate for the member 
 of a party which desired to be regarded as the * mountain ' of 
 Irish rebeUion, who played a conspicuous part in the organi- 
 
138 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 sation, and who afterwards, if we remember rightly, underwent 
 his trial for treason-felony. Another man who took a promi- 
 nent place in the movement was Phil Gray, ostensibly a pedlar 
 by profession, who was of rare service .in conveying mes- 
 sages from one part of the country to another. At the smith's 
 forge, in the cobbler's shop, in Mrs. Heron's supper-rooms, at 
 the private dwellings of the youthful rebels, in all sorts of 
 places in the city, the followers of Joe Brenan — who might 
 almost have called themselves Youngest Ireland — met together 
 and planned, and schemed, and hoped. They had their pass- 
 w^ords, of course— their signs and counter-signs. If one 
 recruit met another, and wished to be certain of his comrade- 
 ship and brotherhood, he began by asking him, ' ^yiiat's the 
 news ? ' If the other were one of the League, he immediately 
 made answer, ' The harvest is coming ! ' If this answer were 
 not quite sufficient — if it seemed an answer that might possibly 
 have been made by chance by some uninitiated one, for the 
 harvest teas near — he spoke again, interrogating thus : 
 ' How are we to reap it ? ' If the man thus interrogated 
 answered, ' We'll reap it with steel,' he was at once recog- 
 nised as being of the company of the chosen. 
 
 What Joe Brenan was doing in Cork, others were en- 
 gaged upon elsewhere. Youngest Ireland was busy in many 
 parts of Ireland. Undoubtedly, however, the task that these 
 young men had undertaken was attempted under conditions 
 of more than usual difficulty. The failure of the forty-eight 
 movement, the imprisonment and exile of its leaders— these 
 in themselves were sufficient to dishearten a people reduced 
 by famine to the verge of despair. The Young Ireland move- 
 ment cannot be said to have taken hold of the popular mind. 
 The people, upon whom in the end the success of a rising 
 must depend, were not as a body prepared for, or even expect- 
 ing, a rising at all. We are told, for example, that when 
 Smith O'Brien, having at last resolved upon revolution, came 
 in the course of his crusade to a certain village, the people 
 there came out to meet him with chairs and tables, and set 
 about the erection of a sort of platform, under the impression 
 
YOUNGEST IRELAND 139 
 
 that he was merely going to hold a public meeting. We are 
 told, too, that at the time when Mitchel was preaching the 
 fiercest principles of insurrection, and was leaving behind him 
 even the most vehement politicians of the Nation — even at 
 this time the large bulk of the Irish peasantry, to whom the 
 rising was most likely to appeal, knew as little of Mitchel as 
 they did of Mahomet. 
 
 If there were such difficulties in the way of the Young 
 Ireland movement, these difficulties stood ten, aye, a hun- 
 dredfold greater in the way of the movement which succeeded to 
 it. The young men who organised it, who took hand in it, 
 who enrolled themselves proudly in its ranks, were patriotic, 
 pure men. Gallant and devoted, they were prepared to do all 
 that men could do for the cause that lay dearest to their 
 hearts. But if the materials for a successful revolution might 
 perhaps have been found in the Ireland of forty- eight, these 
 materials were not to be found in the Ireland of the succeeding 
 year. AVhen one rising has failed, it is very difficult to rouse 
 popular emotion or popular passions to the fever-heat of 
 another insurrection. 
 
 Still, with all these difficulties in the way, the young men 
 of the new movement were determined to go on. Anything, 
 they thought, was better than a torpid acquiescence in defeat. 
 So they met, and plotted, and planned, and drilled, and 
 armed, and made ready for the signal which was to come to 
 them, and which was to be the match which would fire the 
 flames of rebellion in many parts of the country at the same 
 moment. Unfortunately, the signal was not properly given. 
 It reached some places and not others. The insurrection did 
 not break out simultaneously. There were one or two abor- 
 tive risings in different parts of the country. Joe Brenan 
 did his part of the business. He rose at Cappoquin. He led 
 his little body of insurgents to take the police barrack there. 
 The police were prepared for their coming. There was a 
 sharp, short exchange of shots, and then Joe Brenan saw 
 that the thing was hopeless. His men dispersed. He him- 
 self flung away his revolver, and walked quietly from the 
 
HO IB ELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 scene of action and got into hiding, later on making good his 
 escape to America. 
 
 That was the end of insurrection for a time. The Httle 
 centres of conspiracy that had been waiting for the watchword 
 that was to hurl them into action heard with despair of the 
 disaster at Cappoquin and the failure of their hopes. There 
 was nothing further to be done for the moment. For a time 
 the national cause was defeated ; for a time the foreign 
 dominion was triumphant. Many of those who had been 
 leaders and soldiers in this movement were destined to take 
 part in first one and then another secret agitation, having an 
 armed rising for its aim. One agitation for liberty in Ireland 
 was no sooner extinguished than another began to burn in its 
 place. 
 
 Joe Brenan's subsequent career was brief. He made his 
 way to America — to New Orleans, that wonderful city on 
 the Mississippi, which is still a marvellous combination of 
 France before the Eevolution, of tropical Creole life, and of 
 modern American enterprise, and which was then still more 
 striking and vivid in its contrast than it now is. There he 
 founded a newspaper, and there he married — but not the 
 love of his youth, not ' Mary of the Nation.'' She died un- 
 married. Blindness came upon him, and he wrote some 
 melancholy, beautiful verses upon the calamity which dark- 
 ened his life. That life was not long. He died while he was 
 still what may be called a young man. His life was not 
 happy in the ordinary sense in which we value the word 
 happiness. His dearest hopes were withered, the noon of his 
 youth was darkened, and his Hfe cut off in its bloom. But he 
 did a good work worthily. He did his best to animate the 
 national cause, at a time when the national cause seemed low 
 indeed ; and his name will always be held in honourable 
 affection by his countrymen. 
 
141 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE IRISH BRIGADE. 
 
 The failure of the Young Ireland movement flung Ireland 
 back upon a long period of political apathy and domestic 
 wretchedness. Starvation and misery forced the people into 
 steady and incessant emigration. Eviction was in full swing, 
 and between eviction and emigration it is estimated that 
 almost a million of people left Ireland between 1847 and 
 1857. ' In a few years more,' said the Times exultingly, * a 
 Celtic Irishman will be as rare in Connemara as is the Red 
 Indian on the shores of the Manhattan.' That the Times 
 was not a true prophet was not the fault of the majority of 
 the Irish landlords. Evictions took place by the hundred, by 
 the thousand, by the ten thousand — evictions as much for 
 grazier's purposes as for non-payment of rent, which in those 
 evil days of famine and failure they could not pay. Winter 
 or summer, day or night, fair or foul weather, the tenants 
 were ejected. Sick or well, bedridden or dying, the tenants — 
 men', women, or children — were turned out. They might go to 
 America if they could ; they might die on the roadside if so 
 it pleased them. They were out of the hut, and the hut was 
 unroofed that they might not seek its shelter again, and that 
 was all the landlord cared about. The expiring evicted tenant 
 might, said Mitchel, raise his dying eyes to heaven and bless 
 his God that he perished under the finest constitution in the 
 world. 
 
 It is hardly a matter of surprise, however much of regret 
 and reprobation, that the lives of the evicting landlords should 
 often be in peril, and sometimes be taken. At that time the 
 Ribbon organisation flourished. The Ribbon organisation, 
 and kindred associations, were rendered inevitable by the 
 conditions under which the Irish peasantry were compelled to 
 live. Given a dominant landlord class, either of another race 
 themselves, or supported by their adhesion to that other race ; 
 
142 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 given the existence of a body of laws which allowed every 
 right to the landlord and no right to the tenant ; given long 
 years of landlord tyranny and eviction, on the top of famine, 
 and it was simply a matter of logical necessity that bodies like 
 the Ribbon Society should come into existence a,nd flourish. 
 In them the peasant saw his only defence against the hateful 
 landlord class, and the no less hateful law which sustained that 
 landlord class in its worst actions. 
 
 There is a fine passage in Gerald Griffin's immortal 
 novel, ' The Collegians,' which bears striking testimony to 
 the way in which English law was then, and has been ever 
 since, regarded by the Irish peasant. ' The peasantry of 
 Ireland have, for centuries, been at war with the laws by 
 which they are governed, and watch their operation in every 
 instance with a jealous eye. Even guilt itself, however 
 naturally atrocious, obtains a commiseration in their regard, 
 from the mere spirit of opposition to a system of Government 
 which they consider unfriendly. There is scarcely a cottage 
 in the South of Ireland where the very circumstance of legal 
 denunciation would not afford, even to a murderer, a certain 
 passport and concealment and protection.' 
 
 There have been many secret societies in the modern 
 history of Europe — the Tugendbund, the Carbonari, and the 
 Camorra — but none have been more remarkable, more mys- 
 terious, or, for a time, more successful than the Ribbon 
 Society. ' It is assuredly strange, indeed, almost incredible, 
 that although the existence of this organisation was, in a 
 general v»^ay, as well and as widely known as the fact that 
 Queen Victoria reigned, or that Daniel O'Connell was once a 
 living man ; although the story of its crimes has thrilled judge 
 and jury, and Parliamentary committees have filled ponderous 
 bluebooks with evidence of its proceedings, there is to this 
 hour the wildest conflict of assertion and conclusion as to 
 what exactly were its real aims, its origin, structure, charac- 
 ter, and purpose.' 
 
 For more than half a century the Ribbon Society has 
 existed in Ireland, and even yet it is impossible to say how it 
 
THE IRISH BRIGADE 143 
 
 began, how it is organised, and what are its exact purposes. 
 Its aim seems cliiefly to have been to defend the land-serf 
 from the hmdlord ; but it often had a strong pohtical purpose 
 as welL The late Mr. A. M. Sullivan stated that he long ago 
 satisfied himself that the Ribbonism of one period was not the 
 Eibbonism of another, and that the version of its aims and 
 character prevalent among its members in one part of Ireland 
 often differed widely from that professed in some other part of 
 the country. ' In Ulster it professed to be a defensive or re- 
 taliatory league against Orangeism ; in Munster it was first a 
 combination against the tithe-proctors ; in Connaught it was 
 an organisation against rack-renting and evictions ; in Leinster 
 it was often mere trade unionism, dictating by its mandates 
 and enforcing by its vengeance the employment or dismissal 
 of workmen, stewards, and even domestics.' 
 
 All sorts of evidence and information of the most confused 
 kind has, from time to time, been given respecting Ribbonism, 
 much of it the merest fiction. All that is certain is that it, 
 and many other formidable organisations, existed among the 
 peasantry of different parts of Ireland. 
 
 Many of the landlords themselves were in no enviable con- 
 dition. Mortgages and settlements of all kinds, the results of 
 their own or of their ancestors' profuseness, hung on their 
 estates, and made many a stately showing rent-roll the 
 merest simulacrum of territorial wealth. Even rack-rents 
 could not enable many of the landlords to keep their 
 heads above water. At length the Government made an 
 effort to relieve their condition by passing the Encumbered 
 Estates Act, by means of which a landlord or his creditors 
 might petition to have an estate sold in the Court established 
 for that purpose under the Act. Later, by a Supplementary 
 Irish Landed Estates Act, the powers of the Court were in- 
 creased to allow the sale of properties that were not encumbered' 
 When Government has hitherto had to legislate for Ireland, 
 it has usually displayed a pleasing alacrity in legislating for 
 the advantage of the Irish landlord class, and a corresponding 
 perfunctory unwillingness to legislate for the Irish peasant. 
 
144 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 The vast body of the Irish people cared Httle or nothing for 
 the legislation that was to the advantage of the landlord class. 
 They regarded, and rightly regarded, that class as the curse 
 of their country. 
 
 But the wants of the tenant closely concerned the Irish 
 race ; and in August, 1850, those who sympathised with the 
 tenants' cause began to agitate for legislation. A conference 
 was called by Dr., afterwards Sir, John Gray, the Protestant 
 owner of the Freeman's Journal, by the Presbyterian barrister 
 Mr. Greer, who later represented Derry in Parliament, and by 
 Frederick Lucas, the Catholic owner of the Tablet. A confer- 
 ence of men of all classes and creeds was held in Dublin — ' a 
 conference,' Mr. Bright called it in the House of Commons, 
 'of earnest men from all parts of Ireland,' and a Tenant 
 League was started. Everything was against the League 
 The indifference of England and the prostration of the 
 country after the famine and the rebellion, the apathy, even 
 the hostility, of the Irish Liberal members were all combined 
 against it. Then came the reorganisation of the Catholic 
 Church in England, and Lord John Kussell's ' Durham 
 Letter,' which for the time made any political alliance be- 
 tween the Catholics and Protestants impossible. 
 
 But when, in 1852, the Whig Ministry went out, and Lord 
 Derby, coming in with the Tories, dissolved Parliament, the 
 chance of the Tenant Leaguers came. Some fifty tenant- 
 right members were elected. It seemed for a moment as if a 
 new era had dawned for Ireland. The country had for a time 
 a large body of representatives pledged together for a common 
 purpose of a truly national character. Many of the men who 
 had been elected were men of the highest character, honour, 
 and patriotism. Conspicuous among the champions of tenant- 
 right was Charles Gavan Duffy, who has complained very in- 
 accurately and unreasonably that the services of the tenant- 
 right party have been under-rated and even ignored by the 
 leaders of the modern political movement. There was a 
 short and distinguished Parliamentary career waiting for 
 Charles Gavan Duffy, before he went across the seas to find 
 
THE ITiTSB BRIGADE 145 
 
 in a new world that fair fortune wliicli was denied to him and 
 to all national Irishmen in his own country. 
 
 Another conspicuous figure in the movement was Fred- 
 erick Lucas, one of the most upright and pure-minded of 
 politicians, a man whose name was destined to become very 
 famous in Irish politics, and who was destined himself to be- 
 come the leader of an Irish party expressing opinions which 
 would have appeared strangely advanced to the tenant-righters, 
 although they seem strangely behind the age to us of to-day. 
 Isaac Butt was elected for Youghal ; in Mr. John Francis 
 Maguire, Ireland had a representative, eloquent, honest, and 
 able — a man who might be called national in the sense that 
 Irish members of Parliament in those days were national 
 and who at all times did his best to be of service to his 
 country. 
 
 Unfortunately for the country and the cause, the tenant- 
 right party in the House of Commons contained members — 
 and those unhappily among the most prominent — who were 
 neither pure, nor honourable, nor patriotic. Among the most 
 conspicuous of the tenant-right party in the House of Com- 
 mons—the Irish Brigade, as it came to be called — was the 
 once famous John Sadleir. His lieutenants were his brother, 
 James Sadleir, Mr. William Keogh, and Mr. Edmund O'Fla- 
 herty : these men were all adventurers, and most of them 
 swindlers. They were known as the Brass Band. John 
 Sadleir was a man of remarkable ability, and still more re- 
 markable audacity. He was absolutely unprincipled. He 
 regarded the cause with which he was connected solely as 
 a means of advancing the seliish personal interests of himself 
 and of his accomplices. He w^as not merely a political adven- 
 turer, a Lismahago of the House of Commons ; he was a 
 swindler of no ordinary un scrupulousness, and no ordinary 
 address. He got about him a gang of rascals like himself, 
 no less unscrupulous, only a little less gifted in deceit and in 
 fraud. 
 
 For a time this Sanhedrim of scoundrels deceived the 
 Irish people by their pretensions and protestations. The 
 
 Ii 
 
146 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Sadleirs owned the Tipperary bank, one of the most popular 
 banks in Ireland ; they had plenty of money, and spent it 
 lavishly ; they started a paper, the Telegraph, to keep them 
 before the public ; they were good speakers, and they led good 
 speakers ; they were demonstratively Catholic, and for a time 
 a good many people believed in them. Sadleir even succeeded 
 in getting some honest men, who had been sent to represent 
 Irish constituencies m Parliament, to believe in him and his 
 lofty purposes, and so to further his secret aims by lending 
 their respectability and their righteousness to him and his 
 gang. Even however when the power of Sadleir was at its 
 highest, he was distrusted by most intelligent Irishmen ; and 
 that distrust was soon justified. 
 
 Lord Derby went out of office, and Whig Lord Aberdeen 
 came in, and the members of the noisy, blatant, Brass Band 
 took office under him. John Sadleir became a Lord of 
 the Treasury ; Keogh was made Irish Solicitor-General ; 
 O'Flaherty Commissioner of Income Tax. There was fierce 
 indignation, but they kept their places and their course for 
 a time. Then they broke up. John Sadleir had embezzled, 
 swindled, forged ; he ruined half Ireland with his fraudulent 
 bank ; he made use of his position under Government to 
 embezzle public money ; he committed suicide— that is to 
 say, he was supposed to have committed suicide, for there 
 were many persons who believed then, and there are many 
 persons who believe still, that the body which was found on 
 Hampstead Heath, and which was consigned to the grave 
 under circumstances of mysterious haste and secrecy, was not 
 the body of John Sadleir. 
 
 In one of the greatest of German romances, the * Flower, 
 Fruit, and Thorn Pieces ' of Jean Paul Eichter, the hero 
 passes himself off for dead, and seeks a new life far from his 
 old home, leaving behind him an afflicted widow and sorrow- 
 ing friends, under the conviction that he is no more. There 
 were many persons who believed that John Sadleir, like 
 another Siebenkas, had died only in name, and was quietly 
 enjoying the rewards of his deception in the security of self- 
 
THE IBIS IT BRIGADE 147 
 
 chosen exile. The story is not very credible, but it will at 
 least serve to show what public opinion at the time thought 
 of John Sadleir, and of John Sadleir's ingenuity, and of John 
 Sadleir's morality. 
 
 His brother James, his confederate, was formally expelled 
 from the House of Commons, a punishment so rarely exer- 
 cised in our time that it might almost be said to be non- 
 existent. O'Flaherty hurried to Denmark, where there was 
 no extradition treaty, and then to New York, where he lived 
 — and, we believe, still lives — under another name, a familiar 
 figure in certain circles of New York society, famous as a 
 diner-out, as a good story-teller, and a humourist — a sort 
 of combination of Brillat Savarin and the later Eichelieu, 
 with a dash of Gines de Pasamonte. Keogh, the fourth of 
 this famous quadrilateral, their ally, their intimate, their 
 faithful friend, contrived to keep himself clear of the crash. 
 He was immediately made a judge, and was conspicuous for 
 the rest of his life for his unfailing and unaltering hostility to 
 any and every national party. 
 
 Only a Persius, or a Pascal, could do full justice to the 
 history of this extraordinary quadrilateral. The story may, 
 however, be summed up somewhat epigrammatically thus : 
 There were once four men, close friends, companions, allies, 
 partners in politics, partners in finance, bound in a brother- 
 hood of common aims and common interests. One was a 
 forger and swindler, who committed suicide ; another was a 
 swindler, who was expelled from the House of Commons, and 
 who fled the country ; the third embezzled public money, and 
 also fled the country ; the fourth was made a judge. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that the lamentable end of the 
 Brass Band, and the disasters of the tenant-right movement, 
 should have produced another period of political apathy in 
 Ireland as far as constitutional agitation was concerned. 
 But there were other agitations on foot. Another experiment, 
 which had been tried and failed in 1848, was to be tried again 
 under new conditions. 
 
 X.2 
 
148 IRELAND SINCE THE TTNION 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE PH(ENIX CONSPIEAOY. 
 
 After the failure of the revolutionary movement of 1848, 
 and of the slight attempt of the succeeding year, Ireland was 
 left for a time unmoved by any active efforts at insurrection. 
 But the revolutionary spirit was only quiescent, not extinct. 
 It was destined to break out again in a fashion much more 
 dangerous than that of the Young Ireland movement, under 
 the leadership of men far more determined and desperate, and 
 with results far more serious. 
 
 At the time wlian Smith O'Brien and his followers were 
 skirmishing with the police at Ballingarry, there was among 
 the insurgents a young man named James Stephens. Stephens 
 was at that time about twenty- four years old. He was born in 
 Kilkenny in 1824, of comparatively humble parents, who were 
 able, however, to give their son a good education, of which he 
 availed himself to the utmost. His mathematical tastes led 
 him to devote himself to engineering ; and in his twentieth 
 year he obtained an appointment on the Limerick and Water- 
 ford Railway, which was then being constructed. When the 
 railway was completed he was thrown out of work for a while, 
 and he came to Dublin to find occupation. The Young Ire- 
 land movement was in full swing at the time, and it soon 
 drew the gifted young engineer into its charmed circle. 
 Stephens was a clever young man, an ardent Nationalist, eager, 
 like all the young Irelanders, to conquer or to die for his 
 native country. He came very near to dying in that fight 
 with the police at Ballingarry. From the cottage in which 
 they had taken refuge, the police were firing as fast as they 
 could upon their besiegers, and one of their bullets found its 
 billet in James Stephens' body. He fell, rolled behind a hedge, 
 and was left there, either unnoticed or regarded as dead, after 
 Smith O'Brien and his party had dispersed, and the police had 
 left the farm-house. 
 
THE niCENIX CONSPIRACY 149 
 
 A few days later paragraphs in the newspapers announced 
 to all that were interested that James Stephens was dead and 
 buried * Poor James Stephens,' so one paragraph ran, ' who 
 followed Smith 0'l>rien to the field, has died of the wound 
 which he received at Ballingarry while acting as aide-de-camp 
 to the insurgent leader. Mr. Stephens was a very amiable 
 and, apart from politics, most inoffensive young man, pos- 
 sessed of a great deal of talent, and we believe he was a most 
 excellent son and brother. His untimely and melancholy fate 
 will be much regretted by a numerous circle of friends.' 
 Stephens' family and friends took good care to support by every 
 means in their power the story of his death. 
 
 It would have been well for the English Government if 
 the Ballingarry bullet had been surer in its aim, and if the 
 newspaper paragraph had been true. But the news was not 
 true. Stephens lay for some time where he had fallen. 
 When he found himself alone, he bandaged his wound as best 
 he could, exchanged clothes with a peasant, and after an 
 interview with his sweetheart, which dangerously jeopardised 
 his safety, sought hiding in the mountains. In the mountains 
 he found a companion in misfortune, seeking, like himself, 
 shelter from the harsh pursuit of the law. This was Michael 
 John Doheny, the gifted child of a peasant race, the eloquent 
 speaker and unselfish patriot. 
 
 The Hue and Cry of the day, which has left us so many gro- 
 tesque, and some life-like portraits of the men who were wanted 
 by the police, because they were Irishmen and enemies of the 
 foreign dominion, thus describes Stephens' companion : 
 ' Michael John Doheny, barrister, age about forty, height 
 five feet eight inches, sandy hair, grey eyes, coarse, red face 
 like that of a man given to drink, high cheek bones, wants 
 several of his teeth, very vulgar appearance, peculiar, coarse, 
 unpleasant voice, small red whiskers, dresses respectably.' 
 
 Doheny has left on record, in his fascinating ' Felon's Track,' 
 the strange story of the six weeks of adventures and sufferings 
 and privations w^iich he and Stephens shared together while 
 they were in hiding. In sunshine and storm, along sides of 
 
150 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 mountains, and across the cold courses of mountain torrents, 
 tlirougli thick woods, and on bleak hill- sides, the refugees 
 made their desperate way. Sometimes they were pursued by 
 the police ; sometimes, though rarely, they ran the risk of 
 being delivered up to their enemies ; sometimes they en- 
 countered cold looks from those who should have been their 
 friends ; but more often they found welcome and shelter and 
 sustenance from the peasantry whom they had hoped to emanci- 
 pate. The courage of the two men never for a moment de- 
 serted them through the whole time when, in Doheny's expres- 
 sive phrase, they were under the shadow of the gibbet. Doheny 
 was always ready whenever they sat and rested to write glow- 
 ing vc*"ses. Stephens' mind was ever fertile in the formation 
 of plans either for the furtherance of their own escape or for 
 the purpose of kidnapping Lord John Eussell. 
 
 Once, and once only, according to Doheny, did the courage 
 of James Stephens seem likely to give way. This was when he 
 learned that the woman to whom he was devoted was no 
 longer true to him. But he rallied even against this stroke ; 
 his love for the cause and the country to which he had vowed 
 himself was able to dwarf and conquer all other emotions, 
 and he soon shook off the sick mood of despondency in which he 
 had declared himself unwilling to make any further efforts to 
 secure his safety. 
 
 When the little plan for carrying oif Lord John Russell was 
 baffled by the Prime Minister's unexpected departure, Stephens 
 left Ireland in dis.^^uise, and made his way across England to 
 France. In Paris he was joined some little time later by 
 Doheny, who had left Ireland about a week after the departure 
 of Stephens, and Avho made his way with more difficulty 
 across England. The two were shortly reinforced by the arri- 
 val of a third Young Irelander, John O'Mahony. O'Mahony 
 had lingered in Ireland for a considerable time after the 
 failure of Smith O'Brien's rising. He commanded a rather 
 large body of men and had control of some arms, and fjr 
 a time he and his followers lurked among the mountains, 
 licping that something might yet happen to speed the insur- 
 
THE FlIiKNIX CONSPIRACY 151 
 
 rection to success. But nothing did happen. O'Mahony 
 became convinced that for the time the revolution was over ; 
 he dismissed his guerilla army to drift to all the points of the 
 compass, and made the best of his way to Paris. There he 
 and Stephens remained for some years. Doheny had gone to 
 the United States to make his way as a journalist and barrister, 
 and to foster by all the means in his power the national 
 cause. 
 
 It must not be supposed that all secret agitation died out 
 in Ireland with the suppression of the Young Ireland move- 
 ment, or of that later movement with which Fintan Lalor and 
 Brenan were associated. Though many Young Irelanders 
 and their accomplices who were not in the hands of the police 
 sought safety in exile, the vast bulk of the conspirators 
 remained at home. Of this large body the greater proportion 
 dropped out of agitation and fell back into private life, and 
 into the fulfilment of their ordinary daily tasks and daily 
 duties. But a certain number still remained bound together 
 by the bonds of secret association in certain of the larger 
 cities. These small associations wei'e centres of latent activity, 
 ready to be employed at any time in widening their circle of 
 agitation. Each of them was a focus from which the rays of 
 revolution might be directed when the hour came, and brought 
 the man with it. The hour and the man came with the 
 decade of 1850, and the visit of James Stephens to Ireland. 
 
 The outbreak of the Crimean War, and the complications 
 in which it involved England on the Continent and in the 
 East, appeared to Stephens to offer happy opportunities for 
 the renewal of active agitation. There is a story current that 
 Kussian agents sought out Stephens, and encouraged him to 
 incite a new revolutionary movement in Ireland. This may 
 or may not be true. It is doubtful whether at that time the 
 Russian Government were sufficiently well aware of the 
 seriousness of Irish discontent. But in any case, we may well 
 believe that James Stephens needed no encouragement from 
 Eussian or other emissaries to induce him to seize the favour- 
 able hour, to seize the favourable moment, for again repeat- 
 
152 IF ELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 ing Ireland's protest against her hard Government. So 
 Stephens came over to Ireland, and made a tour of personal 
 inspection of the comitry, accompanied by Thomas Clarke 
 Luby. He saw for himself that the country was only out- 
 wardly quiescent ; that the desire for national rights and 
 national liberties v>^as even stronger than it had been in 1848 ; 
 that it only needed skill, and judgment, and patience to set on 
 foot a movement which should do more effective service to the 
 country than Young Ireland. 
 
 These small bodies of secret disaffection, which have been 
 already mentioned, gave great support to Stephens in his visit, 
 and received from him fresh inspiration for the spread of their 
 propaganda. But if the rough outline of Stephens' plans was 
 readily found, it took a long time to mature. The Crimean 
 War passed away without awakening any active disturbance 
 in Ireland ; but the preparations for disturbance were surely 
 and slowly progressing. In the town of Skibbereen there was 
 a small club or reading-room, apparently of no great import- 
 ance either as a literary or as a political centre. But it was 
 destined to prove of very great importance, and gave its name 
 to an unsuccessful conspiracy which was destined to be the 
 parent of a far greater conspiracy. 
 
 This small body or association was called the * Phoenix 
 National and Literary Society.' Many of the young men of 
 the town were its members : and it was apparently merely 
 a kind of literary institute. It covered under its seemingly 
 harmless appearance one of those small centres of secret 
 agitation ah-eady mentioned. One of its most conspicuous 
 members was Jeremiah O'Donovan, later known as O'Don- 
 ovan Eossa. In the members of the PhoBnix Literary Society, 
 Stephens, then in Ireland, found ready and willing confede- 
 rates ; and from tLcin and their institution came the name 
 given to Stephens' organisation, then in process of formation, 
 There was something in the title which appealed particularly 
 and appropriately to the minds of Irish conspirators. Every 
 Irish insurrectionary movement had risen, Phoenix-like, from 
 the ashes of some preceding agitation. So the name Phoenix 
 
THE PIICENIX CONSPIRACY 153 
 
 was adopted ; and, had the Fates been propitious, it might 
 have become the title of the greater movement which succeeded 
 it, instead of hviiig in history merely as the name of a prema- 
 turely-destroyed conspiracy. 
 
 A little before the time when James Stephens was finding 
 welcome and sympathy, and a name for his organisation, at 
 the hands of the Skibbereen Literary Society, another distin- 
 guished Irish rebel had returned to his native land. In 185G 
 Mr. William Smith O'Brien was allowed to return to Ireland 
 mider an unconditional amnesty. He had been for some time 
 set free from absolute imprisonment ; but it was only now 
 that permission to return to his own country was accorded 
 to him. The Government, which seldom did any gracious 
 act except by halves, allowed Smith O'Brien to breathe his 
 native air without fear of arrest as a felon ; but it refused to 
 allow him the rank and title which were his by right, as the 
 brother of Lord Inchiquin. Smith O'Brien, we may feel 
 sure, cared very little for any honours of which the Govern- 
 ment were able to deprive him. The honour of a place of 
 foremost affection in the hearts and minds of his countrymen 
 the Government could not take away. 
 
 In the dead calm which seemed to come over Irish life, 
 something like a ripple was produced in the return home of 
 a Young Ireland leader. There were enthusiastic demonstra- 
 tions in his honour, and he was earnestly entreated to once 
 again represent an Irish constituency in the English Parlia- 
 ment. This, however, Smith O'Brien refused to do. The 
 bright hopes of ten years earlier had faded away. He ^,■as 
 not less national than he had been, but he was less sanguine 
 of immediate success, and he was most unwilling to return 
 to any active personal part in the cause. His interest in, and 
 his affection for the country and the cause was as deep as 
 ever ; and a little later he made a tour of Ireland, in which 
 he was received with enthusiasm wherever he went, and in 
 the course of which he made an important speech on ground 
 which was historic ground for him. At Clonmel, where he 
 and so many of his companions had been tried and sentenced 
 
154 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 to death, he was presented with an address ; and he made a 
 reply to the address which was full of a sad and lenient dignity 
 and courage. He spoke sorrowfully of forty-eight and its 
 failure ; but he declared that he was as devoted now as he 
 had been then to the principles which had led him to risk 
 his life with the lives of his friends and followers in his 
 country's cause. 
 
 The speech naturally created much interest ; and it pro- 
 voked an article in the London Tiines which was in its way a 
 masterpiece of political folly, and of that curious misapprecia- 
 tion of facts, that lack of historical insight, which has always 
 been the chief characteristic of English journalism in its 
 speculations on Irish affairs. The Times was pleased to be 
 somewhat scornfully amused over the utteiances of the re- 
 turned rebel. It pointed exultantly to the absolute peace, 
 tranquillity, and contentment of Ireland ; and it scoffingly 
 assured Smith O'Brien, and such few persons as sympathised 
 with him, that the days of rebels, and agitation, and conspi- 
 racy in Ireland were over, for good and all. At this time 
 when these weighty words were being penned, at this time 
 when the English Press was so confident that order reigned 
 in Ireland, the Irish Executive was preparing to make a descent 
 upon a formidable secret conspiracy which had been brought 
 to its notice, and which was to be the parent of a conspiracy 
 many times more formidable than any which had yet occurred 
 in the history of the relations of the two countries. 
 
 It soon became bruited abroad that the Phoenix organisa- 
 tion was spreading rapidly ; it soon came to be known, too, in 
 that vague, indefinable way in which things do get to be 
 known in political life before they actually occur, that the 
 Government intended to make sharp and short work with the 
 new conspiracy. Some Nationalists conceived it to be within 
 their duty to make public protest against the new movement. 
 Mr. Smith O'Brien, forgetting entirely, or apparently forget- 
 ting entirely, the history of his own struggle little more than 
 ten years earlier with O'Connell, judged it advisable to write 
 a letter to the Nation, appealing to the Irish people against 
 
THE PHCENIX COl^SPIRACY 155 
 
 the Phoenix conspiracy. Mr. John Dillon, wiser then, as he 
 had been wiser ten years before, than his chief, refused to 
 make any demonstration against the Phoenix Society, and 
 considered that public interference was most inadvisable. 
 
 In all probability the Irish Government had made up 
 their minds to crush out the conspiracy before Mr. Smith 
 O'Brien's letter made its appearance. But such a letter 
 would probably, in any case, have only encouraged instead of 
 dissuading them from the course upon which they had re- 
 solved. On December 3, 1858, a viceregal proclamation 
 warned the country that great danger was caused by the 
 existence of a secret society. Within a few days this procla- 
 mation was followed up by a series of raids in different towns 
 in Ireland, upon men known, or suspected to be, members of 
 the Phoenix Society. There were a series of protracted trials, 
 which revealed little or nothing, beyond the fact that in 
 certain districts young men had banded themselves together 
 into a secret organisation for the purpose of secret drilling, 
 and that the organisation had an occult leader who was 
 known as ' the Hawk,' and was pretty generally understood 
 to be James Stephens. 
 
 One of the prisoners, Daniel O'Sullivan, a National School 
 teacher, was brilliantly defended by the late Lord O'Hagan — 
 then Mr. Thomas O'Hagan. The jury disagreed. O'Sullivan 
 was tried again ; and objecting to the unfairness with which 
 the jury was packed, he refused to make any defence, was 
 convicted, and sentence^ to ten years' penal servitude. The 
 other Phoenix prisoners were induced to plead guilty, and 
 were released. Such was apparently the end of the Phoenix 
 conspiracy. The Government fondly fancied they had done 
 with it and all kinds of agitation for long enough. They did 
 not dream that from the extinct association another conspiracy 
 would arise, which would have its home in two hemispheres. 
 ' The last of the Gracchi,' said Mirabeau, ' dying, flung dust 
 to heaven, and from that dust sprang Marius.' From the 
 dust of the exploded Phoenix conspiracy rose the far more 
 formidable imafje of Fenianism. 
 
156 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 JOHN DILLON AND JOHN BEIGHT. 
 
 The General Election of 1865 was in its results one of the 
 most remarkable that have occmTed during the whole of the 
 Victorian epoch. It marked the passing away of an old order 
 and the beginning of a new. Not long before it took place Mr. 
 Gladstone had made himself conspicuous as the sympathiser 
 with, and supporter of, advanced Kadical ideas. The politician 
 who had been looked upon in his youth as the rising hope of 
 the stern and unbending Tories, had passed from Conservatism, 
 through Conservative Liberalism, unto pure and undiluted 
 Liberalism. He was even, in those days, regarded as a 
 Radical. Mr. Gladstone's process of conversion showed that 
 the tide of Liberalism was running high ; the result of the 
 General Election proved it still more conclusively. 
 
 Mr. Disraeli, with the keen political insight which at once 
 perceives the chief historical characteristic of any great event, 
 declared in a speech, shortly after the General Election, that 
 the new Parliament had very greatly increased the power and 
 the following of Mr. Bright. This was, indeed, the most 
 conspicuous result of the election. Mr. Bright was at that 
 time regarded as the champion of advanced thought, as the 
 hero and the herald of Eadical principles and Radical reforms. 
 His position in the new Parliament was very strong. Death 
 had taken from his side, shortly before the new Parliament 
 came into existence, his friend and companion, Richard 
 Cobden ; but death had also, almost immediately after the 
 birth of the new Parliament, taken away Lord Palmerston, 
 who was the most serious barrier to the progress of the new 
 ideas of which Mr. Bright was regarded as the apostle. 
 
 Men of rare gifts and rare genius came with that election 
 for the first time into Parliamentary life, and rallied under- 
 neath Mr. Bright's banner. Mostconspicuous among English 
 members was John Stuart Mill, who had been successfully 
 
JOHN niLLOK AND JOHN BRIGHT 157 
 
 induced to come from his philosophic retirement in pleasant 
 Avignon, and to dedicate for a season his fine intellect to the 
 active service of the Radical party. Most conspicuous amongst 
 Irish members was John Dillon. 
 
 John Dillon entered Parliament in 1865, as he had entered 
 upon revolution in 1848, from a strong conviction of the duty 
 he owed to his country. We have seen that he had not been 
 anxious for revolution in the Young Ireland days ; that he 
 had opposed the premature explosion of insurrection as long 
 as he could ; but that when he saw a rising to be inevitable, 
 he threw in his lot with it as composedly as if he had approved 
 of it from the beginning, and shared heroically the conse- 
 quences of a catastrophe which he had striven to avert. 
 After the rising failed, he succeeded in making his escape, 
 and he lived for many years in exile in the United States. 
 In later years a general amnesty allowed him to return to 
 his own country. It was urged upon him that he could be 
 of service to his country by entering Parliament, and he 
 accepted the duty. 
 
 Like many other Irishmen at that time, John Dillon was 
 a great admirer and implicit believer in John Bright. Mr. 
 John Dillon might very well believe that the Irish people and 
 the representatives of the Irish people had a friend ih Mr. 
 John Bright. Mr. John Dillon was always a student of the 
 political history of his time, and the utterances of Mr. John 
 Bright might well have convinced a man of a more sceptical 
 nature than Mr. John Dillon ever was, that Mr. Bright was a 
 sustained and devoted friend to Ireland. There is no more 
 instructive study for the Irish Nationalist of to-day than those 
 volumes of Mr. Bright's collected speeches w^liich contain his 
 utterances delivered on Irish questions. They deserve to be 
 read and re-read far oftener than they are. They have been 
 called attention to from time to time by Irish politicians. A 
 writer, some few years ago, at a period of acute political crisis, 
 ventured to make public certain extracts from them which 
 had a curious bearing upon Mr. Bright's conduct towards the 
 Land League and its supporters. But it will not be out of 
 
158 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 place here, after some of the very recent utterances of Mr. 
 Bright on the Irish question in and out of the House of Com- 
 mons, to look over some of these Irish speeches of his, and 
 see what it was that made Mr. John Dillon regard him with 
 such admiration. 
 
 In the year 1845, in a speech on the Maynooth Grant 
 question, Mr. Bright, who had then only been but a short 
 time in the House, raised his voice to^point out the wrongs 
 of Ireland. ' I assert that the Protestant Church of Ireland 
 is at the root of the evils of that country, The Irish Catho- 
 lics would thank you infinitely more if you were to wipe out 
 that foul blot, than they would even if Parliament were to 
 establish the Eoman Catholic Church alongside of it. They 
 have had everything Protestant— a Protestant clique that has 
 been dominant in the country ; a Protestant Viceroy to distri- 
 bute places and emoluments amongst that Protestant clique ; 
 Protestant judges who have polluted the seats of justice ; 
 Protestant magistrates, before whom the Catholic peasant 
 could not hope for justice. They have not only Protestant, 
 but exterminating landlords, and more than that, a Protestant 
 soldiery, who, at the beck and command of a Protestant priest, 
 have butchered and killed a Catholic peasant even in the 
 presence of his widowed mother. All these things are noto- 
 rious ; I merely state them. I do not bring the proof of 
 them ; they are patent to all the world, and that man must 
 have been inobservant indeed who is not perfectly convinced 
 of their truth.' 
 
 Two years later, in 1847, Mr. Bright, in speaking on the 
 Coercion Bill, for which he felt himself compelled to vote, 
 but, althougli not without making a strong protest against the 
 system of governing Ireland, addressed some reproaches to 
 the Irish representatives in the House of Commons for their 
 inaction. * I am sure that 105, or even 30 English members, 
 sitting in a Parliament in Dublin, and believing their country 
 had suffered from the effects of bad legislation, would, by 
 their knowledge of the case, their business habits, activity, 
 union, and perseverance, have shown a powerful front, and 
 
JOHN BILLON AND JOHN BRIGHT 159 
 
 by uniting together, and working manfully in favour of any 
 proposition tliey might think necessary to remedy the evils 
 of which they complained, they would have forced it on the 
 attention of the House. But the Irish members have not 
 done this. So far, then, they are and have been as much to 
 blame as any other member of this House, for the absence of 
 good government in Ireland.' 
 
 It is interesting to compare these utterances of what may 
 be called Mr. Bright's youth with speeches made nearly forty 
 years later. When the party whose presence he had so wished 
 for, that party of united Irish members, showing a powerful 
 front, united together, and working manfully in favour of any 
 proposition they might think necessary to remedy the evils of 
 which they complained, made their appearance in the English 
 House of Commons, the reception they got from Mr. Bright 
 was not of the kind which they might well have expected, 
 from the speech of 1847. In the same speech he said : ' We 
 maintain a large army in Ireland, and an armed police, which 
 is an army in everything but name, and yet we have in that 
 country a condition of things which is not to be matched in 
 any other civilised country of Europe, and which is alike dis- 
 graceful to Ireland and to us.' 
 
 In the following year, 1848, almost immediately after the 
 Young Ireland outbreak, Mr. Bright again made a speech 
 about Ireland, and again enlarged upon the injustice of 
 English rule. In this speech he touched upon a question 
 destined to be of the utmost importance in the history of the 
 relations between England and Ireland — the Irish in America. 
 ' Driven forth by poverty. Irishmen emigrate in great numbers, 
 and in whatever quarter of the world an Irishman sets his 
 foot, there stands a bitter, an implacable enemy of England. 
 That is one of the results of the wide- spread disaffection that 
 exists in Ireland. There are hundreds of thousands — I sup- 
 pose there are milHons — of the population of the United 
 States of America who are Irish by birth, or by immediate 
 descent; and, be it remembered. Irishmen settled in the 
 United States have a large influence in public affairs. They 
 
160 IB ELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 sometimes sway the election of members of the legislature, 
 and may even affect the election of the President of the Ee- 
 public. There may come a time when questions of a critical 
 nature will be agitated between the Governments of Great 
 Britain and the United States ; and it is certain that at such 
 a time the Irish in that country will throw their whole weight 
 into the scale against this country and against peace with this 
 country. These are points which it is necessary to consider, 
 and which arise out of the lamentable condition in which Ire- 
 land is placed.' ; 
 
 In the same speech he said : ' At present there prevails 
 throughout th^'ee-fourths of the Irish people a total unbelief 
 in the honesty and integrity of the Government of this 
 country. There may or may not be grounds for all this ill- 
 feeling ; but that it exists, no man acquainted with Ireland 
 will deny. The first step to be taken is to remove this feel- 
 ing ; and, to do this, some great measure or measures should 
 be offered to the people of Ireland, which will act as a com- 
 plete demonstration to them that bygones are to be bygones 
 with regard to the administration of Irish affairs, and that 
 henceforth, new, generous, and equal principles of govern- 
 ment are to be adopted.' 
 
 In the same speech, too, we find the following remarkable 
 utterances : ' With regard to the parliamentary representation 
 of Ireland, having recently spent seventy-three days in an 
 examination of the subject, while serving as a member of the 
 Dublin Election Committee, I assert most distinctly that the 
 representation which exists at this moment is a fraud ; and I 
 believe it would be far better if there were not representation 
 at all, because the people would not then be deluded by the 
 idea that they had a representative Government to protect 
 their interests.' 
 
 It is curious here to remember that when Ireland did 
 get a body of delegates composing a less fraudulent repre- 
 sentation, and possessing the confidence of the Irish people, 
 they found no bitterer enemy than the man who had so 
 ardently desired their existence in 1848. Mr. Bright con- 
 
JOHN DILLON AND JOHN BRIGHT 161 
 
 eluded his speech with an eloquent peroration, which, coming 
 at such a time, was perhaps of more value in keeping the 
 spirit of agitation alive in Ireland than the fiercest utterances 
 of the Nation or the United Irishman. ' Let the House, if it 
 can, regard Ireland as an English country. Let us think of 
 the eight millions of people, and of the millions of them 
 doomed to this intolerable suffering. Let us think of the 
 half million who, within two years past, have perished 
 miserably in the workhouses, and on tlie highways, and in 
 their hovels — more, far more, than ever fell by the sword in 
 any war this country has 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. Let us examine what are uhe laws and 
 principles under which alone God and nature have permitted 
 that nations should become industrious and provident.' 
 
 In the following year, 1849, the year of the abortive insur- 
 rection of Fintan Lawlor and Philip Grey, Mr. Bright made 
 a speech which contains this famous passage : ' But the treat- 
 ment of this Irish malady rem airs even the same. We have 
 nothing for it still but force and arms. You have an armed 
 force there of 50,000 men to keep the people quiet ; large votes 
 are annually required to keep the people quiet, and large 
 votes are annually required to keep the people alive. I pre- 
 sume the government by troops is easy, and that the — 
 
 Civil power may snore at ease, 
 
 "While soldiers fire — to keep the peace 1 
 
 *I shall be told,' said Mr. Bright, in the same speech, ' that I 
 am injuring aristocratical and territorial influence. What is 
 there in Ireland worth to you now ? What is Ireland worth 
 to you at all ? Is she not the very symbol and token of your 
 disgrace and humiliation to the whole world ? Is she not an 
 incessant trouble to your Legislature, and a source of increased 
 expense to your people, already overtaxed ? Is not your 
 legislation all at fault in what it has hitherto done for that 
 country ? The people of Ulster say that we shall weaken the 
 
 M 
 
162 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Union. It has been one of the misfortunes of the legislation 
 of this House that there has been no honest attempt to make 
 a Union with the whole people of Ireland up to this time. . . . 
 Hon. gentlemen turn with triumph to neighbouring countries, 
 and speak m glowing terms of our glorious constitution. It 
 is true that abroad thrones and dynasties have been over- 
 turned, whilst in England peace has reigned undisturbed. 
 But take all the lives that have been lost in the last twelve 
 months in Europe amidst the convulsions that have occurred 
 — take all the cessation of trade, destruction of industry, all 
 the crushing of hopes and hearts, and they will not compare 
 for an instant with the agonies which have been endured by 
 the population of Ireland under your glorious constitution.' 
 
 There now seems a gap in Mr. Bright's speeches on Ire- 
 land, a gap of nearly twenty years. Once again insurrection is 
 in the air ; once again men are planning and arming secretly 
 to attempt the regeneration of Ireland, and once again Mr. 
 Bright comes forward, eloquent upon the injuries that Ireland 
 has sustained, eloquent upon her wrongs, Jier sufferings, her 
 humiliation. 
 
 * I believe that if the majority of the people of Ireland, 
 counted fairly out, had their will, and if they had the power, 
 they would unmoor the island from its fastenings in the deep, 
 and move it at least two thousand miles to the west. And I 
 believe, further, that if by conspiracy or insurrection, or by 
 that open agitation to which alone I ever would give any 
 favour or consent, they could shake off the authority, I will 
 not say of the English Crown, but of the Imperial Parlia- 
 ment, they would gladly do so. . . . Sixty-five years ago this 
 country and this Parliament undertook to govern Ireland. I 
 will say nothing of the manner in which that duty was brought 
 upon us except this — that it was by proceedings disgraceful 
 and corrupt to the last degree. I will say nothing of the 
 pretences under which it was brought about but this — that 
 the English Parliament and people, and the Irish people too, 
 were told that if they once got rid of the Irish Parliament 
 they would dethrone for ever Irish factions, and that with a 
 
JOHN DILLON AND JOHN BRtGlIT ir,-] 
 
 nnitod Parliament we should become a united, and stronger, 
 and happier people.' During these sixty-five years Mr. Bright 
 went on to show that only three measures had been passed 
 in the interests of Ireland. One of these was the Catholic 
 Emancipation Act, which, as Mr. Bright proved, was only 
 conceded out of fear of civil war ; the other two were the 
 measures for the relief of the poor and the sale of encum- 
 bered estates. * Except on these two emergencies I appeal 
 to every Irish member, and to every English member who 
 has paid any attention to the matter, whether the statement 
 is not true that this Parliament has done nothing for the 
 people of Ireland. And, more than that, their complaints 
 have been met — often by denial, often by insult, often by 
 contempt.' 
 
 In the same speech Mr. Bright asked a question which 
 had a peculiar pertinence at a time when the movement was 
 chiefly organised by Irish- Americans. ' Why does every 
 Irishman who leaves his country and goes to the United 
 States, immediately settle himself down there, resolved to 
 better his condition in life, but with a feeling of ineradicable 
 hatred to the laws and institutions of the land of his birth ? ' 
 Then comes a passage which really reads like a satire upon 
 Mr. Bright's latest political pronouncements : ' Now, sir, a 
 few days ago everybody in this House, with two or three ex- 
 ceptions, was taking an oath at that table. It is called the 
 Oath of Allegiance. It is meant at once to express loyalty 
 and to keep men loyal. I do not think it generally does bind 
 men to loyalty if they have not loyalty without it. I hold loyalty 
 to consist, in a country like this, as much in doing justice to 
 the people as in guarding the Crown ; for I believe there is no 
 guardianship of the Crown in a country like this, where the 
 Crown is not supposed to rest absolutely upon force, so safe 
 as that of which we know more in our day, probably, than has 
 been known in former periods of our history, when the occu- 
 pant of the throne is respected, admired, and loved by the 
 general people. Now, how comes it that these great statesmen 
 whom I have named, with all their colleagues — some of them 
 
 M 2 
 
164 litELAJVD SINCE THE UNION 
 
 almost as eminent as their leaders — have never tried what 
 they could do, have never shown their loyalty to the Crown by 
 endeavouring to make the Queen as safe in the hearts of the 
 people of Ireland as she is in the hearts of the people of 
 England and Scotland ? ' 
 
 It is interesting to find that Mr. Bright considers loyalty 
 to consist as much in doing justice to the people as in guarding 
 the Crown, and it will be interesting to know, too, why he 
 defines a party who are occupied in doing justice to their own 
 people as a rebel party. Either Mr. Bright has forgotten his 
 definition of loyalty, or he has changed his mind. Then 
 came a passage that might have been, but was not, repeated 
 by him during recent times of trial. * You may pass 
 this Bill,' said Mr. Bright— the House was discussing a 
 Coercion measure — ' you may put the Home Secretary's 500 
 men into jail; you may do more than this you may suppress 
 the conspiracy and put dow^n the insurrection — but the 
 moment it is suppressed there will still remain the germs of 
 this malady, and from those germs will grow up, as hereto- 
 fore, another crop of insurrection and another harvest of 
 misfortune. And it may be that those who sit here eighteen 
 years after this movement will find another Ministry and 
 another Secretary of State, ready to propose to you another 
 administration of the same ever-failing and ever-poisonous 
 medicine.' 
 
 All these speeches that have been quoted were made 
 during the lifetime of Mr. John Dillon. Listening to such 
 speeches, or reading the reports of them, the true-hearted 
 and simple-minded gentleman who represented Tipperary 
 might very well have believed that Mr. Bright was one 
 of Ireland's best friends. A great dinner was organised, 
 chiefly by Mr. Dillon, to be given in honour of Mr. Bright, 
 in Dublin. Mr. Dillon fully believed that the regeneration of 
 Ireland was to be effected by union between the English 
 Liberals and the leaders of opinion in Ireland. To effect this 
 union he laboured for all the last years of his life ; and this 
 banquet to Mr. Bright was intended to be a sort of inaugura- 
 
JonX DlLLOy AXJJ JOHN BlilGIlT 165 
 
 tion of the accomplished thing, and the herald of a happier 
 state of things. 
 
 When all the preparations were completed for the banquet, 
 at wliic-h, if we remember rightly, Mr. Dillon w^as to have taken 
 the chair, Mr. Dillon suddenly died, and deprived Irish politics 
 of one of the bravest and one of the sincerest of her soldiers 
 and her statesmen. The banquet was not abandoned. It 
 went on in spite of the loss which the two parties, who were 
 thus to be politically bound together, sustained by Mr. Dillon's 
 death. The chair was then taken by another Irish member, 
 who was then regarded in England, and in Ireland, as a very 
 advanced politician indeed, The O'Donoghue, who was, per- 
 haps, a more appropriate chairman for any assembly at which 
 Mr. Bright was going to speak than John Dillon could have 
 been. Mr. Bright made a speech which he began by paying 
 an eloquent tribute to the memory of the dead man. ' I speak 
 with grief when I say that one of our friends who signed that 
 invitation is no longer with us. I had not the pleasure of 
 a long acquaintance with Mr. Dillon, but I shall take this 
 opportunity of s.iying that during the last session of Parlia- 
 ment I formed a very high opinion of his character. There 
 was that in his eye, and in the tone of his voice — in his 
 manner altogetlier— which marked him for an honourable and 
 a just man. I venture to say that this sad and sudden re- 
 moval is a great loss to Ireland. I believe amongst all her 
 worthy sons, Ireland has had no worthier and no nobler son 
 than John Blake Dillon.' 
 
 Then Mr. Bright proceeded to examine the position of 
 Ireland. ' There are some,' he said, ' who say that the great 
 misfortune of Ireland is in the existence of the noxious class 
 of political agitators. Well, as to that, I may state that the 
 most disth.guished political agitators that have ever appeared 
 during the last hundred years in Ireland are Grattan and 
 O'Connell, and I should say that he must either be a very 
 stupid or a very base Irishman who would wish to erase the 
 achievements of Grattan and O'Connell from the annals of his 
 country.' Mr. Bright then proceeded to draw a graphic and 
 
!6Q IRELAND SFXCE THE UNION 
 
 powerful picture of the sufferings of Ireland and the Irish 
 people, and he concluded his gloomy study thus : * Bear in 
 mind that I am not speaking of Poland suffering under the 
 conquest of Eussia. ... I am not speaking about Hungary, 
 or of Venice as she was under the rule of Austria, or of the 
 Greeks under the dominion of the Turk, but I am speaking 
 of Ireland — part of the United Kingdom — part of that which 
 boasts itself to be the most civilised and the most Christian 
 nation in the world.' 
 
 Under these conditions Mr. Bright was naturally not sur- 
 prised at the statement which he quoted of an esteemed citizen 
 of Dublin : ' He told me tliat he believed that a very large 
 portion of what is called the poor, amongst Irishmen, sympa- 
 thised with any scheme or any proposition that was adverse 
 to the Imperial G-overnment.' Then when the thoughts of 
 every national Irishman were with his brethren in America, 
 Mr. Bright gave this impetus to the Fenian movement. 
 ' You will recollect that when the ancient Hebrew prophet 
 prayed in his captivity he prayed with his window open to- 
 wards Jerusalem. You know that the followers of Mahom- 
 med, when they pray, turn their faces towards Mecca. When 
 the Irish peasant asks for food, and freedom, and blessing, his 
 eye follows the setting sun ; the aspirations of his heart reach 
 beyond the wide Atlantic, and in spirit he grasps hands with 
 the great Repuulic of the West.' 
 
 But Mr. Bright was not merely content with enlarging 
 upon the sufferings of Ireland. He saw his way to a remedy 
 and boldly enunciated it. ' If Irishmen were united — if your 
 105 members were for the most part agreed, you might do 
 almost anything you like ; you might do it even in the present 
 Parliament ; but if you are disunited, then I know not how 
 you can gain anything from a Parliament created as the 
 Imperial Parliament is now. The classes who rule in Britain 
 will hear your cry as they have heard it before, and will pay 
 no attention to it. They will see your people leaving your 
 shores, and will think it no calamity to the country. They 
 know that they have force to suppress insurrection, and, 
 
JOHN BILLON AND JOHN JJIllOHT 167 
 
 therefore, you can gain nothing from their fears. What, 
 then, is your hope ? It is in a better Parhament, represent- 
 ing fairly the United Kingdom — the movement which is now 
 in force in England and Scotland, and which is your move- 
 ment as much as ours. If there were 100 more members, 
 the representatives of large and free constituencies, then your 
 cry would be heard, and the people would give you that justice 
 which a class has so long denied you.' 
 
 If John Dillon, over whose grave almost Mr. Bright was 
 uttering these trumpet-notes of encouragement to the Irish 
 people, could have known while he was yet alive that Mr. 
 Bright would be the bitterest and most inveterate opponent 
 of a body of Irish members who were united, and who were 
 agreed, he would, we may feel convinced, have bitterly re- 
 gretted that such a change could ever come over such a friend 
 of Ireland. 
 
 There is little need to make citations from any further 
 speeches of Mr. Bright's, but there is one more which may be re- 
 garded as belonging to the John Dillon period. It was spokenin 
 Dublin only three nights after the banquet in that city. Mr. 
 Bright said : ' I am very sorry that my voice is not what it 
 was ; and when I think of the work that is to be done, some- 
 times I feel it is a pity we grow old so fast.' We, too, may 
 be permitted to regret, nearly twenty years later, that Mr. 
 John Bright grew old so fast — that he so soon shook off the 
 belief and the courage of his nobler years. For the same 
 speech concluded with these words : ' And if I have in past 
 times felt an unquenchable sympathy with the sufferings of 
 your people, you may rely upon it that if there be an Irish 
 member to speak for Ireland, he will find me heartily by his 
 side.' Yet there came a time when there were not one but 
 many Irish members to speak for Ireland in the English 
 House of Commons, and they found Mr. Bright not heartily 
 by their side, but zealously, fanatically, opposed to them. 
 
 The Irish people can afford now to forgive, if not to forget, 
 the enmity of John Bright. He is now the antagonist of the 
 great Englishman who has borne the message of peace and 
 
168 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 love to Ireland. But because he was once a good friend to 
 Ireland, because Ireland believed in him and admired him — 
 then for the sake of that belief and that admiration we may 
 be content to let him pass by in sorrowful silence. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVL 
 
 THE LAND QUESTION. 
 
 Thkoughout the history of Ireland no question has been so 
 fruitful of wretchedness and of conspiracy among the Irish 
 people, and of alternate remedial and repressive legislation 
 on the part of the English Government, as the question of 
 the land. By the incessant confiscations and settlements of 
 Irish soil, the land became almost entirely vested in the 
 hands of landlords, who, if not alien in blood, were at least 
 alien so far as sympathy for their tenants was concerned. 
 In fact, the vast proportion of the Irish people were merely 
 tenants-at-will of these usurping landlords, the majority of 
 whom had no other interest in their lands or their tenants 
 than the amount of money which they could extort from them, 
 and who were enabled to wring exorbitant rents from the 
 wretched peasants to whom the lan<l was an absolute 
 necessity, whatever the price paid for its possession. Under 
 such conditions it is easily conceivable that often the teims 
 demanded were impossible to meet. In such cases the land 
 lord had recourse to eviction. Eviction produced misery, and 
 misery, disaffection — the disaffection gradually organising 
 itself into secret societies and those famous Ribbon lodges, 
 which have had such an important connection with the Irish 
 Land question. 
 
 In no other civilised country in the world, perhaps, has 
 such a system of land tenure existed as existed in Ireland. 
 The landlord was absolutely master of his tenant, whom, as 
 often as not, he ground down by deputy, living out of the 
 country, and merely absorbing the rents. All enterprise and 
 
THE LAND QUESTION 169 
 
 industry in the Irish peasant were simply at a discount ; for 
 any iinprovements which a tenant might efi'cct upon his hold- 
 ing, and any increase in the producing power of the land 
 which he might contrive, could only result, as he knew but 
 too well, in the increase of the rent. Ever since the passing 
 of the Union the position of the Irish peasant has constantly 
 formed the subject of Parhamentary inquiry and the produc- 
 tion of portentous Parliamentary reports. But only too often 
 has the matter ended with the report of the Committee of 
 Inquiry, without any practical legislation resulting. For a 
 long time the only legislation on the subject was directed to 
 the punishment and repression of the discontent which such 
 a state of things naturally provoked. The greatest concession 
 that was ever made was cruelly ironical in its provisions. It 
 was an Act prohibiting evictions on Christmas Day and Good 
 Friday, and the removal of the roof of a dwelling until the 
 inhabitants had left its shelter. 
 
 In the year 1819 the Select Committee presided over by 
 Sir John Newton sat to inquire into the matter. Its report 
 called attention to the great distress of the needy agricultur- 
 alist, and earnestly advocated reform of the land law, and 
 suggested the reclamation of land not under cultivation. But 
 without avail. In 1823 another Committee reported upon the 
 wretchedness of the labouring class, and urged reform as its 
 predecessor had done, but again without avail. This report 
 was followed in 1825 by a similar report of another Com- 
 mittee, which, like the other two, advocated agricultural reform, 
 and like the other two, without success. In consequence of 
 the Act of 1793 which extended the franchise to the forty- 
 shilling freeholder, the landlord, greedy of power, divided his 
 estate into a number of small tenancies in order to increase the 
 number of votes under his command, and without regard 
 to the injuries which -his tenants sustained. Then by the 
 Emancipation Act of 1829 the forty- shilling freeholder was 
 deprived of the franchise, the landlord's interest in smaller 
 holdings was gone, and the system of clearances which ensued 
 was carried on again at the expense of the people. 
 
170 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 In tlie same year as the Emancipation Act, 1829, a Mr. 
 Brownlow introduced into the Eiighsh Parhament a Bill for 
 facilitating the reclamation of waste lands in Ireland, thereby 
 bringing prominently before the Government the wretched 
 condition of the tenant-farmer and the agricultural labourer. 
 The Commons passed the Bill ; and it was read a second time 
 in the Lords ; but the Select Committee to Avhich it was re- 
 ferred shelved it for ever. An Arms Bill, however, proposed 
 at the same time, though denounced by an English peer as 
 vexatious and aggressive, was carried successfully. 
 
 In the year following Mr. Brownlow's futile attempt at 
 remedial legislation, Mr. Henry Grattan, the son of the great 
 Grattan, in concert with Mr. Spring Eice, who afterwards 
 became Lord Monteagle, brought strongly before the attention 
 of the Government the wrongs and hardships of the Irish 
 peasant, and, like his predecessors, urged the reclamation of 
 waste lands. The only outcome of Mr. Grattan's representa- 
 tions was the appointment of another Select Committee, 
 which reported as the other Committees on the same subject 
 had reported, and without any result. 
 
 In 1824 a Select Committee of the House of Commons 
 recommended a valuation of the land in Ireland, and after an 
 interval of six years this valuation was undertaken, In 1836 
 another Act was passed to insure uniform valuation, which 
 enacted that the basis of all valuations was to be a fixed scale 
 of agricultural produce contained in the Act. The instructions 
 to the valuators showed a strong predisposition in favour of the 
 landlord, the consequence being that the average valuation 
 proved to be about twenty-five per cent, under the gross rental 
 of the country. 
 
 In 1814 a Select Committee of the House of Commons was 
 appointed. to reconsider the question, with the result that in 
 184G an Act was passed changing the principle of valuation 
 from a relative valuation of townlands based on a fixed scale 
 of agricultural produce, to a tenement valuation for poor-law 
 rating to be made ' upon an estimate of the net annual value . . . 
 of the rent for which, one year with another, the same might in 
 
THE LAND QUESTION 171 
 
 its actual state be reasonably expected to let from year to year.' 
 The same results, however, practically accrued from the two 
 valuations. In 1852 another Valuation Act was passed, in 
 which the former system of valuation by a fixed scale of 
 agricultural produce was returned to ; but Sir Richard Griffith's 
 evidence in 1869 shows the valuation employed was a live-and- 
 let-live valuation, according to the state of prices for five 
 years previous to the time of valuation. 
 
 In 1830 famine was abroad and riot was rampant. It 
 is curious to note that in the speech from the throne the 
 King, while declaring that he was determined to crush out 
 sedition and disaffection by all the means which the law and 
 the constitution placed at his disposal, had no remedy for the 
 poverty and distress which had bred the disaffection. The 
 Ministry were attacked at this time by Mr. Hume, who de- 
 nounced them for having violated by their coercive policy the 
 promises which they made while in Opposition of a concilia- 
 tory policy towards Ireland. In 1831 Lord Althorpe proposed 
 and carried a vote for 50,000/. to be advanced to Ihe Commis- 
 sioners for expenditure on public works in Ireland. The effect 
 of this measure was, however, entirely negatived by the Arms 
 Bill, w^hich was introduced four months later by Mr. Stanley, 
 and which Lord Althorpe stigmatised as one of the most 
 tyrannical n \isures he had ever heard proposed. 
 
 An Act dealing with the question of sub-letting, prohibit- 
 ing the letting by the lessee unless with the express permission 
 of the proprietor, was now before the House. It w^as attacked 
 by Dr. Boyle, who maintained that it was mere fatuity to ex- 
 pect the Irish peasants to submit tamely to eviction so long as 
 their only means of li\ eliliood depended upon the possession 
 of their potato field. Though the Catholic Emancipation Act 
 liad removed the disabilities of representation from Catholics, 
 yet it had also abolished the forty-shilling vote, and thus gave 
 the landlords greater opportunities for clearance. The con- 
 sequence was that the condition of Ireland was desperate to 
 the last degree. 
 
 This terrible state of things was, as usual, met by the 
 
172 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Grovernment with a fresh Coercion Bill. In 1834, indeed, an 
 effort to do something for the Irish tenant was made by Mr. 
 Poulett Scrope, but unsuccessfully ; and in the following year 
 Mr. Sharman Crawford, then member for Dundalk, moved for 
 leave to bring in a Bill to amend the law relating to landlord 
 and tenant. He reintroduced his measure in March 1836, 
 obtained permission to bring in his Bill, and there the matter 
 ended. He was followed, in 1837, by Mr. Lynch, who moved 
 for permission to introduce a Bill on waste lands, but who met 
 with the same amount of success as Mr. Sharman Crawford. 
 
 The first measure of real remedial value was the Artificial 
 Drainage Act, passed in 1842, which did something towards 
 reclaiming waste land, but which, until reinforced by the 
 Summary Proceedings Act, v\ is of small value. The year 
 1843 was a memorable one in the history of the Irish Land 
 question, for it was then that, in response to the repeated 
 nnportunings of Mr. Sharman Crawford, Sir Eobert Peel 
 appointed the famous Devon Commission. This Commission 
 sat for two years, and at the end of its investigations reported, 
 as all other Committees of Inquiry had reported, that the 
 disastrous relations of landlord to tenant were the direct cause 
 of all the poverty and suffering under which the Irish peasant 
 laboured ; and advised legislatioD which would secure to the 
 tenant a just compensation for outlay of capital and labour. 
 
 Lord Devon, who was determined to secure some practical 
 results to the inquiries of the Commission, if it were possible, 
 on May 6, 1845, printed a number of petitions, in which he 
 urged Parliament to assure to the industrious tenant the 
 results and benefits of the improvements which he effected. 
 In response to those appeals a Bill was brought in in the 
 June of the same year by Lord Stanley, providing for com- 
 pensation for disturbance. Owing to the violent opposition 
 with which the Bill was encountered by Lords, Commons, 
 and the Select Committee to whom it had been referred. 
 Lord Stanley had to abandon it in the following month. 
 
 Mr. Sharman Crawford now introduced a Tenant-Eight 
 Bill which he had held back in 1843 in order to await the 
 
THE LAND QUESTION 173 
 
 report of the Devon Commission. In 1846 a Bill brought 
 forward by Lord Lincoln, prompted by Mr. Sharman Craw- 
 ford, dealing v/itli compensation for disturbance, passed the 
 second reading, and then was lost sight of by the resignation 
 of the Ministry. Mr. Sharman Crawford's Tenant-Eight Bill 
 was finally rejected on June 10, 1847, by a majority of eighty- 
 seven ; but it was brought forward again in the following year, 
 and this time the adverse majority was reduced to twenty-three. 
 
 In 1848 a Bill, practically the same as that of Lord 
 Lincoln's, which was lost in 1846, was introduced by the 
 Irish Secretary, Sir William Somerville. It received the 
 support of the Irish members ; but the report upon the Bill 
 was not prepared until too close to the end of the session for 
 any further progress to be made ; so, in order that the Irish 
 people might not be disappointed by an absence of legislation, 
 the Government suspended the Habeas Corpus Act. 
 
 In 1849 Mr. Horsman pleaded powerfully, but unsuccess- 
 fully, for the presentation of an address to Her Majesty, 
 pointing out the condition of her Irish subjects. Sir William 
 Somerville, early in the following year, reintroduced his Bill, 
 which passed the second reading, was consigned to a Com- 
 mittee, and shelved, while Mr. Sharman Crawford again 
 brought forward his Tenant-Right Bill, and again was 
 defeated. 
 
 In 1851 a motion made by Sir H. W. Barron for a 
 Committee of the whole House to inquire into the condition 
 of Ireland, was lost by a majority of nine ; and thus, though 
 six years had elapsed, nothing had been done for Ireland 
 since the report of the Devon Commission, except the En- 
 cumbered Estates Act, which was passed in the interest of 
 the landlords. 
 
 On February 10, Mr. Sharman Crawford obtained leave to 
 bring in a Bill to regulate the Ulster custom. But at this 
 point the Liberal Government was ousted and supplanted by 
 Lord Derby's administration, and Mr. Crawford's Bill was lost 
 by a majority of 110. The new Government was not entirely 
 supine on the Irish question, and the Irish Attorney- General, 
 
174 IRELAND SINCE TtEE UNION 
 
 Mr. Napier, drafted four Bills all bearing on the relations of 
 landlord to tenant — a Land Improvement Bill, a Landlord 
 and Tenant Law Consolidation Bill, a Leasing Powers Bill, 
 and a Tenants' Improvements Compensation Bill. 
 
 In 1853 a Committee was appointed to consider these four 
 Bills in conjunction with Mr. Sharman Crawford's Bill. It 
 rejected the latter, and considerably modified, at the expense 
 of the tenant, Mr. Napier's Compensation for Improvements 
 Bill. Meanwhile the Government had again been vested in 
 the hands of the Liberals, and although Mr. Napier, now in 
 opposition, continued to give his strongest support to the Bills 
 which he had introduced, the Tory party fought them tooth 
 and nail. 
 
 In 1854 the Select Committee of the House of Lords, ap- 
 pointed to consider these Bills, condemned the Tenants' Com- 
 pensation Bill, and only the other three were returned to the 
 House of Commons. In the following year the Government 
 adopted a Bill which Mr. Serjeant Shee endeavoured to bring 
 in, and which was substantially identical with that Bill of 
 Mr. Napier's which the Lords had rejected. The opposition 
 of the land-owning class, however, was so violent that the 
 Bill had to be abandoned. 
 
 In 1856 Mr. George Henry Moore, the leader of the Irish 
 Parliamentary party, took up again Mr. Sharman Crawford's 
 Tenant-Eight Bill ; but the opposition which it encountered 
 from the Government was fatal to it. Mr. Moore reintroduced 
 it in the following year, only to abandon it again. 
 
 In 1858 Mr. John Francis Maguire, who had succeeded to 
 the leadership of the Irish party, again brought forward Mr. 
 Serjeant Shee's Tenant Compensation Bill, but was defeated 
 by a majority of forty-five. Though the Government displayed 
 much apathy in remedying the grievances of their Irish fellow- 
 subjects, they showed much more consideration for the Ben- 
 galee. They had just settled the Bengal Land question on 
 the ancient principles of Indian law, thereby granting to the 
 Indian subject much that was denied to the Irish subject. 
 
 At last, in 1860 was passed the famous Land Act, which 
 
THE LAND QUFSTTON- 175 
 
 proved so unsatisfactory. This Act attempted to simplify the 
 relations between landlord and tenant by sweeping away all 
 the remains of the feudal connection, and by establishing an 
 absolute principle of free trade and freedom of contract as 
 opposed to tenure. But the principle of freedom of contract 
 is wholly unsuited to the Irish Land question, and in so much 
 as it was based upon this principle the Act was a failure. The 
 tenants are compelled to take the land, often without any ^to- 
 spect of fulfilling their contract, because all other means of 
 hvelihood have been destroyed. The best terms they can 
 make are practically those which the landlord chooses to im- 
 pose. It is exactly the same principle as the State regulation 
 of railway fares. Freedom of contract is not permitted in 
 this case, because the passenger and the railway company are 
 not free contracting parties. The latter holds a monopoly of 
 what is practically a necessity to the former ; and without 
 State interference the passenger would have to submit to any 
 charges the company thought fit to impose. The immediate 
 effect of the Act was to produce an immense flood of emigra- 
 tion and to give rise to the Fenian conspiracy. 
 
 In 1866 a Bill brought in by Mr. Chichester Fortescue, 
 to amend that of 1860, fell through, and in 1867 a like fate 
 befell a Tory measure drawn up much on the lines of Lord 
 Stanley's Bill of 1845. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone came into office in 1868, and early in 
 1870 introduced the only really beneficial measure since 
 the report of the Devon Commission — the Bill to amend 
 the Law of Landlord and Tenant in Ireland. But, though 
 this Bill conceded to the tenant the privilege of litigation with 
 his landlord, this really did not place him beyond the land- 
 lord's control, for the day went generally to the man who 
 could hold out longest. The three objects of the Land Act 
 of 1870 were to obtain for the Irish tenant security of tenure ; 
 to encourage the making of improvements ; and the creation 
 of a peasant proprietorship. With tenancies held under the 
 Ulster tenant-right custom the Act did not interfere, but 
 merely enforced the custom against the landlords of estates 
 
176 IBELANB SINCE THE UNION 
 
 subject to it. The two chief features of this Ulster custom — so 
 long and so greatly coveted by the Irish peasants of the other 
 provinces — were permissive fixity of tenure, and the tenant's 
 right to sell the good- will of his farm. 
 
 Those who drew up the Act of 1870 dare not affirm that 
 its object was the creation of a peasant proprietorship- -and, 
 indeed, it was often denied that such was the object — or to 
 give him any portion of absolute ownership. Its effect was 
 stated as compelling bad landlords to act lilie good landlords ; 
 but wdiat it really did was to make eviction too costly for any 
 but the wealthier land-owners. Its provisions for compensa- 
 tion for disturbance were ineffectual, and the eight clauses 
 attempting to create a peasant proprietorship were also futile.' 
 ' The cause of their failure is obvious,' says Mr. Richey, ' to 
 anyone acquainted with the nature of the landed estates title 
 which it was considered desirable for the tenant to obtain. A 
 Landed Estates Court conveyance affects not only the parties 
 to the proceedings, but binds persons, whether parties or not, 
 and extinguishes all rights which are inconsistent with the 
 terms of the grant of the Court. If by any mistake more 
 lands than should properly be sold be included in the grant, 
 or the most indisputable rights of third parties are not noticed 
 in the body of the grant or the annexed schedule, irreparable 
 injustice is done, and the injured parties have no redress.' 
 The fact that the Court was not made the instrument for the 
 perpetration of the grossest frauds is due solely to the stringency 
 of its rules and the intelligence of its officers. Such was the 
 condition of things that the Land Act of 1880 was schemed 
 to ameliorate. 
 
177 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 FENIANISM. 
 
 The suppression of the Phoenix movement stimulated, instead 
 of retarding, the spirit of secret organisation in Ireland and in 
 America. Stephens was not disheartened bv a temporary 
 defeat. The process of agitation, of enrolment, of organisa- 
 tion, went on with greater vigour than ever. And the new 
 body was imbued with far greater vitality than the Phoenix 
 conspiracy ever possessed, or had seemed likely to possess. 
 Stephens in Ireland, and O'Mahony in America, were both 
 working steadily for the same ends ; and the result of their 
 efforts was the Fenian organisation. 
 
 The title of the Fenian Brotherhood was not the title by 
 which at first the body was known in Ireland. Stephens 
 called the association of which he was the presiding genius 
 the Irish Republican Brotherhood, and for a time the letters 
 I.R.B. represented to Irish conspirators the name of their 
 conspiracy. But O'Mahony, over in America, was something 
 of a Gaelic scholar and student. He desired to give the 
 organisation for which he was working a name which should 
 recall some great historical association connected with the past 
 glories of Ireland, and cast about in his mind for a suitable 
 appellation. He bethought him of that wonderful semi- 
 mythic chivalry of the Feni, companions of Fionn, the son of 
 Coul, whose deeds were the pride and the marvel of pre- 
 historic Irish liistory. From this legendary brotherhood of 
 warriors and poets and heroes — warriors like Fionn himself, 
 poets like Oisin and heroes like Diarmuid, the lover of Grainne 
 — he borrowed their stately title to give it to the very real 
 brotherhood of which he was, in a measure, the head. Thus, 
 from the poetic fancy of the exiled Young Irelander, the 
 most formidable of Irish conspiracies got its name of the 
 Fenian Brotherhood. 
 
 The title was an attractive one. It was easy to remember, 
 
 N 
 
178 J BEL AN B SINCE THE UNION 
 
 It roused famous and fascinating associations, and it soon 
 over-crowed the colder name devised by Stephens ; till, in the 
 end, the Fenians became the generally accepted designation 
 of the world for the members of the I.K.B. The name passed 
 at once into literature. It lives in passionate poems and 
 stirring lyrics, in which the lengthy appellation of the Irish 
 Republican Brotherhood could have found no place. The 
 well-known poem, with its stirring refrain of ' Up and make 
 way for the Fenian men,' would in itself be enough to fix and 
 make permanent the title of any movement. The Tyrtaeus of 
 the latest of Irish conspiracies found his account in tlie term 
 taken from the shadowy heroes of Irish antiquity. The Irish 
 Eepublican Brotherhood might serve very well in eloquent 
 speeches and elaborate addresses, but the Fenians was the 
 term for poets. 
 
 The movement went on slowdy but very surely. It re- 
 ceived perhaps the most important of its earlier impulses with 
 the funeral of Terence Bellew M'Manus. M'Manus had died 
 away in America in exile. Fortune had not smiled upon him 
 since the days when Meagher described him as the ' tall, 
 dashing, soldierly fellow, with frank, bold, honest features, 
 flushing with delight,' who, with a green cap on his head 
 and a rifle in his right hand, joined the rebel muster at Ballin- 
 garry. He made his escape from his Australasian prison in 
 1851. 'Having been arrested,' says Gavan Duffy, 'by an 
 excess of authority, for some supposed violation of convict 
 regulations, he appealed to a bench of magistrates, and was 
 set at liberty. Being thus free from any obligation to his 
 jailers, he made his escape to San Francisco.' In California 
 M'Manus's closing years were passed not too happily. He 
 entered upon his old business. But the business habits of the 
 New World, and especially of that very New World of Cali- 
 fornia in those days, were not the business habits of the Old ; 
 and Terence Bellew M'Manus found it difficult for him to 
 reconcile his own principles and theories with the rough-and- 
 ready methods of that terra nova, the California of the Pioneers 
 and of Bret Harte's ' argonauts.' 
 
FENIANISM 179 
 
 We are told that heavy shadows came to linger on the 
 handsome face which once was all smiles and brightness. He 
 lived poor, and he died poor in 1861. His family and his 
 friends resolved that his body should be laid in the country he 
 had loved so well, and for which he had sacrificed so much. 
 The remains of the brave, brilliant, and gifted Young Irelander 
 were conveyed in their coffin across the Atlantic, and were 
 borne in solemn state through Dublin, to their final resting- 
 place in Glasnevin, amidst the silent homage of assembled 
 thousands. 
 
 'The incident,' says Mr. A. M. Sullivan, 'was so dramatic 
 and touched such deep emotions, that the proceeding assumed 
 a magnitude and solemnity which astonished and startled 
 everyone. The Irish race in America seemed to make of the 
 funeral a demonstration of devotion to the old land. The 
 Irish at home were seized with like feelings, and on all sides 
 prepared to give a suitable reception to the remains of him 
 who, proscribed in life, might return only in death to the 
 land he loved. It was a proceeding which appealed power- 
 fully to the sympathies of the people ; and Nationalists of all 
 hues and sections mingled in the homage and patriotism 
 which it was understood to convey.' 
 
 Another writer gives an interesting account of the pas- 
 sage of the funeral cortege through Dublin : ' Every spot 
 that could call up a vengeful memory was included ; no turn- 
 ing was neglected from which a silent bravado couU 'je flung 
 at the Government. It proceeded through Thomas Street, 
 indissolubly associated with the memory of Lord Edward Fitz- 
 gerald, every head uncovering as it passed the house where 
 that nobleman met his death, and the church where he was 
 interred. A third, the most striking pause of all, was made 
 at the scene of Emmet's execution. ... A similar mark of 
 respect was accorded to a house in High Street, where the 
 remains of Wolfe Tone had been deposited previous to their 
 removal to their last resting-place. In passing the Castle 
 .the procession slackened i's pace to the utmost, and Hngered 
 on its way in silent, but stern defiance. Then it took its 
 
 n2 
 
180 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 course by the Exchange, through College Green, and in front 
 of the Parliament Houses. Thence it wound through West- 
 moreland Street to Carlisle Bridge, and so to Glasnevin. 
 The pall- bearers themselves were members of the Irish 
 Republican Brotherhood.' 
 
 An immense number of recruits came into the Fenian 
 ranks after the M'Manus funeral. During the six months 
 which followed that memorable event the organisation is said 
 to have no less than doubled its numbers in Ireland. One 
 addition to the ranks could well have been spared. This was 
 Pierce Nagle, who afterwards became so conspicuous and so 
 infamous as the informar. A large number of American 
 Fenians, too, came over with the body of M'Manus, and their 
 presence in Dublin served to link very closely the kindred 
 organisations of Ireland and America, and to encourage and 
 stimulate the Irish agitation. 
 
 One very remarkable event which followed close upon the 
 M'Manus funeral was a meeting that w^as held in the Rotunda 
 in Dublin, to express sympathy with the American Federals. 
 The meeting, which was ingeniously organised by members of 
 the Fenian body, was addressed by one very peculiar patriot, 
 and the chair was taken by another. The speaker was the 
 late Mr. P. J. Smyth ; the chairman was The O'Donoghue. 
 At that time The O'Donoghue was an advocate of advanced 
 nationalism, a point of view to which he again oscillated 
 for a short time lately. It is interesting to read an account 
 of the speech which Mr. P. J. Smyth, whose memory has 
 been a good deal glorified by the Conservative Press, addressed 
 to the meeting on that occasion : 
 
 ' Having read the resolution which he was called upon to 
 move, Mr. Smyth made a speech which abounded in sneers 
 against England. The tone of his voice was pitched and his 
 accent carefully suited to convey his meaning. He said that 
 an insult had been offered to " our " flag -thereby capping the 
 denial made shortly before by the chairman, that Irishmen 
 accepted the flag of England as their own. He alluded to the 
 mere Yankee captain, who was not of noble blood, but who, 
 
FENIANTSM IS! 
 
 for all that, dared to fire a shot across the bows of a right- 
 royal 5n'i(is/i steamer, although she was " under the flag that 
 had braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze," thus 
 forgetting that'* Britons never failed," &c., and altogether re- 
 gardless of the British captain, his storming, his swearing, and 
 his exposition of British international law. After more of 
 this kind of thing — the word British figuring in every sneering- 
 sentence — the speaker went on to observe that England had 
 got up indignation meetings, but that Irishmen knew how to 
 be indignant too. Here he looked round him with a peculiar 
 expression. The look was understood, and elicited a storm 
 of applause. Then came a panegyric on America, which in- 
 troduced and strengthened the diatribe that followed against 
 England, " the nation that had levelled their homes, banished 
 them and scattered them as outcasts through the earth, and 
 denied them the ordinary rights of mankind — even at that 
 very hour forbidding Irishmen to bear arms. Thus," added 
 Mr. Smyth, should Irishmen read the characters of the 
 antagonists (England and America), " the one the best friend 
 of Ireland, the other her inveterate enemy," and act accordingly. 
 How the speaker expected his countrymen to act in case 
 of war between the two countries, he showed a little later. 
 When speaking of those already in the field on both sides in 
 America, he declared that the moment England entered into 
 a war with America, they (the Irishmen serving the North 
 and the South) would forget all past differences and be ar- 
 rayed against England. The speech closed with an enumera- 
 tion of the difficulties and dangers threatening England, 
 which drew forth reiterated cheers.' This was not the kind 
 of speech which Mr. P. J. Smyth was accustomed to make in 
 later years, when he had become first the panegyrist, and 
 then the placeman of the Government he denounced. 
 
 The American civil war was a great nourisher of the Fenian 
 movement. Thousands upon thousands of Irishmen fought 
 upon either side in the great American Iliad. Whether under 
 the Stars and Stripes or beneath the Stars and Bars, whether 
 io the tune of * The Bonny Blue Flag ' or the still more 
 
182 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 menacing music of * John Brown's Body,' vast numbers of 
 Irishmen learnt the trade of war in one of its grimmest and 
 sternest schools ; learnt the familiar use of arms ; learnt 
 something of strategy ; learnt, too, the art of commanding, 
 and the more difficult art of obeying ; and became familiar 
 with all the duties and dangers of a soldier's life. When the 
 war was over, it left many thousands of Irishmen dead on 
 many desperate fields. 
 
 ', Of the Irish Brigade that followed Meagher so gallantly 
 up the heights of Fredericksburg, few came back to tell the 
 story of their wild charges under their beloved leader. In the 
 ranks of the Confederate army Irishmen fought and died by 
 the hundred and the tens of hundreds. But on either side, 
 whether in the blue uniform of the Federal or the grey cloth 
 of the Secessionist, the Irish soldier remained first of all an 
 Irishman. There is a touching story told of one battle in 
 which a Federal Irish regiment found itself opposed to an 
 Irish regiment on the Confederate side, and of how the two 
 regiments refused to join battle, and passed each other with 
 mutual cries of ' God save Ireland! ' Of such men as this 
 the war left a goodly multitude, well-trained, well-seasoned, 
 well-schooled in the use of arms. Such were the men whom 
 the planners and promoters of the Fenian movement relied 
 upon to make that movement triumphant. 
 
 The chiefs of the movement felt the time was approaching 
 for the long-dreamed-of rising. A large amount of money 
 was subscribed, and sent over to Stephens to be expended for 
 the good of the cause. A little cloud of Irish -American 
 officers, men who had served on both sides in the war, de- 
 scended upon Ireland to organise the country, and act as heads 
 of the rebellion. The preparations, however, in Ireland were 
 not in a very advanced state, and the Irish-American officers 
 found in most cases that very little was ready ; that there were 
 very few men for them to take command of ; that there was 
 little or nothing for them to do ; and that their presence was 
 rapidly arousing suspicions in the minds of the English 
 Government. An attempt on Canada, which was, perhaps, 
 
FENIANISM 18H 
 
 one of the most hopeful of the Fenian schemes, fell through 
 for want of proper management, and practically came to 
 nothing. 
 
 Three men were conspicuous conspirators and followers of 
 Stephens in the Fenian movement. These were Charles J. 
 Kickham, John O'Leary, and Thomas Clarke Luby. Charles 
 Kickham was a Tipperary man, intensely popular with the 
 people of his own county. He had been intended for the 
 medical profession, but an unhappy accident prevented him 
 from ever hoping for success in such a career. He was a 
 passionate sportsman ; and one day, after returning from a 
 long day's shooting in the hills, he was drying some wet 
 powder before the fire, when a spark fell from the embers, and 
 the powder exploded in Kickham's face. It was feared at first 
 that he would lose his sight altogether ; and when he had re- 
 covered, both sight and hearing were terribly injured. This 
 misfortune, which only deepened the affection of the people, 
 led him to devote his life to the study of literature. He wrote 
 some charming stories, and some exquisite verses. He was 
 an intense Nationalist, and when the Fenian movement first 
 began to take shape in Ireland, he became an active member 
 of the body. 
 
 In November 1860 some twenty-eight Tipperary men, who 
 had formed part of the Irish brigade for the defence of the 
 Pope, gave a public reception at Mullinahone, Kickham's 
 native place, at which Kickham made a speech, and read an 
 address to the friends of Ireland, signed by the twenty-eight 
 members of the Papal brigade, and said to have been writ- 
 ten by Kickham. In this address the signatories declared : 
 ' We wish to let the world know that we are slaves, but not 
 contented slaves. . . . We protest against this intolerable 
 tyranny, and denounce to the world the hypocrisy of England 
 in pretending to be the friend of freedom and oppressed nation- 
 alities.' Kickham made a speech after the address was read, 
 which he concluded with some words which showed clearly 
 enough his impassioned sympathy for the new agitation. * I 
 heard people say that the brigade men should be asked to 
 
184 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 scatter the seed during the spring, as in that case the harvest 
 would surely be good. I hope they will scatter another kind 
 of seed, broadcast too, and it will grow and ripen.' 
 
 The second of Stephens' supporters was John O'Leary. 
 ' John O'Leary,' says Mr. A. M. Sullivan, ' was unquestion- 
 ably one of the ablest and most remarkable men in the con- 
 spiracy. Intellectually and politically he was of the type of 
 V/olfe Tone, Robert Emmet, and John Mitchel. . . . He was 
 born in Tipperary town, and inherited on the death of his 
 parents, for his share, a small property of some 300Z. or 400Z. 
 a year. He was a graduate of the Queen's University, having 
 taken out his medical degree in the Queen's College, Cork. 
 He resided for some time in Paris, where his mind, his tastes, 
 his manners, opinions, and principles, received impress and 
 shape discernible in his subsequent career. He also visited 
 America, and there formed the acquaintance of the men who 
 were planning and davising the Fenian movement. He was 
 a man of culture, and of considerable literary abilities. . . . 
 He was reserved, sententious, almost cynical ; keenly obser- 
 vant, sharply critical, full of restrained passion.' We believe 
 that we are right in saying that Mr. O'Leary himsalf has 
 stated that he never was a member of the Irish Eepublican 
 Brotherhood. 
 
 The third of Stephens' ablest lieutenants was Thomas C. 
 Luby. Luby, like Kickham, was a Tipperary man ; like some 
 of the most prominent of the leaders of 1798, he was a Protes- 
 tant. Though he was a very young man when the movement 
 of 1848 was going on, he had devoted himself to it, and had 
 attached himself to the advanced section of the Young Irelan- 
 ders who followed the lead of John Mitchel. He had come 
 from Melbourne to France to join Stephens and O'Mahony, and 
 he accompanied Stephens on the tour through Ireland that 
 preceded the formation of the Phoenix conspiracy. Later on 
 he became one of the editors of the Irish Tribune, a national 
 newspaper which lived for a short time, and which preceded 
 the Irishman. ' His politics,' says Mr. A. T^I. Sullivan, ' were 
 a great affliction to his relatives, who were in a position to 
 
FENIANISM 185 
 
 advance him, and who would have done so if he would but 
 give up such dangerous doctrines. He preferred to struggle 
 on for himself, holding by his principles, such as they were. 
 This course he pursued unfalteringly to the last.' 
 
 Disaster after disaster came upon the Fenian movement. 
 The best opportunity for a rising was in 1865, but the opportu- 
 nity was lost. The history of other Irish insurrectionary pro- 
 jects repeated itself. In 1848 the followers of Mitch el appear to 
 have imagined that the Government they were openly defying 
 would forbear and hold its hand until all the plans and pre- 
 parations of the insurgent party were perfected. Something 
 of the same impression would seem to have influenced the 
 councils and the actions of the Fenian leaders. Stephens 
 established the Irish People newspaper, which numbered on 
 its staff some of his best lieutenants, and the Irish People 
 played much the same part in the history of the Fenian move- 
 ment which the United Irishman played in the history of 
 Young Ireland. 
 
 The Government allowed the Irish People to carry on its 
 existence unimpeded up to a certain point. Then, suddenly, 
 when Stephens and his friends were unprepared and unaware, 
 it struck and struck sharply. As usual the hands of the 
 Government were greatly strengthened by treachery in the 
 ranks of their opponents. There was a man in the service of 
 the Irish People, and in the confidence of Stephens, named 
 Pierce Nagle. This man was a Government spy who made 
 himself a profitable livelihood by retailing to the Castle 
 authorities all the infoimution he could get — and he had ex- 
 cellent opportunities of getting such information — about the 
 plans of the Fenian leaders. In September, 1865, Nagle stole 
 from one of Stephens' emissaries a letter from the head-centre 
 to members of the movement in Tipperary. This letter he 
 sent after some delay to the Castle, where a study of its con- 
 tents showed the Executive that the plans of the Fenians were 
 rapidly advancing, and that the Government must strike at 
 once if it wished to strike in time. The letter in question 
 ran thus ; 
 
186 IBELAISD SINCE THE UNION 
 
 * Dublin, September 8, 1865 
 
 'Brothers, — I regret to find the letter I addressed to you 
 has never reached you. Had you received it I am confident 
 all would have been right before this ; because I told you ex- 
 plicitly what to do,,, and once you saw your way it is sure to 
 me that you would have done it well. As far as I can under- 
 stLind your actual position and wishes now, the best course to 
 take is to get all the working B.'s together, and after due 
 deliberation and without favour to any one — acting purely and 
 conscientiously for the good of the cause — to select one man 
 to represent and direct you all. This selection made, the man 
 of your choice should come up here at once, when he shall 
 get instructions and authority to go on with the good work. 
 There is no time to be lost. This year — and let there be no 
 mistake about it — must be the year of action. I speak with 
 a knowledge and authority to which no other man could pre- 
 tend ; and I repeat, the flag of Ireland — of the Irish Eepublic 
 — must this year be raised. As I am much pressed for time, 
 I shall merely add that it shall be raised in a glow of hope 
 such as never gleamed round it before. Be, then, of firm 
 faith and the best of cheer, for it all goes bravely on. — Yours 
 fraternally, 
 
 * J. POWEE. 
 
 ' N.B. — This letter must be read for the working B.'s only 
 and when read must be burnt.' 
 
 With such a document in their possession, the Executive 
 felt confident of convicting its enemies, and it made its raid. 
 On September 15 a police descent was made upon the offices 
 of the Irish Peoijle ; all the copies of the journal found there- 
 in were seized and conveyed to the Castle ; and within a few 
 hours all the more prominent Fenians were captured at their 
 dweihngs and secured in prison. All with one important ex- 
 ception. The head -centre himself, James Stephens, was not 
 to be found. The Government had in their power all his 
 principal lieutenants, but without Stephens their work was 
 hardly half done. Fenianism, to the eye of authority, was 
 
FENIANISM 187 
 
 criisliable if Stephens were captured ; with Stephens at hberty 
 little or nothing had been accompHshed. 
 
 There was the most intense excitement in DubHn when it 
 became known that the Government had struck with all its 
 force at the Fenian organisation ; the excitement was in- 
 creased an hundredfold by the news that Stephens was free 
 and unfindable. For some hours it was feared that the 
 arrests would be the signal for an armed rising. But the 
 utmost precautions were taken by the Government. All over 
 Ireland prominent Fenians were seized upon ; all over Ireland 
 forces of military and constabulary were held in readiness to 
 meet any attempt at insurrection. Stephens was, indeed, a 
 free man, but for the moment his movement was checkmated. 
 It was perfectly easy for the Government to obtain convictions 
 against the men in their power. When Luby was arrested a 
 document was found among his papers, which was the most 
 magnificent ' find ' for the Government, and was in itself 
 enough for their purpose. It was a paper written by the 
 head-centre entrusting his authority to a triumvirate of his 
 most trusted friends : 
 
 * I hereby empower Thomas Clarke Luby, John O'Leary, 
 and Charles J. Kickham a Committee of Organisation or 
 Executive, with the same supreme control over the home 
 organisation, England, Ireland, and Scotland, that I have 
 exercised luyself. I further empower them to appoint a 
 Committee of Military Inspection and a Committee of Appeal 
 and Judgment, the functions of which Committee will be 
 made known to every member of them. Trusting to the 
 patriotism and abilities of the Executive I fully endorse their 
 actions beforehand. I call on every man in our ranks to 
 support and be guided by them in all that concerns the 
 military brotherhood. 
 
 * J. Stephens.' 
 
 Even without such a document, however, the Government 
 tad on their side all the evidence they desired. Their trusty 
 
188 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 spy, Nagle, had been arrested, for form's sake, along with his 
 deluded comrades, and for some days he kept up his character 
 as a Fenian prisoner. As soon as he was wanted, however, 
 he exchanged the cell for the witness-box, and made his 
 appearance as the inevitable informer to give Queen's evidence 
 against the men who had believed in him. 
 
 In the meantime the Dublin police were racking their 
 brains to discover the whereabouts of Stephens. It was not 
 until November that they learned that the man whose capture 
 they so eagerly desired was, and had been, within their grasp 
 all the time since their raid upon the offi^^e of the Irish People. 
 In a peaceful unsuspected gentleman, with a taste for garden- 
 ing in a mild way, living in the suburbs of Dublin — Mr. 
 Herbert, of Fairfield House, Sandymount — the police at last 
 discovered the long-lost head-centre. 
 
 On Saturday, November 11, 1865, Fairfield House was 
 surrounded by a strong force of police, and Stephens was 
 arrested at last. With him were captured Charles J. Kick- 
 ham, Hugh Brophy, and Edward Duffy, who has been called 
 the life and soul of the Fenian movement west of the Shannon. 
 A vast mass of important documents were seized at the same 
 time. An exultant Executive was now convinced that all 
 further danger from the dreaded organisation was over for 
 good and all. In Ireland, in England, in America, and, 
 indeed, all over the civilised world, the tidings of the capture 
 of the famous head-centre were received with intense excite- 
 ment. But the excitement occasioned by the capture of 
 Stephens was as nothing when contrasted with the excite- 
 ment caused by a piece of news which followed close upon 
 it — the news of Stephens' escape. 
 
 Stephens' escape ! The escape of the head-centre of the 
 Fenian conspiracy from the hands that had caught him at 
 last, after seeking for him so long and so eagerly in vain ! 
 The escape of the Government's most valuable prisoner from 
 one of the strongest of Government prisons ! The escape of 
 James Stephens within exactly a fortnight of his capture ! 
 It seemed incredible, but it was true, nevertheless. On 
 
rENHyiS.U 189 
 
 Saturday, November 11, the police laid hands on Stephens; 
 on Saturday, the 25th, he had slipped through their fingers 
 and was free again, out of their power and wholly vanished. 
 ' The earth has bubbles as the water has, and he is of them,' 
 the perplexed Lord Lieutenant might well have said, with 
 Macbeth, when he learned of the astonishing disappearance 
 of his prize. 
 
 Nothing in the whole history of wonderful escapes from 
 durance, from Benvenuto Cellini or Casanova to Latude, is 
 more remarkable than the escape of Stephens. The prison- 
 breaking feats recorded of English Sheppard or French 
 Cartouche sink into insignificance beside it. The dearest 
 captive that Castle authority could have closely shut in its 
 surest stronghold had passed out of its power as easily as if 
 bolts and bars were things of air, and massive walls mere 
 film or gossamer. Stephens might well have boasted, more 
 literally than the poet Lovelace, that ' stone walls do not a 
 prison make nor iron bars a cage.' He was gone, no one 
 in authority knew how, and left not a trace behind. Then 
 came such a mounting and riding for such a hunt as had 
 not been run in Ireland since the days of ninety-eight. But 
 not all the king's horses nor all the king's men could get 
 James Stephens within the grip of the law again. He hid 
 safely for a wliile in the vicinity of Dublin, and then made 
 good his escape to France. 
 
 The escape of Stephens seemed little short of miraculous, 
 at the time. We know now that Fenianism had made its way 
 within the walls of Richmond Prison. If the Government had 
 their servants in the ranks of the Fenians, the Fenian oath 
 bound many who were apparently in the service of the 
 Government. Two of these, it is said, were warders in Rich- 
 mond Prison, and it was by their aid that Stephens' escape was 
 effected. It may be that the knowledge of this fact was in 
 the mind of Stephens when, at his examination on November 
 15, he boldly declared that he ' defied and despised any punish- 
 ment that British law could inflict upon him.' The words 
 seemed idle breath when they were uttered ; their meaning 
 
190 in ELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 was understood on the wild, wet morning when Dublin woke 
 up to find that Stephens was once again at liberty. 
 
 But if Stephens was gone, the E xecutive had other 
 prisoners, and could deal with them. Luby and O'Leary were 
 sentenced to penal servitude for twenty years ; O'Donovan 
 Rossa to penal servitude for life. There were more and more 
 arrests, more and more convictions ; blow after blow was 
 dealt at the Fenian organisation ; internal quarrels, too, 
 weakened it. But it still existed, still held together ; the 
 dread of a rising was almost daily present to the mind of 
 authority in 1866. Well it might be present. Over across 
 the Atlantic wild work had begun. The Fenians in America 
 invaded Canada on the 31st of May, 1866, and enjoyed for 
 some brief hours the honour of victory. They occupied Fort 
 Erie ; they defeated the Canadian Volunteers who came 
 against them ; they captured some English flags, and saw 
 their own green banner floating over a captured position in 
 British territory. But the United States, which under other 
 conditions might have been willing enough to hold aloof if not 
 to facilitate the invasion, interfered to enforce the neutrality of 
 the frontier, arrested most of the Fenian leaders, and extin- 
 guished the invasion. 
 
 Another daring attempt was actually made some time 
 later on English soil. Some of the Fenians in England 
 planned the capture of Chester Castle. The scheme was to 
 seize the arms in the Castle, to hasten on at once to Holy- 
 head, to take possession of such steamers as might be there, 
 to cut the telegraphic communication between the islands, 
 and invade Ireland before the authorities could be prepared 
 for the blow. Once in Ireland, the pressure of such a force 
 would facilitate the general rising, and anything might be 
 hoped for. The plan was daring and ingenious, but it was 
 betrayed by the informer Cory don, and came to nothing. 
 
 At last the general rising in Ireland, which had been so 
 long expected, came in the early months of 1867. It was 
 premature, abortive ; but, while it lasted, desperate. Through 
 Corydon and their other informers the Government were ac* 
 
FENTANTSM 191 
 
 quainted with most of tlie Fenian plans, and were able to 
 meet them at almost every point. Everything seemed against 
 the insurrection : the very elements fought against it. Snow, 
 that rare accompaniment of winter in the mild climate of 
 Ireland, fell incessantly during those stormy March days 
 of 1867, and practically buried the rising in its white 
 shroud. 
 
 The last struggle of the Fenian insurrection of 1867 was 
 made in England, and that last struggle forms the saddest 
 chapter in the whole story. Soon after the rising in Ireland 
 the Manchester police arrested on suspicion two men. The 
 prisoners proved to be Colonel Thomas J. Kelly, who had 
 taken a conspicuous part in tlis leadership of the Fenian 
 movement after Stsphens' arrest and escape, and Captain 
 Deasy, another prominent Fenian. Their seizure was a great 
 gain to the Government and a great blow to the Fenians. 
 The members of the organisation in Manchester met together 
 and resolved upon a bold attempt to rescue their captive 
 leaders. A body of men were told off for the purpose. As 
 usual, some inkling of the Fenian purpose reached the 
 Government, and some precautions were taken by the Man- 
 chester authorities. 
 
 On Wednesday, the 18th of September, Kelly and Deasy 
 were removed in the prison van from the court to be taken to 
 the county jail at Salford. The prisoners were handcuffed in 
 separate compartments of the van ; a guard of twelve police- 
 men accompanied it. On the road the van was stopped by a 
 body of armed Fenians, who drove off most of the police and 
 attempted to break it open. The policeman inside the 
 van. Sergeant Brett, refused to surrender the keys, and the 
 Fenians, driven by time, and dreading reinforcements for the 
 police, resorted to the familiar expedient of blowing open the 
 lock with a pistol shot. The shot thus fired accidentally and 
 mortally wounded Brett. One of the women prisoners in- 
 side the van took the keys from the dying man's pocket and 
 handed them out to the rescuing party. The van was then 
 opened, entered, KeUy and Deasy were brought out, and 
 
192 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 heavily manacled as they were, were hurried away by some 
 of their rescuers. 
 
 While all this was going on the majority of the rescuing 
 party were engaged in keeping off with levelled revolvers the 
 police who had returned, and the large crowd that had rapidly 
 formed. When Kelly and Deasy were safely out of danger, 
 this little ring of men about the van broke up and each sought 
 safety for himself. The fugitives were hotly pursued, and 
 several of them were captured and savagely handled by the 
 crowd. It is worth while noticing that none of the armed 
 Fenians used their weapons in their own defence. The only 
 shot fired was fired with no deadly purpose ; the death of the 
 policeman was absolutely an accident. Whether the rescuers 
 would or would not have taken life if they could not effect 
 their object otherwise is matter of opinion ; their justification 
 for so doing is matter for argument ; the fact remains that the 
 solitary shot fired was fired for the purpose of breaking open 
 the van door, and that Sergeant Brett was killed by mistake. 
 Yet for this shot three men were hanged. 
 
 The captured rescuers were Willia^m Philip Allen, Michael 
 Larkin, Michael O'Brien, Thomas Maguire, and Edward 
 Condon. All five were tried for the wilful murder of Brett ; 
 all five were found guilty ; all five v/ere sentenced to death. 
 The state of the English mind at the time was one of unreason- 
 ing anger. These men had defied the ]aw ; they had rescued 
 two Fenian prisoners ; they were rebels and the friends of 
 rebels ; let them die the death. What is called public opinion 
 was expressed by a clamour for an example. The public 
 mind, curiously inconsistent, flames into easy sympathy with 
 revolution abroad, but blazes into deadly fury at any hint of 
 revolution at home. Had the men of Manchester been Hun- 
 garian volunteers rescuing some Magyar leaders from Austrian 
 hands ; had they been Venetians plucking some follower of 
 Manin from Teuton jailers ; had they been Poles contending 
 with Russians, or Southern Secessionists fighting with the 
 Federal Government, the Press would have been loud in its 
 praise of the heroism of their deed, and would have heeded 
 
FENIANIS3I 193 
 
 little if some Austrian or Kussian or Federal soldier had 
 fallen in the scuffle. But the Fenians who tried to rescue 
 their fellows, and who killed a man by mistal^e, were, in the 
 judgment of the general public at that time, nothing but 
 common murderers, for whom no plea could be maintained, 
 to whom no pity could be extended. 
 
 It must not be forgotten, however, that in that season of 
 frantic panic some minds were found calm and just ; that 
 through all the wild clamour for death some voices were 
 raised' loud and clear for mercy. Mr. John Bright made 
 many efforts. Mr. John Stuart Mill exerted himself strenu- 
 ously and courageously to save the Manchester men from their 
 doom. The English poet, Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne, 
 wrote and published a passionate appeal to his countrymen 
 for mercy, an appeal which deserves the gratitude of all the 
 generations of Irishmen. 
 
 Freeman he is not, but slave, 
 Whoso in fear of the State, 
 Asks for council of blood, 
 Help of gibbet or grave ; 
 Neither is any land great 
 Whom in her fear-stricken mood 
 These things only can save. 
 
 Lo ! how fair from afar, 
 Taintless of tyranny, stands 
 Thy mighty daughter, for years 
 Who trod the wine-press of war ; 
 Shines with immaculate hands, 
 Slays not foe, neither fears. 
 Stains not peace with a scar. 
 
 Thus Mr. Swinburne sought to sprinkle cool patience upon 
 the heat and flame of the distempered public mind, conjuring 
 it to mercy by the image of the great, victorious Eepublic. 
 In vain poet and philosopher and politician — the three great 
 men, and all those who thought with them, strove bravely and 
 strove unsuccessfully to stay the hands of the executioner. 
 Two of the five condemned men were pardoned— Maguire, 
 who after his sentence was proved to have had nothing to do 
 with the rescue, and Condon. Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien 
 
 o 
 
194 IRELAND STNCE THE UNION 
 
 were hanged on November 23, 1867. The manner of their 
 death is recorded in Mr. T. D. Sullivan's touching poem, 
 ' God save Ireland ! ' 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT AND EDUCATION. 
 
 The Government had put down the Fenian insurrection, 
 but that insurrection had memorable consequences, and a 
 memorable influence upon the statesmen of England. There 
 were English statesmen sufficiently endowed with political 
 foresight to appreciate that although a Fenian rising had been 
 put down, the political difficulty which Fenianism represented 
 was as great and as complicated as ever. It did not, indeed, 
 need a statesman to be a very political Lynceus to perceive 
 that the mere suppression of revolution after revolution was 
 not, in the long ran, the most satisfactory method of govern- 
 ing a country. The very fact of a country being in a condition 
 of latent revolution and intermittent rebellion was in itself 
 enough to teach such statesmen as were willing to learn, that 
 something or other was wrong in this portion at least of that 
 complex piece of State machinery, which its admirers were 
 accustomed to regard as the most perfect piece of political 
 mechanism on the face of the earth, the Government of Ireland. 
 Mr. Gladstone was then, as he is now, the most advanced 
 thinker and the most keen-sighted statesman in the English 
 House of Commons. Then, as now, he was far ahead of his 
 fellows in appreciating the inevitable in politics. The younger 
 men who have grown up around him are not quicker to see 
 what must be done at a great crisis, nor more ready to do it. 
 At the time when the Fenian insurrection was lying dead 
 beneath, its white shroud of snow, Mr. Gladstone was the one 
 man in English statecraft who was keen enough to perceive 
 what the Fenian rising meant, and to grasp the vast import- 
 ance of the lesson it had taught him. Mr. Gladstone had the 
 
DTSESTABLISR3IENT AND EDUCATION 195 
 
 genius to appreciate the fact that a nation which could make 
 such repeated efforts to shake off a bondage which had been 
 gradually lightening, must be suffering from some very serious, 
 some very intolerable, grievances. So Mr. Gladstone looked 
 a little more closely into the question, and saw that the most 
 intolerable grievances from which the Irish people were suffer- 
 ing were the Irish Church question and the Irish Land ques- 
 tion. 
 
 The condition of Ireland with regard to what was called 
 the Irish Church question was one of the greatest scandals in 
 modern history. One of the most Catholic among Catholic 
 countries, Ireland had languished for generations under the 
 most savage system of Penal Laws levelled against her faith ; 
 and even now, at a time when the nineteenth century had 
 lived more than half its life, Catholic Ireland was compelled 
 against its will to maintain a foreign Church, and to hear it 
 spoken of, in bitter mockery of themselves and of their creed, 
 as the Irish Church. 
 
 One of the most remarkable of all the many remarkable 
 facts in connection with the long struggle of Ireland against 
 the English rule, is the way in which the Irish people have 
 maintained through all the darkest pages of their history their 
 devotion to their national Church. That Church, whose 
 missionaries and w^hose martyrs alike maintained the princi- 
 ples of religion and of education for Western Christianity in 
 evil times— that Church had implanted in the hearts of her 
 Irish children the deepest and the most passionate attachment 
 to her. 
 
 A well-known writer has made use of the beautiful allegory 
 with which Moore conveys the attachment of Ireland to her 
 own Church. ' " The Irish Peasant to his Mistress " is the name 
 of one of Moore's finest songs. The Irish peasant tells his 
 mistress of his undying fidelity to her. *' Through grief and 
 through danger " her smile has cheered his way. *' The darker 
 our fortunes, the purer thy bright love burned ; " it turned 
 shame into glory ; fear into zeal. Slave as he was, -with her 
 to guide him he felt free. She had a rival, and the rival was 
 
 o2 
 
196 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 honoured, " while thou wert mocked and scorned." The rival 
 wore a crown of gold ; the other's brows were girt with thorns. 
 The rival wooed him to temples, while the loved one lay hid 
 in caves. " Her friends were all masters, while thine, alas ! are 
 slaves ! " "Yet," he declares, " cold in the earth at thy feet 
 I would rather be, than wed one I love not, or turn one thought 
 from thee j " ' 
 
 Ihe poet has described with all a poet's beauty the 
 strength, the profundity, and the purity of the Irish peasant's 
 devotion to the Catholic Church, and his loyal refusal, through 
 long generations of temptation and of persecution, to abandon 
 her for the rival creed which was sought. to be imposed upon 
 him by foreign arms. The writer already quoted has shown 
 the poetic and religious character of the Irish nature. ' For 
 him, as for Schiller's immortal heroine, the kingdom of the 
 spirits is easily opened. Half his thoughts, half his life, 
 belong to a world other than the material world around him. 
 The supernatural becomes almost the natural for him. The 
 streams, the valleys, the hills of his native country are peopled 
 by mystic forms and melancholy legends, which are all but 
 living things for him. Even the railway has not banished 
 from the land his familiar fancies and dreams. The "good 
 people " still linger around the raths and glens. The banshee 
 even yet laments, in dirge-like wailings, the death of the repre- 
 sentative of each ancient house. The very superstitions of the 
 Irish peasant take a devotional form. They are never 
 degrading. This piety is not merely sincere ; it is even 
 practical. It sustains him against many hard trials, and 
 enables him to bear in cheerful patience a life-long trouble. 
 He praises God for everything, not as an act of mere devo- 
 tional formality, but as by instinct ; the praise naturally rising 
 to his lips. Old men and women in Ireland, who seem to the 
 observer to have lived lives of nothing but privation and 
 suffering, are heard to murmur, with their latest breath, the 
 fervent declaration " that the Lord was good to them always." ' 
 
 This intense spirit of devotion to his creed was accom- 
 panied in the Irish peasant by a strong and unconquerable 
 
BTSESTABLISHBIENT AND EDUCATION 197 
 
 loyalty to it. The infernal ingenuity of the Penal Laws 
 might well have seemed calculated in the minds of hostile 
 statesmen to root out the Irish faith from the hearts of 
 Ireland, to annihilate for ever the Catholic Church in Ireland. 
 But the Penal Laws at their worst only seemed to strengthen 
 the hold of the Catholic Church over her children, and to 
 deepen and widen the affection of her children for the Catholic 
 Church. Even when the Penal Laws had ceased to exist, 
 when they had become only a hideous record of blundering 
 tyranny and misgovernment, the trials of the Catholic Church 
 in Ireland were not at an end. The strength of the attach- 
 ment of the Irish people for their Church was not to be left 
 untested. A man was no longer liable to have his property 
 confiscated, or his children stolen from him, or to run the 
 risk of imprisonment or exile, because he professed the 
 Catholic creed ; the priest had to go no longer in fear of his 
 life ; it was no longer a legal sin for Catholic masters to teach 
 Catholic children ; but all the indignities that a powerful and 
 dominant party could offer, through the Church it sought to 
 impose upon the Irish people, were freely offered ; and all the 
 disadvantages that could be flung in the way of the Catholic 
 Church were so flung persistently. 
 
 The Protestant Church in Ireland was kept alive as a 
 State Church out of the substance of the people, to whom it 
 could offer nothing, to whom it was only the representative of 
 oppression and injury and insult, and to whom its ministers 
 were only part and parcel of Ascendency. Ascendency could 
 and did maintain for long enough the State Church in Ireland 
 against the wishes of the Irish people, and in a large measure 
 upon money extorted from the unwilling Irish people. But 
 there was one thing it could not do — it could not make the 
 Irish people abandon their own faith and worship at foreign 
 altars. When the leprous servant of the Assyrian king came 
 to the Hebrew prophet, and was made pure of body, he sought 
 the permission of the holy man to bend his knee in the house 
 of Rimmon. What the companion of the king was willing to 
 do for the sake of preserving the royal favour, the Irish people 
 
]98 IRELAISD SINCE THE UNION 
 
 refused to do to win the pleasure of Ascendency. The Irish 
 Church existed, a huge aiiomaly of State-imposed rehgion, 
 which the vast majority of the people who were compelled to 
 support it refused to have anything to do with, and which re- 
 mained one of the bitterest of the many bitter grievances which 
 kept alive the detestation of English dominion in Ireland. 
 
 Many attempts, more or less half-hearted and pottering, 
 had been made in the House of Commons from time to time 
 to approach this Irish Church question with some idea of 
 settling it, and a Commission had even been appointed to 
 make some kind of investigation of the matter. But the first 
 serious blow struck against the Established Church was struck 
 by Mr. John Francis Maguire, in a debate in March 1868, on 
 a series of resolutions dealing with the condition of Ireland, 
 which he submitted to the House. Mr. Maguire was an 
 Irish member of great ability and of great integrity. He was 
 not an advanced politician in the sense in which we speak of 
 advanced politicians to-day. He was not an advanced politi- 
 cian twenty years ago ; but he was genuinely devoted to the 
 interests of his country, and loyally determined to serve those 
 interests in every way compatible with his own opinions as to 
 what her best interests were. He was the proprietor of the 
 most important paper in the South of Ireland — the Cork Ex- 
 a7niner— and. he had made himself a strong position in the 
 House of Commons by his independence and his courage and 
 his Parliamentary ability. 
 
 In the course of the speech in which he introduced his 
 resolutions, Mr. Maguire made a special and powerful attack 
 upon the principle which sanctioned the Established Church 
 in Ireland. In the debate wiiich followed, the then Irish 
 Secretary, Lord Mayo, made a somewhat mysteriously- worded 
 speech, in which he threw out hopes that a way might be 
 found of introducing religious equality in Ireland without mak- 
 ing a sacrifice of the Established Church, and he considerably 
 surprised his hearers by an occult phrase about ' levelling up, 
 and not levelling down.' 
 
 What Lord Mayo actually meant by the half-hints he 
 
DISESTABLISHMENT AND EBU CATION 199 
 
 threw out, whether he was giving a kind of tentative ex- 
 pression to some idea on the part of the Government, or was 
 merely uttering a speculation of his own, must remain an 
 unsolved political problem. But the speech and the words 
 made it plain to Parliament, and to politicians outside Parlia- 
 ment, that the existence of the Established Church in Ireland 
 was from that moment down an open question. 
 
 The debate suddenly assumed a new aspect when Mr. 
 Gladstone, as leader of the Opposition, rose and announced 
 himself an opponent of the Established Church in Ireland. 
 Mr. Maguire immediately withdrew his resolutions, and Mr. 
 Gladstone brought in a series of resolutions of his own, the 
 effect of which would be to sweep away the Established 
 Church in Ireland. The debate which followed upon the in- 
 troduction of these resolutions was one of the most remark- 
 able that has ever taken place in the House of Commons. 
 On both sides the feelings of politicians were keenly, even 
 bitterly aroused. On both sides the battle was fought stub- 
 bornly, even desperately. 
 
 Mr. Lowe made a fierce attack, which has now become 
 famous, upon the Irish Church. He compared the Irish 
 Church to ' an exotic brought from a far country, tended with 
 infinite pain and useless trouble. It is kept alive with the 
 greatest difficulty and at great expense in an ungenial climate 
 and an ungrateful soil. The curse of barrenness is upon it. 
 It has no leaves, puts forth no blossom, and yields no fruit. 
 Cut it down ; why cumbereth it the ground ?' The opinion 
 which was expressed by Mr. Lowe in these fiercely eloquent 
 words proved to be the opinion of the majority in the House 
 of Commons. The resolutions were carried by large majorities. 
 The Government was defeated upon a question of vital im- 
 portance, and Mr. Disraeli appealed to the country. 
 
 The General Election of 1868 was remarkable for the 
 expectations it formed, and the way in which these expecta- 
 tions were not answered. It had been expected that the 
 Parliament chosen upon the General Election would have 
 a strongly Eadical and even Democratic element introduced 
 
200 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 into it. Expectation was not realised. The most advanced 
 Eadical in the previous ParHament, Mr. John Stuart Mill, 
 was not re-elected for Westminster. Of the many advanced 
 Eadical candidates who came forward with Mr. Mill's support 
 and approval, none were returned. It had been confidently 
 expected by advanced politicians that a certain number of 
 working-men candidates would find seats in the new Parliament. 
 And many working-men "candidates offered themselves to con- 
 stituencies, but in no case was any one of them returned. 
 
 The new Parliament of 1868 presented few bright features 
 of difference from the preceding Parliaments. It had no 
 more of a Democratic complexion than any of those which 
 had gone before ; but it was sufficiently advanced in its views 
 to place the Liberal party in power, and to enable Mr. Glad- 
 stone to carry into effect his purpose of eradicating the 
 Establishment in Ireland. The proposals of the Government 
 were that the Irish Church should almost at once cease to 
 exist as a State establishment, and should pass into the con- 
 dition of a free Episcopal Church. As a matter of Qourse, 
 the Irish bishops were to lose their seats in the House of 
 Lords. The clergy and laity of the Church were to elect a 
 governing body from themselves, which the Government was 
 to recognise and incorporate. The English and Irish Churches 
 were no longer to be connected, and the Irish Ecclesiastical 
 Courts were to be done away with. With regard to the pro- 
 tection of the life interests of those holding office in the Irish 
 Church, and with regard to the disposal of the fund which 
 would return to Government when all such holders of office 
 had been indemnified, there were various intricate provisions. 
 In considering such claims as these the Government did not 
 err on the side of parsimony. But the opposition by which 
 they were confronted was so powerful, that they were almost 
 compelled to paralyse some part of it by compensating with a 
 free hand all those who were about to lose the dignity attach- 
 ing to the position of a clergyman in a State Church. 
 
 When all these claims had been met and settled, there yet 
 remained in the hands of the Government a considerable sum 
 
DISESTABLISHMENT AND EDUCATION 201 
 
 of money, which they determined to devote to the alleviation 
 of inevitable suffering in Ireland. The Conservative Oppo- 
 sition fought the Ministerial proposals step by step and point 
 by point with defiant pertinacity. They knew well enough 
 that the Government would have its way, and that the 
 Established Church in Ireland was doomed ; but they argued 
 and wrangled and debated un weary ingiy none the less. One 
 of the great points raised by the opponents of the Ministerial 
 measure was based on the Act of Union. The 5th article of 
 that Act was incessantly quoted, dwelt upon, alluded to in 
 the early debates. That article provided ' that the Churches 
 of England and Ireland as now by law established be united 
 into one Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called "the 
 United Church of England and Ireland," and the doctrine, 
 worship, discipline, and government of the said United Church 
 shall be and shall remain in full force for ever as the same 
 are now" by law established for the Church of England, and the 
 continuance and preservation of the said United Church as the 
 Established Church of England and Ireland shall be deemed and 
 taken to be an essential and fundamental part of the Union.' 
 
 The argument, of course, had no validity in it. The Act 
 of Union is fortunately as liable to be set aside as any other 
 measure. Of late days Ireland's enemies have made use of 
 this alteration in the Act of Union to strengthen their argu- 
 ment for a reduction of the Irish representation. They argue 
 that the mere fact that the Act of Union provides for a certain 
 representation in Ireland can no longer be appealed to as a 
 definite argument against the reduction of Irish representa- 
 tion, because, as the Act of Union has been altered in one 
 particular, it may be altered in another. This point is easily 
 answered. It is perfectly in accordance with all the princi- 
 ples of justice for one nation to alter the terms of conditions 
 that she has imposed upon another nation when the alteration 
 is for that other nation's benefit. It would be directly in de- 
 fiance of all principles of justice for a dominant nation to make 
 such alterations to the injury of the other country. 
 
 All the ingenuity and all the obstinacy of the Conservative 
 
202 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 party could not defeat, could not long delay, the determina- 
 tion of tlie Government. On July 26, 1869, the measure 
 which disestablished the Irish Church received the royal 
 assent and became law. 
 
 The Liberal Government which came into office in 1868 
 deemed itself destined to settle for ever any grievances which 
 Ireland might have to complain of. Mr. Gladstone admitted 
 frankly and freely enough that Ireland had grievances to com- 
 plain of ; but if he was convinced of the existence of injustices 
 in the existing condition of things, he seemed scarcely less 
 convinced of the possibility of removing them in the space, if 
 not of a single session of Parliament, at least in a single 
 Parliament. The Government came into power with the 
 practical recognition of the fact that Ireland and the Irish 
 question were to be the important themes of legislation. 
 English statesmen had recognised this fact before the Parlia- 
 ment of 1868 ; but it is only since the Parliament of 1868 
 that the statesman who then made himself the champion of 
 Irish wrongs has fully worked out the problem and found the 
 solution of the Irish difficulty. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone was in a mood for great legislation in the 
 beginning of 1869. He approached Parliament with a list of 
 measures long enough to startle the most enthusiastic of his 
 followers, and to arouse from Mr. Bright the criticism that 
 the Government were attempting to drive six omnibuses 
 abreast through Temple Bar ; a criticism which was criticised 
 in its turn by another politician, Mr. W. E. Forster, who 
 observed that six omnibuses might be unable to pass through 
 Temple Bar abreast, but they might pass very successfully 
 one after another. Of the six omnibuses, three may be said, 
 to pursue Mr. Bright 's ingenious allegory a little further, to 
 have been painted green and lettered Ireland. 
 
 The three most important measures which Mr. Gladstone 
 had undertaken to pilot in safety tlirough the two Houses of 
 Parliament were devoted to Irish questions, and these Irish 
 questions were of jpressing and urging importance. The most 
 immediate question, which like a great wave had swept the 
 
DTSESTABLISHBIENT AND EDUCATION 203 
 
 previous Government out of office and carried Mr. Gladstone 
 to power on its crest, was the question of the Disestablishment 
 of the Irish Church. We have already seen how that great 
 reform was effected. The second great question was the Land 
 question, and we have already touched upon the principal 
 points of the Land Act of 1870. The Land Act of 1870 was 
 a very important measure, although it rendered very little 
 immediate service to the Irish people, although it was at the 
 best but a weak and imperfect piece of legislation, although 
 it was not the first chapter, but merely one of the first lines 
 in the record of reforms demanded by the system of land 
 tenure in Ireland. It was one step in the steady march of 
 progress. 
 
 Happily for the world, the statesmen who extolled the 
 Land Act of 1870, and went into ecstasies over it, and dwelt 
 upon its many merits, and expatiated upon its effect, while 
 those for whose relief it was intended failed to discern its 
 blessings, were of a different mould from the Prime Minister 
 who created it, Having, however, accomplished the Disesta- 
 blishment of the Irish Church, which was a great measure, 
 and passed his Land Act, which was a small measure, Mr. 
 Gladstone turned with fresh purpose to his third enterprise, 
 the solution of the great question of Irish Education. Those 
 three questions dealt with, Mr. Gladstone appeared to hope 
 that Irish disaffection and Irish discontent would vanish for 
 ever from the fair face of the island. It had always been the 
 delusion of English statesmen to fancy that every small con- 
 cession of Ireland's just demands is to silence for ever any 
 allusion to demands Avhich are left unsatisfied. Like Pan, in 
 the hymn of the English poet, ' Gods and men, they were all 
 deluded thus,' and they regarded with stern disapproval the 
 contumacious and persistent nation which, when it is offered 
 some small plateful of legislative porridge, has the audacity 
 to come up with a hungry face and ask for more. This line 
 of policy is now the exclusive property of the Tory party. 
 
 The third side of Mr. Gladstone's triangular policy with 
 regard to Ireland faced the question of University Education 
 
204 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 in Ireland. Parliament met on February 6, 1873. The 
 Eoyal Speech announced that * A measure will be submitted 
 to you on an early day for settling the question of Uni- 
 versity Education in Ireland. It will have for its object the 
 advancement of learning in that portion of my dominions, and 
 will be framed with a careful regard to the rights of conscience.' 
 
 On February 13 Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish 
 University Education Bill, and explained it to an eager and 
 attentive House of Commons. The position of Irish University 
 education was very serious. Ireland possessed — she could not 
 be said to boast of — two Universities. One was the University 
 of Dublin, which was then a distinctly and even defiantly 
 Protestant organisation ; the other was the Queen's University, 
 which had been established under the odd delusion that a 
 University body entirely given over to secular instruction 
 would satisfy the educational desires of the Irish people. 
 This strictly secular system was condemned by the authority of 
 the Catholic Church, and it was practically a failure. Ireland 
 from an educational point of view presented this extraordinary 
 appearance to a curious investigator. In a country in which the 
 vast, the overwhelming majority were Catholics, there were 
 two chartered Universities, one which was opposed to the 
 Catholics, and the other to which Catholics were opposed. 
 Under the conditions it ought not to have been very difficult 
 for any body of statesmen to see their way out of the 
 difficulty. The Catholics asked for a University of their own. 
 Nothing, one would think, could be simpler than to accede 'o 
 the wishes of the majority of the Irish people and charter 
 a Catholic University . 
 
 But Parliamentary ideas were strongly opposed to so 
 simple and sensible a solution of the difficulty. Government 
 had always recognised grudgingly and sorely against its will 
 the Catholic demand, not merely for education, but even for 
 existence. If it could it would have liked to shut its eyes to 
 the fact that a majority of the Irish people are Catholics. It 
 had always acted in the long course of its connection with 
 Ireland on a policy based on .this belief, or at least upon this 
 
DISESTABLISHMENT AND EDUCATION 205 
 
 "Assumption. So the majority of the Parliament were unwill- 
 ing to grant a charter for a merely Catholic University ; and 
 those amongst its members who did not admit, or did not 
 choose to admit, that their objection was levelled against 
 Catholics as Catholics, adduced a variety of more or less flimsy 
 reasons for refusing to satisfy the natural demands of a 
 Catholic country. 
 
 One argument was, that if a charter were granted to a 
 Catholic University there would be a distinct risk of lowering 
 the national standard of education in the two islands. Another 
 equally invalid argument was, that the grant of any funds for 
 the purpose of supporting a Catholic University would be 
 spending the public money on a purely sectarian body. With 
 arguments as vague and as valueless as these, English states- 
 men had for long enough persistently rebutted all claims of 
 Irish Catholics to be educated according to their own ideas in 
 their own country. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone now appeared upon the Parliamentary 
 scene with the resolute determination to settle if he could 
 a hitherto complex question — a new Alexander solving the 
 knot ; a new (Edipus answering the riddling interrogations of 
 the Sphinx. He recognised the difficulty ; he saw the neces- 
 sity for some remedy ; and he did his best to devise the right 
 remedy. Hopeful was the tone of Mr. Gladstone's speech on 
 February 13, 1873, when he explained to the attentive Com- 
 mons the principles of his Irish University Education Bill. 
 
 Unfortunately, however, the Bill itself did not quite 
 answer to the hope of its introducer, and did not appear to 
 Irish Catholics, and their representatives in the House of 
 Commons, to be so satisfactory a settlement of the vexed 
 question as it appeared to the Prime Minister. Mr. Gladstone 
 proposed to make the Dublin University the central University 
 of Ireland, and to make it not merely an examining, but a 
 teaching body. Trinity College was to be separated from the 
 Dublin University, and the theological faculty separated from 
 Trinity College. Trinity, the Colleges of Cork and Belfast, 
 and the existing Catholic University — an institution which 
 
206 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 was supported entirely by a voluntary fund, and which had no 
 charter — were all to become affiliated colleges of a newly- 
 created University. The Galway College was to be wiped out 
 of existence altogether. The theological faculty, which had 
 hitherto existed in connection with Trinity College, was to be 
 given to a representative body of the Disestablished Irish 
 Church, together with a fund for carrying out the purposes 
 for which the theological faculty had hitherto existed. The 
 new University was to have no chairs for theology, moral 
 philosophy, or modern history. The governing body of the 
 University was to be composed in the first instance «f twenty- 
 eight ordinary members, to be nominated in the Act. Vacan- 
 cies were to be filled by the Crown and by co-option alternately 
 for ten years ; after that time four members were to retire 
 annually — one successor to be named by the Crown, one by 
 the council, one by the professors, and one by the senate. In 
 addition to the ordinary members, the afiiliated colleges would 
 be allowed to elect one or two members of council, according 
 to the number of pupils in each college. The money to sus- 
 tain the University was to come in proportionate allotments 
 from the revenues of Trinity College, a very y^ealthy institu- 
 tion ; from the Consolidated Fund, the fees of students, and 
 the surplus of Irish ecclesiastical property. Trinity College 
 and each of the other affiliated colleges would be allowed to 
 frame schemes for their own government. 
 
 Such was the plan by which Mr. Gladstone trusted that he 
 had succeeded in threading the labyrinth of the Irish Univer- 
 sity question ; such was the scheme by which the Prime Minister 
 hoped for a moment that he had succeeded in reconciling 
 opposing principles and satisfying contending claims — only for 
 a moment, however. AVhen the excitement of the particular 
 sitting in which the Bill was introduced had passed away, the 
 Prime Minister discovered that his method was not the right 
 one. 
 
 The first reception accorded to the Bill in the House of 
 Commons was of a nature to deceive its introducer. A great 
 man}' speakers said a great many civil things about the pro- 
 
DISESTABLISHMENT AND EDUCATION 207 
 
 posed scheme, and a few dissentient voices were raised. But 
 if few dissentient voices were heard that night there was no 
 lack of dissentient opinion, which soon enough found tongue. 
 The measure which was meant to please everybody pleased 
 nobody. Englishmen of most creeds objected to the Bill. 
 The vast Nonconformist body protested against any endow- 
 ment for the purposes of Catholic denominational education. 
 They received no endowment, they argued, and therefore no 
 other sectarian body ought to receive it. The Irish Protestants, 
 already sore over the disestablishment of their Church in 
 Ireland, protested loudly against the proposed interference 
 with their old-established University system. The Irish 
 Catholics declined definitely and distinctly to accept the pro- 
 posed measure, which did not meet their demands. It did 
 not satisfy their wishes. It made no answer to their claims. 
 They wanted a Catholic University, and that Catholic Univer- 
 sity Mr. Gladstone's measure did nofc propose to give them. 
 
 The outcry against the measure steadily increased in 
 volume. In all parts of Ireland all parties protested against 
 it. The Roman Catholic prelates held meetings to oppose 
 the scheme, and joined in a declaration which contained the 
 following passages expressing their views : ' That, viewing 
 with alarm the widespread ruin caused by godless systems of 
 education, and adhering to the declarations of the Holy See, 
 we reiterate the condemnation of mixed education as fraught 
 with danger to that divine faith which is to be prized above 
 all earthly things. . . . That the distinguished proposer of 
 this measure, proclaiming as he does in liis opening speech 
 that the condition of Roman Catholics in Ireland with regard 
 to University education is " miserably bad," " scandalously 
 bad," and, professing to redress this admitted grievance, 
 brings forward a measure singularly inconsistent with his 
 professions, because, instead of redressing, it perpetuates that 
 grievance, upholding two out of three of the Queen's Colleges, 
 and planting in the metropolis two other great teaching insti- 
 tutions the same in principle with the Queen's Colleges. . . . 
 That, as the legal owners of the Catholic University, and, at 
 
208 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 the same time, acting on behalf of the Catholic people of 
 Ireland, for whose advantage and by whose generosity it has 
 been established, in the exercise of that right of ownership, 
 we will not consent to the affiliation of the Catholic University 
 to the new University, unless the proposed scheme be largely 
 modified ; and we have the same objection to the affiliation of 
 other Catholic colleges in Ireland.' 
 
 A second reading was speedily and persistently opposed. 
 Mr. — now Sir — Lyon Playfair made himself conspicuous in 
 his opposition — on the ground that it was unreasonable and 
 absurd to exclude modern history from any national University, 
 and in which he talked wildly about sacrificing free inquiry 
 to. ecclesiastical dictation. Dr. Playfair did not recollect that 
 Mr. John Stuart Mill, a thinker who was, to put it mildly, at 
 least as gifted and as far-seeing as Dr. Playfair himself, con- 
 sidered history as one of those branches of knowledge which 
 are best left to private study. He did not reflect, too, that 
 the teaching of modern history might present some difficulties 
 in an Irish University of the kind proposed by Mr. Gladstone, 
 the members of which would hardly be likely to look with the 
 same eye upon any of the events of Irish history. Dr. Play- 
 fair's opposition was in itself a matter of small importance, 
 but it served to show the variety of men and minds arrayed 
 against the scheme. 
 
 On the same day when Dr. Playfair delivered his some- 
 what unfortunate protest, a deputation of Irish members 
 waited upon Mr. Gladstone to inform him that they were 
 bound to support denominational and religious education 
 ao'ainst secularisation. A little later a Pastoral from Cardinal 
 Cull en was read in all the Irish Catholic churches, which 
 described Mr. Gladstone's Bill as endowing ' non-Catholic 
 and godless colleges to those who for centuries have enjoyed 
 the great public endowments for higher education in Ireland, 
 and then, without giving one farthing to Catholics, it invites 
 them to compete in their poverty, produced by penal laws 
 and confiscations, with others who, as the Prime Minister 
 states, are left in possession of enormous wealth. The new 
 
mSESTABLTSTTMENT ATTD EDUCATION 209 
 
 University scheme only increases the number of Queen's 
 colleges, so often and so solemnly condemned by the Catholic 
 Church and by all Ireland, and gives a new impulse to that 
 teaching which separates education from religion and its holy 
 influences, and banishes God, the Author of all good, from our 
 schools.' 
 
 The opposition came to a head on March 11, on the 
 fourth night of the debate on Mr. Bourke's amendment. The 
 House was crowded to its fullest ; both sides were animated 
 by the keenest emotions of anxiety and expectation. The 
 general impression that the Government was about to sustain 
 a defeat was visible on the faces of most men. Mr. Disraeli, 
 fired and animated by a triumphant consciousness of impend- 
 ing victory, made one of his most brilliant and most para- 
 doxical speeches. * We live in an age,' said Mr. Disraeli, 
 * when young men prattle about protoplasm, and when young 
 ladies in gilded saloons unconsciously talk atheism. And 
 this is the moment when a Minister, called upon to fulfil one 
 of the noblest duties that can fall upon the most ambitious 
 statesman — namely, the formation of a great University — 
 formally comes forward and proposes the omission from public 
 study of moral and mental philosophy.' He described the 
 new council of twenty-eightj persons, which was to form the 
 governing body, as coming to be * very much what you have 
 in the House — two parties organised and arrayed against 
 each other, with two or three trimmers thrown in on each 
 side.' 
 
 From assaults upon the particulars of the Bill, Mr. Disraeli 
 proceeded to a direct attack upon the author of it. * You 
 have now,' said Mr. Disraeli, ' had four years of it. You have 
 despoiled churches. You have threatened every endowment 
 and corporation in the country. You have examined into 
 everybody's affairs. You have criticised every profession and 
 vexed every trade. No one is certain of his property, and no 
 one knows what duties he may have to perform to-morrow. 
 I believe that the people of this country have had enough of 
 the policy of confiscation.' 
 
 P 
 
210 IBELAXD SIXOE THE rXTOJSr 
 
 The speecli ^Yas extravagant. It was levelled against the 
 measure, not because it was not Irish enough, but because it 
 was too Irish, Mr. DisraeU thought. But it delighted Mr. 
 DisraeH's followers, whose views it expressed perfectly. The 
 description which Mr. Disraeli gave of the measure in his 
 concluding sentences was one which exaggerated the ^-iews of 
 every opponent of the Bill. ' I must vote,' said Mr. Disraeli, 
 * asfainst a measure which I believe to be monstrous in its 
 general principles, pernicious in many of its details, and 
 utterly futile as a measure of practical legislation.' 
 
 Mr. Gladstone concluded the debate, and accepted defeat 
 v\uth a dignified and statesmanlike composure. In concluding, 
 Mr. Gladstone was eloquent in his appeal to the sacred name 
 of justice. * To mete out justice to Ireland according to the 
 best view that with human infirmity we could form, has been 
 the work — I will almost say the sacred work — of this Parlia- 
 ment.' Such measure of human infirmity as Mr. Gladstone 
 admitted to himself then, has not prevented him, fortunately, 
 from meting out in a later day justice to Ireland in the way 
 that the Irish people themselves most desired. 
 
 In the face of almost inevitable defeat, ]\Ir. Gladstone still 
 persisted in regarding his measure as one which might be law. 
 ' As we have begun,' he said, ' so let us go through, and with 
 a firm and resolute hand let us efface from the law and the 
 practice of the country the last — I believe it is the last — of 
 the relio'ious and social errievances of Ireland.' There was 
 something exceedingly pathetic, there was something almost 
 tragic, in the picture of a great English statesman seriously 
 striving with aU his heart and soul to remove h'om the Irish 
 people all the political and all the social grievances of which 
 they had to complain, and striving unsuccessfully then. Ex- 
 perience has taught Mr. Gladstone, in the twelve years that 
 have gone by since that eventful March morning, that Ireland's 
 political and Ireland's social grievances are only to be efi'aced 
 from the minds and memories of her children by Home Rule. 
 Mr. Gladstone addressed a few w^ords of dignified reference to 
 the Ii'ish members who had supported him in his two previous 
 
DISESTABLISHMENT AND EDUCATION 211 
 
 measures, and who had gone .against him in this, and were 
 helping to overthrow him, as more than twelve years later 
 another body of Irish members were again destined to turn 
 him from office. 
 
 About two o'clock on the morning of the 12th the 
 division took place, and the Government were defeated by a 
 majority of three. Mr. Gladstone immediately resigned 
 office, but Mr. Disraeli declined to accept it ; and Mr. Glad- 
 stone had to return to power with a shaken majority and a 
 damaged party. 
 
 OHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 THE HOME EULE MOVEMENT. 
 
 The Fenian insurrection had been put down ; most of its 
 leaders were in prison or in exile ; many were dead. The 
 Government and the Government party in Ireland believed 
 that another ten or twenty years of apathetic acquiescence 
 in their rule was secured to them. Indeed, for the few years 
 that immediately succeeded the collapse of the rising of 1867 
 there seemed to be every prospect of such hopes finding 
 fulfilment. The years immediately following upon the Fenian 
 outbreak were years without a history for Ireland. Somebody 
 has said, foolishly enough, that the country is happy which 
 has no history. Ireland had no history in the national sense in 
 these years of evil, and yet she could hardly be called happy. 
 Landlordism, that had been frightened out of its wits by the 
 apparition of what it and its kind called the revolutionary 
 spectre in its midst, was taking its revenge for its alarm by 
 fresh and persistent oppression of the peasantry, whom evil 
 chance had delivered into its hands. Eack-renting and evic- 
 tions flourished ; and for a time it seemed as if the landlord 
 party were to have it all their own way, and as if national 
 aspirations had been flung back for a generation. 
 
 Just, however, when things were looking their blackest, 
 
 p2 
 
212 ISELAXD SIXCi: THE UXIOy 
 
 there came a new gleam of liope. A moTement was in- 
 augurated wliicli was destined to develop into something very 
 much more powerful than its early founders ever dreamed of 
 or desired; wliicli was destined after iifteen years of varying 
 and stormy fortunes to cause the overthrow of an English 
 Ministry, and to hring the Irish demand for national inde- 
 pendence very delinitely into what English statesmen are 
 fond of terming the tield of practical politics. In the ]\Iay 
 of 1870 a meeting was held in an hotel in Dublin, which was 
 attended by representative Irishmen of almost all classes of 
 society and almost all phases of political and religious opinion. 
 The majority, however, was composed of Protestant Conser- 
 vatives. The meeting was summoned to consider the pohtical 
 position of Ireland, and to debate the question as to what ought 
 to be done to advance her interests. 
 
 The presence at that meeting of so large a body of 
 Protestant Conservatives is not dithcult of explanation. The 
 Irish Protestants were inspired at that time with mingled 
 feelings of alarm at and hatred of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. 
 Gladstone's recent Irish poHcy. The disestablishment of what 
 was caUed the Irish Church had caused that tierce irritation 
 which men always feel when they have been suddenly de- 
 prived of rights and privileges over a foreign population. 
 Some of the Irish Protestants, therefore, who attended that 
 meeting in Dublin in the May of 1870 were animated chieiiy 
 by a dislike and dread of Mr. Gladstone, and by the gradually- 
 daT^iiing conviction that, on the whole, they might hope to 
 fare better at the hands of the Irish people themselves than 
 at the hands of their patrons across St. George's Channel. 
 Others there were, however, men not in one sense of the term 
 Nationalists, who saw more clearly than English statesmen 
 could or would see, that the desire for national independence 
 was one of the deepest -rooted feelings in the Irish heart. 
 These men had suihcient pohtical foresight io perceive that 
 no measures of disestablishment, no small concessions here 
 and small amehorations there, would in any degree satisfy the 
 aspirations of the Irish people. It was not small concessions 
 
THJ^: HOME RULE MOVEMENT 213 
 
 that the Irish people were asking for, but the just demand to 
 be allowed to have their voice heard in the administration of 
 their own afi'airs. 
 
 Some, therefore, of those who attended the meeting were 
 prepared to meet the Irish demand half-way. They saw there 
 were only two alternatives before the English Government — 
 either to concede to Ireland some measure of self- administra- 
 tion, or to keep on for ever struggling at greater or less inter- 
 vals with active or intermittent rebellion. Of the two alter- 
 natives they preferred for their own peace, and for the peace 
 of the country, that the principle of self-government should 
 be conceded. There were others at the meeting of more 
 advanced views —Fenians and friends of Fenians — who re- 
 cognised the fact that for the time any acquirement of their 
 rights by a strong hand was out of the question, and who were, 
 therefore, prepared to go in with a, constitutional movement, 
 and strive to attain some measure of national independence. 
 There was one man present at that meeting — a man of dis- 
 tinction and of a rare ability that at times seemed closely 
 akin to genius — who was fated to be for a season the leader of 
 the new movement. 
 
 Mr. Isaac Butt was at that time a man of fifty-five years 
 of age, whose life had been devoted to law and politics, and 
 occasionally to literature. He had begun his political career 
 as a strong opponent of nationalism, and had been chosen by 
 the Irish Protestant Conservatives to fight their fight and 
 plead their cause for them against O'Connell himself, in the 
 days when Kepeal was the watchword of the national party. 
 O'Connell, at the end of a debate, had prophesied that the 
 time would come when his eloquent young opponent would be 
 found * in the ranks of the Irish people,' and the prophecy of 
 O'Connell had come to pass. Mr. Butt in course of time 
 found himself the legal and the political champion of Irish 
 nationalism. He v.as a lawyer of the greatest skill and 
 subtlety — a skill and subtlety worthy of Daniel O'Connell him- 
 self ; and at the time of the meeting in Dublin, and for many 
 years previously, he was practically without a rival at the Irish 
 
214 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Bar. In 1848 lie had played a prominent part in the defence 
 of Smith O'Brien and Thomas Francis Meagher at Clonmel ; 
 and at the time of the Fenian risings he defended many of the 
 most conspicuous of the political prisoners. 
 
 He became as years went on more and more of a Nationalist, 
 and less and less of an adherent of the Conservative party. 
 The Conservatives, with that unwisdom which at times charac- 
 terises tliem in their dealings with their adherents, had some- 
 what ]ieglected Isaac Butt. The Conservative party have 
 always an innate distrust of brilliant men — even when the 
 brilliant men belong to their own country, and rise from their 
 own ranks. All the successes that the Conservative party 
 have achieved in modern times have been due to the enter- 
 prise and genius of one or two brilliant men whom the Con- 
 servative party as a whole has at first sourly mistrusted and 
 disliked, and only accepted in the end with reluctant resigna- 
 tion to the inevitable. The steady-going Conservative chiefs 
 as a rule like steady-going followers. They have a vague 
 dread of abilities of the kind which they characterise as showy ; 
 and when they avail themselves of such abilities they are 
 seldom grateful for the services that have been rendered them. 
 So the Conservative leaders somewhat unwisely neglected 
 Mr. Butt. 
 
 One Conservative leader, keener than his fellows, in at 
 least appreciating the services of Mr. Butt, recommended 
 the rarty, in a letter to a colleague, 'to buy Butt.' This 
 cynical piece of advice showed that the writer understood the 
 value of Mr. Butt's allegiance ; but it showed also that the 
 writer did not quite understand Mr. Butt's character. Mr. 
 Butt was by no means the Englishman's ideal of a prudent 
 politician. He was not a keen, cool, hard-headed man of 
 business. He was not always very wise in the w^ay in 
 which he ordered his own personal affairs. He was often 
 enough in difficulties, which are very embarrassing to a poli- 
 tician, and, perhaps, still more embarrassing to a politician's 
 friends. But he was emphatically not a man to be bought, 
 though the cynical Conservative counsellor seemed to think he 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 215 
 
 was. His political record is wholly free from such a suspicion. 
 In any case, the Conservative party made no attempt to buy 
 Butt, in which they were wise, and made no attempt to con- 
 ciliate him, in which they were foolish. He gradually dropped 
 away from his alliance with them ; he disappeared from poli- 
 tical life altogether for a time, and when he came to the front 
 again he came as the inaugurator of a new departure in Irish 
 politics, as a leader of the Home Eule movement. 
 
 He was a genuinely eloquent and brilliant speaker, and he 
 made a brilliant speech at the meeting in Dublin, at which he 
 urged on his hearers the common union of all policies and all 
 parties for the one goal of Irish self-government. It was he 
 who proposed the resolution declaring ' that the establishment 
 of an Irish Parliament with full control over our domestic 
 affairs was the only remedy for the evils of Ireland ; ' and the 
 resolution was carried unanimously. A committee was im- 
 mediately formed to draw up a series of resolutions to con- 
 stitute the platform of the Home Eule party. It is curious 
 and interesting to study now what these resolutions were whicla 
 then seemed so terrible in their audacity in the eyes of English 
 statesmen. 
 
 * I. — This association is formed for the purpose of obtain- 
 ing for Ireland the right of self-government by means of a 
 National Parliament. 
 
 ' II.— It is hereby declared, as the essential principle of 
 this association, that the objects, and the only objects, 
 contemplated by its organisation are : 
 
 * To obtain for our country the right and privilege of 
 managing her own affairs, by a Parliament assembled in Ire- 
 land, composed of Her Majesty the Sovereign, and her suc- 
 cessors, and the Lords and Commons of Ireland ; 
 
 ' To secure for that Parliament, under a federal arrange- 
 ment, the right of legislating for and regulating all matters 
 relating to the internal affairs of Ireland, and control over 
 Irish resources and revenues, subject to the obligation of con- 
 tributing our just proportion of the Imperial expenditure ; 
 
216 IRELAND SINCE IHE UNION 
 
 * To leave to an Imperial Parliament the power of dealing 
 witli all questions affecting the Imperial Crown and Govern- 
 ment, legislation regarding the colonies and other dependen- 
 cies of the Crown, the relations of the United Empire with 
 foreign States, and all matters appertaining to the defence and 
 the stability of the empire at large. 
 
 * To attain such an adjustment of the relations between 
 the two countries, without any interference with the preroga- 
 tives of the Crown, or any disturbance of the principles of the 
 constitution. 
 
 * III, — The association invites the co-operation of all Irish- 
 men who are willing to join in seeking for Ireland a federal 
 arrangement based upon these general principles. 
 
 * IV. — The association will endeavour to forward the object 
 it has in view by using all legitimate means of influencing 
 public sentiment, both in Ireland and Great Britain, by taking 
 all opportunities of instructing and informing public opinion, 
 and by seeking to unite Irishmen of all creeds and classes in 
 one national movement, in support of the great national object 
 hereby contemplated. 
 
 * V. — It is declared to be an essential principle of the 
 association that, while every member is understood by joining 
 it to concur in its general object and plan of action, no person 
 so joining is committed to any political opinion, except the 
 advisability of seeking for Ireland the amount of self-govern- 
 ment contemplated in the objects of the association.' 
 
 But the movement which was then inaugurated spread 
 rapidly by one of the surest tests which can be applied to any 
 political movement — the test of the elections. It was soon 
 found that Home Kule had a great hold upon the mass of the 
 Irish people. A curious proof of the condition to which 
 Ireland had been reduced is afforded by a study of the names 
 of the men who were then returned to Parliament as leaders 
 in the front rank of the Irish movement. Mr. Mitchell-Henry 
 and the late Mr. P. J. Smyth are not exactly politicians of 
 the kind that Irish nationalism of to-day looks upon with any 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 217 
 
 great favour. The late Mr. P. J. Smyth, as we have seen, 
 had never outgrown the traditions of the 1848 movement, in 
 which he played no conspicuous part. Of late years, shortly 
 before his death, he came to be distinguished chiefly as a 
 bitter and unscrupulous enemy of those who were recognised 
 as the leaders of the Irish people. 
 
 But at the time when the Home Eule movement was still 
 in its dawn, the election of Mr. P. J. Smyth and the election 
 of Mr. Mitchell-Henry were hailed with jubilation as proof of 
 the amount of vitality in the country. The election of Mr- 
 John Martin for Meath, and of Mr. Butt himself for Limerick, 
 gave fresh impetus to the advancing movement, which now 
 began to be regarded with equal enthusiasm in Ireland and 
 indignation in England. The demand of the Home Eule 
 party was not a very appalling one. It was clear and simple 
 enough. It did not, indeed, plead for the restoration of 
 Grattan's Parliament, for the restoration of a Parliament 
 which practically ignored the rights of Catholics in a Catholic 
 country was hardly likely to appeal even to the moderate 
 politicians who first began the Home Eule agitation. What 
 they asked was a separate Government for Ireland, still allied 
 with the Imperial Government, on principles such as those 
 which regulated the alliance between the United States of 
 America. The proposed Irish Parliament in College Green 
 would have borne much the same relation to the Parliament 
 at Westminster that the Legislature of every American State 
 bears to the head authority of the Congress in the Capitol 
 at Washington. All that related to local business it was 
 proposed to delegate to the Irish Assembly ; all questions of 
 Imperial policy were still to be left to the Imperial Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 There was nothing very startling, very daringly innovating, 
 in this scheme. In most of the dependencies of Great 
 Britain, Home Eule systems of some kind were already esta- 
 blished. In Canada, in the Australian colonies, the prin- 
 ciple might be seen at work upon a large scale ; upon a small 
 scale it was to be studied nearer home in the neighbouring 
 
218 IB ELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Isle of Man. One of the chief objections raised to the 
 neyf proposal by those who thought it worth while to raise 
 any objections at all, was that it would be practically im- 
 possible to decide the border-line between local affairs and 
 Imperial affairs. The answer to this is, of course, that what 
 has not been found impossible, or indeed exceedingly difficult, 
 in the case of the American Kepublic and its component 
 States, or in the case of England and her American and 
 Australasian colonies, need not be found to present unsurpass- 
 able difficulties in the case of Great Britain and Ireland. But 
 this demand, modest as it was, aroused the wildest indigna- 
 tion and the most vigorous opposition in England. English 
 journalists and politicians alike mistook the importance of the 
 movement. They cried out almost unanimously that England 
 would never listen to such a demand, that it was no use 
 making it, as it would never be entertained or even investi- 
 gated. 
 
 This attitude of uncompromising refusal only served to 
 give further strenr;th to the Home Eulers. * If the Home 
 Eule theory,' says Mr. Lecky, ' brings with it much embarrass- 
 ment to English statesmen, it is at least a theory which is 
 within the limits of the Constitution, which is supported by 
 means that are perfectly loyal, legitimate, and which, like 
 every other theory, must be discussed and judged upon its 
 merits.' This was exactly what English statesmen and 
 politicians sternly refused to do in the early years of the 
 decade of 1870. They would have none of the Home Eule 
 theory. They would not adnnt that it could possibly come 
 within the limits of a constitutional question. ' Home Eule 
 never could and never shall be granted, so what is the use of 
 asking it ? ' they said. 
 
 This was the temper in which Home Eule was at first 
 received in and out of Parliament. Even much later, 
 politicians who piqued themselves on being practical, and 
 who had been gradually forced to consider the possibility, if 
 not the necessity, of some scheme of local government for 
 Ireland, still strove to fight off the consideration of the ques- 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 219 
 
 tion by saying, ' What is the use of discussing the question of 
 Home Eule until you who support it present us with a clear 
 and definite plan for our consideration ? ' 
 
 This form of argument was hardly less unreasonable than 
 the other form of uncompromising antagonism. The sup- 
 porters of Home Eule very fairly answered, ' We maintain 
 the necessity for establishing a system of local government 
 in Ireland. That cannot be done without the Government ; 
 till, therefore, the Government is willing to admit that Home 
 Eule is a question to be entertained at all, it is no use bring- 
 ing forward any particular plans. Wlaen it is once admitted 
 that some system of Home Eule must be established in 
 Ireland, then will be the time for bringing forward legislative 
 schemes and plans, and out of the multiplicity of ideas and 
 suggestions creating a complete and cohesive whole.' 
 
 The principle of Home Eule obtains in every State in the 
 American Union, though the plan of Home Eule in each 
 particular State is widely different. The principle of Home 
 Eule obtains in every great colony of the Crown, but the 
 plan pursued by each colony is of a very different kind. 
 Now that the people of the two countries have practically 
 agreed together to allow Ireland to manage for herself her 
 own local affairs, it will be found very easy to shape a scheme 
 exactly deciding the form which the conceded Home Eule is 
 to take. But to bring forward the completed scheme before 
 a common basis of negotiation was established would have 
 been more the duty of a new Abbe Sieyes, with a new theory 
 of irregular verbs, than of a practical and serious politician. 
 
 But, whether English statesmen liked it or not, were 
 compromising or uncompromising in their attitude towards it, 
 the Home Eule movement was an accomplished fact. Every 
 day increased the popular interest and the popular support 
 accorded to the new organisation. After the General Election 
 of 1874, some sixty members were returned for Irish con- 
 stituencies who had stood before their constituents as Home 
 Eulers. Most of them were w^hat would be called to-day 
 very moderate Home Eulers. Indeed, many of the names in 
 
220 IRELAND SINGE THE UNION 
 
 that sixty would not suggest to the politician of to-day the 
 idea of any very active or very daring political reputation. 
 But for a time the Home Eule party in Parliament appeared 
 a very formidable body, indeed, in the eyes of English 
 Ministers and English members of Opposition. But with all 
 his sixty men, and all his own ability and eloquence, and 
 with all the enthusiasm of the country behind him, and with 
 all the strength that lies in a new movement, Mr. Butt did 
 not make much use of his opportunities. The Home Eule 
 party was in existence, but its existence was not an active one. 
 Mr. Butt and his followers had proved the force of the desire 
 for some sort of National Government in Ireland, but the 
 strength of the movement they had created now called for 
 stronger leaders. A new man was coming into Irish political 
 life who was destined to be the most remarkable Irish leader 
 since O'Connell. 
 
 Shortly after the General Election of 1874, a vacancy 
 caused by a Government appointment left Dublin County Open 
 to a contest. A young Irish Protestant landlord came forward 
 to fight for the seat as a Home Rule candidate. At that time 
 little or nothing was known in Ireland of the new man who 
 was to become the leader of the Irish people. Mr. Parnell 
 was a member of the same family as the English poet, 
 Parnell, and the two Parnells, father and son, John and 
 Henry, who had stood by Grattan to the last in the struggle 
 against the Union. He was the grand-nephew of Sir Henry 
 Parnell, the first Lord Congleton, the advanced Eeformer and 
 the friend of Lord Grey and Lord Melbourne. He had been 
 educated entirely in England. He had been for some time at 
 Cambridge University, and had travelled much in America. 
 In 1871 he had settled down on his estates in Avondale, 
 within whose boundaries is to be found Moore's Vale of Avoca 
 with its meeting waters, and was apparently about to content 
 himself with the career of an Irish country gentleman. But 
 it would have been as possible for a Napoleon to remain a 
 simple sub -lieutenant as for Mr. Parnell to pass his days as a 
 quiet country gentleman. So his unsuccessful Dublin contest 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 221 
 
 of 1874 brought him for the first time into pubUc notice in 
 Ireland. 
 
 It is curious to have to record that when Mr. Parnell 
 addressed his first meeting in the Dubhn Eotunda he was 
 exceedingly nervous, and practically broke down, so that, we 
 are told, the persons who were present on the occasion 
 prophesied of him that if he ever got into Parliament he 
 would only play the part of a silent member. In 1875 Mr. 
 Parnell stood again, on the death of John Martin, as candidate 
 for Meath, and was successfully returned after a stiff contest. 
 That Meath election marks the date of a new and important 
 epoch in the histories of Ireland and England. 
 
 At first Mr. Parnell attracted absolutely no notice in the 
 House of Commons ; one member of the numbers who were 
 simply regarded as the rank and file, and whose position in 
 the representative assembly was of little importance to them- 
 selves, and of no importance to anyone else. Presently, 
 however, Mr. Parnell began to force himself a little upon 
 public attention. He began to ask questions, to make speeches, 
 to show he had a very keen and ready appreciation of the 
 duties of Parliamentary life, and a very remarkable power of 
 assimilating and interpreting the rules of the House itself. 
 His name began to be talked about. English members talked 
 with some curiosity of the pale slight young man who sat for 
 an Irish constituency, and who was beginning to cause some 
 ferment among the Irish representatives in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 The presence of the member for Meath seemed to be 
 quickening the Irish Parliamentary party into a new existence, 
 and animating it with a fresh and unexpected activity. Mr. 
 Butt's placid leadership, his well-ordered and regulated field 
 nights for the discussion of Irish questions, which were 
 immediately allowed to drop into complete oblivion until the 
 next set scene was ready, had reconciled English members 
 very much to the presence of the Home Eule party in the 
 House of Commons. It did no harm ; it took up a night 
 now and then, it is true ; but it had one or two good speakers 
 
222 IBELANB SINCE THE UNION 
 
 — its leader in especial was a very eloquent man — its members 
 were many of them pleasant enough, and so the English 
 parties on both sides of the House had come to tolerate the 
 Home Eulers, and to listen to their periodical display of 
 patriotism with a kind of good-humoured compassion. All 
 this easy-going, jog-trot, old order of things was now under- 
 going a change beneath their very eyes, and the change was 
 due to the agitating presence of the young man who repre- 
 sented Meath. 
 
 In 1877 the House first came definitely into conflict with 
 the new factor in Irish politics, when the Home Eule members 
 made a determined stand against the principle of bringing on 
 important business late at night, or rather early in the 
 morning. On this point they fought vigorously, employing 
 all the rules of the House that assisted them ; moving the 
 adjournment of the debate and the adjournment of the House 
 alternately, and very seriously interfering with the old Minis- 
 terial privilege of rushing work unnoticed through the House 
 of Commons at an unseemly hour in the morning. The House 
 of Commons, as a body, bitterly resented the action of Mr. 
 Parnell and those who acted with him, and sought to express 
 its resentment in its time-honoured, old-fashioned way, and 
 the time-honoured, old-fashioned way failed utterly, as such 
 ways will sometimes when applied unwisely to new conditions 
 which are too strong for them. 
 
 In old days a member of the House who pursued any line 
 of policy unpopular to the majority was rapidly howled and 
 shouted into silence. The majority, to do it justice, did its 
 very best to howl and shout Mr. Parnell down, but failed 
 hopelessly. It had howled and shouted down Sir Charles 
 Dilke and Mr. Auberon Herbert a few years before when these 
 two members proclaimed themselves Eepubhcans to an aston- 
 ished and insulted Senate ; but Mr. Parnell and his half-dozen 
 colleagues were not to be howled or shouted down. If the 
 House shouted and howled while they were talking so much 
 the worse for the House, and so much the greater waste of 
 time. They went on talking till the House was tired, or they 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 223 
 
 quietly or composedly moved motions of adjournment, wliicli 
 had to be tested by a process of long divisions, and which 
 could not be howled or shouted out of existence. 
 
 The term ' obstruction ' has been applied very frequently 
 and very angrily to the policy which Mr. Parnell and his 
 followers pursued then, and to the policy which Mr. Parnell 
 and his increasing number of followers have had occasion to 
 pursue from time to time in the years that came after. 
 Indeed, there appears to be a kind of popular, loose im- 
 pression abroad that obstruction was invented by the Parnel- 
 lites ; that until the unlucky hour which introduced the 
 member for Meath into the House of Commons such things 
 as talking against time, dilatory motions, and the whole 
 machinery of obstruction had never been employed — had 
 never been so much as heard of. As a matter of fact it had 
 often been employed before, with good effect, long before Mr. 
 Parnell ever came into the House of Commons. Mr. Glad- 
 stone himself had once announced his determination of 
 opposing an obnoxious measure by every means which the 
 forms of the House permitted to him. The Tory party had 
 often enough shown themselves to be past masters in the art 
 of obstruction. A very gifted and brilliant Irish politician, 
 Sir John Pope Hennessy, recently Governor of the Mauritius, 
 was, during the period of his successful Parliamentary life, 
 more than once conspicuous for the skill and ability of his 
 obstructive tactics. In point of fact, obstruction, like 
 everything else beneath the sun, was not a new method of 
 Parliamentary warfare. The Irish members did not invent 
 obstruction. It had been practised often before, for special 
 purposes, by Liberals and Tories alike. But they applied the 
 method with considerable ingenuity and consistence. 
 
 Equally ignorant, equally unfair, is the popular, loose 
 impression that Mr. Parnell obstructed for the pure joy in 
 obstruction, merely for the pleasure of delaying business — any 
 business — and without any definite purpose whatever. This 
 is, of course, so amazing, so astounding a misconception, that 
 it seems extraordinary that it ever should be necessary to 
 
224 IRELAND SINCE THE TTNION 
 
 contradict it. The obstruction of 1877 was levelled against a 
 most unjust and unbusinesslike method of going through 
 Parliamentary work, and one which pressed with particular 
 unfairness upon Irish members. The opposition which Mr. 
 Parnell and those who sided with him raised to the Prison 
 Code, and to the Army and Navy Mutiny Bills, rendered a 
 most signal service to all those Bills. ' Whoever,' says Mr. 
 A. M. Sullivan, * will take into his hand the Prison Code of 
 this country, and the Army and Navy Mutiny Bills as they 
 stood before Mr. Parnell and his audacious band began opera- 
 tions on them in March 1877, and compare those three codes 
 with what they were as they emerged from that purifying 
 ordeal, will be struck with amazement and admiration.' 
 
 But the worst of it is, that the hostile critics of Mr. 
 Parnell and his friends and his followers never will take the 
 trouble to inquire into the accuracy of any of their allegations. 
 The soldier who wears the English uniform, the sailor who 
 serves in the English navy, whether he be English, Irish, 
 Scotch, or Welsh, have the best of reasons to be grateful to 
 Mr. Parnell and his allies for the beneficial changes which 
 they introduced into the Government measures. A record of 
 the debate on the Prison Bills tells the same tale. 
 
 One of the most well-lmown cases of early obstruction 
 belongs to the famous South African debate ; and there are few 
 Englishmen now who will not be inclined to regret that the 
 efforts of Mr. Parnell and his followers on that occasion did 
 not prove successful. That was one of the few occasions on 
 which the members of the Irish party did not fight their 
 fight alone. They had with them the leading lights of the 
 English Eadical party below the gangway. Sir Charles Dilke, 
 Mr. Leonard Courtney, and Mr. Edward Jenkins — who was 
 then a Eadical and a Home Ruler, though he has now become 
 a Conservative and an enemy to Home Rule — fought in the 
 South African debate as vigorously as any of the Irish 
 members, and were as fertile in the employment of the 
 resources of obstruction. 
 
 The Bill over which the battle was fought was Lord 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 225 
 
 C irnarvon's South African Confederation Bill, v/liicli provided 
 facilities for the voluntary union of the Colonies, and for the 
 appointment of a Governor-General, a Ministry, a Legislative 
 Council, and a House of Assembly, each Council to be pre- 
 sided over by a Chief Executive officer. The Bill was intro- 
 duced in the Lords, through which it passed rapidly enough, 
 and came down to the Commons. Before it had reached its 
 second reading, news came of the annexation of the Transvaal 
 by Sir Theophilus Shepstone, the British Commissioner in 
 South Africa. The Bill and the annexation were alike strenu- 
 ously opposed by Mr. Leonard Courtney, Sir Charles Dilke, 
 and Mr. Edward Jenkins, as involving a complete reversal of 
 the policy of twenty years previously, when the Orange River 
 territory had been given up. 
 
 The opponents of the Bill urged — and urged with a wisdom 
 which proved prophetic— that the annexation would involve 
 the country in increased expenditure, and inevitable war. 
 Some of the Lisli members acting with Mr. Parnell, in their 
 position as members of an Imperial body, agreed with the 
 English Radicals, and supported them with all their strength 
 and fought the fight as stubbornly as they could. They were 
 bitterly opposed to the Bill and to the annexation, and they 
 were determined to combat both by all the means in their 
 power. The old House of Commons tradition that Lish 
 members should only interfere on Irish questions, and should 
 leave great Imperial matters to be settled by the English 
 members alone, was in itself an ingenious argument for 
 Home Rule ; but it was not one which Irish members, com- 
 pelled to attend an English Parliament, were bound to act 
 upon. So J\Ir. Parnell and his followers steadily opposed the 
 Bill in Committee step by step, stage by stage, and point by 
 point. 
 
 At the end of July there was a sitting of then unparalleled 
 length, which endured for exactly twenty- six hours. Other 
 and longer records have since completely defeated this ; but at 
 the time it was one of the longest sittings the House of Com- 
 mons had ever held, and it was looked upon as little less than 
 
 Q 
 
226 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 a prodigy and a portent ; and a portent it certainly was. 
 Motion after motion of adjournment was made, divided on, 
 and defeated, the temper of the House with every division 
 proving hotter and angrier, and the ParnelHtes more and more 
 determined. In the course of the struggle Mr. Butt seized an 
 opportunity for severing himself from the unpopular action of 
 his fellow-members, and of practically ending his own career 
 as a possible leader of an Irish party. He repudiated the claim 
 of the Irisli members who were acting with Mr. Parnell to re- 
 present the Irish party ; and he declared that if he thought 
 they did he would retire from political life altogether. ' I 
 would retire,' he said, ' from Irish politics, and from a public 
 broil in which no man can take part with dignity to himself 
 or advantage to his country.' 
 
 It mattered very little then what opinion Mr. Butt might 
 hold or express to Mr. Parnell and to those who thought and 
 acted with him. Mr. Butt's career was coming to an end 
 with such services as he had rendered. His leadership had 
 done little to advance the cause of the country, and if his words 
 of renunciation gained for him the applause of the English 
 benches, they had no effect in guiding the conduct or affecting 
 the policy of Mr. Parnell and the party that was growing up 
 around him. In the end, of course, numbers triumphed, and 
 the unlucky South Africa Bill became laAv. 
 
 The obstruction, if it had been successful, would have pre- 
 vented an unfortunate war and much bloodshed, and some 
 humiliating defeats, and some ignominious treaties. It was 
 silenced by the sheer force of numbers, and from that time forth 
 any comment that any member of the advanced Irish party 
 offered upon any measure was described as a systematic policy 
 of obstruction. The obstruction of 1877 had, however, one 
 good effect. It brought to the front rank of Irish politics the 
 most remarkabl ^ Irish politician of the century, and gave the 
 Irish people what they had been long looking for, and what 
 they had been long looking for in vain — a leader who was 
 worthy of the cause. 
 
 Any history of that wild and stormy period of obstruction 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 227 
 
 would be incompletG which failed to do justice to the abil";} , 
 the courage, and the loyalty of Mr. Biggar. When Mr. Pai - 
 nell was still a young, almost unknown and untried, member 
 of the House of Commons, unsifted in the perilous enterprise 
 of facing hostile and howling majorities, Mr. Biggar sat by 
 his side, faithfully and undauntedly, through all the brunt of 
 the battle. In one of the best modern historical novels in the 
 English language — ' The Cloister and the Hearth '—the hero 
 is comforted, through a long period of sorrow, strife, and 
 danger, by a gallant companion, who shares his sufferings, 
 helps him to face his dangers, fights his enemies, and at all 
 times and seasons is clapping him encouragingly on the back, 
 and repeating to him the watchword, ' Courage, camarade, le 
 diable est mort ! ' 
 
 In the same spirit of gallant brotherhood Mr, Biggar occu- 
 pied his place by the young man who was fighting his first 
 fights in a hostile assembly. With imperturbable composure, 
 with unalterable good humour, with an apparently mar rellous 
 and unwearying staying-power, Mr. Biggar proved himself the 
 very ideal lieutenant of the leader of a small minority against 
 overwhelming odds. Those who remember that wild night 
 ten years ago think even now, with unfeigned amazement, of 
 the composed way in which, at four o'clock on that stormy 
 morning, Mr. Biggar quietly adjourned to the library to seek 
 a little needful slumber, and presently came back, after a due 
 interval of time, as fresh as ever, to carry on the fight. That 
 South African night might not inappropriately be regarded as 
 the birth night of a new Irish Parliamentary j^arty. 
 
 Meanwhile all dispute or discussion with regard to the 
 leadership of Mr. Butt was settled by the death of Mr. Butt 
 himself in 1879, and Mr. Shaw was chosen leader in his stead. 
 Mr. Shaw became leader in difficult times. The Land question 
 was coming up again. Mr. Butt, shortly before his death, 
 had predicted its reappearance, and been laughed at for his 
 prophecy, but he was soon proved to be right. The condition 
 of the peasantry was still very bad, their tenure of land pre- 
 carious. A new land agitation was inaugurated by a new 
 
 Q-2 
 
^28 IRELAND SINCE THE UNI ON 
 
 man. Mr. Michael Davitt was the son of an evicted tenant. 
 He had lost his arm while a boy in a machine accident in 
 Lancashire. When a young man he joined the Fenian move- 
 ment, was arrested, and sentenced to fifteen years' penal ser- 
 vitude. Seven years later he was let out on ticket-of-leave. 
 During his imprisonment he had thought much of the means 
 of bettering the condition of Ireland, and had come to the 
 conclusion that by constitutional agitation, not by force of 
 arms, the improvement could be best accomplished. Mr. 
 Davitt went to America, planned out there a scheme of land 
 organisation, and returned to Ireland to put it into practice. 
 He found the condition of the Irish peasant very wretched. 
 For three years the harvest had been going from bad to worse, 
 and there was d?aiger of a serious famine. Mr. Davitt and 
 his friends organised land meetings in various parts of Ireland ; 
 the new scheme was eagerly responded to by the tenant farmers 
 in all directions. 
 
 In October, 1879, the Irish National Land League was 
 formed. Mr. Davitt and some other Land Leaguers were 
 prosecuted for speeches made at some of the land meetings, 
 but the prosecutions were abandoned. Mr. Parnell went to 
 America to raise funds to meet the distress ; the Lord Mayor 
 of Dublin, Mr. E. D. Gray, M.P., raised a furd at home ; so 
 did the Duchess of Marlborough. The Government passed 
 certain relief measures. The severity of the famine was stayed, 
 but neither the Government nor the public and private relief 
 was able to prevent a great amount of suffering. Such was 
 the condition of affairs in Ireland when Lord Beaconsfield 
 wrote his letter to the Duke of Marlborough, in which he at- 
 tacked the Liberal party for their compromises with Irish 
 ' faction and disaffection. 
 
 Quite unexpectedly, in the early March of 1880, Lord 
 Beaconsfield issued a political manifesto. The political 
 manifesto took the form of a letter to the Duke of Marl- 
 borough, in which Lord Beaccnsfield announced his intention 
 of promptly dissolving Parliament, and of appealing to the 
 constituencies for their verdict upon his policy and the policy 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 229 
 
 of his opponents. The letter covered a vast variety of topics, 
 but it was practically a hostile pronouncement against the 
 Irish Parliamentary party, then mider the nominal leader- 
 ship of Mr. Shaw and the virtual leadership of Mr. Parnell. 
 It was no question of foreign policy which drove Lord Beacons- 
 field into an appeal to the country, which cannot be described 
 as premature, but which was certainly unexpected at the time 
 when it was made. Ireland was the theme of Lord Beacons- 
 field's letter. The difficulty about Ireland was the first topic 
 touched upon by him in the last letter of political importance 
 he was ever destined to write. Lord Beaconsfield frankly 
 recognised the growth of the Home Eule movement, and 
 characterised it as dangerous, ' scarcely less disastrous than 
 pestilence or famine.' According to Lord Beaconsfield it had 
 been insidiously supported by the Liberal party, who sought 
 to destroy the * Imperial character ' of England by a ' policy 
 of decomposition,' which Lord Beaconsfield called upon all 
 ' men of light and leading ' to struggle against. 
 
 As we read this letter now, at a distance of seven years from 
 the time when it was first given to the world, it is difficult to 
 avoid smiling at the way in which history repeated itself, 
 only with a slight eccentric transformation of the roles of 
 die two great parties in England. Then, in 1880, it was 
 Lord Beaconsfield who thundered and anathematised against 
 the v/ily and treacherous Liberals who were dallying with the 
 seditious phantom of Home Eule, and who were going to give 
 up the empire to chaos and old night, in order to please tne 
 Irish people and the handful of their representatives. 
 
 Seven years have passed by ; new Ministries have come 
 into power and have fallen from power ; and there is a fresh 
 appeal to the country impending, and we hear over again the 
 same accusation of dalliance with Irish disaffection and alli- 
 ance with Irish leaders. But this cry comes this time from 
 Liberal as well as from Tory lips. Certain of the men whom 
 Lord Beaconsfield so vehemently accused of a desire to 
 disintegrate the empire, and to destroy England's Imperial 
 character by a policy of decomposition, in which they were 
 
230 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 assisted by Ireland and the Irish members, are now applymg 
 tlie same thing as vigorously and as violently to Mr. Glad- 
 stone's followers and Mr. Gladstone's lieutenants in the 
 leadership of the Kadical party. It is the Eadicals, we are 
 iold now, who are pledged to the hilt to the Irish party, who 
 have packed cards with treason, and who are destroying the 
 empire by a policy of decomposition. The words are the 
 words of Lord Beaconsfield, but the voice is the voice of Mr. 
 Chamberlain. But whatever language is addressed by one 
 English party to another the position of the Irish people and 
 their leaders remains the same. Their power has changed, 
 however, marvellously. 
 
 When Lord Beaconsfield issued his fiery letter to the 
 Duke of Marlborough the Irish party in the House of Commons 
 was few in numbers, was, as a body, feeble of purpose, was, 
 indeed, a house divided against itself. Mr. Shaw, who was 
 its nominal leader—' Sensible Shaw,' as he was called by his 
 friends and admirers — was regarded by everyone as a solid, 
 practical man of business ; but he was not the kind of man 
 wdio was calculated to shine as a leader of an active and 
 energetic political minority in an assembly like the House of 
 Commons. Mr. Parnell was the real lender; and round Mr. 
 Parnell all that was strong in purpose and in principle of the 
 Irish Parliamentary party was forming itself into a group 
 that became the core of a later and more successful party. 
 
 Lord Beaconsfield, with the keen political foresight that 
 was usually characteristic of him, saw the real strength of 
 the little band of men that were clustered round Mr. Parnell ; 
 but his insight was not keen enough to allow him to estimate 
 that strength at its full value. He saw that tliey were dan- 
 gerous, but he made the mistake of thinking that they could 
 be crushed out of existence ; and he accordingly struck at 
 them with all his strength in his pronouncement to the Duke 
 of Marlborough. The Irish party promptly took up the 
 challenge. A manifesto was immediately drawn up by the 
 Irish leaders, and circulated broadcast wherever an Irish 
 voter was to be found, calling upon every man who believed 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 231 
 
 in the national cause and the national leaders to lend a 
 hand in flinging the Tory party from office. That call was 
 responded to with a promptness which must have appeared 
 menacing to any English statesmen of either party who were 
 watching the contest with sufficient calmness to appreciate 
 the gravity of the appeal to the Irish Parliamentary party, 
 'and the answer which the Irish voters gave to it. 
 
 At the time undoubtedly the sympathies of a large portion 
 of the Irish people in England went with the Liberal party ; 
 but they recorded their votes for the Liberal candidates on 
 this occasion for the first time, not because they were Liberal 
 candidates but because they were opposed to the Tories. The 
 Irish vote throughout the United Kingdom was acting in ac- 
 cordance with the advice and entreaty of men to whom a 
 scornful and irritated majority denied the right of speaking 
 for the Irish people at all. In giving that advice the Irish 
 -leaders acted wisely ; in following it the Irish people acted 
 'admirably. It was essential at that time for the safety of the 
 national movement, for the integrity of the national party, 
 that the challenge of Lord Beaconsfield should be taken up, 
 and that the Tory Government should be driven from office. 
 The personal leanings of Irishmen in England to one or other 
 of the great parties were wisely put aside in recognition of the 
 fact that it was far more important to furthei- Irish interests 
 than to pay heed to the quarrels of Whig and Tory. There 
 were plenty of Irishmen in England who, if they had been 
 left untrammelled by any other consideration, would gladly 
 have recorded their vote in favour of the Tory candidate, but 
 who, in obedience to the appeal of lea;ders whose judgment 
 they relied upon, whose action they admired, and whose 
 opinions they supported, went with a light heart to the polling- 
 tooth and voted for the Liberal representative. 
 '■ Undoubtedly the Irish vote, given as it thus was, practi- 
 cally solid for the Liberal party, counted for much in the 
 result of the General Election. Undoubtedly, in the face of 
 -the advantage of gaining that vote, English Liberal statesmen 
 and Liberal politicians of all classes said a good deal more or 
 
'Sd2 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 a good deal less than they precisely meant on the Irish ques- 
 tion. Either they expressed their sympathy with a warmth 
 which cooled down with amazing rapidity when they fomid 
 tliemselves in office, or they discreetly kept their disapproval 
 of the Irish demands well in the background until the contest 
 was safely over. 
 
 The result of the election greatly altered the appearance 
 of the Irish party in Parliament. The action of Ireland showed 
 decisively and conclusively that the heart of tlie Irish people 
 was with Mr. Parnell and the advanced men who supported 
 him, rather than with the moderate Home Rulers who were 
 represented by Mr. Shaw. Mr. Parnell himself was elected 
 for no less than three constituencies, and decided to take his 
 place in the House of Commons as the representative of the 
 city of Cork. The story of the Cork election is one of the 
 most remarkable in the whole history of the General Election 
 of 1880. We know now how largely Mr. Parnell's candida- 
 ture for Cork, and in consequence his success there, was due 
 to the interest and the action of one of his most brilliant and 
 gifted lieutenants. The result had an eiTect almost beyond 
 the hopes of the advanced party. The seat was a diflicult one 
 to win ; and it was won under conditions which made victory 
 exceptionally diflicult and exceptionally advantageous. It 
 impressed the sense of Mr. Parnell's popularity through Ire- 
 land upon Englishmen almost more than all the other elec- 
 tions put together. In nearly all the other elections Mr. 
 Parnell's candidates were as a matter of course returned, and 
 when the Iri&h party assembled at St. Stephen's it was seen 
 that ]^-Ir. Parnell could count upon tlie alliance and the adhe- 
 sion of a la] ge majority of those who had come to Westminster 
 as members of the Home Rule Party. 
 
 The division of the party between those who sided' with 
 Mr. Parnell and those who held by Mr. Shaw made itself at 
 once apparent. IMr. Parnell and his followers were of opinion 
 that it was the duty of any Irish ii minal party in the English 
 House of Commons to seat itself in opposition to any Govern- 
 ment, Whig or Tory, that might be in office. The Irish vote 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 233 
 
 tad helped to return the Liberals to office, not so much from 
 devotion to the Liberals as in order to answer Lord Beacons- 
 field's challenge. The good intentions of the Liberal party 
 had, indeed, been freely expressed towards Ireland ; but the 
 Irish members who were with Mr. Parnell were not quite sure 
 of the value of these good intentions, which come so readily 
 into the political mind at the time of an election, and which fade 
 away so often without any fulfilment or performance. Those, 
 therefore, who followed Mr. Parnell, who had already been 
 formally chosen as leader of the Irish Parliamentary party at 
 a meeting in Dublin, seated themselves below the gangway on 
 the Opposition side of the House. Mr. Shaw and the minority 
 of moderate Home Eulers took up their places, as loyal ad- 
 herents of the Government, below the gangway on the Minis- 
 terial side of the House. 
 
 The new Irish party, which followed the lead of Mr. 
 Parnell, has been often represented by the humourist as a 
 sort of Falstaffian ' ragged regiment,' and its members de- 
 scribed as rivals of Lazarus in the painted cloth, to whom the 
 mere necessities of life were luxuries, to obtain which they 
 would follow any leader or advocate any cause. From dint 
 of repetition this has come to be almost an article of faith 
 in some quarters. Yet it is grotesquely without foundation. 
 A large proportion of Mr. Parnell's followers were journalists. 
 Journalists, unfortunately, seldom amass laige fortunes, but 
 the occupation is not usually considered dishonourable by 
 Lnglishmen, and the journalisis who belonged to the Irish 
 party were, to put it mildly, sufficiently intelligent to be able 
 to obtain their livelihood by their pens. 
 
 Mr. T. P. O'Connor, for example, was a young Irishman 
 who had come to London, and was making his way in English 
 journalism. He was a strong Eadical, and had gained a 
 reputation by an exceedingly able ' Life of Lord Beaconsfield.' 
 Mr. Sexton, who was destined to prove himself one of the 
 foremost debaters in the House of Commons, began life in 
 the employment of the Waterford and Limerick Piailway 
 Company. When he was some twenty years of age he 
 
231 IRELAND &1NCE THE UNION 
 
 became a writer for the Nation, a newspaper which had 
 upheld through long years and under disheartening conditions 
 the traditions of Nationalism which had made it famous in 
 1848. He had been a writer for the Nation for some years 
 when the Geneml Election came. Mr. Sexton, like most 
 young Irish journalists who ever wrote for the Nation, had 
 taken the keenest interest in Irish politics. He was sent to 
 Sligo to oppose Colonel King Harman, an influential landlord 
 and a nominal Home Euler. So great was the popular feeling 
 for the growing Nationalist party, that an almost unknown 
 young writer with the eloquent tongue was returned by a 
 triumphant majority over the wealthy landlord, his opponent, 
 who had come to regard a seat for Sligo as an item of his 
 personal property. Mr. T. D. Sullivan was another Irish 
 journalist, the owner of the Nation, eminent in Ireland, and 
 aiot in Ireland alone, as a true poet of the people. 
 
 Mr. Healy was not returned to Parliament at the 
 ■General Election. He did not enter the House of Commons 
 until November, 1880, but he may fairly be described with 
 the party he was so soon to join, and of which he was already 
 a valuable adherent. Mr. Healy came to England at sixteen 
 years of age, a poor young man, with his way to make in the 
 world. Almost self-educated, he had taught himself, beside 
 French and German, Pitman's shorthand, and through his 
 knowledge of phonography he obtained a situation as short- 
 hand clerk in the oftice of the Superintendent of the North- 
 Eastern Kail way at Newcastle, Later on, he came to London 
 as the confidential clerk of a manufactory, and as weekly 
 correspondent of the Nation. In this capacity he made the 
 acquaintance of Mr. Parnell, whom he accompanied on his 
 American tour in 1879. From that time Mr. Healy became 
 one of the most prominent of the young men who were 
 working for the Nationalist cause. He was soon to prove 
 the possession of true political genius, and to become one of 
 the most brilliant and one of the most important of the Irish 
 Parliamentary party. 
 
 Mr. James 'Kelly was a journalist who had been a 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 235 
 
 soldier and a special correspondent in all parts of the world. 
 He served in the Foreign Legion of the French army against 
 the Arabs at Oran, under Maximilian in Mexico, and had 
 narrowly escaped being shot by the Spaniards at Cuba. He 
 was yet to peril his life in the red deserts of the Soudan. 
 After accompanying the Emperor of Brazil on his tour 
 through America, and following the fortunes of the war with 
 the Sioux chief, Sitting Bull, Mr. 'Kelly came to England, 
 and at once took an active part in the Home Eule movement 
 then inaugurated by Mr. Butt. 
 
 Another journalist, one of the most able among the Irish 
 members, was Mr. E. D. Gray, the proprietor of the Freeman's 
 Journal, probably the most valuable newspaper property in 
 Ireland. Mr. William O'Brien, one of the most trenchant 
 writers and sincerest patriots who ever served Ireland, entered 
 Parliament later. He and Mr. Justin M'Carthy were both 
 journalists. 
 
 Those who were not journalists in the Irish party were 
 generally what is called well-to-do. Mr. Dillon had inherited 
 property from his father. Mr. Biggar had retired from a very 
 successful connection with the North of Ireland bacon trade. 
 Mr. Eichard Power was a country gentleman of position ; so 
 was Mr. ]\Iulhallen Marum ; so was Mr. John Eedmond ; 
 so was Mr. William Eedmond, who was elected later ; so 
 was Mr. Shell ; so was Mr. Metge. Mr. Arthur O'Connor had 
 been in the War Office for many laborious years, and had re- 
 tired upon a pension. Dr, Commins was a successful Liver- 
 pool lawyer, Mr. John Barry was a prosperous business man ; 
 so was Mr. Dawson. Mr. Leamy was a solicitor of independent 
 means. Colonel Nolan was an artillery officer of distinction. 
 One of the most remarkable figures in the ranks of the Irish 
 party was Colonel The 0' Gorman Mali on, with whose career 
 we are already familiar. 
 
 It is obvious, therefore, that the Irish Parliamentary party 
 was a very solid political body, containing within its ranks 
 a large number of men of very remarkable ability, and a 
 very goodly proportion of men of ample means and of position 
 
23G IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 in the conventional social sense. It contained, for its num- 
 bers, a proportion of really admirable speakers, all ready, 
 many genuinely eloquent, which either of the two great 
 parties might have envied. 
 
 The Liberal party, whose triumphant return to office was 
 due in so large a measure to the Irish vote, was not a little 
 surprised at the attitude taken up by the Irish Parliamentary 
 party who followed Mr. Parnell. They could not understand 
 why the party who helped to vote them into office should sit 
 in opposition. They did not appreciate the full force of the 
 new departure. They did not realise that henceforth there 
 was to be an Irish party in the House of Commons which 
 would not pledge itself in any way to either of the two great 
 English parties, but would fight entirely for its own cause, 
 and which was always in opposition to any Government which 
 did not grant full and complete justice to Ireland. 
 
 But though the Irish party sat in opposition to the Liberal 
 party which they had helped to return to power, there did not 
 at first appear to be any likelihood of any serious disunion. 
 In the previous Parliament the Irish members and the Eadical 
 members had been thrown into frequent alliance ; during the 
 General Election the bonds of sympathy between the English 
 Eadicals and the Irish people seemed to have been strength- 
 ened. The Irish vote in England had been given to the 
 Liberal cause. The Liberal speakers and statesmen, without 
 committing themselves to any definite line of policy, had 
 maintained friendly sentiments towards Ireland ; and though, 
 indeed, nothing was said which could be construed into a 
 recognition of the Home Kule claim, still the new Ministry 
 was known to contain men favourable to that claim. 
 
 The Irish members hoped for much from the new Govern- 
 ment ; and, on the other hand, the new Government expected 
 to find cordial allies in all sections of the Irish party. The 
 appointment of Mr. Forster to the Irish Secretaryship was 
 regarded by many Irishmen, especially those allied to Mr. 
 Shaw and his following, as a marked sign of the good inten- 
 tions of the Government towards Ireland. 
 
THE HOME UTILE MOVEMENT 237 
 
 From the very first, however, it became obvious that there 
 was httle chance of any practical friendship between the 
 Liberal party in power and the Irish party in opposition. The 
 opening record of the new Ministry was marked by a series of 
 blunders in their dealings with the various phases of the Irish 
 question. The Queen's Speech contained some important 
 announcements ; but it was remarkable for yet more important 
 omissions. 
 
 The Queen's Speech announced that the Peace Preserva- 
 tion Act would not be renewed. This was a declaration of 
 considerable moment. From her Union with England Ireland 
 had hardly ever been governed by the ordinary law. Since 
 the opening of the century stringent coercive measures of 
 every description had succeeded, accompanied, and overlapped 
 each other with incessant persistence. Now the Government 
 were to boldly attempt to govern Ireland without having re- 
 course to exceptional and repressive legislation. 
 
 The Queen's Speech, however, referred to Ireland only in 
 one other particular — namely, tliat a Bill should be brought 
 in for the extension of the Irish borough franchise. The 
 borough franchise in England was very much lower than in 
 Ireland, the latter system being based upon the old principle 
 still extant in English and Irish counties. Every householder 
 in England exercised the privilege of the franchise, without 
 regard to the value of the house in which he lived. The right 
 to vote was conferred by any place in which he and his family 
 lived, whether lodging, or room separately held. In Ireland, 
 on the contrary, the house in which a man lived had to be 
 of a certain value, had to have a certain rental, before its 
 occupier might exercise the franchise. No house in an Irish 
 borough the yearly rental of which was not 4^. or more could 
 qualify for a vote. 
 
 In England and Ireland alike there was a standard of value 
 which had to be reached before an occupier had the privilege 
 of voting. This condition of things the advocates of the new 
 Eeform Bill proposed to change. But extension of the 
 borough franchise did not seem to the Irish members in 1880 
 
23S IB EL A XI) StXCE TUB UNION 
 
 the most important form that legislation for Ireland could 
 take just then. The country was greatly depressed by its 
 recent suffering ; the number of evictions was beginning to 
 rise enormously. The Irish members thought that the 
 Government should have made some promise to consider the 
 Land question, and above all should have done something to 
 stay the alarming increase of evictions. E victims had in- 
 creased from 463 famihes in 1877, to 980 in 1878, to 1,238 in 
 1879 ; and they were still on the increase, as was shown at 
 the end of 1880, when it was found that 2,110 families were 
 evicted. 
 
 An amendment to the Address was at once brought 
 forward by the Irish party, and debated at some length. 
 The Irish party called for some immediate legislation on 
 behalf of the Land question. Mr. Forster replied, admitting 
 the necessity for some legislation, but declaring that there 
 would not be time for the introduction of any such measure 
 that session. Then the Irish members asked for some tem- 
 porary measure to prevent the evictions which were undoubt- 
 edly rapidly on the increase, and appeals were made to the 
 Government not to lend landlords military aid in carrying 
 out evictions ; but the Chief Secretary answered that while 
 the law existed it was necessary to carry it out, and he could 
 only appeal to both sides to be moderate. 
 
 For a short time matters went on slowly in this manner, 
 the Secret Service vote and the Irish Eelief Bill giving op- 
 portunities for animated debates, in the course of which the 
 Irish Secretary several times declared his belief that the im- 
 proved condition of Ireland would render it unnecessary to 
 resort to many of the old-fashioned methods of governing 
 Ireland. Evictions speedily increased, however, and Mr. 
 O'Connor Power introduced a measure for the purpose of 
 staying evictions. The Government, however, refused this 
 measure, but brought in a Compensation for Disturbance 
 Bill of its own, which embodied some of the points in the 
 Irish Bill. The Bill authorised County Court Judges in 
 Ireland till the end of 1881 to allow compensation to tenants 
 
THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT 239 
 
 evicted for non-payment of rent, in cases where failure of 
 crops had produced the insolvency. 
 
 Mr. Forster described this as nothing more than an 
 extension of the Act of 1870, by making eviction for non- 
 pa3^ment of rent, in cases where tenants were really unable 
 to pay, a disturbance within the meaning of that Act. Mr. 
 Forster moved the second reading on June 25, denied that 
 it was a concession to the anti-rent agitation, and denounced 
 in forcible terms the outrages then taking place in Ireland. 
 At the same time he admitted that the annual rate of evic- 
 tions had already more than doubled the average rate in 
 1877. This was the point at which the difference between 
 the Irish people and the Government became strongly marked. 
 It was destined to become more marked yet. From that 
 moment for live years the natural Knks between the English 
 Liberals and the Irish Nationalists were severed. 
 
 OHAPTEE XX. 
 
 THE LAND LEAGUE. 
 
 In order to properly understand the exact position of affairs 
 in Ireland at the moment when Mr. Gladstone took office in 
 1880, it is no harm to recapitulate some of the events that took 
 place under the preceding Ministry, or even earlier. When 
 Mr. Gladstone went out of office in 1874, he had passed two 
 great Irish measures, and had tripped himself and his ad- 
 ministration up over a third. The measure which overthrew 
 him was the Irish University Education Bill ; the measures 
 which he carried disestablished the Irish Church, and created 
 the Land Act of 1870. 
 
 The Land Act of 1870 endeavoured, first, to give the tenant 
 some security of tenure ; second, to encourage the making of 
 improvements throughout the country ; and third, to promote 
 the establishment of a peasant proprietorship. It sought to 
 further the first and second of these aims by legalising th© 
 
240 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Ulster tenant right on farms where it ah'eacly existed, and by 
 allowing compensation for disturbance and for improvements 
 to evicted tenants on farms where the Ulster tenant-right 
 system did not prevail. 
 
 Up to this time the Ulster tenant-right custom was not 
 recognised by law, and as it differed widely in different estates, 
 it was not very easy to define strictly. Roughly speaking, 
 however, it maintained, for those who were bound to it by time 
 and tradition, first, that the tenant was not to be evicted so 
 long as he paid his rent and acted properly, his landlord having 
 indeed the right of raising the rent from time to time, though 
 not so high as to destroy the tenant's interest; second, that 
 the tenant who wished to leave his holding had a right to sell 
 his interest in the farm, subject to the landlord's consent to 
 receive a new purchaser as a tenant ; third, that if the land- 
 lord wanted to take the land himself, he must pay a fair sum 
 for the tenant right. 
 
 It may be fairly said that, wherever the Ulster tenant-right 
 custom existed, the relationship between landlord and tenant 
 was reasonably good. On estates w^here the custom or anything 
 like it did not prevail, the tenant had practically no rights as 
 against the landlord. The majority of Irish tenancies were 
 tenancies from year to year. These might at any time be 
 ended by the landlord after due notice. A comparatively 
 small proportion of tenancies were let on leases which gave the 
 tenant security of possession for a considerable period, so 
 long as he could pay the yearly rent, or the landlord did not 
 press too heavily for arrears. In neither case had the tenant 
 any right to claim on eviction compensation for disturbance, 
 or for any improvements he might have made in the land ; and 
 in Ireland, except on a few ' English -managed ' estates, the 
 improvements were always made by the tenants. In the yearly 
 tenancies the landlord had always the power of raising the 
 rent when he pleased ; in estates held on lease he could raise 
 it at the expiration of the lease, and, as a rule, the landlord or 
 his agent always did so raise the rent whenever the exertions 
 of the tenant had made the land of more value than when he 
 had entered it. 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 241 
 
 Undoubtedly one of the reasons for the wretched condition 
 of so many Irish farms and cabins was that the tenant feared, 
 and often justly feared, that the smallest si^^n of well-being, 
 the least evidence of improvement of any kind, would be taken 
 by the landlord or his agent as a sure sign that he might 
 safely raise the rent. Raising the rent .was the one great 
 dread of the tenant. So great was the poverty of the average 
 tenant that, in many cases, it was almost impossible to pay 
 any rent at all, and the prospect of having the existing rent 
 raised was terror. The Irish peasant is, as a rule, profoundly 
 unwilling to emigrate. He loves his land with a passion which 
 defies starvation, and he will make any sacrifices and run any 
 risks to remain at home. Of those who do emigrate, the 
 majority always dream of returning, and many do return, to 
 their native land. The land is the love, but it is also the life, 
 of the Irish peasant. If he remains in Ireland, he has nothing 
 else to live upon, and he is ready to take the land on any terms 
 the landlord chooses to make, trusting to Providence to see 
 him safely through with his rent at the due time, or hoping 
 that the landlord may be found easy-going and unexacting. 
 Furthermore, the Irish peasant is in his heart convinced that 
 the land is really his ; that the landlord to whom he pays his 
 rent and the agent to whom he touches his hat are alike, 
 whatever their nationality, the representatives of a hostile 
 rule, of a coercion which is no conquest. 
 
 Evictions were the great misery of the peasantry. Evic- 
 tions were often for non-payment ofrent, often because the 
 landlord wished to clear the ground, and was anxious to get 
 rid of his tenants whether they paid their rent or not. In the 
 years from 1849 to 1882 inclusive, the evictions have been on 
 an average of more than three thousand families a year. The 
 highest rates of eviction were in 1849 and 1850, the two years 
 immediately following the rising of 1848, when the rates were 
 16,686 and 19,949 families in each year. The rate was at its 
 lowest in 1869, when the number of evicted families was only 
 374. From 1865 to 1878 inclusive, the number of evictions 
 never got into the thousands ; in 1879 they were over 1,000 ; 
 
242 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 m 1880, over 2,000 ; in 1881 and 1882 over 3,000. Tlie Land 
 Act of 1870 did not lessen evictions, as great numbers of the 
 tenantry in all parts of the country were in heavy arrears of rent. 
 In many estates it was practically compulsory for the rent to be 
 in arrears by a process known as the hanging gale, by which the 
 tenant had always a year's or half a year's rent due and hanging 
 over him, thus giving him comjjletely into the landlord's 
 power as regarded eviction. 
 
 One of the objects of the Land Act of 1870 was to create 
 a peasant proprietary, through the clauses known by the name 
 of Mr. Bright. Something of the kind had already existed 
 on a very small scale. When the Irish Church was disesta- 
 blished, the Church Temporalities Commissioners were given 
 the power to aid occupying tenants of Church lands in pur- 
 chasing their holdings when it was wished. These tenants 
 were allowed, on payment of one-fourth of the purchase-money, 
 to leave three-fourths of the purchase-money on mortgage at 
 four per cent., the principal and interest to be repaid in half- 
 yearly payments, extending over a period of thirty-two years. 
 Nearly three-fourths of the tenants occupying Church lands 
 did in fact thus purchase their holdnigs. It was with the in- 
 tention of increasing such facilities for the purchase of hold- 
 ings that the Bright clauses were introduced. A landlord 
 and a tenant might come to an agreement under the Act by 
 which the tenant could purchase his holding, and receive a 
 Landed Estates Court conveyance. 
 
 The very fact, however, that a Landed Estates Court con- 
 veyance is absolutely binding in its character, and gives its 
 possessor an absolute title to the land acquired, to the disre- 
 gard of any subsequent claims that might be made after the 
 sale was effected, made the process a costly one. To prevent 
 any mistake in the transfer of the land, or injury to any third 
 parties, careful investigations had to be made, and elaborate 
 requirements gone through, all of which made the process of 
 transfer costly and troublesome. The expenses were often 
 from ten to thirty per cent, of the price of the farm ; in some 
 extreme cases the cost of the transference was very consider- 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 243 
 
 ably greater than the actual price of the purchased land. 
 Moreover, the tithe rent-charges, quit-rents, and drainage 
 charges, to which most Irish estates are subject, remained 
 with the land instead of being transferred to the money in 
 court, and were a fruitful source of trouble to the new pur- 
 chasers. 
 
 All these various conditions combined to make the work- 
 ing of the Bright clauses far more limited and unsatisfactory 
 than had been intended by their framers. Thus the Act failed 
 practically to establish a system of peasant proprietorship on 
 anything like an extended scale, or indeed on any scale large 
 enough to judge of its working by. It did not give the or- 
 dinary tenant any great degree of security of tenure. It 
 allowed him, indeed, the privilege of going to law with his 
 landlord, but as in most cases the tenant had little or no 
 money, while the landlord could fight out the case from court 
 to court, appeal to the law was a privilege of no great value 
 to the tenant. The chief thing actually accomplished by the 
 Act was the legalising of the excellent Ulster custom. 
 
 The passing of the Land Act, instead of settling the Land 
 question in Ireland, was destined to give it a fresh impetus. 
 The year that saw it passed saw also the formation of an Irish 
 organisation which was to be the cause of bringing every 
 phase of the Irish question more prominently before the notice 
 of England than at any time since O'Connell, if not, indeed, 
 since the Union. On May 19, 1870, two months and a few 
 days before the Land Act became law, a meeting was held in 
 Dublin of representative Irishmen of all opinions, and of all 
 political and religious creeds. The object of the meeting was 
 to form an organisation to advocate the claims of Ireland to 
 some form of Home Government. The words ' Home Eule ' 
 were used by some one, and they became at once the shibbo- 
 leth of the new party. 
 
 The increase of evictions in Ireland, following as it did 
 upon the wide-spread misery caused by the failure of the 
 harvests and the partial famine, had generated — as famine 
 and hunger have always generated— a certain amount of law- 
 
 r2 
 
244 IRELAND STNGE THE UNION 
 
 lessness. Evictions were occasionally resisted with violence ; 
 here and there outrages were committed upon bailiffs, process- 
 servers, and agents. In different places, too, injuries had 
 been inflicted upon the cattle and horses of land-owners and 
 land-agents, cattle had been killed, horses houghed, and sheep 
 mutilated. These offences were always committed at night, 
 and their perpetrators were seldom discovered. There is no 
 need, there should be no attempt, to justify these crimes. But 
 while condemning all acts of violence, whether upon man or 
 beast, it must be remembered that these acts were committed 
 by ignorant peasants of the lowest class, maddened by hunger, 
 want, and eviction, driven to despair by the sufferings of their 
 wives and children, convinced of the utter hopelessness of 
 redress, and longing for revenge. 
 
 It was difficult to get these poor peasants to believe in the 
 good intentions of the Government at any time, and unfortu- 
 nately just then the good intentions of the Government were 
 not very actively displayed. The Compensation for Disturb- 
 ance Bill was carried in the Commons after long debates in 
 which the Irish party strove to make its principles stronger, 
 while the Opposition denounced it as a flagrant infringement 
 of the rights of property. It was sent up to the Lords, where 
 it was rejected on Tuesday, August 3, by a majority of 231. 
 ' The Government answered the appeals of Irish members by 
 refusing to take any steps to make the Lords retract their 
 decision, or to introduce any similar measure that session. 
 From that point the agitation and struggles of the past four 
 years may be said to date. 
 
 It is impossible to estimate how much suffering might 
 have been avoided if the Government had taken a firmer line 
 with the House of Lords in August 1880. The House of 
 Lords is never a serious opponent to the will of a powerful 
 and popular Ministry ; and if it had once been shown that the 
 Government were determined to carry some measure for the 
 relief of evicted tenants, it would have soon ceased to make 
 any stand against it. But though the Government, through 
 the mouth of Mr. Forster, had admitted the alarming increase 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 245 
 
 of evictions and the agitated condition of tlie country, they 
 refused to take any further steps just then. They promised, 
 indeed, to bring in some comprehensive measure next session, 
 and they appointed a Committee to inquire into the condition 
 of the agricultural population of Ireland. On this commission 
 they absolutely refused, in spite of the earnest entreaties of 
 the Irish members, to give any place to any representative of 
 the tenant-farmer's cause. 
 
 This was a curious illustration of the Irish policy of the 
 Government during the early part of its rule. Though the 
 Irish members who followed Mr. Parnell might surely have 
 been regarded as expressing at least the feelings of a very large 
 section of the Irish people, their wishes were as little regarded 
 as if they had represented nothing. It seems difficult to 
 believe that during the whole of Mr. Forster's occupation of 
 the Irish Secretaryship, he never once consulted any member 
 of the Parnellite party on any part of his Irish policy ; never 
 asked their advice, or even their opinion, on any Irish affairs 
 whatever. It is still stranger that he pursued almost the 
 same principle with regard to the Irish members who sat on 
 his own side of the House — moderate men like Mr. Shaw and 
 Major Nolan. 
 
 The speeches of the Land League leaders became more and 
 more hostile to the Government. At a meeting in Kildare, in 
 August, Mr. John Dillon made a speech in which he called 
 upon the young farmers of Ireland to defend evicted Leaguers 
 threatened with eviction. He looked forward to the time 
 when there would be 300,000 men enrolled in the ranks 
 of the Land League ; and when that time came, if the 
 landlords still refused justice, the word would be given 
 for a general strike all over the, country against rent, and 
 then ' all the armies in England would not levy rent in that 
 country.' 
 
 On Tuesday, August 17, Sir Walter Barttelot called the 
 attention of the Chief Secretary to this speech. Mr. Forster 
 described it as wicked and cowardly ; but, while he declined 
 to prosecute Mr, Dillon for it, he announced that the Govern- 
 
24.6 IRELAND SIACU TUB UNION 
 
 ment were watching the Land League speeches very carefully. 
 Mr. Dillon immediately came across from Ireland to reply to 
 the Chief Secretary's attack. 
 
 Mr. Dillon w^as one of the most remarkable men in the 
 national movement. He was the son of John Dillon, the 
 Young Irelander and rebel of 1848, with whose history we 
 have already made ourselves familiar. When the * Young 
 Ireland ' rising failed, John Dillon the elder escaped to 
 France, and afterwards to America, and in later years he 
 came back to Ireland, and was elected to Parliament for the 
 county of Tipperary. He earned an honoura,ble distinction 
 in the House of Commons, where his great aim was to 
 strengthen the alliance between the Irish members and the 
 English Eadicals, and he won the cordial admiration of Mr. 
 John Bright. Mr. Bright, as we have seen, paid eloquent 
 tribute to the memory of John Dillon in a speech which 
 he delivered in Dublin at a banquet which Mr. Dillon had 
 organised to Mr. Bright. Mr. Dillon was to have presided 
 at the banquet, but he died suddenly a few days before it 
 took place. ' I venture to say,' said Mr. Bright, in words 
 which may well be repeated, ' that his sad and sudden removal 
 is a great loss to Ireland. I believe among all her worthy sons 
 Ireland has had no worthier and no nobler son than John 
 Blake Dillon.' Mr. Dillon, the son, was a much more extreme 
 man than his father. He did not display the sympathy with 
 English Radicalism which his father felt, and he appeared to 
 have little or no belief in Parliamentary action. He was quite 
 a young man, and had been elected for the county of Tipperary 
 at the General Election while absent himself in America. 
 
 Mr. Dillon rose in the House of Commons on Monday, 
 August 23, and moved the adjournment of the House in order 
 to reply to Mr. Forster's attack upon him. The manner of 
 his speech was no less remarkable than its matter — quiet, 
 perfectly self-possessed. With a low, passionless voice and 
 unmoved face, Mr. Dillon met the charges against him. He 
 professed his absolute indifference as to what the Irish Secre- 
 tary might choose to call him ; but he denied that his speech 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 247 
 
 was wicked in advising the farmers of Ireland to resist an 
 unjust law. He laid at Mr. Forster's door the difficulties 
 and the possible bloodshed that might be caused by the in- 
 creasing evictions and the unjust course the Government was 
 pursuing. 
 
 Mr. Forster replied by analysing the Kildare speech, and 
 repeating his former charges. He accused Mr. Dillon of 
 advising his hearers not to pay their rents, whether they could 
 afford to or not ; he charged him with something like sym- 
 pathy with the mutilation of animals, because, instead of 
 denouncing the houghing of horses and cattle that had taken 
 place, he had said that if Mayo landlords put cattle on the 
 lands from which they could get no rent, the cattle would 
 not prosper very much. He quoted sentences from Mr. 
 Dillon's speech, that ' those in Parliament faithful to the 
 cause of the people could paralyse the hands of the Govern- 
 ment, and prevent them from passing such laws as would 
 throw men into prison for organising themselves. In Parlia- 
 ment they could obstruct, and outside of it they could set the 
 'people free to drill and organise themselves ; ' and that ' they 
 would show that every man in Ireland had a right to a rifle 
 if he liked to have a rifle.' 
 
 Along and bitter debate followed, in w^lnch Irish, Liberal, 
 and Conservative members took part. The Irish members, in 
 almost every case, appealed to the Government even now to 
 do something for the tenants ; the Liberals replied, justifying 
 the action of the Government. The next day, Tuesday, the 
 24th, another Irish debate arose on a motion of Mr. Parnell's 
 on the Parliamentary relations of England and Ireland. On 
 the following Thursday, in Committee of Supply, another 
 Irish debate arose on the vote for the Irish constabulary 
 estimates. This was in many ways a memorable debate. It 
 was from the defence Mr. Forster made in this debate of the 
 use of buckshot as ammunition for the Irish constabulary that 
 the nickname of ' Buckshot ' arose, which will, in all prob- 
 ability, be associated Avith his name as long as his name may 
 be remembered. Furthermore, this debate was the first cf 
 
248 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 several famous all-night sittings, which mark at intervals the 
 career of the administration. The debate had begun on 
 Thursday afternoon ; it was protracted all through Thursday 
 night and over Friday morning, and only came to an end 
 shortly before 1 p.m. on the Friday, when the Government 
 consented to an adjournment of the debate until the following 
 Monday. 
 
 On the Monday, after further debate from the Irish mem- 
 bers, the vote was finally carried. The Irish case against 
 the constabulary was in some measure recognised by Mr. 
 Forster, who stated that, although it was quite impossible 
 then for the Executive to consent to the general disarmament 
 of the constabulary force, yet Her Majesty's Government felt 
 bound not to rest until they had placed Ireland in such a 
 position as no longer to need the presence of this armed force. 
 In some of Mr. Forster's speeches there were menacing 
 allusions to the possibility of the revival of the abandoned 
 coercive measures ; but, on the other hand, Mr. Forster 
 declined to promise to urge the calling of a winter session in 
 case the evictions increased, in order to deal with the question. 
 On September 7, the House was prorogued. 
 
 The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill 
 and the inaction of the Government gave fresh impulse to the 
 agitation in Ireland. Evicting landlords, encouraged by the 
 failure of the Government measure, swelled the list of evic- 
 tions ; and, on the other hand, all landlords, good and bad alike, 
 became the objects of popular antipathy. The Land League 
 leaders, members of Parliament and others, advised the tenants' 
 passive resistance of eviction and non-payment of rent, in 
 the hope that, by a sort of general strike on the part of the 
 tenantry, evictions might be delayed until the following session 
 saw the introduction of the promised Ministerial measure. In 
 fact, the Land League advised the tenants to form a sort of 
 tenant trades union, for resisting not merely evictions, but 
 the exactions of what they considered an unjust amount of 
 rent above Griffith's valuation. 
 
 Griffith's valuation played such an important part in the 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 249 
 
 politics of this time, and was so frequently alluded to, that it 
 may be well to give some idea of what it Avas. The valuation 
 of Ireland was undertaken in 1830 on the recommendation of 
 a Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1824. To 
 insure uniform valuation an Act was passed in 183(3 requiring 
 all valuations of land to be based on a fixed scale of agri- 
 cultural produce contained in the Act. The valuators were 
 instructed to act in the same manner as if employed by a 
 principal landlord dealing with a solvent tenrjit. The 
 average valuation proved to be about twenty-five per cent, 
 under the gross rental of the country. In 1844 a Select 
 Committee of the House of Commons was appointed to recon- 
 sider the question, and an Act passed in 1846 changed the 
 principle of valuation from a relative valuation of town lands, 
 based on a fixed scale of agricultural produce, to a tenement 
 valuation for poor-law rating to be made ' upon an estimate 
 of the net annual value ... of the rent for which, one year 
 with another, the same might in its actual state be reasonably 
 expected to let from year to year.' The two valuations gave 
 substantially the same results. In 1852 another Valuation 
 Act was passed, returning to the former principle of valuation 
 by a fixed scale of agricultural produce ; but Sir Eichard 
 Griffith's evidence in 1869 shows the valuation employed was 
 a ' live-and-let-live valuation, according to the state of prices 
 for five years previous to ' the time of valuation. 
 
 Griffith's valuation was indeed but a rough-and-ready way 
 of estimating the value of land. In many cases it was really 
 above the worth of the land ; in other cases it was below it. 
 Still it was a reasonable basis enough, certainly far more 
 reasonable than the rates of the rack-rents. The Land League 
 speakers condemned all rents above Griffith's valuation — only, 
 it must be remembered, in the period of probation while the 
 Government was preparing its Land measure — and under their 
 direction a practical strike was organised against the landlords 
 extorting high rents. It ought to be borne in mind that the 
 failure of the Government to pass its Compensation for 
 Disturbance Bill, coup''ed with its announcement that it 
 
250 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 practically intended to reopen the Land question and intro- 
 duce a new Land Bill, had driven the bad landlords in Ireland 
 to desperation. They thought that the interval between the 
 measure that had failed and the measure that was to come 
 was the only time left to them, and tbey v/ent to work vigor- 
 ously to get all the money they could out of the land before 
 the crash came, and the Government, in the formulas of the 
 Opposition, ' interfered with the rights of property.' 
 
 It certainly did seem hard that the tenants should have 
 been left by the Government at the mercy of landlords who 
 were incited to make the most out of their tenancies before 
 the new Land Act fell upon them. But as the Government 
 had done nothing, the Land League advised the people to 
 stand out for themselves ; to pay no rent, and passively resist 
 eviction. The supporters of the Land League had another 
 enemy besides the landlord, in the person of the land-grabber, 
 the man who took a farm from which his neighbour had been 
 dispossessed. The strike was supported by a form of action, 
 or rather inaction, which soon becpane historical. 
 
 Ca^otain Boycott was an Englishman, an agent of Lord 
 Earne, and a farmer at Lough Mask, in the wild and beauti- 
 ful district of Connemara. In his capacity as agent he had 
 served notices upon Lord Earne's tenants, and the tenantry 
 suddenly retaliated in a most unexpected way by, in the lan- 
 guage of schools and society, sending Captain Boycott to 
 Coventry in a very thorough manner. The population of the 
 region for miles round resolved not to have anything to do 
 with him, and as far as they could prevent it not to allow any 
 one else to have anything to do with him. His life appeared 
 to be in danger ; he had to claim police protection. His ser- 
 vants fled from him as servants fled from their masters in 
 some plague-stricken Italian city ; the awful sentence of ex- 
 communication could hardly ha'N o rendered him more help- 
 lessly alone for a time. No one would work for him ; no one 
 would supply him with food. He and his wife had to work 
 in their own fields tliemselves in most unpleasant imitation 
 of Theocritan shepherds and shepherdesses, and play out their 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 251 
 
 grim eclogue in their deserted fields with the shadows of the 
 armed constabulary ever at their heels. 
 
 The Orangemen of the North heard of Captain Boycott and 
 his sufferings, and the way in which he was holding his 
 ground, and they organised assistance and sent him down 
 armed labourers from Ulster. To prevent civil war the 
 authorities had to send a force of soldiers and police to Lough 
 Mask, and Captain Boycott's harvests were brought in, and 
 his pota^toes dug by the armed Ulster labourers, guarded always 
 by the little army. When the occupations of Ulstermen and 
 army were over, Captain Boycott came to England for a time, 
 but in the end he returned to Lough Mask, where, curiously 
 enough, he is once again at peace with his neighbours, and 
 is even popular, perhaps because he showed that he was a 
 brave man. 
 
 The events at Lough Mask, however, gave rise to two 
 things — to boycotting on the part of the Land League, and to 
 the formation of a body known as emergency men, chiefly 
 recruited from the Orange lodges. The business of the 
 emergency men was to counteract, wherever it was possible, 
 the operations of the League, by helping boycotted landlords 
 and land-agents to gather in their harvests. Boycotting v^^as 
 freely employed by the League. It meant the practical ex- 
 communication of rack-renting landlords, evicting agents, and 
 land-grabbers. No sympathiser with the League was supposed 
 to have any dealings with the boycotted individuals ; they 
 Avere not to be worked for, bought from, sold to. The prin- 
 ciple of boycotting was not aggressive ; nothing was to be 
 done to the obnoxious person, but, also, nothing was to be 
 done for him. This was strictly legal. The law cannot com- 
 pel a man to buy or sell with one of his fellows against his 
 will. The responsible leaders of the Land League never 
 countenanced other than legal agitation. Mr. Michael Davitt 
 again and again put on record in public speeches his uncom- 
 promising opposition to all intimidation. ' Our League does 
 not desire to intimidate any one who disagrees with us,' he 
 said ; * while we abuse Coercion we must not be guilty of 
 
252 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Coercion ; ' and he made frequent appeals to his hearers in 
 different parts of Ireland to ' abstain from all acts of violence 
 and to repel every incentive to outrage.' * Glorious indeed,' 
 he said, ' will be our victory, and high in the estimation of 
 mankind will our grand old fatherland stand, if Ave can so 
 curb our passions and control our actions in this struggle for 
 free land, as to march to success through privation and danger 
 without resorting to the wild justice of revenge, or being guilty 
 of anything which could sully the character of a brave and 
 Christian people.' 
 
 Unfortunately, these good counsels were not always 
 obeyed. Famine and eviction had sowed evil seed ; men 
 who had been evicted, men who were starving, who had 
 seen their families and friends evicted, to die often enough 
 of starvation on the cold roadside — these men were not in 
 the temper which takes kindly to wise counsel. Outrages 
 have invariably followed in the track of every Irish famine, 
 and they followed now this latest famine. There were murders 
 in different parts of the country ; there were mutilations of 
 cattle. These outrages were made the very most of by the 
 enemies of the Land League. Scattered agrarian murders 
 were spoken of as if each of them were a link in the chain 
 of a widely-planned organisation of massacre. People found 
 their deepest sympathies stirred by the sufferings of cattle 
 and horses in Ireland, who never were known to feel one 
 throb of compunction over the fashionable sin of torturing 
 pigeons at Hurlingham. 
 
 But while most of the persons who acted thus knew little 
 and cared less for the real condition of Ireland, there was one 
 man who was studying the country with all the sympathy of 
 one of the noblest natures now living on the earth. General 
 Gordon — then known best to the world as ' Chinese ' Gordon, 
 destined now, perhaps, to be remembered chiefly as ' Soudan ' 
 Gordon — was in Ireland examining the Irish question for him- 
 self with kind, experienced eyes. He wrote a letter to a friend, 
 which was published in the Times on December 3, 1880. ' I 
 have been lately over the south-west of Ireland,' General 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 25B 
 
 (lordon wrote, ' in the hope of discovering how some settle- 
 ment could be made of the Irish question, which, like a fret- 
 ting cancer, eats away our vitals as a nation.' After speaking 
 of the ' complete lack of sympathy ' between the landlord and 
 tenant class. General Gordon went on : ' No half-measured 
 Acts which left the landlords with any say to the tenantry of 
 these portions of Ireland will be of any use. They would be 
 rendered — as past Land Acts in Ireland have been — quite 
 abortive, for the landlords will insert clauses to do away with 
 their force. Any half-measures will only place the Govern- 
 ment face to face with the people of Ireland as the champions 
 of the landlord interest.' 
 
 General Gordon then proposed that the Government 
 should, at a cost of eighty millions, convert the greater 
 part of the south-west of Ireland into Crown lands, in which 
 landlords should have no power of control. * For the rest of 
 Ireland I w^ould pass an Act allowing free sale of leases, fair 
 rents, and a Government valuation. In conclusion, I must 
 say from all accounts, and my own observations, 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. . . . Our comic 
 prints do an infinity of harm by their caricatures. Firstly, 
 the caricatures are not true, for the crime in Ireland is not 
 greater than that in England; and, secondly, they exasperate 
 the people on both sides of the Channel, and they do no good. 
 It is ill to laugh and scoff at a question which affects our 
 existence.' It is impossible to avoid reflecting with melan- 
 choly bitterness on the different aspect that the Irish question 
 would now wear if a man like Chinese Gordon could have been 
 sent to administrate the country in the place of the egotistical 
 and ill-conditioned politician who succeeded to, and was more 
 noxious than, famine. 
 
 Still there were outrages, and Ireland was disturbed. 
 
254 IIIELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 The Land League claimed that it did much to prevent out- 
 rage ; that the unavoidable violence consequent upon the 
 famine and the evictions would have been far greater but 
 for them ; that secret conspiracy and midnight outrage were 
 notably diminished by their open agitation. The Govern- 
 ment, on the other hand, declared that the Land League 
 was guilty of inciting to outrage. A State prosecution was 
 commenced against the officials of the League — Mr. Parnell, 
 M.P., Mr. Dillon, M.P., Mr. T. D. Sullivan, M.P., Mr. 
 Sexton, M.P., Mr. Biggar, M.P., Mr. Patrick Egan, Treasurer 
 of the Land League, Mr. Thomas Brennan, Secretary of the 
 Land League, and some eight others — on a charge of seditious 
 conspiracy. The jury were unable to agree, and the trial 
 came to nothing. 
 
 In the meantime the country was becoming daily more 
 agitated, and Mr. Forster daily more unpopular. His appoint- 
 ment had at first been hailed with satisfaction by many of what 
 maybe called the popular party, and with anger and alarm by 
 the landlords, who regarded him as the herald of startling 
 land changes. But Mr. Forster soon became as unpopular 
 with the national party in Ireland as ever Castlereagh had 
 been. They alleged that he was completely under Castle in- 
 fluence ; that he only saw through the eyes and heard through 
 the ears of Castle officials ; that he came out prepared to be 
 popular and settle everything at once, and that his vanity 
 was keenly hurt by the disappointment ; that, finding the 
 forces he had to deal with were difficult and complex, he 
 could only propose to deal with them by crushing thcDi down. 
 He Avas soon known to be in favour of a revival of the policy 
 of Coercion. Lord Cowper, the Lord Lieutenant, was an 
 amiable, but by no means a strong, man ; in the Cabinet he 
 feebly echoed Mr. Forster' s opinions, and in the Cabinet Mr. 
 Forster w;is able to carry the day on Irish matters when he 
 proposed the revival of Coercion. It was soon blown abroad 
 that the Govoiinnent intended to bring in a Land Bill for 
 Ireland, and to balance it with a Coercion Bill ; furthermore 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 255 
 
 that they intended to bring in the Coercion Bill first, and the 
 Land Bill afterwards. 
 
 Parliament met on Thm^sday, January 6, 1881. It found 
 the Eadicalism of the Ministry strengthened by the appoint- 
 ment of Mr. Leonard Com^tney as Under Secretary for the 
 Home Department. The Queen's Speech was able to announce 
 the conclusion of the Afghan war, and the intention not to 
 occupy Candahar, an intimation that sounded most un- 
 pleasantly in the ears of the Imperial party. The Boer war 
 was spoken of ; the Greek frontier was declared to be under 
 the consideration of the great Powers ; mention was made of 
 certain measures of domestic interest, chief among them 
 being the Bills for the abolition of flogging in the army and 
 the navy. But undoubtedly the most important part of the 
 royal speech referred to Ireland. The multiplication of 
 agrarian crimes, and the insecurity of life and property, 
 demanded the introduction of coercive measures ; while, on 
 the other hand, the speech admitted that the condition of 
 Ireland called for an extension of the Land Act principles of 
 1870. k measure for the establishment of county government 
 in Ireland was also mentioned. 
 
 The debate on the address in the House of Lords was 
 chiefly remarkable for a brilliant and bitter speech from Lord 
 Beaconsfield. In the eight months that had elapsed since the 
 new Ministry had come into power, much had happened to 
 embarrass them and dim their triumph. Lord Beaconsfield 
 was naturally not willing to spare his antagonists the re- 
 capitulation of their difficulties. In the lifelong duel between 
 Mr. Gladstone and Lord Beaconsfield there came in the end 
 to be an amount of accusation and recrimination of so personal 
 a nature as almost to recall the traditions of the days of Bol- 
 ingbroke and Walpole. Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian speeches 
 had struck hard at Lord Beaconsfield, and Lord Beaconsfield 
 was not, now likely to let slip the chance of retaliation upon 
 his antagonist. He dwelt with scornful emphasis upon the 
 complete repudiation of Tory policy which had been so loudly 
 
256 IRFL.iyi) STNCE THE UNI 01^ 
 
 trumpeted when Mr. Gladstone came into office. What had 
 their principles of repudiation brought the Government ? he 
 asked. Eetreat from Afghanistan, abandonment of Candahar, 
 a Berlin Conference which had reopened the closed Eastern 
 question and nearly plunged Europe into war. 
 
 But Lord Beaconstield was naturally most exulting when 
 he came to the relations of the Government with Ireland. 
 He had been mocked at for his prognostication of danger ; the 
 new Ministry were satisfied with the condition of Ireland, and 
 were prepared to govern it without the worn-out Tory methods 
 of Peace Preservation Acts : and now, after little more than 
 half a year of trial, the Government were coming before the 
 House, confessing their failure, and seeking to be strengthened 
 once again by those coercive measures which they had so lightly 
 rejected with every other portion of the policy of their predeces- 
 sors. Lord Beaconsfield had a clever case, and he made the 
 most of it. With a brilliant maliciousness which recalled tlie 
 days when Mr. Disraeli was still a young man with the world 
 before him. Lord Beaconsfield appealed to the Lords not to do 
 anything in this juncture which might weaken the Administra- 
 tion in their late effort to deal with their Irish difficulty. 
 
 Almost at the same time that Lord Beaconsfield was 
 attacking the policy of the Government in the Lords, Mr. 
 Gladstone was defending it in the Commons. He dwelt upon 
 the happy conclusion of the Montenegrin difficulty ; he was 
 hopeful of a fortunate settlement of the Greek difficulty ; he 
 passed lightly over the 'Afghan war, touched upon the Boer 
 war, and justified the Government in not making the Basuto 
 war — with which they had nothing to do, and for which they 
 were in no measure responsible — their own. But the chief 
 point of Mr. Gladstone's speech, as indeed of every speech 
 delivered then and for a long time to come, was of course the 
 Irish question. The Prime Minister denied that the Ministry 
 had any reason to feel humiliation at what had taken place. 
 He justified them in not calling Parliament together earlier, 
 on the ground that they were determined to do their best with 
 the existing law before appealing for stronger measures. In 
 
THE LAND ZHAGVE 257 
 
 a few remarkable sentonces he censured the late Government 
 for the manner in which they had chosen to act upon the 
 existing law : they put the law into effect against four men, 
 three of whom were utterly insignificant. * One of them, indeed,' 
 Mr. Gladstone added, thinking of Mr. Davitt, ' has since 
 proved himself to be a man of great ability, but was not then 
 of much note.' ' The late Government did not aim their 
 weapons at the chief offenders, but contented themselves with 
 charging comparatively insignificant men, and, having charged 
 them, did not bring them to trial.' ' The method of threat- 
 ening without striking is, in our opinion,' said Mr. Gladstone, 
 amid the loud cheers of his party, ' the worst course of action 
 that could have been adopted ; ' and he pointed to the State 
 trials then going on as a proof of the more decided action and 
 stronger purposes of the new Ministry. He considered that 
 they had done their duty in watching the country for a while 
 under the operation of the ordinary law. He thought they 
 had now waited long enough, but could not admit that they 
 had waited too long, though he declined to allow that the 
 coercion which he thought necessary was any remedy for the 
 grievances of Ireland. Hence the announcement with regard 
 to the new Land Act. He claimed that the Land Act of 1870 
 had not been a failure ; but he confessed that the provisions 
 of the Act * have not prevented undue and frequent augmenta- 
 tions of rent which have not been justified by the real value 
 of the holding, but have been brought in in consequence of 
 the superior strength of the landlord.' 
 
 Mr. Forster had given notice before Mr. Gladstone spoke 
 of the introduction of Bills for the better protection of persons 
 and property in Ireland, and to amend the law relating to a 
 carrying and possession of arms ; and Mr. Gladstone had 
 announced his intention of moving that these Bills should 
 have priority over all other business. But these Bills were 
 not destined to be introduced for some days to come. The 
 address was still to be disposed of, and there were many 
 amendments to it to be considered and discussed, several of 
 these being moved by Irish members and relating to Irish 
 
 s 
 
258 IRELANB SINCE THE [TMON 
 
 affairs. But as, according to Thackeray, even the Eastern 
 Counties' trains come in at last, so, too, the debate on the 
 address came to an end at last. On Thursday, January 20, 
 after eleven days of debate, the report of the address was 
 agreed to amid general cheering. 
 
 But already the Irish members had roused the anger of 
 the Government. Most of the speeches on the address had 
 been Irish speeches, the speeches of Irish members on the 
 various Irish questions. Before the debate had concluded, 
 Lord Hartington had attacked the obstructive policy of the 
 Irish members, and warned them that their action might 
 compel the House to come to some understanding by which 
 the process of business should be facilitated. If every day 
 added to the debate on the address staved off the introduction 
 of Coercion, so too, Lord Hartington urged, it delayed the in- 
 troduction of the promised Land Act. Lord Edmond Fitz- 
 maurice and Mr. Thorold Rogers formed themselves into a 
 sort of amateur committee on obstruction. They plunged 
 into records of old rulings, they became learned in antique 
 principles of procedure and venerable points of order, and they 
 addressed to the Times, three days before the debate on the 
 address concluded, a long letter in which they pointed out the 
 existence of certain seventeenth-century orders of the House. 
 One of these ruled that ' if any man speak impertinently, or 
 beside the question in hand, it standeth with the order of the 
 House for Mr. Speaker to interrupt him, and to know the 
 pleasure of the House whether they will further hear him ; ' 
 an order which was sanctioned and strengthened by later 
 rulings. 
 
 On Monday, January 24, 1881, Mr. Forster introduced his 
 first Coercion measure. Mr. Forster made out a long and 
 elaborate case in justification of the measure. He presented 
 a return of outrages to the House of Commons which looked 
 alarming at first, but which Mr. Labouchere showed to be 
 somewhat curiously manufactured. In many cases outrages 
 were of the simplest description ; in many more the number 
 was swelled by an ingenious process of subdivision, so that 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 259 
 
 one outrage was made to stand for several, by the simple pro- 
 cess of multiplying any given oixence by the number of men 
 committing it. The total number of agrarian outrages in 
 Ireland in the year 1880 was 2,590. Keturns of agrarian 
 crimes in Ireland had been made since 1844, but not before, 
 and the highest return since that date was for the year 1845, 
 the first year of the great famine, in which year the list of 
 outrages numbered 1,920, or thirty-five per cent, less than in 
 1880. Excluding threatening letters, the number of outrages 
 in 1880 was 1,253, as contrasted with 950 in 1845, or thirty- 
 two per cent, higher. Moreover, as the population of Ireland 
 was only 5,000,000 in 1880, to 8,000,000 in 1845, the propor- 
 tion of outrages in 1880 was really more than double the pro- 
 portion of outrages in 1845. There were, indeed, few cases 
 of murder, or attempts at murder ; the outrages were chiefly 
 intimidation by personal violence, by injury to property and 
 cattle, and by threatening letters. The number of outrages 
 of this kind had greatly increased during the last three months 
 of 1880, and the area of intimidation was extending. One 
 hundred and fifty-three persons were under the personal pro- 
 tection of two policemen on the first day of the new year, and 
 1,149 persons were watched over by the police. 
 
 Mr. Forster urged that the existing law was not strong 
 enough to grapple with this system of intimidation. The in- 
 struments of this intimidation were, however, well known to 
 the police ; they were generally old Fenians and Eibbonmen, 
 the inauvais sujets of their neighbourhood, dissolute ruffians 
 and village tyrants. The new Bill would give the Lord 
 Lieutenant power by warrant to arrest any person reasonably 
 suspected of treason, treasonable felony, or treasonable prac- 
 tices, and the commission, whether before or after the Act, of 
 crimes of intimidation or incitement thereto. By this means 
 the Government would be able to lay their hands upon the 
 mauvais sujets, the village tyrants, and, by depriving the Land 
 League of its police, render it powerless. 
 
 Naturally an animated debate followed. The Irish Nation- 
 alists, of course, opposed the measure. Moderate Irishmen, 
 
 s2 
 
260 IRELAND STNCE THE TJNton 
 
 like Dr. Lyons, Mr. Givan, Mr. Richardson, and Mr. Litton, 
 either opposed the precedence of coercive to remedial measures, 
 or urged the introduction of a Bill to stay unfair eviction 
 pending the introduction of the remedial legislation. Mr. 
 Bradlaugh did not consider that a case had been made out 
 for a Coercion Bill. The Conservative party, of course, sup- 
 ported the Government. The debate was adjourned on the 
 Monday night, and its resumption was interrupted for a couple 
 of days by the first all-night sitting of the year. On the day 
 after Mr. Forster's introduction of the Coercion Bill, Mr. 
 Gladstone moved to declare urgency for the Coercive Bills, 
 and so give them precedence over all other public business. 
 The Irish Nationahsts at once set themselves to opposing this 
 by every means in tlieir power. The new standing order pre- 
 vented the taking of many divisions, as it allowed individual 
 members only two motions for adjournment ; so the Irish 
 members confined themselves to making speeches, which were 
 incessantly interrupted by calls to order from the chair. 
 
 Mr. Biggar, at a comparatively early period of the debate, 
 got into a conflict with authority which led to his being sus- 
 pended from the sitting ; whereupon he immediately with- 
 drew, and, ascending the heights of the strangers' gallery, 
 watched the conflict with unwearying interest from that 
 elevation, as Ivanhoe followed from his turret the fortunes 
 of the Black Knight and his fellows. The struggle, indeed, 
 was sufficiently interesting to be worth sitting out. It was 
 fought — this being but a first essay for the year — with suffi- 
 cient good-humour on both sides. The hours waned, but 
 there came no waning in the animation of the speakers on 
 both sides. Members came and went ; mgenious little plans 
 of relays for relieving guard were arranged. Morning came, 
 and brought with it a fog scarcely less obscure than night. 
 It was not bright enough till eleven o'clock to extinguish the 
 gas. Very dismal the chamber showed when daylight did 
 come, as unwashed, unbrushed, with weary, sleepy faces and 
 tumbled clothes, the members faced each other. For three 
 hours more the fight Avent on, and then, at two o'clock, Mr. 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 261 
 
 Gladstone's motion was agreed to, and the House, not un- 
 naturally, immediately adjourned to wash, eat, and sleep. 
 
 This was but the prelude to a series of stormy scenes in 
 the House, each one surpassing its predecessors in bitterness 
 and unpleasantness. The debate on the Coercion Bill was 
 resumed on the Thursday, and was remarkable for a speech 
 from Mr. Bright. Mr. Bright had kept silence — with the 
 exception of a protest against obstruction— since the begin- 
 ning of the session, and it had been whispered that he was 
 so silent because he was not in accord with his colleagues on the 
 Irish question. He was roused from his silence by a speech 
 of The O'Donoghue's. The O'Donoghue was at this period 
 of his varied political career an ardent supporter of Mr. 
 Parnell. He sat in opposition to Government, and made 
 himself conspicuous as an aggressive patriot and unfailing 
 opponent of the Government. He declared that the Land 
 League differed in no respect from the Anti-Corn Law League, 
 and taunted Mr. Bright by asking what trials followed the 
 agitation and the denunciation of landlords which belonged 
 to the movement of which Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden were 
 the heads. 
 
 A little later in the debate Mr. Bright rose and spoke. In 
 a speech of great bitterness Mr. Bright attacked the conduct 
 of the Irish Parliamentary party. He denied angrily that any 
 parallel existed between the action of the Land League and the 
 Anti-Corn Law League. With all the indignation of which Mr. 
 Bright is a master, and with more than his usual vehemence, 
 he flung himself in a very fury of passionate oratory upon the 
 Irish opponents of the Government. It almost seemed as if 
 Mr. Bright were determined to make it plain, by the very rage 
 and whirlwind of his passion, how completely unfounded were 
 those rumours which hinted that he was at odds with his col- 
 leagues in the Cabinet on the Irish question. He assailed his 
 opponents with all the eloquence at his command ; and though 
 the speaker was now old, the strength and power of that 
 eloquence were still sufficiently impressive, even to those at 
 whom all its fierce invective was levelled. 
 
263 IRELAND SIXCE THE UNION 
 
 The severance of the extreme Irish party and the Govern- 
 iiient was now complete. Mr. Bright, who had often sup- 
 ported Ireland before and was looked upon as a true friend by 
 the Irish people, was now one of the bitterest opponents of the 
 whole national movement and of its Parliamentary leaders. 
 The Irish national press was fiercely exasperated to find Mr. 
 Bright supporting Coercion for Ireland. He had indeed voted 
 for Coercion before in his younger days, but he had always been 
 eloquent against it, and his utterances were brought up against 
 him by the Irish papers, They reminded him that in 1866 
 he had described Coercion for Ireland as an ' ever-failinej and 
 ever-poisonous remedy ; ' and they asked him why he recom- 
 mended the unsuccessful and venomous legislation now. 
 They pointed to his speech of 1849, in which he said : * The 
 treatment of this Irish malady remains ever the same. We 
 have nothing for it still but force a,nd alms.' They quoted 
 from his speech of 1847 : ' I am thoroughly convinced that 
 everything the Government or Parliament can do for Ireland 
 will be unavailing unless the foundation of the work be laid 
 deep and well, by clearing away the fetters under which land 
 is now held, so that it may become the possession of real 
 owners, and be made instrumental to the employment and 
 sustentation of the people. Honourable gentlemen opposite 
 may fancy themselves interested in maintaining the present 
 system; but there is surely no interest they can have in it 
 which will weigh against the safety and prosperity of 
 Ireland.' 
 
 Such a passage as this might have served, it was urged, 
 as a motto for the Land League itself. What other doctrine 
 did the Land League uphold but that the land should become 
 the possession of real owners, and be made instrumental to 
 the employment and sustentation of the people ? Might not 
 the Land League have fairly asked the Government what 
 interest it could have in the present system of land which 
 would weigh against the safety and prosperity of Ireland ? 
 Had not Mr. Bright told them too, in 1866, that 'the great 
 evil of Ireland is this : that the Irish people— the Irish nation 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 263 
 
 • — are dispossessed of the soil, and what we ought to do is to 
 provide for and aid in their restoration to it by all measures 
 of justice ' ? He disliked the action of the Irish members now 
 because they were acting against the Liberal party ; but had 
 he not said, in 1866, also : ' If Irishmen were united, if you 
 hundred and five members were for the most part agreed, you 
 might do almost anything that you liked ; ' and further said : 
 
 * If there were a hundred more members, the representatives 
 of large and free constituencies, then your cry would be heard, 
 and the people would give you that justice which a class has 
 so long denied you'? 'Exactly,' replied his Irish critics. 
 
 * We have now a united body of Irishmen, the largest and 
 most united the House has ever seen, and you do not seem to 
 look kindly upon it. You do not seem to be acting up to your 
 promise made in Dublin in 1866.' 'If I have in past times 
 felt an unquenchable sympathy with the sufferings of your 
 people, you may rely upon it that if there be an Irish member 
 to speak for Ireland, he will find me heartily by his side.' 
 At the same speech in Dublin, Mr. Bright said : ' If I could 
 be in all other things the same, but in 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 counirymen to some great and united action.' ' This is 
 exactly what we are doing,' said his Land League critics; 
 
 * why do you denounce us now ? Why do you vote for 
 Coercion Acts to prevent the discussion of the great Irish 
 question ? ' 
 
 The next day, Friday, January 28, while the impression 
 of Mr. Bright's speech was still fresh in the minds of the 
 House, Mr. Gladstone made a speech which, viewed as a 
 piece of Parliamentary attack, certainly far surpassed it. 
 With all his eloquence Mr. Gladstone flung himself against 
 his enemies, justified the introduction of Coercion in the dis- 
 organised condition of Ireland, and bitterly denounced many 
 of the speeches of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar. From a 
 dramatic point of view the scene in the chamber was singularly 
 impressive. If the sheer force of eloquence and anger and 
 
2Gi IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 the support of a powerful and enthusiastic majority could 
 have done it, the opposition would have come to an end then 
 and there, and the Coercion Bill been carried at once. Never 
 since the night when Sir Charles Dilke made his famous 
 speech, and Mr. Auberon Herbert announced himself too as a 
 Eepublican, had the House witnessed such a scene, though 
 since then stormy scenes have been less infrequent. Mr. 
 Gladstone was playing the part of Jupiter suppressing the 
 revolted gods. Wine, says Macaulay, was the spell which 
 unlocked the fine intellect of Addison. Passion is the spell 
 which most surely unlocks Mr. Gladstone's skill as an orator 
 of attack. The fury of his indignation swept over the House 
 and stirred it to its depths, arousing tumultuous enthusiasm 
 in the majority of his hearers, and angry protest from the 
 minority he was assailing. The pale, unmoved face of Mr. 
 Parnell occasionally showed through the storm as he rose 
 to correct the Prime Minister in his quotations from his 
 speeches, and was howled and shouted, if not into silence, at 
 least into being inaudible. 
 
 Vague rumours floated about the House of Commons on 
 the Monday evening that there would be troublesome work 
 ere night, but at first there seemed no promise of the excited 
 and strenuous fighting which kept the weary Commons awake 
 through successive days. The Irish members were determined 
 to resist the Coercion Bill in every stage to the utmost. They 
 challenged Fate, in the sbape of the Ministry, to come into the 
 lists and fight it out, and the result was the longest sitting theii 
 on record. The hours came and went, the gray dawn stole 
 on the heels of night, and ugly night again came breathing 
 at the heels of day, and found the Commons still wrangling, 
 still dividing, still calling to order, still stupidly sleeping or 
 vainly trying to follow the arguments of the various speakers. 
 The scene was full of interest to those — and there were some 
 — who had the courage to see it out from the watch-towers of 
 the Speaker's gallery. 
 
 As the time went on the appearance of the H nise was 
 not without elements of humour. One member of the Third 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 265 
 
 Party, as the Irish party were called, found the atmosphere 
 cold, and insisted upon addressing the House in a long ulster, 
 resembling the gaberdine of Noah in the toy-shop arks. On 
 the Treasury bench Lord liartington, grimly erect, doggedly 
 surveyed the obstructives. He was curiously in contrast with 
 Mr. Forster, who sat doubled, or, rather, crumpled up, in an 
 attitude of extreme depression. The occupants of the front 
 Opposition bench v/ore an air of bland unconcern. ' This is 
 not our fault,' they seemed to say, ' but it is not uninteresting, 
 and we do not mind seeing you through with it.' 
 
 At ten minutes to five o'clock on the Tuesday morning 
 the Speaker left the chair ; the clerk at the table gravely in • 
 formed the House of the unavoidable absence of Mr. Speaker, 
 and his place was taken by Mr. Lyon Playfair. Still the 
 debate went on. Irish member succeeded Irish member in 
 lengthy speeches, interrupted by incessant calls to order from 
 all parts of the House and from the chair. Somewhere about 
 six o'clock the motion for the adjournment of the debate was 
 defeated by 141 to 27 : majority, 114. The debate was then 
 resumed on the original motion, and Mr. Healy immediately 
 moved the adjournment of the House. At twenty-five 
 minutes past one on Tuesday afternoon the deputy-diairman 
 left the chair, which was reoccupied by the Speaker. 
 
 A small side discussion sprang up at this point, Mr. 
 Parnell contending that, by the standing orders of the House, 
 the Speaker had not the right to return to his place after that 
 place had been taken by the deputy-chairman, until the next 
 sitting of the House, a point which the Speaker ruled was 
 based on a misconception of the order. At ten minutes to 
 three the motion for the adjournment of the House was 
 divided upon, and was lost by a majority of 204 ; the numbers 
 being, ayes, 21, nays, 225. Still the debate went on, without 
 any sign of flagging determination on either side. The ad- 
 journment of the debate was then moved by Mr. Daly, and 
 this question was fought out for some time and divided upon 
 — 23 to 163 : majority against, 140. The debate was then 
 resumed on Dr. Lyon's amendment to the main question, and 
 
266 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 the adjournment of the House moved. At half-past eleTen 
 on the Tuesday night the Speaker again left the chair, and 
 his place was again taken by Mr. Lyon Playfair. At mid- 
 night Sir Stafford Northcote appealed alike to the chair and 
 the Government to do something to put an end to the obstruc- 
 tion. A little later on the debate was enhvened by a wordy 
 wrangle between Mr. (now Sir Frederick) Milbank and Mr. 
 Biggar. Mr. Milbank complained that Mr. Biggar had used 
 offensive language to him in the chamber, and, in consequence 
 Mr. Milbank, later on, in the lobby, addressed opprobrious 
 terms to Mr. Biggar. Mr. Biggar denied having used the 
 words attributed to him, whereupon Mr. Milbank apologised 
 to the House. 
 
 By this time a fresh division had been taken, and the 
 motion for adjournment negatived by 22 to 197 : majority, 
 175. At ten minutes to five on Wednesday morning the second 
 unsuccessful attempt to count the House was made. At nine 
 o'clock the Speaker resumed the chair, and, immediately 
 rising, made perhaps one of the most remarkable speeches 
 ever delivered from the chair. The Speaker observed that the 
 motion to bring in the Bill had been under discussion for five 
 days, and that during that time most of the opposition was 
 purely obstructive. By the existing rule nothing could be 
 done to stop this obstruction ; but the Speaker was prepared 
 to take upon himself the responsibility of ending it by de- 
 clining to call upon any more members, and by putting the 
 questions at once from the chair. This announcement was 
 received with tumultuous cheering, and the Speaker then put 
 the motion for Dr. Lyon's amendment, which was defeated on 
 a division by 164 to 19 : majority, 145. The Speaker then 
 proceeded to put the main question. An L^ish member rose> 
 but the Speaker refused to hear him. Then the whole Irish 
 party stood up, shouted for some seconds the cry of ' Privilege !' 
 — which had not been heard in the House since the day when 
 Charles I. came looking for his five members— and, bowing 
 to the di.iir, left the chamber in a body. The Bill was im- 
 mediately brought in by Mr. Forster. Mr. Forster then 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 267 
 
 explained to the House that on the previous I jiday he had 
 given into the hands of Mr. Gladstone a speech which he 
 beheved to be by Mr. Parnell, and which Mr. Gladstone 
 quoted from as being by Mr. Parnell, but which was, as a 
 matter of fact, delivered by another person. The House then 
 adjourned until twelve o'clock of the same day, when it met 
 again to discuss the second reading of the Coercion Bill. 
 
 The Irish members who had left the House in a body that 
 morning did not, however, intend to follow the example set 
 them by Pulteney and his followers, in the early part of the 
 last century, and secede from the House for any length of 
 time. When the House met again at mid-day, they returned 
 to their places in order to criticise the action of the Speaker 
 in bringing the debate to a close on his own motion. Thu 
 Speaker, however, ruled that the matter was not a question 
 of privilege, and could not be discussed then, but must be 
 brought forward on a specific motion. The adjournment of 
 the House was then moved by Mr. A. M. Sullivan, and sup- 
 ported by Mr. Joseph Cov/en, Mr. Labouchere, LordEandolph 
 Churchill, and Mr. Shaw, and argued upon until nearly six 
 o'clock, when it was defeated on division by 278 to 44 : 
 majority, 234 ; after which, it being six o'clock, and the day 
 being Wednesday, the House of necessity adjourned. 
 
 The next day, however, witnessed a still more exciting 
 scene, compared wiLli which any mere prolongation of debate 
 seemed tame and colourless. At question time Mr. Parnell 
 suddenly rose and asked if it was true that Mr. Michael 
 Davitt had been arrested that day at one o'clock. There was 
 a muimur of surprise, followed immediately by a deep silence 
 as Sir William Harcourt rose to reply. 'Yes, sir,' was the 
 answer of the Home Secretary, amid the wildest cheering 
 from both sides of the House. Had some new conquest or 
 some great victory been announced, it could not have been 
 greeted with greater rapture. Human nature and human 
 voices have their limits, and certainly the limits of human 
 voices were severely taxed that day when it was .definitely 
 announced that Michael Davitt was once again in prison. 
 
268 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 When the cheering abated, Sir WiUiam Harcourt went on 
 to state that the Irish Secretary and he, after consultation 
 with their colleagues and the law officers of the Crown, had 
 come to the conclusion that Mr. Davitt's conduct was incom- 
 patible with the conditions of his ticket-of-leave. Mr. Parnell 
 tried to find out what condition of ticket-of-leave Mr. Davitt 
 had broken, but the Speaker called upon Mr. Gladstone, who 
 was waiting to submit to the House his urgency motion. Mr, 
 Gladstone had risen and begun to speak when Mr. Dillon rose 
 also to a point of order. What the point of order was the 
 House was not fated to hear ; for amid much noise and shout- 
 ing from all parts of the House, the Speaker rose and declared 
 Mr, Gladstone in possession of the House. Mr. Dillon, in- 
 stead of sitting down when the Speaker rose, and then rising 
 again to make his point of order clear, remained standing 
 with folded arms facing the speaking Speaker, and demanding 
 his privilege of speech. A few seconds of excited confusion 
 followed, few members of the House remaining silent. The 
 majority shouted against Mr. Dillon. The Irish minority 
 shouted scarcely less loudly for him. * Name him,' vocifer- 
 ated English members ; to which the Irish members responded 
 by shouting, ' Point of order.' Then the Speaker gravely 
 named Mr. Dillon for disregarding the authority of the chair, 
 not, as he afterwards explained, for rising to a point of 
 order while Mr. Gladstone was speaking, but for remaining 
 on his feet after the Speaker had risen. Mr. Dillon now sat 
 down, and Mr. Gladstone, rising, immediately moved the 
 usual formula, familiar enough even then, but destined within 
 the next half-hour to become much more familiar, that the 
 offending member should be suspended from the service of the 
 House for the remainder of the sitting. A division was taken 
 and Mr. Gladstone's motion carried by 395 to 33 : majority, 
 362. The Speaker then called upon Mr. Dillon to withdraw. 
 Mr. Dillon rose again and strove to speak, but the shouts 
 with which he was greeted rendered him practically inaudible. 
 He was understood to announce that he refused to withdraw. 
 The Speaker immediately called upon the serjeant-at-arms to 
 
THE LAWD LEAGUE 269 
 
 remove Mr. Dillon. At first Mr. Dillon refused to move, but 
 at a signal from the seijeant several attendants advanced 
 into the House, whereupon, as if accepting this as symbolic 
 of sufficient force to remove him by physical strength, Mr, 
 Dillon got up and left the House. All that happened imme- 
 diately after was an incoherent medley. Mr. A. M. Sullivan 
 spoke amid vehement clamour against the Speaker, who ex- 
 plained that he had named Mr. Dillon, not for interrupting 
 Mr. Gladstone on a call to order, but for remaining on his 
 feet when the Speaker rose. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone now made a further effort to go on with his 
 speech, and was at once interrupted by The O'Donoghue, who 
 loudly moved the adjournment of the House. The Speaker 
 taking no notice of this, Mr. Parnell jumped up and called 
 out that he moved that Mr. Gladstone should be no longer 
 heard. Amid stentorian cheers from his own party and in- 
 dignant shouts from the rest of the House, Mr. Parnell reite- 
 rated his motion in defiance of the warning of the Speaker, 
 and was immediately named. Mr. Gladstone again made the 
 motion for expulsion, which was carried by a majority of 405 
 to 7, the Irish members refusing to leave their seats and vote. 
 On the reassembling of the House, Mr. Parnell refused to 
 withdraw until the serjeant-at-arms had gone through the 
 same ceremony with him as with Mr. Dillon, when he retired 
 amid the plaudits of his party. 
 
 It must here be remarked that, whatever may be the 
 opinion as to the wisdom, policy, or propriety of Mr. Parnell's 
 conduct on this occasion, there was absolutely nothing * dis- 
 orderly ' in the Parliamentary sense about it. But a little 
 time before Mr. Gladstone had moved, and moved successfully, 
 that a member should be no longer heard, and it had been 
 urged in defence of that motion that it was perfectly permis- 
 sible, although it had not been made in Parliament for some- 
 thing like a couple of centuries. Now, if it was permissible 
 for Mr. Gladstone to put this venerable rule into action against 
 an Irish member, it was equally permissible for an Irish 
 member to put it into practice against Mr. Gladstone. We 
 
270 lUELAND StWCE THE UNION 
 
 are not speaking now of the good or bad taste of such a line 
 of action, nor do we need to be reminded of the impossibihty 
 of carrying on the business of any legislative assembly if any 
 member might interrupt it by motions that other members be 
 not heard. But the Prime Minister had himself revived this 
 antiquated form ; he had drawn it out from the dust of cen- 
 turies in order to silence an unwelcome speaker ; it had received 
 the full sanction of Parliament, and until Parliament repealed 
 or altered it, it was in full force. As the rules binding the 
 House of Commons affect all members equally — as no mem- 
 ber, whether he be at the head of the Government or not, has 
 any privilege whatever of making aaiy motion which is denied 
 to any other member — it is clear that Mr. Parnell was as much 
 in his Parliamentary right as Mr. Gladstone in moving that 
 a member should not be heard. So much for the mere ques- 
 tion of the motion, the revival of which Mr. Gladstone was 
 himself probably the first to regret. 
 
 After the division had been taken, and the leader of the 
 Irish party removed, Lord Richard Grosvenor, the Liberal 
 Whip, announced that the Irish members had refused to leave 
 their seats and enter the division lobby, a line of action which 
 Mr. Gladstone immediately expressed a hope that the Speaker 
 would find some means of dealing with. He was, however, 
 once more interrupted, this time by Mr. Finigan, member for 
 Ennis, who, following the example of Mr. Parnell, again pro- 
 posed that Mr. Gladstone should be no longer heard. The 
 Speaker named Mr. Finigan ; Mr. Gladstone, for the third 
 time, made the suspension motion, and a division was again 
 taken, and the motion carried by 405 to 2, the Irish members 
 again expressing their protest against the whole proceeding 
 by remaining in their seats and refusing to vote. The Speaker 
 cautioned them that he would regard this abstention as defi- 
 ance of the authority of the chair, and the Clerk of the House 
 took down their names. 
 
 When Mr. Finigan had been removed from the House, 
 after the same fashion as Mr. Dillon and Mr. Parnell, the 
 Speaker called the attention of the House to the conduct of 
 
TTTE LAIS^B IE A GUM 271 
 
 fche Irish members, and ' named ' them at once. There were 
 twenty-eight of them in all. Mr. Gladstone immediately rose 
 and moved for their suspension in a body, and the motion was 
 carried by 410 to 6, the abstaining members, as before, refus- 
 ing to vote. Then came a strange scene, such as had never 
 been witnessed in the House of Commons before. The name 
 of each member was read out in turn by the Speaker, as he 
 called upon him to withdraw. Each member called upon 
 answered to his name with a short speech condemning the 
 action of the Government, and refusing to go unless removed 
 by superior force. To each member making such announce- 
 ment, the serjeant-at-arms advanced and touched him solemnly 
 on the shoulder. In most cases the member so touched at 
 once rose and walked out ; one or two exceptionally stalwart 
 members, however, refused to go until the serjeant-at-arms 
 approached ihem with such a muster of attendants as made 
 it evident that he commanded sufficient force to compel with- 
 drawal. For half an hour this process of naming, speech- 
 making, and removal went on. At length the bulk of the 
 Irish members were expelled, and had rallied in the conference 
 room, where they drew up an addres3 to the people of Ireland, 
 urging them to remain quiet in spite of the indignity offered 
 to their representatives. Then, for the fourth time, Mr. 
 Gladstone rose and essayed to go on with his motion. 
 
 But, in the meantime, some few Irish members who had 
 not been present hitherto in the House had arrived, and 
 through their opposition shared their comrades' fate. First 
 Mr. O'Kelly, then Mr. O'Donnell, moved that Mr. Gladstone 
 be no longer heard, and were named, suspended, and removed, 
 while three others — Mr. Molloy, Mr. Eichard Power, and Mr. 
 O'Shaughnessy — went through the same process for refusing 
 to take part in the division, and remaining in their seats while 
 the division went on. Then, none of the Irish members who 
 followed the lead of Mr. Parnell being left in the House, Mr. 
 Gladstone began his urgency motion for the sixth time, and 
 proceeded with it without further interruption. 
 
 After the cowp d'etat by which the Speaker brought the 
 
272 IRELAND SINCE THE UNTON 
 
 debate on the introduction of the Coercion Bill to an end, the 
 Government felt the necessity of altering the rules of the House 
 so far as to meet with such emergencies in the future in a 
 more legal manner. A set of rules was accordingly drawn up, 
 nominally by the Speaker, for the regulation of the business 
 of the House when the state of public business should be de- 
 clared urgent. These rules limited the occasions and the scope 
 of motions for adjournment of either the House or the debate, 
 gave the Speaker power of calling the attention of the House 
 to continued tediousness and irrelevancy on the part of a 
 member, and of taking the general sense of the House on any 
 debate, and, if supported by a three-fourths majority, of putting 
 the question without further debate. The rules further pre- 
 vented the possibility of debate on the motion for the House 
 to go into committee on any matter declared urgent, and limited 
 members to a single speech. These rules were laid on the 
 table of the House by the Speaker on Wednesday, February 9, 
 1881. The long-argued-about principle of cloture — or closure, 
 to give what has become an English institution its English 
 name — was of course conceded in the rule which allowed 
 the Speaker, when presiding over a debate governed by the 
 urgency rules, to appeal to the general sense of the House, 
 and, if supported by a three-fourths majority, to put the 
 question at once from the chair without any further debate. 
 
 The debate on the Coercion Bill was not concluded very 
 rapidly. On Wednesday, February 23, 1881, the Bill was 
 still in committee, and Mr. Gladstone, in order to accelerate 
 its progress, moved that on the next day at seven the debate 
 should come to an end, and the third reading be moved without 
 discussion on any amendments that might be left unconsidered 
 at that time. There was no debate permissible upon this 
 motion, which was moved by Lord Hartington in the absence 
 of Mr. Gladstone, wdio was confined to his room for a few days 
 by an accident— he had slipped on the ice near his house, and 
 hurt his head — and was carried by 371 to 53 : majority, 318. 
 At seven o'clock, accordingly, the debate was cut short by the 
 Speaker ; the remaining amendments w^ere divided upon with- 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 273 
 
 out debate, and the third reading moved for by Mr. Forster. 
 The third reading was carried in the Commons the next day, 
 Friday, February 25, by 231 to 36 : majority, 245. The Bill 
 was then sent up to the House of Lords, where it passed rapidly 
 through all its stages ; was read a third time on Wednesday, 
 March 2, and received the royal assent by commission on the 
 same day. 
 
 The Arms Bill was introduced in the Commons on Tuesday, 
 Mareh 1, by Sir William Harcourt, in the absence of Mr. 
 Forster ; and its third reading was carried on Friday, March 
 11, by 236 to 26— majority, 210 — and was passed in the Lords 
 on the following Friday. During its passage through the 
 Commons there were some heated debates on the relationship 
 of the American Fenians with the Irish Land Leaguers, in 
 one of which, on Thursday, March 3, Mr. Healy suffered 
 suspension for charging the Home Secretary with breaches of 
 truth and usual disingenuousness. Mr. O'Donnell was sus- 
 pended on Tuesday, March 8, after a dispute with Mr. Play- 
 fair on a point of order. 
 
 In the meantime the excitement in Ireland was increasing. 
 While the Coercion debates were going on, Mr. Parnell had 
 gone across to Paris, accompanied by Mr. O'Kelly, and obtained 
 an interview with Victor Hugo, who was expected to issue some 
 manifesto in favour of Ireland. Victor Hugo compared Ireland 
 to Poland struggling against Eussia, but he wrote nothing on 
 the subject, either in prose or verse. The interview, however, 
 provoked a remonstrance from the great Catholic organ, the 
 Unive7's, which warned Mr. Parnell that it was not well for the 
 leaders of a Catholic cause and country to «eek for the alliance 
 of men like Victor Hugo and his friends. Mr. Parnell had an 
 interview with M. Rochefort on the one hand, and with the 
 Archbishop of Paris on the other. Just at that moment, 
 when people were saying that there would be a split between 
 the Nationalists and the Catholic clergy on account of the 
 friendship of M. Rochefort, an event occurred which served 
 to show how much the Irish priests and the Irish people were 
 in agreement as to the Land League and the national cause 
 
 T 
 
74 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 g^ierally. In Ireland a Ladies' Land League had been 
 formed, with Miss Anna Parnell — a sister of Mr. Parnell — for 
 its president. Its object was to assist the existing Land League 
 in every possible way — by raising funds, by inquiring into the 
 cases of eviction, and by affording relief to evicted tenants. 
 As soon as this new organisation came into existence it was 
 assailed by Archbishop M'Cabe of Dublin. In an angry 
 pastoral he denounced the participation of women in the strife 
 of politics as at once immodest and wicked. ]\Ir. A. M. 
 Sullivan, one of the most Catholic of Irish Catholic members 
 of Parliament, immediately wrote a reply defending the Ladies' 
 Land League, and justifying and approving of the manner in 
 which the women of Ireland proposed to come to the assistance 
 of their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Mr. A. M. Sullivan's 
 letter had not long been written when the Ladies' Land League 
 found a still stronger ally, and Archbishop M'Cabe a still more 
 formidable opponent, in Archbishop Croke, of Cashel. From 
 the rock which has reminded so many travellers of the 
 Athenian Acropolis, Archbishop Croke launched an epistle 
 which Jerome might have envied for its vigorous distinctness. 
 The Archbishop of Cashel had nothing but praise for the 
 Ladies' Land League, and for their eloquent champion. In a 
 moment Archbishop Croke was the hero of the national party 
 in Ireland. They greeted him with joy as a proof that the 
 Church was on their side ; and when he went, shortly after, 
 on a sort of tour of inspection through a great part of Ireland, 
 he was received everywhere with a display of the most enthu- 
 siastic homage and devotion. 
 
 Long before Archbishop Croke had come so prominently 
 to the front, many of the priests had shown their sympathy 
 with, and approval of, the Land League doctrines ; but after 
 the action of the Archbishop of Cashel, their sympathy and 
 approval became more openly and markedly displayed. Day 
 by day the ranks of the League were swelled by Irish ecclesi- 
 astics of all orders. It might be fairly said that, roughly 
 speaking, all the younger priests throughout the country were 
 in cordial sympathy with the Land League, and a very large 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 275 
 
 number of the elder priests as well. It was this sympathy 
 between the priests and the people which gave the Land League 
 a great pr.rt of its strength ; it was the eagerness of the people 
 to be in accord with their priests which made them receive 
 Archbishop Croke's pronouncement with so much delight, 
 and listen to his counsels with as much readiness as if they 
 had come from the lips of Parnell or Davitt. 
 
 When the Coercion Acts were carried, Mr. John Dillon 
 went over to L'eland and began a series of speeches in different 
 parts of the country, supporting the League and assailing the 
 Government. On the one side, the League was being upheld 
 from pulpit and platform ; on the other, the Executive was 
 choking its prisons with its arrests of ' suspected ' Land 
 Leaguers. Evictions had not decreased, and there were fre- 
 quent collisions between the police and the people, and blood 
 was spilled on both sides. At first the Government arrests 
 "were confined to members of the League, who, although 
 prominent enough in their own localities, were little known 
 outside of Ireland. But Mr. John Dillon's action soon 
 attracted the notice of the Government ; and, after a speech 
 which he delivered at Grangemaller, near Clonmel, in May, 
 which counselled an extreme form of boycotting, he was 
 arrested and put into prison. A short while before, the Go- 
 vernment had roused great indignation among the Irish eccle- 
 siastics by arresting and imprisoning Father Eugene Sheehy, 
 of Kilmallock. These were the most important arrests made, 
 at first, under the new Coercion Acts. The LandLeague was still 
 flourishing. Mr. Sexton, M.P., hurried to Dublin from London 
 to take Mr. Dillon's place at theheadof the League in Ireland. 
 
 When the Coercive Acts had passed into law, every one's 
 thoughts turned at once to the promised Land Act. But 
 there were some other matters to be disposed of before the new 
 Land Bill could be introduced. There was a debate on 
 Candahar. The Army Discipline Bill, definitely abolishing 
 flogging for soldiers, had to pass through its various stages. 
 Then there was the Budget, which had of necessity to be dis- 
 posed of before any other possible topic could be discussed. 
 
 T L' 
 
276 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 On Monday, April 4, Mr. Glr^dstone made his financial state- 
 ment in a speech of over two liours. The Budget being finally 
 disposed of, the ground was now" clear for the Land Bill, 
 which was introduced, accordingly, by the Prime Minister on 
 Thursday, April 7, 1881. 
 
 The history of the new Land Bill was curious. The 
 measure which Mr. Gladstone laid before the Ho ise on April 7 
 was not the measure, or indeed anything like tlie measure, 
 which the Government had originally intended to offer to 
 Parliament. Another Bill had been prepared, of a less com- 
 prehensive nature. The draft of this Bill had been submitted 
 by a member of the Ministry to a prominent Liberal member, 
 who was very properly regarded as an aathority on the Land 
 question in Ireland, and who has since been one of the most 
 eminent legal members of a Liberal Ministry, with the request 
 that he would make any suggestions he thought fit as to its 
 possible improvement. The member consulted returned the 
 draft Bill promptly, saying that the only improvement he could 
 suggest would be to put the proposed measure behind the fire. 
 The Government apparently acted upon this summary advice ; 
 at least, if they did not put their valueless land scheme actu- 
 ally behind the fire, they speedily prepared a new and more 
 advanced measure. Even the new Bill was mild enough, and 
 bore very little resemblance to the form it came to assume 
 later on. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone introduced the Bill on April 7, 1881, in a 
 long, elaborate, and exceedingly eloquent speech on what he 
 then not inappropriately called ' the most difficult and the most 
 complex question ' which he ever had to deal with in the course 
 cf his public life. Koughly speaking, the Bill proposed to 
 deal with the Irish Land question on the basis of what was 
 known as the three F's — fair rent, fixity of tenure, and free 
 s^ile. Mr. Gladstone denied that either the iniquity of the 
 existing land laws, or any sympathy with the extreme views 
 of some of the Irish land reformers, or the bad conduct of 
 Irish landlordism in general, called for the new attempt at 
 legislation. It was the * land hunger,' or rather the land 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 277 
 
 scarcity ; it was certain defects in the Land Act of 1870, and 
 it was the rack-renting and evictions of a limited number of 
 landlords which had inspired the action of the Government. 
 
 The Government was not in want of guidance in the step 
 it was taking. A commission—the Kichmond Commission — 
 had been appointed by the previous Government to inquire 
 into the Land question. Another commission — the Bess- 
 borough Commission — had been appointed by the existing 
 Government for the same purpose. These two Commissions 
 had begot, not two reports, but a perfect ' litter' of reports. 
 There was naturally an agreeable diversity of opinion among 
 these various reports. One member of the Richmond Com- 
 mission, Mr. Bonamy Price, was for applying, ' in all their 
 unmitigated authority,' the principles of abstract political 
 economy to the very exceptional Land question of Ireland, 
 * exactly as if he had been proposing to legislate for the in- 
 habitants of Saturn or Jupiter.' Of the four commissioners 
 who made up the Bessborough Commission, only two agreed 
 to sign what may be called the main report : Mr. Shaw signed 
 one collateral report, The O'Conor Don signed another, and 
 Mr. Kavanagh signed a third. Out of this multiplicity of 
 counsel, however, Mr. Gladstone found that, with the excep- 
 tion of Mr. Bonamy Price, the whole body of both commis- 
 sions were agreed in supporting the constitution of a court for 
 the purpose of dealing with the differences between landlords 
 and tenants in Ireland with regard to rent. 
 
 The establishment of such a court was to be then one of 
 the principal features of the new measure. Appeal to this 
 court was to be optional, and not compulsory. Every tenant 
 from year to year coming under the description of * present 
 tenant ' could go before the court and have a judicial rent 
 fixed for his holding. This judicial rent was to last, in the 
 first instance, for fifteen years, during which no eviction would 
 be possible, except for non-payment of rent or distinct breach 
 of specific covenants. When the fifteen years expired, land- 
 lord or tenant might apply to the court for a revision of the 
 rent. If the tenancy were renewed, the same conditions as 
 
278 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 to eviction were to hold good. In the case, however, of the 
 tenant wishing to sell his tenant right, the privilege of pre- 
 emption, at the price fixed by the court as the value of the 
 tenant right was reserved to the landlord. :^ The Bill acted re- 
 trospectively with regard to tenants against whom process of 
 ejectment had been begun but not concluded. The Ulster 
 tenant, while remaining under the privilege of his custom, 
 was to be allowed the protection of the general provisions of 
 the Bill for controlling augmentation of rents. The new 
 court, which was also to perform the functions of a land com- 
 mission, was to consist of three members, one of whom was 
 always to be a judge or ex-judge of the supreme court. It 
 was empowered to appoint sub-connnissions as courts of first 
 instance, to hear applications and fix fair rents. 
 
 The second part of the Bill passed entirely from the region 
 of the three F's into the difficult question of peasant pro- 
 prietary. The court, as a land commission, was empowered 
 to assist tenants to purchase their holdings, and furthermore 
 to purchase itself estates from willing landlords, for the pur- 
 pose of reselling them when three -fourths of the tenants were 
 ready to buy. The court might advance three-fourths of the 
 purchase-money to tenants, and was not to be prohibited from 
 advancing the whole sum when it saw fit. Tenants availing 
 themselves of these purchase clauses would obtain a guaranteed 
 title, and would only have to pay a very small sum for legal 
 costs. Emigration was to be included among the purposes 
 for which advances might be made. Such were the more 
 striking features of the new measure. 
 
 The Bill was read a first time without opposition, and 
 immediately after, on the following day, the House adjourned 
 for the Easter recess. When it reassembled on April 25 the 
 second reading of the Land Bill was moved at once. The 
 debates were long and bitter. The Conservative party as a 
 body opposed the Bill with unwearying vigilance and 
 vehemence. They characterised it again and again as a 
 measure of communism, of socialism, of brigandage ; and they 
 exhausted their ingenuity in efforts, if not to defeat the Bill 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 279 
 
 altogether, at least to delay it as long as possible, and to 
 iiiiiiimise as much as might be its ' revolutionary ' nature. 
 The Irish members, on the other hand, were no less energetic 
 in their efforts to widen the scope of the Bill, and make it of 
 a character more markedly beneficial to the tenant class. 
 Their efforts were more successful than those of the Con- 
 servative party. The general principles of the Bill remained 
 the same, but its scope was widened, and its powers of 
 application strengthened to a surprising degree. The Bill in 
 the final form in which it was presented to the House of 
 Lords in the end of July, after months of protracted debate, 
 might be not unfairly characterised as in large part the 
 creation of Mr. Healy and the I>'ish party, of Mr. Charles 
 Russell and certain of the Ulster members. 
 
 The sleeper in the Arabian story scarcely underwent a 
 more remarkable metamorphosis when he assumed the care 
 and dignity of the Kalifeh than was experienced by the new Bill 
 in its passage from the Treasury bench to the Upper House. 
 It is only necessary to compare the original draft of the Bill 
 with its final form to see how important these alterations 
 were. The famous Healy clause was constructed to exclude 
 altogether the valuation of improvements made by the tenant 
 in estimating the amount to be fixed as a judicial rent. On 
 the other hand, an amendment by Mr. Heneage was agreed 
 to, excluding what are called ' English-managed ' estates 
 from the operation of the Healy clause. The court was em- 
 powered by another provision to quasli leases contracted since 
 1870, which might be shown on examination to have been 
 drawn up with a view to dodging or defeating the objects 
 of that measure. The emigration proposals, which were 
 extremely obnoxious to the Irish paity, were very largely 
 modified. The total expenditure for this purpose was limited 
 to 200,000Z., not more than a third of which was to be spent 
 in any single year. A clause was introduced allowing the 
 commissioners to make advances to tenants for the purpose 
 of clearing off arrears of rent which had accrued for three 
 years. 
 
280 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 On July 29 the Bill was read a third time in the House 
 of Commons, and was carried up to the House of Lords, 
 where it was read a first time for form's sake, without 
 op].H)sition, the same evening. After two nights' debate it 
 was read a second time without division, in obedience to 
 Lord Salisbury's counsels. In committee, however, the 
 majority in the Lords fell upon the measure. They reduced 
 the Bill to a nullity by comprehensive interpolations and 
 additions. They altered, they amended, they substituted, till 
 the Bill resembled Wallenstein's horse as shown to Brown, 
 Jones, and Eobinton. The head, legs, and part of the body 
 are new, all the rest is the real horse. The Bill in this ' real- 
 horse ' condition was returned to the Commons. The 
 Ministry accepted a few of the least important amendments, 
 modified some others, and firmly rejected those which struck 
 at the vitality of the measure. It was sent back to the Lords 
 again, and once again the Lords, with that marvellous 
 infatuation which is the peculiar privilege of the Upper House 
 in its struggles with the Commons, proceeded to make the 
 measure useless by reinstating the objectionable amendments 
 and interpolations. The Bill was then sent down to the 
 Commons. The Ministry made a further pretence of con- 
 sidering the question. The more dangerous amendments 
 which the Lords had restored were struck out, bat the Ministry 
 made certain concessions. In the first form of the Healy 
 clause, for instance, the Government had insisted upon a 
 proviso that the tenant should not be allowed the value of 
 improvements for which he had been paid by the landlord. 
 The Government now conceded the addition *' or otherwise 
 compensated.' Under these words, Irish courts can, as in 
 the case of Adams and Duuseath, rule that length of enjoy 
 ment is to be taken into account as an element in considering 
 the value of a tenant's improvement. The Bill was then 
 handed back to the Lords. 
 
 By this time public feeling was thoroughly aroused at the 
 prospect of a serious constitutional struggle between the two 
 Houses. Liberal meetings were held in all parts of the 
 
TBE LAND LEAGUE 281 
 
 country, at which the Government were vigorously encouraged 
 to make no concessions, to fight the fight out to the end. The 
 Lords blustered, but their courage was shaken. Two of the 
 most comprehensively destructive of tlie Lords' amendments 
 had been moved by the Duke of Argyll and Lord Lansdowne. 
 .On August 16, when the Bill came before the Lords for the 
 third time, Lord Salisbury still assumed a semi-defiant 
 attitude. Perhaps on the whole, he said, their lordships had 
 better accept the Bill, unless, indeed, the Duke of Argyll and 
 Lord Lansdowne pressed their amendments. In tliat case, 
 Lord Salisbury would certainly vote for them, and for resist- 
 ance to the imperious Commons. But the Duke of Argyll 
 was conveniently absent. Lord Lansdowne sat in his seat and 
 made no sign. Lord Salisbury had sounded his trumpet, and 
 no knight challenger galloped into the arena. So, with 
 something of an ill grace. Lord Salisbury bade those of his 
 inclining hold their hands, and the Land Bill of 1881 became 
 law. The House of Lords had gained nothing by their 
 opposition, but, for the moment at least, they were saved 
 from the consequences of direct collision with the Commons. 
 Mr. Cowen had been a persistent opponent of the coercive 
 policy of the Government. He had spoken against it again 
 and again ; he had supported the Irish members time after 
 time with his voice and with his vote in opposing the Bills. 
 At the meeting in Newcastle-on-Tyne, on Monday, August 29, 
 1881, he attacked the Government with all his energy and all 
 his eloquence. It had been found useless, he said, to argue 
 with the master of n^any legions, even when that master 
 argued on the extraordinary paradox that the only way in 
 which the law could be maintained in Ireland was by its being 
 superseded. The Land Act had failed as a means of pacifica- 
 tion. It was too abstruse and complicated for plain men to 
 understand, and its fair proportions were hidden by the re- 
 pulsive screen of the Coercion Act. While he strongly con- 
 demned the wild writings and wild threats of the American 
 Fenians, he attributed the fault of such writings and threats 
 raamly to the action of the Enghsh Government itself. * No 
 
282 1 RELAX n EIXCE TILE UNION 
 
 more barbarous or inhuman treatment had been attempted 
 a^gamst poUtical prisoners in modern days in Western Europe 
 than was meted out by the English Government to the 
 Fenians. ... By their treatment we converted men who 
 might have been our friends into foes.* The outrages in 
 Ireland, on account of which tlie Government had demanded 
 Coercion, were, Mr. Cowen contended, shamefully exaggerated. 
 The reason for the exaggeration was this : the Irish Executive 
 feared that a Liberal Parliament would not pass a Coercion 
 Bill, and that they could only get it by showing that the 
 country was greatly disturbed, and law superseded. They 
 therefore made no attempt to use the ordinary law with a 
 view to restrain incipient excess, and their strategy succeeded. 
 There was no constitutional country in Europe, Mr. Cowen 
 concluded, in which such a state of things oblained as it did 
 in Ireland. It was a scandal to our civilisation, and a dis- 
 grace to our statesmanship. 
 
 The convention at Newcastle was followed up by another 
 convention in Ireland, in the Dublin Eotunda, a convention 
 of delegates from the various branches of the Land League all 
 over Ireland. The convention represented the public feeling 
 of Ireland, as far as public opinion ever can be represented by 
 a delegated body. The descendants of the Cromwellian 
 settlers of the north sat side by side with men of the rebel 
 blood of Tipperary, with the impetuous people of the south, 
 with the strong men of the midland hunting counties. The 
 most remarkable feature of the meeting was the vast number 
 of priests who were present. A great number of priests, 
 young and old, spoke at the convention ; all were warm in 
 sympathy with the League and its leaders ; all were ready to 
 deal with the Bill as these leaders wished. Mr. Parnell ex- 
 plained his views to the convention. He announced that the 
 League was willing to use the Bill as far as it went, but that 
 the existence of the Bill did not put an end to the work of the 
 Land League ; it had still to be vigilant ; it had to experiment 
 upon the newly-founded land courts with test cases, and in 
 every way to watch over the interests of the tenant farmers. 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 283 
 
 Not of the tenant farmers alone ; the Irish labourers were to 
 be thought of as well. The condition of the labourers in 
 Ireland was very bad, and their complahits had gradually been 
 taking organised shape. They were now formally recognised 
 by the League, which became henceforward a Land and 
 Labour League. 
 
 The convention was singularly quiet ; the speeches were 
 all moderate in tone ; the attitude of the League as repre- 
 sented by its delegates was pacific and constitutional. But 
 the country undoubtedly was in a disorganised state. The 
 fierce anger that the Coercion Acts and their operation had 
 aroused was creating a wide-spread disorder, with which it 
 seemed at first as if Coercion itself could not successfully cope. 
 The Land League leaders maintained always that they had 
 the country entirely under their control, and that as long as 
 they were to the front they could keep the disorrler and 
 violence in check. How far they could have carried this 
 out — how far they could have overmastered the forces that 
 were now at work in Ireland — it is impossible to say, for 
 they were not given the opportunity of carrying out their 
 promises. 
 
 The action of the Government during the couple of months 
 following upon the rising of Parliament is wholly inexplicable. 
 They cannot have thought that the condition of the country 
 was dangerous, for they saw fit to set free Father Sheehy, a 
 step which it is difficult to believe they would have tal^en if 
 they considered the country to be seriously disturbed. Yet, 
 before the release of Father Sheehy, Mr. Parnell had received 
 in Dublin the greatest tribute of popular enthusiasm that 
 had been accorded to any Irish leader since the days of the 
 Liberator. He had been attending meetings in the country. 
 He returned to Dublin one night towards the end of Sep- 
 tember. He was met at the station by an enthusiastic crowd 
 bearing torches, and was drawn through the Dublin streets to 
 the Land League offices in Sackville Street. From the 
 windows of these rooms Mr. Parnell and Mr. Sexton delivered 
 speeches to the vast, excited audience, who choked the whole 
 
284 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 of Sackville Street ; and on the speeches made that night part 
 of the Government case was afterwards made to rest. 
 
 Yet it was after this demonstration and after those speeches 
 that the Government thought proper to set Father Sheehy at 
 liberty, although they must have known that he was scarcely 
 likely to remain quieter after his experiences of a prison than 
 he was before he entered it. Is it to be credited that the 
 Government considered the country to be seriously dis- 
 organised and disturbed, and yet deliberately let loose among 
 such elements of revolution an agitator who was doubly 
 popular, and therefore doubly dangerous, because he was a 
 priest, and was regarded by the people as a martyr ? Father 
 Sheehy at once commenced a vigorous crusade against the 
 Government, and his entry into Cork, in company with Mr. 
 Parnell, resembled a Eoman triumph. 
 
 For a while after the session came to an end there ap- 
 peared to be a lull in political excitement. The session had 
 been so stormy that it was, not unnaturally, hoped that it 
 might be succeeded by a lengthened period of repose. 
 
 Up to this time nothing new had taken place in Ireland. 
 The convention had been held, and had passed off quietly. 
 Mr. Parnell had spoken in Cork and Dublin ; the Land League 
 was advising the tenant farmers to wait for the submitting of 
 their cases to the land courts until the test cases of the League 
 had been decided ; the Land League itself was in full activity, 
 and seemed more popular than ever. Suddenly a series of 
 events took place with great rapidity, which were more start- 
 ling than anything that had preceded them. Early in Octo- 
 ber Mr. Gladstone entered upon what was called his Leeds 
 campaign. It was, in point of fact, a campaign against the 
 Irish Parliamentary party, and against Mr. Parnell in par- 
 ticular. On Friday, October 7, 1881, Mr. Gladstone was at 
 Leeds receiving an address from the mayor and town council, 
 and he made a speech. 
 
 This speech was remarkable for the manner in which it 
 singled out a political opponent for all the energy of Mr. 
 Gladstone's powers of attack. Mr. Gladstone began by re- 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 285 
 
 plying to the Conservative taunts over their victory at Dur- 
 ham. In Durham the victory had been won, it was said, by 
 the Irish vote, and Mr. Gladstone at once turned to the Irish 
 question. After declaring that the condiLon of Ireland for 
 generations, perhaps for centuries, its prosperity and happi- 
 ness, or its loss of all rational hope of progress, depended 
 upon its reception of the Land Act, Mr. Gladstone proceeded 
 to draw a contrast between the conduct of politicians of the 
 school of 1848, like Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, and even of 
 some advanced men of to-day like Mr. John Dillon, with the 
 conduct of Mr. Parnell and his followers. Sir Charles Gavan 
 Duffy was delighted with the new legislation ; Mr. John 
 Dillon,' rather than attempt to plunge his country into dis- 
 order by intercepting the operations of the Land Act, had 
 withdrawn from politics ; while Mr. Parnell, in carrying out 
 his policy of plunder, was doing his best to arrest its action. 
 ' Mr. Parnell,' said Mr. Gladstone, slightly confusing his 
 Scripture history in the vehemence of the moment, desired 
 ' to stand, as Moses stood, between the living and the dead, 
 but to stand there not as Moses stood, to arrest, but to spread 
 the plague.' 
 
 Such a speech, made at such a time, naturally created the 
 greatest excitement. Lord Salisbury attended a meeting at 
 Newcastle-on-Tyne on the following Tuesday, in which he 
 pointed out humorously that Mr. Gladstone was unjust to 
 Mr. Parnell. * When Mr. Gladstone complains that Mr. 
 Parnell has deserted him, I think he forgets it is mainly due 
 to the organisation over which Mr. Parnell presides that he is 
 now Prime Minister of England. . . . Mr. Gladstone's com- 
 plaint of Mr. Parnell for preaching the doctrine of public 
 plunder seems to me a strange application of the old adage 
 that Catiline should not censure Cethegus for treason.' In 
 such terms the head of the Opposition bantered the head of 
 ohe Government ; but in Ireland the speech aroused replien 
 that had little spirit of banter in them. 
 
 At a meeting in Wexford on the Sunday following Mr. 
 Gladstone's speech at Leeds, Mr. Parnell delivered a speech 
 
286 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 of vehement attack upon the Prime Mmister. It was a 
 curious duel of words, unlike anything that English political 
 life had been accustomed to : a Prime Minister levelling a 
 bitter personal attack upon a political opponent, and the op- 
 ponent retorting in terms of equal fierceness. Mr. John 
 Dillon was not behindhand in replying to the Prime Minister. 
 Mr. Gladstone had held him up as an honourable contrast to 
 the conduct of ]\Ir. Parnell, and Mr. Dillon angrily and scorn- 
 fully repudiated the compliments of the Prime Minister. He 
 had not, he assured the Prime Minister, retired from politics 
 to allow free play to the Land Act. On the contrary, he 
 deeply regretted that he had not been able to stand between 
 his country and the Land Act altogether. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone's speech had aroused the greatest excite- 
 ment in Ireland, and, indeed, in England too. People felt 
 that such a pronouncement could not have been uttered 
 TCiQiely pour rire — that something more was to come of it; 
 and something more came. A few days after Mr. Parnell and 
 Mr. Dillon had replied to the attack, the Government replied 
 by a veritable coup cVetat. A descent was made upon all the 
 prominent Land League leaders in Dublin on Thursday, 
 October 13. Mr. Parnell was arrested in Morrison's Hotel, 
 and conveyed to Kilmainham early in the morning. Mr. 
 Sexton, M.P., Mr. O'Kelly, M.P., Mr. Dillon, M.P., Mr. 
 O'Brien, and Mr. J. P. Quinn, Secretary of the Land League, 
 were arrested in rapid succession, and conveyed to Kilmain- 
 ham Prison. Warrants vv^ere out for Mr. Biggar, Mr. Healy, 
 and Mr. Arthur O'Connor. Mr. Biggar and Mr. Arthur 
 O'Connor got over to England, where Mr. Healy was, and 
 orders were conveyed to them from their leader not to return 
 to Ireland to certain arrest, but to remain in England, where 
 they might be useful in keeping the agitation alive. 
 
 These wholesale arrests startled the whole civilised world. 
 Continental countries, used to struggles with revolutionary 
 parties, congratulated themselves on the discovery that Eng- 
 land, the proud mother of free nations, had her difficulties as 
 well as they, and could only meet them with the old methods. 
 
THE LAND LEAGUE 287 
 
 In England itself the cou^p d'etat was received witli satisfac- 
 tion, almost with rejoicing, by the generality of the supporters 
 of the Government, though it is hardly necessary to say that 
 advanced Eadicals like Mr. Jesse Collings, Mr. Thompson of 
 Durham, Mr. Labouchere, Mr. Storey, and Mr. Joseph Cowen 
 did not share in this satisfaction, and that the rejoicing was 
 not unanimous even in the Cabinet. Mr. Gladstone was pre- 
 sent at an entertainment given by the Corporation of the City 
 of London at the Guildhall on October 13. Mr. Gladstone 
 made a speech which might be regarded as the epilogue to 
 his Leeds address. In the middle of an eloquent appeal to 
 the principles of law and order the Prime Minister produced 
 a telegram which he had just received, and in tones of trium- 
 phant exultation announced to his hearers the arrest of Mr. 
 Parnell. 
 
 The effect was curious. Had Mr. Gladstone informed his 
 audience of the conquest of some foreign foe, of the successful 
 conclusion of some long and hazardous war, or the consum- 
 mation of some honourable and long-looked-for peace, his 
 words could not have aroused a greater frenzy of enthusiasm. 
 Every man in the crowded hall sprang to his feet and cheered 
 till he could cheer no longer. ' Our enemies have fallen, 
 have fallen,' said Mr. Gladstone ; and the tumultuous applause 
 with which he was greeted from political opponents, as well 
 as political allies, must have assured him that he had wrestled 
 well, and overthrown more than his enemies. 
 
 Across the Irish Sea everything was confusion. Arrests 
 followed arrests ; excited meetings were held all over the 
 country; a Ladies' Land League, even a Children's Land 
 League, and a Political Prisoners' Aid Society strove to keep 
 the agitation alive ; there were slight riots here and there ; 
 the Government took the most elaborate precautions against 
 a possible popular rising. Suddenly the walls of Dublin were 
 placarded bj a proclamation calling upon the Irish people to 
 pay no rent while their leaders were in prison. This docu- 
 ment was signed by Charles S. Parnell, President, Kilmainham 
 Jail ; A. J. Kettle, Honorary Secretary, Kilmainham Jail ; 
 
288 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Michael Davitt, Honorary Secretary, Portland Prison ; Thomas 
 Brennan, Honorary Secretary, Kilmainham Jail ; John Dillon, 
 Head Organizer, Kilmainham Jail ; Thomas Sexton, Head 
 Organizer, Kilmainham Jail ; Patrick Egan, Treasurer ^ Paris. 
 
 The No-Rent manifesto was dramatically effective, but it 
 was not generally acted upon ; its framers can hardly have 
 expected that it would be. The clergy were entirely against 
 i'. Even the most national of Irish ecclesiastics. Archbishop 
 Croke of Cashel, condemned it unhesitatingly. A general 
 strike of rent all over Ireland might have been a great political 
 move if it had been possible, but it was not possible. The 
 No-Rent manifesto was a direct challenge to the Government, 
 and the Government retaliated by declaring the Land League 
 an illegal body, by proclaiming its meetings, and by arresting 
 its remaining official7MrrDorris, and sending him to Dundalk 
 Prison. Many women, members of the Ladies' Land League, 
 were put into prison in different parts of the country. The 
 most advanced of the national newspapers, United Ireland y 
 was shortly afterwards proscribed, and for the time being 
 practically suppressed. It carried on a fitful existence, printed 
 now in Paris, now in Liverpool, and smuggled over as well as 
 might be to Ireland, where it was sold surreptitiously, and 
 seized by the police whenever they could lay hands upon it. 
 The Government had done their best to stifle the Land League, 
 to crush it out of existencj altogether, and they appeared to 
 have succeeded. They really seemed to think that by abolish- 
 ing an association and suppressing a newspaper they could 
 silence a national agitation, and summarily dispose of a com- 
 plicated and vexatious problem. 
 
 As soon as Mr. Parnell was imprisoned the Lord Chancellor 
 removed his name from the Commission of the Peace for the 
 county of Wicklow. An effort was immediately made by the 
 national section of the Dublin Corporation to confer the free- 
 dom of the city upon Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon. After a 
 stormy discussion, in which Mr. Gray, M.P., and Mr. Dawson, 
 M.P., led the national party, against Mr. Brooks, M.P., who 
 opposed the proposal, the motion was lost by the casting vote 
 
THE LAWD LEAGUE 289 
 
 of the Lord Mayor, Dr. Moyers. The proposal was only de- 
 layed. With the new year a new Lord Mayor was elected, 
 Mr. Charles Dawson, M.P., a strong Nationalist. This time 
 the national party in the Corporation were in a large majority, 
 and by a large majority the customary vote of tlianks to a re- 
 tiring Lord Mayor was refused to Dr. Moyers, for the part he 
 ]iad taken in defeating the freedom of the city proposal. This 
 proposal was now revived and carried successfully. Such an 
 act on the part of the Corporation of a city that had always 
 been remarkable for what was called its 'loyalty,' which 
 meant its subservience to Castle influence, was in itself deeply 
 significant of the hold the national leaders had got upon the 
 lieart of the country. But a message from Heaven would not 
 have appeared significant to Mr. Forster if it had not accorded 
 with his pre-established opinions of the way Ireland ought to 
 be governed. 
 
 The suppression of the Land League did not make Ireland 
 quiet. The imprisonment of the responsible leaders of the 
 national party had removed all check upon the fierce and 
 dangerous forces which are always at work under the surface 
 of Irish politics. The secret societies, which had almost 
 ceased to operate during the rule of the Land League, came 
 into play again the moment the restraining influence of a 
 popular, constitutional, and open movement was removed. 
 Outrages increased daily, and were exaggerated out of all 
 proportion to their increase, until, to those at a distance, 
 Ireland appeared to be sinking into a condition of hopeless 
 anarchy. The Chief Secretary had had his way ; he had put 
 into prison men, women, priests, according to his pleasure, and 
 yet an obstinate island and an ungrateful people refused to 
 justify him by being pacified. Order did not reign in Warsaw. 
 
290 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 OHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 COEECION. 
 
 The year 1882 opened with a grim sense of disquiet in Ireland, 
 of which we find a gloomy record in the ' Annual Register.' 
 ' Though the Land League was suppressed, though its chief 
 leaders were in prison, the condition of the country was worse 
 than ever, and seemed to have become more and more hope- 
 lessly disorganised day by day. Undoubtedly the imprisonment 
 of Members of Parliament like Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and 
 Mr. 'Kelly had succeeded in breaking the power of the Land 
 League, but it had done little or nothing towards restoring 
 the country to quiet. The members of the many secret 
 societies that abound in Ireland had found their favourite 
 forms of action terribly restrained by the more open agitation 
 established and carried on by the Land League. Now that 
 there was no longer a Land League, the secret societies had 
 it all their own way, and outrages of various kinds multi- 
 plied alarmingly in all parts of the island where the influence 
 of these occult bodies extended. A new and dangerous organi- 
 sation, headed by a mysterious individual known as " Captain 
 Moonlight," distinguished itself for midnight maraudings, 
 farm-burnings, mutilations of cattle, and similar crimes. 
 
 ' At last the police arrested a man named Connell, who 
 seems to have been drifting about the Cork hills and the 
 Killarney mountains, dressed in a sort of military costume, 
 and levying a kind of black-mail upon the peasantry. Papers 
 were found on the man, orders for shooting, and clipping, and 
 the like, all signed " Captain Moonlight," which seemed to 
 show that he was no other than Captain Moonlight himself. 
 Captain Moonlight, to save himself, promptly turned informer, 
 gave evidence which led to a great many arrests, and then 
 disappeared and was heard of no more. 
 
 • But the arrest of Captain Moonlight did not necessarily 
 mean the stoppage of moonlighting, nor the cessation of 
 
COERCION' 291 
 
 outrages, nor, unfortunately, of incessant rumours and 
 stories of outrages of the most exaggerated kind. Arch- 
 bishop Croke, the leader of what may be called the national 
 majority among the priesthood, declared that a large number 
 of outrages were invented or grossly exaggerated for the mere 
 purpose of inflaming public feeling and injuring the Land 
 League. Archbishop Croke, though a Nationalist, was by no 
 means an extreme man. He had never failed to denounce 
 wild action of any kind ; he had always used his influence 
 for the preservation of peace and order. His opinion, there- 
 fore, was well worthy of serious consideration, and it must be 
 admitted that while the condition of Ireland was bad enough, 
 rumours and exaggerations of all sorts were in circulation, 
 with and without intent, which made it appear a good deal 
 worse than it really was. 
 
 * Arms were frequently seized by the police, and the 
 authorities were convinced that the importation of weapons 
 into Ireland was being successfully carried on on a very large 
 scale. The two most serious crimes which marked the 
 beginning of the year were the murder of two bailiffs in 
 Connemara, and the shooting of an informer in Dublin. 
 The first of these murders occurred in January, when two 
 of Lord Ardilaun's bailiffs, an old man and his grandson 
 named Huddy, were sent to collect rents in a part of Conne- 
 mara known as Joyce's country, from the fact that through 
 constant intermarriages all, or almost all, the peasants of 
 the district bear the name of Joyce. Into the Joyce country 
 they went, and in the Joyce country they disappeared ; search 
 was instituted, the waters of Lough Mask were dragged, and 
 the bodies of the Huddys found. They had evidently been 
 shot, and then tied up in sacks with stones and flung into the 
 Lough. For many months no clue to the murderers was 
 obtained, and it was not until the end of the year, at the 
 time of another terrible crime in the Joyce country, that 
 the murderers of the Huddys were discovered. 
 
 * Late in February an informer named Bernard Bailey was 
 shot dead in Skipper's AUey, Dublin, at a time when the 
 
 u2 
 
292 IRELAND SINCE THE mVTON 
 
 place was crowded with people, when the lamps were light- 
 ing, and policemen on duty in the immediate neighbourhood. 
 But the assassins were not discovered, and the offer of a 
 reward of 500/. failed to elicit any information. Bernard 
 Bailey was a labourer who was supposed to have given 
 information which led to an extensive seizure of arms by 
 the police in Brabazon and Cross Kevin Street, in the 
 preceding December. He had received several threatening 
 letters, and had, it is said, lived for some time entirely in the 
 police -barracks, which he left to go into the workhouse. On 
 Saturday, February 25, he went out into the street, and was 
 immediately killed. 
 
 * Towards the end of 1881 a proposal had been brought 
 before the Corporation of the city of Dublin, by Mr. Charles 
 Dawson, M.P., that the freedom of the city should be con- 
 ferred on Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon, then in Kilmainham 
 Prison. The question was fiercely contested, and Mr. Dawson's 
 proposal was finally defeated by the casting vote of the Lord 
 Mayor, Dr. Meyers. The new year, however, gave Dublin a 
 new Lord Mayor in the person of Mr. Dawson himself, and the 
 question at once came up again. Dr. Moyers was punished for 
 his casting vote by being refused by a large majority the usual 
 vote of thanks accorded to a retiring Lord Mayor. Then the 
 proposal to give the freedom of the city to Mr. Parnell and 
 Mr. Dillon was brought forward by Mr. T. D. Sulhvan, M.P., 
 and, in spite of an opposing amendment by Mr. Brookes, M.P., 
 on the ground that to do so would be to support the No-Rent 
 manifesto, was carried by a majority of 29 to 23. The de- 
 feated members of the Corporation talked of further resistance 
 — even hinted that as Messrs. Dillon and Parnell were not 
 burgesses, they could not legally receive the freedom of the 
 city ; but on having it pointed out to them that this argument 
 would, if successful, necessitate the removal of the names of 
 Mr. Gladstone, of President Grant, and other distinguished 
 persons who were not burgesses, from the roll, they forbore 
 to press the point, which, indeed, it seems had in reality 
 little to support it. The Corporation, or rather the Parnellite 
 
COERCION 293 
 
 majority in the Corporation, asked the Lord Lieutenant to 
 allow Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon to attend at the City Hall 
 to receive the freedom of the city, but the request was of 
 course refused. 
 
 * Though the Land League was suppressed, the Ladies' 
 Land League declined to admit defeat. Women had played a 
 great part in history before, had marched to Versailles at the 
 heels of Shifty Usher Maillard, had disarmed military opposi- 
 tion, had conquered a king. Would the Irish constabulary 
 be more ungallant than those Gardes Fran9aises ? Would a 
 Lord Lieutenant be more difficult than a Louis Capet ? Such, 
 or similar thoughts, may be supposed to have animated the 
 minds of the Lady Land Leaguers when they announced that, 
 in despite of all proclamations and prohibitions, they would 
 hold their meetings all over the country on New Year's Day ; 
 would meet Mr. Forster at Phihppi. Miss Parnell came over 
 from England to preside at the meeting in the League rooms 
 in Sackville Street, Dublin, at which there were many 
 speeches made, and allusions to the uncrowned king of Ireland. 
 Similar meetings took place on the same day in every part of 
 Ireland where a Ladies' Land League had a branch organisa- 
 tion to raise its head. One or two Lady Land Leaguers were 
 arrested in consequence here and there, but practically the 
 Government thought it wisest to ignore the existence of the 
 Ladies' Land League rather than extinguish it by any violent 
 suppression. So the Ladies' Land League lingered on 
 throughout the year, until it was finally abolished by the 
 national leaders, Messrs. Parnell and Dillon, whom, if report 
 were at all well-founded, the Lady Land Leaguers regarded 
 with very little favour in the end, as temporising and half- 
 hearted politicians. 
 
 ' Mr. Forster, of course, was more unpopular than ever. 
 Threatening letters snowed on him ; one at least was more 
 than threatening, and might have exploded had not aroused 
 suspicion taken proper precautions. Yet for all his unpopu- 
 larity he was able to make a journey of inspection into County 
 Clare, then much disturbed, to go about among the people 
 
294 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 unescorted, and make earnest, well-meaning appeals to tliem, 
 which were well enough received, to support the Executive in 
 carrying out the law. It is to be regretted that Mr. Forster 
 had not acted more in this manner from the beginning. Like 
 most of his acts since he took the office of Chief Secretary, 
 it was done too late. The Executive, as advised by Mr. 
 Forster, always used the means at its disposal, whether of 
 coercion or of conciliation, just too late for either to be of 
 effective service. It was no use for Mr. Forster now to go 
 among the disturbed districts and make sensible speeches ; 
 the mischief had been done, and was not now to be mended 
 by any efforts of his. 
 
 ' Meanwhile, the popularity of the men in prison only in- 
 creased. Dublin had given them the freedom of her city, and 
 other Irish cities were not slow to follow her example. Cork 
 conferred its freedom on Mr. Dillon ; freedoms came in to the 
 Kilmainham prisoners from all directions. Mr. Parnell and 
 ]\Ir. Dillon could exercise all the privileges of freemen in an 
 embarrassing variety of places when once they came out of 
 Kilmainham. But when this coming out of Kilmainham was 
 to take place, no man could say. 
 
 ' A curious bye-election served to show that the Land 
 League and its leaders were not losing popularity in the country. 
 Mr. A. M. Sullivan, Member of Parliament for Meath, felt him- 
 self compelled for his health's sake to resign his seat in the 
 early part of the year. The name of Mr. Michael Davitt was 
 at once brought forvv'ard, and the founder of the Land League 
 Avas elected without opposition. He was not of course 
 allowed to take his seat. The Solicitor-General showed that 
 as Mr. Davitt was a convicted felon worldng out his sentence 
 in Portland Prison at the time of the election, he was by that 
 fact disqualified, as O'Donovan Eossa in 1870 and John 
 Mitchel in 1875 were disqualified. A new Land League can- 
 didpite was immediately proposed— ]\Ir. Shell, formerly member 
 for Athlone — and was returned without opposition. 
 
 ' On April 2 a terrible murder took place. Mr. Smythe, a 
 large landowner in ¥/estmeath, had become very unpopular 
 
CO EB CI ON 295 
 
 with his tenants, and his Hfe had been for some time threatened. 
 On April 2 he was retm^ning from church in a carriage with 
 his sister-in-law, Mrs. Henry Smythe, and Lady Harriet 
 ]\lonck, when he was fired at by three men with blackened 
 faces, who made no attempt to conceal themselves, and who 
 successfully escaped. The shots missed Mr. Smythe, but 
 struck his sister-in-law in the head, killing her instantly. 
 The circumstances of this murder were exceptionally ghastly, 
 for it had always hitherto been maintained that, no matter 
 how unpopular a landlord might be, he was always safe so 
 long as he was in the company of a woman, and threatened 
 landlords often lived long by availing themselves of so simple 
 a precaution. Mr. Smythe wrote a very bitter letter to Mr. 
 Gladstone, laying the guilt of the blood upon him and his 
 Ministry. Mr. Gladstone replied in a singularly temperate 
 letter, expressing his profound regret and sympathy, and 
 kindly ignoring the wild personal charge made against him- 
 self. Mr. Smythe then addressed an indignant circular to his 
 tenants, accusing them all of complicity in the murder, directly 
 or indirectly, and telling them that in future the rents were 
 to be paid to a non-resident agent, ** who can make no future 
 allowances, nor do anything on the property not strictly 
 required by law." 
 
 * The fear of assassination led many persons to take careful 
 measures to protect themselves. Of all these, perhaps, the 
 most characteristic and complete was that of Major Traill, 
 R.M., who, in a letter to the Daily Express, gave a curious 
 picture of his daily life. He always went about with a guard 
 of two policemen, one armed with a Winchester riile, carrying 
 twelve rounds ready and fifteen extra rounds in pouch, and 
 the other armed with a double-barrelled gun loaded with 
 buckshot and eight extra rounds ; he himself carried a revolver 
 and six spare rounds, and his groom carried a revolver and 
 five spare rounds. At no moment of the twenty-four hours 
 was a revolver out of reach of his hand, and his wife had a 
 revolver too, and knew how to use it. Being thus guarded 
 against any attempts at assassination, Major Traill dryly con- 
 
296 IRELAND SINCE THE VNION 
 
 eluded, ** The man who attempts my hfe and Hves to be tried by 
 a jury is entitled to their merciful consideration as a brave man." 
 
 ' But if Major Traill was perfectly justified in taking all 
 possible precautions to defend his life or to sell it as dearly as 
 might be, there was no such justification for an extraordinary 
 circular which Major Clifford Lloyd thought fit to issue later in 
 the year. In this document the police were told tha.t if they 
 should " accidentally commit an error in shooting any person 
 on suspicion of that person being about to commit murder," 
 the production of the circular would exonerate them. Of course 
 such a document, which practically authorised any policeman 
 to shoot on sight anyone whom he fancied might possibly be 
 going to commit murder, could not be tolerated by the Execu- 
 tive. Even allowing to the constabulary the best intentions, 
 it is easy to see that in troublous and excited times harmless 
 persons — beggars by the roadside, labourers in the field, 
 belated wayfarers, anybody at all — might have been shot down 
 by an excitable constable with a revolver in his hand and such 
 a circular in his pocket. Between this and any amount of 
 such precautions as Major Traill and others like him were 
 taking there was all the difference in the world, and the 
 circular had to be withdrawn. 
 
 ' Early in the year a very remarkable publication was made 
 under the official authority of the Irish Land Commission. 
 This was the reprint of articles which appeared in the Free- 
 man'' s Journal, under the title of " How to become owner of 
 your own farm : why Irish landlords should sell and Irish 
 tenants should purchase, and how they can do it under the 
 Land Act of 1881." 
 
 * Those who thought this heading rather remarkable for a 
 work issued with the authority of the Government-appointed 
 Commission, found much more cause for wonder on reading 
 the pamphlet itself. There they found a vigorous and able 
 exposition of the principles of peasant proprietorship, inter- 
 spersed with enthusiastic commendation of the Land League as 
 " the most widespread, the most powerful, and in its effects, we 
 believe, the most enduring organisation of our time," andallu- 
 
GOER CI ON 297 
 
 sions to the cause for which " Parnell and Dillon and Davitt 
 laboured and suffered." Naturally such a pamphlet, issued with 
 official authorisation, and at a time when the Land League was 
 suppressed as illegal, and Parnell, Dillon, and Davitt were in 
 prison, created no small excitement in Ireland. An inquiry was 
 immediately instituted ; the pamphlet was found to be written 
 by Mr. George Fottrell, an able and rising Dublin solicitor, who 
 had been appointed Secretary to the Irish Land Commission. 
 Mr. Fottrell, while defending the pamphlet as well calculated to 
 advance the cause of peasant proprietorship, which the Commis- 
 sion had at heart, immediately resigned his secretaryship, and 
 the pamphlet was withdrawn from official circulation at once. 
 
 * The Government had great difficulty in dealing with the 
 chief of the Land League journals. United Ireland, and with 
 the large introduction into Ireland of the New York Irish 
 World, a journal of the fiercest and most pronounced opinions. 
 United Ireland was suppressed, and was being seized inces- 
 santly, but it continually made its appearance in some form or 
 other. Sometimes it was printed in Dublin under conditions of 
 great difficulty, and sold or rather smuggled about ; then it was 
 printed in Paris and exported to Dublin, where it was generally 
 seized on arrival ; then again it was taken over to Liverpool to 
 be set up, and introduced from there surreptitiously into 
 Ireland. All the activity of the police could not prevent the 
 circulation of the paper in some form or another. Week after 
 week it kept on appearing, encouraging the agitation to con- 
 tinue, and assailing the Government in unmeasurcl prose 
 and vigorous cartoons. 
 
 ' The Irish World was a much wilder journal than United 
 Ireland, and the copies sent to Ireland by post were generally 
 seized by the English postal authorities, to the great indig- 
 nation of the staff of the Irish World, who inquired indig- 
 nantly : '* Is a thick-headed, shock-haired, leaden-hearted old 
 reprobate like Forster going to succeed in keeping out the 
 light, or are we to see America triumphant and defeating this 
 hirsute Forster? " In one sense America, as represented by 
 the Irish World, was triumphant, for with all the zeal and 
 
298 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 watchfulness of the Government, it could not prevent the fre- 
 quent mtroduction of the journal mto Ireland. 
 
 ' Early in April the rumour suddenly ran through Ireland 
 that Mr. Parnell had been released from Kilmainham. The 
 greatest joy was expressed at the news, and bonfires blazed in 
 every village in the three provinces ; but the excitement was 
 allayed by the later information that Mr. Parnell had indeed 
 been released, but only on parole for a few days, in order that 
 he might go to Paris to attend the funeral of a relative. The 
 terms of Mr. Parnell' s parole engaged him not to take any part 
 in political matters or demonstrations of any kind, and it is 
 needless to add that the conditions were absolutely observed. 
 Mr. Parnell did not return to his prison quite as soon as was ex- 
 pected, and the absurd scare got possession of some minds in 
 Dublin that the Land League leader did not mean to come 
 back at all. Such baseless apprehensions were, however, 
 promptly dissipated by Mr. Parnell's return to Kilmainham on 
 April 24. 
 
 ' This temporary liberation was but the herald of freedom 
 for the imprisoned Land Leaguers. For some time, indeed, 
 the Government had been greatly embarrassed by the necessity 
 for , keeping Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. O'Kelly in 
 prison. The hoped-for reformation in the country which that 
 imprisonment was to effect had not taken place ; on the con- 
 trary, the country was evidently getting more and more 
 hopelessly disorganised ; and, at the same time, the responsi- 
 bility of keeping so many men imprisoned merely as " suspects " 
 increased daily. Many offers were made to the three leaders 
 in Kilmainham of liberation on condition of their leaving the 
 country, or even of going across to France for a short time 
 and returning to Ireland when they pleased. The imprisoned 
 Members declined all conditions of the kind. In the mean- 
 time, ever since the temporary release of Mr. Parnell, many- 
 tongued rumours had been circulating in Dublin. It was 
 whispered that Mr. Dillon was to be released. The statement 
 was denied, was whispered abroad again, and again denied. 
 It was clear that some curious political event was going to 
 
COERCION 299 
 
 happen, but few outside the Government circle were prepared 
 for the startling character that the event was to wear. On 
 ]\Iay 2, Ireland was electrified by the news that Mr. Forster 
 and Lord Cowper had resigned; that Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, 
 and Mr. O'Kelly were to be immediately released uncondition- 
 ally ; nay, more, that Michael Davitt was once more to 
 become a free man, and that the Government had undertaken 
 to bring in an Arrears Bill on the lines of a measure drafted 
 by Mr. Parnell himself. 
 
 'What was the cause of this strange Ministerial change cf 
 front ? This was the (Question everyone set himself to ask 
 and answer to the best of his ability during the days im- 
 mediately following the amazing news. The Government 
 explanation itself was, one might well think, sufOciently clear 
 and reasonable to satisfy curiosity, without any further gropings 
 for hidden motives and secret reasons. Mr. Gladstone and 
 his Ministry had imprisoned certain men at a certain time 
 because they believed it was for the good of both countries 
 that they should do so. 
 
 ' The condition of the country since had led Mr. Gladstone 
 to the conclusion that the ends he had in view for the pacifica- 
 tion of Ireland and the settlement of the Irish question would 
 be further advanced by releasing the imprisoned Members. 
 Mr. Gladstone had been conspicuous all through his political 
 career for his willingness to recognise when he had made an 
 error, and his willingness to sacrifice those personal feelings 
 of pride which have so often led Ministers to pursue an un- 
 lucky course, simply because they had began and were too 
 proud to draw back. But so simple an explanation would 
 not satisfy the wiseacres who always know more of Ministerial 
 purposes than the Ministers themselves, and an imaginary 
 '* Kilmainham Treaty " was at once invented, in which it was 
 supposed that Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell had made 
 many mutual pledges to assist and countenance each other, 
 and that the liberation of the prisoners was the fulfilment of 
 the first article of the convention. Nothing in the subsequent 
 history of the year showed anything to justify the assumption 
 
300 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 of the existence of any such negotiations, even were the 
 repeated denials of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell not to be 
 considered sufficiently conclusive. 
 
 ' Mr. Forster, however, was entirely opposed to Mr. Glad- 
 stone's new policy. Having entered on one particular line of 
 action, he was for following it up to the end, regardless of 
 consequences ; and he refused to be any party to the new 
 arrangement. He resigned, and Lord Cowper resigned with 
 him. Lord Spencer was appointed Lord Lieutenant, and 
 Lord Frederick Cavendish, second son of the Duke of 
 Devonshire and brother of Lord Hartington, was appointed 
 Chief Secretary in Mr. Forster's stead. 
 
 ' For the first time since Mr. Gladstone's Ministry took 
 office there seemed to be a cordial understanding between 
 the Government and the Irish party. Each side seemed to 
 have awakened to the fact that its opponents were honest and 
 honourable men, really trying to do their best, and that the 
 welfare of Ireland was the real desire of each. If such an 
 understanding could have been arrived at earlier the history 
 of the past two years might have been very different ; but the 
 impartial observer is compelled to admit that on both sides 
 — on the part of the Ministry as well as on the part of Mr. 
 Parnell and his followers — there was a certain impatience, a 
 not unnatural incredulity as to the good intentions of the other, 
 which widened day by day the breach between the great 
 Liberal majority and the small Irish minority. Now, how- 
 ever, all this seemed to be at an end ; the unhappy quarrel 
 seemed concluded. The Government appeared to accept the 
 fact that it was impossible to govern Ireland without taking 
 into account some of Ireland's ideas as expressed by her 
 representatives. Ireland appeared well pleased to admit that 
 the Liberal party were as sincerely anxious to benefit the 
 country now as they had often done before. All over Ireland 
 there was a feeling of joy that the time of trouble had passed 
 away ; that misunderstandings had ceased ; that the new era 
 had begun at last. Indeed, it seemed like a new era. The 
 imprisoned leaders were released, were actually consulted by 
 
COEUCION 301 
 
 the Government ; the Chief Searetary who, with tlie best in- 
 tentions, had succeeded in making himself as unpopular as 
 Castlereagh, was out of office ; the reign of Coercion was to 
 cease, and new and much-desired legislation was to be un- 
 dertaken immediately. It would be difficult to over-estimate 
 the good effect that the change produced in Ireland. But 
 unfortunately there were men in the country to whom 
 reconciliation was hateful, who hated the constitutional 
 agitation with all their hearts, and who dreaded nothing so 
 much as its triumph. During the suppression of the Land 
 League the secret societies which fostered such feelings had 
 grown and thriven. While the Land League was in existence 
 their influence had dwindled away ; the moment the power of 
 the Land League was destroyed, the secret societies again 
 asserted themselves and their dangerous methods. So much 
 to explain the catastrophe which suddenly destroyed so many 
 bright hopes of peace and reconcilement between the two 
 countries. 
 
 * On Saturday, May 6, Lord Frederick Cavendish arrived in 
 Dublin, to be present at the entry of the new Viceroy, Lord 
 Spencer. When the ceremony was over he took a car to drive 
 to the Viceregal Lodge in the Phoenix Park. On his way he 
 passed Mr. Burke, a well-known Castle official of many years' 
 standing. Lord Frederick Cavendish got oft' the car, dismissed 
 it, and walked with Mr. Burke through the Phoenix Park. 
 It was a bright summer evening, between seven and eight, 
 scarcely less light than at noonday. There were many people 
 in the Park. Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke were 
 walking along the principal road — a wide highway for walking 
 and driving, with flat grassy stretches at each side, and trees 
 here and there. It seems almost incredible that in such a 
 place, a park full of people, and at such a time — the clear 
 bright evening of a summer day — two men could have been 
 suddenly set upon by armed assassins, and literally been cut 
 to pieces without anyone noticing what was going on, and 
 without any opposition being offered to the escape of the 
 murderers ; yet that is precisely what did happen. Lord 
 
302 lUELANB SINCE THE UNION 
 
 Frederick Cavendisli and Mr. Burke had got to within a few 
 yards of the Phoenix Monument, they were within sight of 
 the windows of the Viceregal Lodge, which lay at their right 
 a few hundred yards away. Some boys on bicycles who 
 passed them were the last to see them alive. The bicyclists 
 drove round the Phcenix Monument, passed a cart with some 
 four men on it driving rapidly away, and came back to find 
 Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke lying on the ground 
 dead, and covered with wounds. When the alarm was given 
 the bodies were soon recognised, but all trace of the assassins 
 had disappeared, and such efforts as were made in the excite- 
 ment of the hour to track them down were futile. It soon 
 transpired that several persons were witnesses of the ghastly 
 murder, who had no idea what they were witnessing. One 
 man who was walking with his dogs at some little distance 
 off saw what he believed to be a group of roughs struggling 
 together in the road ; he saw a couple of men fall and some 
 others drive away without any feeling of surprise ; nor had 
 he, until he arrived at the spot where the dead bodies were 
 lying, the slightest idea that he had been looking at one of 
 the most horrible tragedies on record. It is even more painful 
 to know that from the windows of the Viceregal Lodge Lord 
 Spencer himself was looking out of one of the windows, and 
 saw with unconcerned eyes the scuffle on the road some 
 hundred yards away, little thinking that what seemed to be 
 the horseplay of half a dozen roughs was in reality the murder 
 of two of his colleagues. 
 
 • The effect that the news produced in Ireland and in Eng- 
 land was one of universal horror. The leaders of the National 
 party, Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, and Mr. Davitt, at once issued 
 an address to the Irish people and to the world, expressing 
 their horror and despair at the shameful crime which had 
 brought disgrace upon their country. The manifesto con- 
 cluded : " We feel that no act has ever been perpetrated in our 
 country, during the exciting struggles for social and political 
 rights of the past fifty years, that has so stained the name of 
 hospitable Ireland as this cowardly and unprovoked assassi- 
 
COERCION 303 
 
 nation of a friendly stranger, and that until the murderers of 
 Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke are brought to justice, 
 that stain will sully our country's name." 
 
 * The feelings expressed in this manifesto were generally 
 shared in Ireland. In Cork, a meeting chiefly composed of 
 Nationalists and Land Leaguers, passed unanimously the 
 following resolution : 
 
 * " That this meeting of the citizens of Cork, spontaneously 
 assembled, hastens to express the feelings of indignation and 
 sorrow with which it has learned of the murders of Lord 
 Frederick Cavendish and Mr. T. H. Burke last night, and to 
 denounce it as a crime that calls to Heaven for vengeance ; 
 to repudiate its authors, whoever they may be, with disgust 
 and abhorrence, as men with whom the Irish nation has no 
 community of feeling ; and to convey our condolence with the 
 families of the murdered." 
 
 * Similar resolutions were passed in all parts of Ireland, 
 and the sincerest regret and horror appeared to prevail all 
 over the country. But the murderers could not be found. 
 
 . During the w-eeks immediately following the murder 
 the police made many arrests, but in no cases were they able 
 to establish any evidence of guilt in the prisoners. Later in 
 the year a man named Westgate gave himself up in a South 
 American port as one of the murderers, and was brought to 
 Ireland to be examined ; but it was soon found that his con- 
 fession was false, it being clearly proved that he had sailed 
 from Ireland some days before the murder had been com- 
 mitted. 
 
 ' Mr. G. 0. Trevelyan was appointed as the new Chief 
 Secretary for Ireland. The Government immediately passed 
 an exceptionally stringent and severe Crimes Act. 
 
 ' Whatever the value of some of the powers conferred by 
 the Bill might be, proof of the uselessness of " curfew-clause " 
 legislation was given in June by two terrible murders which 
 were committed long before sunset. On June 8, Mr. Walter 
 Bourke and his military escort were shot at from behind a 
 loojpholed wall near Gort, and both killed. On the 29th of 
 
804 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 the month Mr. John Henry Blake, Lord Clanricarde's agent, 
 an J Mr. Keene, his steward, were shot also from behind a loop- 
 holed wall near Lough Eea, and both killed. In neither case 
 was any clue to the assassins discoverable. 
 
 ' The 15th of August was the occasion of a grer^t national 
 celebration in Dublin. On that day the great statue of O'Con- 
 nell, cast from designs by Foley, which had been set up in the 
 end of Sackville Street opposite the O'Connell — formerly Car- 
 lisle — Bridge was to be unveiled. On the same day the 
 Exhibition of Irish Arts and Manufactures was to be opened. 
 The history of this Exhibition was somewhat curious. Towards 
 the end of 1881 the scheme of an Exhibition of Irish Manu- 
 factures in Dublin was proposed by some of the leading Dublin 
 citizens, amongst whom Mr. Dawson, M.P., the Lord Mayor 
 Elect, and other Irish members were conspicuous. 
 
 ' These gentlemen ha^ determined that the Exhibition 
 should be entirely of a national character, and though they 
 would undoubtedly have received Government assistance for 
 their scheme, they chose to trust to their own exertions to 
 carry the thing through, and they gave considerable offence 
 in many quarters by their refusal to solicit or accept either 
 Castle or Eoyal patronage for their undertaking. It was con- 
 fidently predicted that an Exhibition got up under these con- 
 ditions must of necessity be a disastrous failure. Nothing of 
 the kind had practically been done without Castle countenance 
 ever since there was a Castle, and the experiment was con- 
 demned in many quarters before it was attempied. But the 
 founders of the scheme were not to be daunted. Headed by 
 Mr. Dawson, they certainly worked hard for the success of 
 their project, and by August 15 the Exhibition, which was 
 entirely the work of the national party, was actually ready. 
 
 ' The Exhibition, which was erected at the back of the 
 Eotunda, was really a very pretty building of glass and iron, 
 and it contained a display of Irish art and manufactures which 
 was highly creditable to the artistic and industrial efforts and 
 resources of the country. There was some fear that the day 
 of the celebration would be disturbed by some fierce outbreak 
 
COEBCTON 305 
 
 in Dublin, in consequence of the number of persons who 
 would come into the city from the surrounding country. Com- 
 mendation is due to Mr. Trevelyan and the authorities, who, 
 while taking every precaution to be in readiness in case of any 
 outbreak, made no display whatever of military or constabu- 
 lary force. In Sackville Street, wliere the chief events of the 
 day were to take place, there were no policemen visible ; the 
 town was apparently left in the trust and charge of the people 
 themselves, and the result fully justified t1ie wise action of the 
 authorities. All the day the most perfect order was maintained 
 everywhere. No rioting or unseemly displays of any kind 
 occurred. The great procession, some miles in length, of 
 Dublin guilds and trades, headed by tlie popular members of 
 Parliament, went its appointed course from Stephen's Green 
 through the city, and down Sackville Street to the foot of the 
 veiled statue of O'Connell, through streets so densely filled 
 by enthusiastic crowds no whit disheartened by an occasional 
 rainfall, which indeed served only to heighten the national 
 character of the proceedings. The statue was unveiled ; the 
 Exhibition was opened and was immediately crowded with 
 curious visitors ; and the 'N>]iole day passed off without leaving 
 any unpleasant memory of any kind behind it. 
 
 ' The next day the long-deferred freedom of the city of 
 Dublin was conferred upon Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon in the 
 City Hall. Some considerable excitement was caused during 
 the ceremony by the arrival of the news that Mr. E. D. Gray, 
 M.P., the owner of the Freeman's Journal, and High Sheriff 
 of Dublin, had just been committed to prison by Justice 
 Lawson for contempt of Court. A man named Francis Hynes 
 had been tried for a murder and condemned to death. A letter 
 was published in the Freeman's Journal by Mr. O'Brien, the 
 editor of United Ireland, declaring that on the night before 
 the finding of the verdict the jury, who were in the Imperial 
 Hotel where Mr. O'Brien was stopping, had behaved in a very 
 noisy manner under the influence of drink. The Freeman 
 published an article on this letter written by Mr. Gray, and 
 
 X 
 
1506 IBELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 commenting very severely upon the conduct of the jury. 
 Mr. Gray was accordingly summoned before Mr. Justice 
 Lawson for contempt of Court, and was condemned to three 
 months' imprisonment, to pay a fine of 500Z., and at the ex- 
 piration of his imprisonment to find bail for 5,000^., and two 
 sureties in 2,500/., under penalty of a farther imprisonment 
 of three months. Mr. Gray went to prison. Many of the 
 Irish members in Dublin immediately went back to London, 
 where the Parliament was just drawing to a close, to make 
 the case known there ; a proclamation, signed by the Lord 
 Mayor and Mr. Parnell, was posted in all parts of the town 
 calling upon the people to make no disturbance in consequence 
 of the arrest. A public subscription was immediately started 
 to meet the fine, which was promptly paid off. To dispose 
 of this matter at once, we may say that Mr. Gray was kept 
 in prison for a couple of months, and then released by Mr. 
 Justice Lawson. The whole matter was afterwards made the 
 subject of an inquiry by a Committee of the whole House of 
 Commons, which, however, decided to take no action in the 
 matter, on the ground that Judge Lawson was within his 
 rights and privilege in what he had done. 
 
 ' On August 17 a terrible outrage took place in Maam- 
 trasma, in the Joyce country, which was coimected with the 
 murder of the Huddys in the early part of the year. A party 
 of disguised men entered the house of a family named Joyce, 
 consisting of a man, his wife, mother, two sons, and a 
 daughter, and massacred them all with the exception of one 
 son, who was severely w^ounded. The murderers had some 
 reason to fear that the Joyce family knew of the murder of 
 the two baihffs whose bodies had been found in Lough Mask, 
 and might betray it, and they tried to prevent this by a whole- 
 sale massacre. Three alleged murderers were convicted and 
 condemned to death, and executed on December 15. Five 
 others pleaded guilty and were condemned to death, but the 
 death-penalty was commuted by the Lord Lieutenant. The 
 alleged murderers of the Huddys, two men named Higgins 
 and a man named Michael Flynn, were then discovered on 
 
COERCION 307 
 
 the evidence of an informer, tried, and Flynn and one of the 
 Higgins were sentenced to death. 
 
 * During the greater part of August the Irish Executive 
 was much embarrassed by what threatened to be, and what 
 in certain districts became, an actual strike on the part of 
 the Irish Constabulary. The Constabulary had been agitating 
 for increased pay and some other reforms in the service. The 
 Inspector-General of Constabulary unfortunately characterised 
 the conduct of the men, who had rendered the Government 
 great service during two very trying years, as " disloyal " — a 
 word which roused the greatest indignation throughout the 
 whole force, and which had to be apologised for later. The 
 Viceroy made several promises of redress of grievances which 
 quieted the agitation for a short time, but it soon broke out 
 again, chiefly in Limerick and in Dublin. On September 1 
 there was an almost general strike of policemen in Dublin. 
 Special constables had to be hastily enrolled. For the time 
 Dublin might almost have been called the City of Proclama- 
 tions, for every wall bore placards — some from the Lord 
 Lieutenant calling upon loyal citizens to come and enrol 
 themselves as special constables ; some from the Lord Mayor, 
 Mr. Dawson, M.P., entreating all citizens to keep order. In 
 fact, during this period of the strike the Lord Lieutenant and 
 the Lord Mayor figured for a time as rival and hostile poten- 
 tates. The Lord Mayor did not at all approve of the special 
 constables enrolled by the Viceroy, and was anxious to 
 organise a body of his own, and the Lord Lieutenant objected 
 strongly to any such step on the part of the Mayor. The 
 timely surrender of the Constabulary and the return of the 
 policemen to their duty put an end to a very unpleasant 
 crisis. There was actual rioting on more than one day, and 
 the military had to be called out to clear Sackville Street at 
 the point of the bayonet. 
 
 ' The extreme Nationalists lost an old leader in August by 
 the death of Mr. Charles Kickham. Mr. Charles Kickham 
 was an author and journalist who had taken part in the 
 Fenian organisation of 1867, was arrested, tried', and sen- 
 
 x2 
 
308 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 tenced to fourteen years' penrJ servitude. After remaining 
 three and a half years in Portland Prison he was released, 
 but his health, which had always been delicate, was much 
 weakened by his imprisonment, and for the remaining years 
 of his life he took no part in Irish politics, but lived quietly 
 outside Dublin, occasionally writing a little for some of the 
 national papers. A large funeral procession was organised 
 to do honour to his remains. 
 
 * Some slight excitement was caused in the early part of 
 September by the arrest of Mr. Henry George, the corres- 
 pondent of an American paper, and ]\Ir. Joynes, an assistant- 
 master at Eton who were travelling together in Ireland. The 
 arrest was a mere mistake, and the two gentlemen were at 
 once released ; but Mr. Joynes wrote an amusing account of 
 the adventure to the Times, and afterwards published a little 
 book upon the Irish question, which led to disagreements 
 between himself and the head-master of Eton, and to Mr. 
 Joynes' s retirement from his position as assistant-master. 
 
 ' On October 17 an Irish National Conference was held in 
 the Ancient Concert Eooins, Dublin. The object of the con- 
 ference was to form an organisation which should unite into 
 one body all sections of the Irish party, whether Nationalists, 
 Land Leaguers, or Home Eulers. The new body was styled 
 the Irish National League, and its programme was undoubt- 
 edly of the most comprehensive nature, for, in the words of 
 Mr. Parnell, its objects were " national self-government, land- 
 law reform, local self-government, extension of the Parlia- 
 mentary and municipal franchises, and the development and 
 encouragement of the labour and industrial interests of 
 Ireland." This formation of the National League on the 
 ruins of the old Land League recalled curiously enough the 
 historical parallel of O'Connell's societies for the promotion 
 of Catholic Emancipation, which the Government was always 
 suppressing and the Liberator always re-creating under a new 
 name. 
 
 ' At first the new organisation seemed likely to cause some 
 dissension among the national party. Mr. Michael Davitt 
 
COERCION 309 
 
 was well known to hold very different views from these of 
 ]\Ir. Parnell himself on the Land question. While Mr. Parnell 
 for the time contented himself with making peasant-proprietor- 
 ship the basis of his demands, Mr. Davitt was an enthusiastic 
 advocate of the nationalisation of the land, and lie had a con- 
 siderable following in the country. Mr. John Dillon, too, was 
 supposed to be in favour of more advanced views than the 
 leader of the Parliamentary party, and this impression was 
 confirmed by the sudden announcement that Mr. Dillon 
 intended to resign his seat in Parliament. The cause alleged 
 w^as ill-health, and it was indeed well-known that Mr. Dillon's 
 physical condition was far from good, but it was immediately 
 bruited abroad that there was a split in the national camp. 
 A little later, however, Mr. Dillon was induced to withdrav/ 
 his resignation at the request of Archbishop Croke, but he 
 shortly after left the country to recruit his health in warmer 
 climates. Mr. Davitt, though he still adhered to the prin- 
 ciple of nationalisation of the land, and advocated it warmly 
 on every platform where he spoke, offered no opposition to the 
 new organisation, and all appearance of disunion among the 
 party Avas averted. But the threatened split proved a tempo- 
 rary split among the national Irish across the Atlantic. The 
 Irisli World and its followers not only espoused Mr. Davitt's 
 theories, but fiercely attacked Mr. Parnell and the Parlia- 
 mentary party, while most of the Land League branches 
 throughout the States adhered to Mr. Parnell's policy. 
 
 ' The Corporation of Dublin were again conspicuous in 
 November. One of the body proposed that the freedom of 
 the city should be conferred on Sir Garnet Wolseley, in recog- 
 nition of his distinguished services in the Egyptian cpaiipaign. 
 This was strenuously opposed by the more extreme members 
 of the Corporation, and a story was circulated to the effect 
 that Sir Garnet Wolseley had expressed a wish for a rising of 
 ** the Paddies," that he might get a chance of putting them 
 down. As the story, though improbable, found many 
 believers, some friends of Sir Garnet Wolseley thought it 
 worth while to write to him, asking if there was any truth in 
 
3i0 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 the tale. Sir Garnet Wolseley at once replied that there 
 was no truth in it, and added, " I trust I may not live to see 
 civil war in any part of Her Majesty's dominions ; but should 
 such a calamity ever befall us as a nation, I hope I may not 
 have anything to do with it. Although I am not any politician, 
 no Irishman could wish to see Ireland loyal, peaceful, con- 
 tented, and prosperous more than I do." In view, however, 
 of the strong feeling manifested, the proposal to confer the 
 freedom of the city on Sir Garnet Wolseley was withdrawn. 
 
 ' On November 11a period of considerable absence of out- 
 rages was broken, and Dublin society w^as much alarmed by a 
 mysterious attempt to assassinate Mr. Justice Lawson. The 
 Judge was walking on the north side of Merrion Square, about 
 five o'clock in the evening, when one of his escort of four 
 men, two detectives and two army pensioners, who always 
 accompanied him of late, observed that a suspicious-looking 
 man was apparently dodging the Judge. This man was then 
 observed to put his hand to his breast, when he was seized 
 . by the one of the escort who had first observed him, and was 
 found to be holding a loaded seven- chamber revolver in his 
 hand. He was at once disarmed and given into custody. 
 He was afterwards tried and sentenced to ten years' penal 
 servitude. 
 
 * Towards the end of November, Dublin was the scene of 
 several more outrages. On the night of November 25, an 
 attack was made on several detectives by armed men in Abbey 
 Street, and one of the detectives was killed. The next 
 evening a man named Field, who had been juror in the trial 
 of a man named Walsh, who was executed for the murder of 
 a policeman at Letterfrack, was attacked by assassins outside 
 his own house in North Frederick Street in the dusk of 
 evening, and stabbed several times and left for dead. The 
 assassins escaped, and no trace of them could be found, but 
 their victim, though his case was considered hopeless at first, 
 did finally recover from his injuries.' 
 
311 
 
 CHAPTEK XXII. 
 
 OEANGE AND GREEN. 
 
 In December of 1882, according to the same authority, the 
 Irish Executive had turned its attention to certain speeches 
 dehvered by Mr. Michael Davitt, Mr. Healy, M.P., and Mr. 
 Biggar, M.P., which appeared to the Castle authorities to call 
 for prosecution. ' On January 2, Mr. Biggar's case came 
 before the Waterford Sessions, Waterford having been the 
 scene of his offending utterances. The prosecution, however, 
 came to nothing. Mr. Biggar had made a very violent 
 attack upon Lord Spencer, and had passed the severest 
 strictures upon the conduct of the jury in the Hynes case ; 
 but, however much his remarks might have offended against 
 the canons of political good taste, there was nothing in them 
 to justify the interference of the law. Mr. Biggar was com- 
 mii;ted for trial at the Spring Assizes, after being allowed to 
 find bail and give securities in small amounts ; and nothing 
 further was heard of the matter. 
 
 ' The Executive would, perhaps, have displayed greater 
 discretion if they had treated the speeches of Mr. Biggar, 
 Mr. Davitt, and Mr. Healy with politic indifference from the 
 beginning. Failing this, the wisest course might have been 
 to let the matter drop in all three cases. An unsuccessful 
 prosecution is, indeed, always bad for an Executive, but it is 
 not the worst that can befall it. A successful prosecution 
 may sometimes have more disastrous consequences. It proved 
 so in this instance. The Executive, fearing that its action 
 with regard to Mr. Biggar might make it appear too easy- 
 going, determined to push things farther in the cases of 
 Mr. Davitt, Mr. Healy, and Mr. Quinn, a secretary of the 
 National League. They were called upon to find securities 
 for their good behaviour, or to go to prison for six months. 
 
 ' To men in their position there was of course no alter- 
 native. To have consented to find securities would have 
 
312 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 been to admit that they were wrong, and to discredit them 
 for ever in the eyes of the people to whom they were appeahng. 
 In sending them to prison, on the other hand, the Castle 
 authorities were only hicreasing their opponents' popularity 
 and power in the country a thousandfold. Mr. Davitt had, 
 indeed, passed a large part of his life in prison, but every 
 fresh incarceration made him more and more of a martyr in 
 Irish eyes, and he invariably came out of confinement a far 
 more potent political force than he had entered it. Mr. 
 Healy, on the other hand, although one of the most popular 
 of the Parnellite party in Ireland, was one of the few leading 
 Nationalist members wlio had not suffered imprisonment for 
 his opinions. It was, dramatically, the one thing wanting to 
 his career, and the temporary inconvenience of six months' 
 seclusion was but a trifle in contrast with the increase of in- 
 fluence and authority which was certain to accompany it. 
 
 ' But the prosecutions did something more than merely 
 increase the personal and political popularity of Mr. Davitt 
 and Mr. Healy. The opponents of the national movement 
 were always most anxious to see a split in the Parnellite 
 ranks. Such a split they thought had occurred after the 
 formation of the new national League, when Mr. Davitt 
 made proclamation of marked difference of opinion with 
 Mr. Parnell, and was severely censured by Mr. T. P. O'Connor 
 for doing so. There did, indeed, seem at moments the 
 possibility of the National movement being divided, into the 
 two camps of the Parnell party and the Davitt party. But 
 any such division, if it existed at all, was completely put an 
 end to by the imprisonment of Mr. Davitt and Mr. Healy. 
 The necessary intercourse caused by common imprisonment 
 between Mr. Davitt and one of the ablest of Mr. Parnell's 
 lieutenants was in itself enough to solder close the two powers 
 in the national party. In the excitement and enthusiasm 
 caused by the imprisonment all small differences were for- 
 gotten, and, as a matter of fact, when Mr. Davitt finrJly came 
 out of prison, he gave in his adherence cordially to the 
 National League, with Vv^iich, at its first inception, he appeared 
 
OllAXGE AND GREEN 313 
 
 to be at odds. It is, indeed, one of the most remarkable 
 things in Mr. Davitt's coiniection with the agitation in Ireland 
 that the originator of the Land League has always been con- 
 tent to act loyally with Mr. Parnell, and has steadily rejected 
 the many opportunities of setting himself in opposition. 
 
 ' Of course the Executive could not allow its action to be 
 influenced by such considerations as these, if the speeches of 
 either Mr. Davitt or Mr. Healy seriously called for strong 
 measures. But the offending orations were hardly of sufficient 
 magnitude to j ustify the temporary martyrdom of their speakers. 
 They had said nothing very new or very surprising, and in 
 making an example of them, the Executive only succeeded in 
 making Mr. Davitt more popular than before, in raising Mr. 
 Healy to the front rank among the politicians of the Parnellite 
 party, and in effectually preventing for the time any sugges- 
 tion of a split between the followers of Mr. Parnell on the 
 one side, and the adherents of Mr. Davitt on the other. 
 
 ' The Government was engaged on yet a third prosecution, 
 the results of wliich were equally favourable to the Nationalists. 
 United Ireland was the pamper of all others in Dubl'n which 
 expressed most frankly the opinions of the advanced party in 
 Ireland. At the time of the Government descent upon the 
 Land League this journal was promptly proscribed, and for a 
 long time made its appearance with the greatest difficulty, 
 being printed now in Paris, now in Liverpool, and smuggled 
 into Ireland as chance permitted or opportunity offered. It 
 now made its appearance again, and was as active as ever in 
 its support of the extreme national party. Its editor was 
 Mr. William O'Brien, a young man of education and ability, 
 conspicuous among the prominent non-Parliamentary followers 
 of Mr. Parnell for his "irreconcilable" opinions. 
 
 ' He had, it will be remembered, come forward at the time 
 of the Hynes trial to give his testimony to the riotous conduct 
 of the jury at the Imperial Hotel on the night previous to the 
 verdict. After the execution an article appeared m United 
 Ireland entitled " Accusing Spirits," in which a bitter attack 
 was made upon the Government of Lord Spencer. On 
 
314 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 January 15 Mr. "William O'Brien was committed for trial for 
 having, in the phraseology of the indictment, published a 
 false, malicious, and seditious libel for the purpose and with 
 the intent of bringing the government of the country and the 
 administration of the law into hatred and contempt, and in 
 order to incite hostility against the same, and for the purpose 
 of disturbing the peace of the country, and of raising discon- 
 tent and disaffection among the Queen's subjects. 
 
 ' At this time Mr. William O'Brien was a candidate for the 
 small constituency of Mallow, one of the most peculiar con- 
 stituencies in the South of Ireland. It was very small ; it 
 was popularly held to be very rotten. During the old Parlia- 
 ment it had been represented by a very moderate Home Euler, 
 Mr. John George MacCarthy. That a Home Ruler of any 
 shade should be able to sit for Mallow seemed remarkable 
 enough, but it was pretty generally admitted that a Home 
 Euler would have no chance again. At the General Election 
 Mr. William M. Johnson, an Irish Liberal lawyer, had been 
 elected by a considerable majority over his Conservative 
 opponent. When, on the formation of the Ministry, Mr. 
 Johnson, as the .new Solicitor-General for Ireland, went down 
 again to Mallow, a Home Rule candidate was run in opposi- 
 tion to him. The result was discouraging enough to the 
 Home Rulers. Mr. Johnson was returned by a larger majority 
 than before, while the Home Rule candidate got very con- 
 siderably less votes than had been won by Mr. Johnson's 
 Conservative rival. Now, in the beginning of 1883, Mr. 
 Johnson, having accepted other duties, was leaving Parliamen- 
 tary life ; Mallow was again vacant, and the national party, 
 apparently forgetful of their former rebuff', were bringing 
 forward, not a nominal Home Ruler, but one of the most 
 aggressive and uncompromising champions of the principles 
 of Mr. Parnell. 
 
 * The struggle was watched by both sides with the keenest 
 interest. The defeat of Mr. O'Brien would undoubtedly be a 
 very severe check to the aspirations of the Nationalist party ; 
 his success would be a decided triumph for them. The issue 
 
CHANGE AND GREEN 315 
 
 seemed doubtful until the beginning of the United Ireland 
 trial. With his committal for trial Mr. O'Brien's chance of 
 election became a certainty. Two days after the formal com- 
 mittal he was returned at the head of the poll by a majority 
 of seventy two votes over Mr. Naisli, the new Solicitor- 
 General for Ireland, and the Nationalists had scored their 
 greatest success since the election of Mr. Parnell for Cork 
 City. The trial itself came to nothing, owing to the dis- 
 agreement of the jury. 
 
 ' During the week of the Mallow election several executions 
 took place, which were the subject of much comment in the 
 Nationalist Press and on Nationalist platforms. Patrick 
 Higgins, Thomas Higgins, and Michael Flynn were hanged 
 for the murder of the Huddys in the Joyce country in the 
 early part of the previous year ; Sylvester Poff and James 
 Barrett were hanged for the murder of Thomas Brown near 
 Castle Island. Considerable belief in the innocence of Poff 
 was expressed in Ireland, and a wide-spread sympathy for the 
 dead man was finding vent in bitter criticisms of the adminis- 
 tration of justice, when a series of events, the most startling 
 and the most impressive that had yet occurred in the history 
 of Ireland under the new Government, diverted public atten- 
 tion from everything except certain proceedings in the Dublin 
 Police-court and in Kilmainham Court-house. 
 
 ' On January 13 Dublin was surprised by a mysterious 
 police raid on various houses, resulting in the arrest of no less 
 than seventeen persons, most of them in an humble way of 
 life, but one of them, a well-to-do tradesman, and recently 
 elected Town Councillor, by name James Carey, of whom the 
 year was to hear more. The arrests were made in consequence 
 of a series of inquiries which had been going on at the Castle, 
 under the peculiar statutory powers allowed by the Crimes 
 Act, of examining witnesses without bringing any specific 
 charges against individuals, and so obtaining information not 
 otherwise to be got at. The seventeen prisoners were at once 
 charged with conspiracy to murder certain Government officials 
 and other persons. Attempts were made on behalf of many 
 
316 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 of the prisoners to obtain bail, but bail was in every instance 
 steadily refused. Two days later three more men were 
 arrested. 
 
 ' The news of these arrests created great excitement on both 
 sides of St. George's Channel. In Ireland all who belonged 
 to the disaffected portion of the community were inclined to 
 believe that the authorities had made one more needless blunder 
 in arresting a number of inoffensive men, and putting them to 
 unnecessary annoyance and indignity by repeated examinations. 
 The refusal of bail was regarded as a special grievance, and 
 the complaints against the harshness of the Executive were 
 many and bitter. Others, however, were more disturbed by 
 doubt as to whether the Castle had really been fortunate enough 
 to place its band upon any of those unknown criminals who 
 were held responsible for the mysterious murders of the pre- 
 ceding year. While they lioped, with the London Times, ** that 
 there is at length a probability of securing the clue to a series 
 of atrocious crimes, perpetrated with a cold-blooded deliberation 
 and remorseless purpose not easily paralleled, save among the 
 fanatics of Nihihsm," they felt that it did not follow that even 
 now the Government was in the possession of legal proof. 
 Any such doubt was soon to be removed. On January 20, 
 the prisoners were brought before the court, and it was made 
 known that one of their number, Robert Farrell, a labourer 
 and an old-time Fenian, had turned informer. Farrell's evi- 
 dence was startling. Something had always been known by 
 the outer world of the Fenian organisation, but Farrell's 
 revelations disclosed the existence of an organisation inside 
 that, a mysterious inner circle, composed of men carefully 
 selected from the larger body, and organised for the assassination 
 of Government officials and others. The scheme of this inner 
 circle was managed with an ingenuity that would have done 
 credit to a Nihilist committee. Its members were unacquainted 
 with the bulk of their associates ; each man only knew the 
 colleague who swore him in, and who was known as his " right," 
 and another introduced by hiiiiself, and who was styled his 
 "left." The chief business of this inner circle, as far as 
 
ORANGE AND GREEN 317 
 
 Farrell's knowledge of it went, was to try and assassinate t]io 
 then Chief Secretary, Mr. Forster. Farrell descrihed with 
 great coohiess and elaborate minuteness of detail a series of 
 plans to take Mr. Forster's life, each of which only failed 
 through some mere chance, some bungle in the working of a 
 preconcerted signal, or some error in the calculation of the 
 hour at which the Chief Secretary's carriage would pass by 
 an appointed spot. Farrell himself was never a member of 
 the inner circle, nor was he ever present at any meeting called 
 for the purpose of planning the murder of any one ; but he 
 admitted being implicated in certain attempts on the life of 
 the Chief Secretary. He furthermore stated that one of the 
 prisoners, Hanlon, had given him a circumstantial account of 
 the attempt to murder Mr. Field. 
 
 * Farrell's evidence aroused the most intense excitement 
 everywhere. It was whispered abroad that the Government 
 expected to elicit from this inquiry information not merely 
 with regard to the attack on Mr. Field, but the murders in 
 the Phoenix Park, and public curiosity was strained to its 
 highest. On the 27th evidence was given implicating Joseph 
 Brady, Timothy Kelly, John Dwyer, Joseph Hanlon, and a 
 car-driver, Kavanagh, in the Field attack. One of the wit- 
 nesses, Lamie, was, like Farrell, an informer who had been a 
 Fenian. He gave some curious evidence of the formation of 
 vigilance committees to see that the orders of the Directory 
 were carried out. One of these vigilance committees had been 
 broken up by the fight in Abbey Street, when apparently a 
 Fenian, named Poole, was being marked for assassination. 
 The work was interrupted by the detectives, and in the scuffle 
 that followed Sergeant Cox was killed. 
 
 * On February 3 the inquiry first was directed towards the 
 Phoenix Park murders. Knives were produced wdiich had 
 been found in James Carey's house, deadly-looking weapons, 
 such as are used by surgeons for amputation. The medical 
 men who liad examined the bodies of Lord Frederick Cavendish 
 and Mr. Burke considered that the knives corresponded to the 
 natare of the wounds inflicted. A chairmaker and his wife, 
 
318 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 who lived at the strawberry beds, identified Edward O'Brien 
 and Joseph Brady as being in the Phoenix Park on the day of 
 the murder. The keeper of a deerkeeper's lodge testified to 
 seeing a car with Joseph Brady on it pass out of the Chapelizod 
 Gate on the evening of the murder. Another witness had 
 seen Brady and M'Caftrey in the Park on the evening of the 
 murder. On February 10 Michael Kavanagh, the car-driver, 
 turned informer. His evidence was startling. On May 6, 
 1882, he drove Joe Brady, Tim Kelly, and two other men, 
 whose names he did not know, but one of whom he identified 
 as Patrick Delaney, to the Phoenix Park. There they found 
 James Carey ; there Carey gave the signal for the murder of 
 Mr. Burke and Lord Frederick Cavendish by raising a white 
 handkerchief. Kavanagh saw the murder committed ; then 
 his four passengers got on again to the car and he drove off 
 as fast as he could, returning to the city in a roundabout 
 way. On the night of the Field outrage he drove Brady and 
 Daniel Delaney to Hardwicke Street, where Tim Kelly and 
 Hanlon were, and after the assault he dro\e Brady and Kelly 
 away. 
 
 ' But the crowning surprise came on February 17, when 
 James Carey entered the court as an informer. This Carey 
 had conducted himself all through the ' course of the investi- 
 gations thus far with cool effrontery. His position among 
 the other prisoners was peculiar. He belonged to a somewhat 
 better class in life than the rest. His place on the Town 
 Council he owed to the fact that he was an ex-suspect. He 
 had been arrested under the old Coercion Act on suspicion of 
 being concerned in an outrage in Amiens Street. After his 
 release he stood at the municipal elections for Town Councillor, 
 and was elected by a very large majority over a Liberal and 
 Catholic opponent. 
 
 ' His demeanour during the early part of the investigation 
 was noisily defiant. He protested loudest when he was first 
 arrested ; we hear of him swaggering out of the prison van to 
 the first examinations smoking a cigar, ostentatiously dressed 
 to mark the distinction between his position and that of his 
 
OBANGE AND GREEN 319 
 
 fellow-prisoners ; again we hear of him losing his temper and 
 assaulting the Governor of Kilmainham Jail. But after the 
 evidence of Farrell and Lamie his audacity appears to have 
 broken down. He determined to save his own neck at any 
 hazard, and he turned informer. 
 
 * Carey, on his own showing, was the worst of the assassins. 
 He had lured other men into the organisation, had plotted 
 murders, had arranged the Phoenix Park assassination, and 
 given the signal when the deed was to be done. It was at 
 his suggestion that knives were chosen as the weapons to be 
 employed in committing the crime. 
 
 * In 1861 Carey had joined the Fenians, and was a promi- 
 nent member until 1878. In 1881 the Invincibles were 
 formed, outside the Fenian body, though composed of men 
 drawn from its ranks. The oath which Carey took as leader 
 of this body pledged him to obey all the orders of the Irish 
 Invincibles, under penalty of death. At the head of the 
 organisation appeared to be a mysterious person, whose name 
 Carey never knew, but who was always called "No. 1." He 
 gave most of the orders, he seems to have supplied the money. 
 After the attempts on Mr. Forster failed, and when Mr. 
 Forster and Earl Cowper resigned, it was No. 1 who settled 
 that Mr. Burke w^as to be the victim. 
 
 ' Carey's evidence practically closed the inquiry. The 
 prisoners were at once committed for trial. The trials began 
 in April, and did not last very long. Brady, Curley, Fagan, 
 and Kelly were found guilty, the latter after the jury had 
 twice disagreed, and were sentenced to death. Caffrey and 
 Delaney pleaded guilty, and were sentenced to death. Delaney's 
 sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life. The five 
 others were hanged. Mullett and Fitzharris were sentenced 
 to penal servitude for life, and the remaining prisoners to 
 various periods of penal servitude. 
 
 ' Carey's evidence failed to connect the Land League as a 
 body with the " Invincibles." When it first became known 
 that James Carey had turned informer, and that he had ap- 
 parently inculpated the Land League in his evidence, public 
 
320 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 curiosity on both sides of the Irish Sea held its breath. What 
 might not come next ! The wildest improbabilities were 
 gravely suggested ; the enemies of the Land League exult- 
 ingly announced that the time had at last come when the 
 secrets of the nefarious body were to be revealed, and its 
 flimsy pretence of constitutional agitation finally torn away 
 from it, while others went even so far as to hint with unmis- 
 takable clearness that the true heads of the Livinciblus would 
 now be found among the ranks of the Irish Parliamentary party. 
 
 ' These predictions, however, were not verified. Some 
 humble members of the Land League were accused by Carey 
 of being concerned in the Phoenix Park assassination, but his 
 evidence absolutely failed to show any connection between the 
 Land League, as an organised body, and the Invincibles. 
 Carey accused the wife of a secretary of the English branch 
 of the Land League — a man named Frank Byrne — of having 
 brought over weapons from London to Dublin for assassination 
 purposes, but on being confronted with the woman, who w^as 
 immediately arrested, Carey at once declared that she was 
 not the woman he meant. A man named Sheridan, who had 
 figured in the debates on the Kilmainham Treaty, and another 
 named Walsh, who were implicated by Carey's evidence, got 
 away to the United States. Frank Byrne and Walsh were in 
 France at the time when the disclosures were made in 
 Kilmainham Court-house. They were arrested in reply to the 
 appeal of our Government, and examined, but were speedily 
 set at liberty, on the ground that there w^as no case to justify 
 their extradition, and made their way to America. 
 
 ' A curious piece of evidence came out in the trial in 
 support of the claim made by the leaders of what may be 
 called the Parliamentary part of the national movement, that 
 their action, far from having anything in common with the 
 actions of the secret societies, was actually inimical to these, 
 and was in consequence bitterly obnoxious to them. One of 
 the assassins kept a diary, in which he recorded from time to 
 time his opinions of the political events going on around him, 
 and one of these records gave, in clear and direct language, 
 
ORANGE AND GREEN 321 
 
 full expression to the writer's scorn and contempt for Mr. 
 Parnell, and those who, like him, were practising the methods 
 of constitutional agitation. 
 
 ' The trial made it evident that the death of Lord Frederick 
 Cavendish was a mischance, wholly unplanned and wholly 
 unintentional. While the horror of the murder was first 
 fresh in men's minds, it seemed obvious that Lord Frederick 
 Cavendish had been sacrificed by the irreconcilable party as 
 an immediate answer to the message of peace which Mr. 
 Gladstone was sending to the distracted country. 
 
 ' The Government had recalled a thoroughly unpopular and 
 unsuccessful Chief Secretary, and were sending in his place 
 a young man of ability, of unprejudiced sympathy with the 
 work entrusted to him, who was known to be in the most 
 complete agreement with Mr. Gladstone. It seemed almost 
 certain that his murder was the deliberate answer of the 
 secret societies to any attempt on the part of England to hold 
 out the hand of fellowship to Ireland. 
 
 ' It is gratifying, as far as anything in the hideous tragedy 
 can be gratifying, to find that this theory was erroneous. 
 The evidence of the chief criminal made it clear that the 
 Phoenix Park murder, horrible though it was, was not so ab- 
 solutely horrible as it had first appeared. The assassination 
 was entirely aimed at Mr. Burke, a man who was well known 
 to be one of the most dangerous enemies the secret societies 
 had in all the range of Castle authority. He was believed to 
 have all the threads of their workings in his hands ; it a /as at 
 him the blow was levelled, not at the friendly stranger. Lord 
 Frederick Cavendish was murdered not because he had come 
 with a message of conciliation to those who would not be con- 
 ciliated, but because he was walking in the company of a man 
 marked for death. 
 
 ' The murderers of Mr. Burke did not even know who his 
 companion was — did not learn till later that the brave man 
 who had fallen in the effort to save his companion was the new 
 Chief Secretary. The levity of destiny shows only too pain- 
 fully in the chance which killed Lord Frederick Cavendish, 
 
 Y 
 
322 TBELAXD SITCI'J THE UNION 
 
 and deepened tlie darimess of the gloom in which the struggle 
 between the two countries was going on. But the horror of 
 the murder is somewhat lessened by the knowledge that 
 the Phoenix Park assassins had not compassed the death 
 of one who, judged even by their own dark canons, was inno- 
 cent of all offence against the country which, in their error, 
 they believed themselves to be serving. 
 
 ' One result of the trials was to fully justify the Government 
 in any action which had resulted in the substitution of a new 
 Chief Secretary for Mr. Forster. However excellent Mr. 
 Forster's intentions, however praiseworthy his motives, the 
 result of his administration was not success. With all the 
 instruments of coercion in his hands, he did not know how to 
 employ them properly. It reads like the grimmest of satires 
 upon his term of office to know that at a time when the jails 
 were choking with the number of Mr. Forster's " suspects ; " 
 when, according to his own belief, he had every dangerous 
 man in the island under lock and key, his own life was in in- 
 cessant danger at the hands of men of whose existence and 
 purposes he was guilelessly unaware. Only a succession of 
 chances, that read almost like providential miracles, saved 
 him, time after time, from men whom a word of his, or a 
 stroke of his pen, could at any moment have clapped in safe 
 keeping, had he the slightest suspicion of their existence. 
 The law gave him power to arrest on suspicion, but he had 
 no suspicion of the only body of men whose plans were really 
 dangerous, whose actions were really deadly. 
 
 'The informer's own fate was dramatically tragic. For 
 some time he remained in Kilmainham Prison. His life 
 would not have been worth an hour's purchase had he been 
 turned out free into the streets of Dublin, and yet, with reck- 
 less effrontery, he wrote letter after letter to the Town Council, 
 of which he was a member, announcing that he would soon 
 take his seat amongst them again. Meanwhile preparations 
 were being made to get him out of the country. He really 
 seems to have been unwilling to go, to be deeply angered 
 against the Castle authorities for refusing to pay him any 
 
ORANGE AND GREEN 323 
 
 reward. At last he seemed to be got rid of, to have disap- 
 peared ; no one, it was thought, knew whither. Most people 
 conjectured that he would be successfully buried from know- 
 ledge or pursuit in some Crown colony, or possibly in the 
 wardership of some Government prison, where, under an 
 assumed name, he might probably escape detection for the 
 term of his natural life. 
 
 ' Suddenly, one day towards the end of July, came a start- 
 ling telegram from the Cape, from the representatives of the 
 firm of Donald Currie, announcing that James Carey, the 
 informer, had been shot dead on his arrival at the Cape by a 
 man named O'Donnell, who had travelled out with him on 
 the same ship from England for the purpose of killing him 
 At first the news was doubted. There was something grimly 
 dramatic about the way in which the informer was struck 
 down, that at first people refused to believe it. But the news 
 was soon corroborated. O'Donnell was brought to England, 
 tried, found guilty, and executed early in December. It is as 
 well to conclude the list of the year's executions at once by 
 mentioning that on Tuesday, December 18, Joseph Poole, 
 convicted of the murder of a suspected informer named Kenny, 
 was hanged in Dublin. 
 
 ' After the ghastly revelations in Kilmainham Court-house 
 there . came a season of comparative quiet in Ireland. So 
 terribly had the public ear been crammed with horrors in 
 Dubliii, that a series of trials going on in Belfast raised little 
 excitement, and passed off comparatively unnoticed. Yet at 
 any other time these trials would have roused the keenest 
 attention. A murder conspiracy was being unravelled — a 
 conspiracy scarcely less deadly than that of Dublin, though 
 its aim was the assassination of local landlords ratlier than of 
 prominent Government officials. As usual, the evidence of 
 an informer was necessary to complete the Government case, 
 and a James Carey was found to bring guilt home to the 
 North of Ireland conspirators in the person of one Patrick 
 Duffy. Ten of the twelve men brought to trial were sentenced 
 
 y2 
 
324 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 to ten years' penal servitude ; of the remaining two, one re- 
 ceived seven, the other five years of imprisonment.' 
 
 In conformity with the habit of Parhament under the new 
 administration, a long debate sprang up upon the address. 
 People vv^ho objected to the policy of the Government in Egypt 
 and in Zululand, or who objected to other actions of the 
 Government, or who wished to point out what the Government 
 ought to do, expressed their opinions with sufficient copious- 
 ness. Mr. Gorst was the first to bring Ireland prominently 
 forward by an ingenious amendment, expressing a hope that 
 no further concessions would be made to lawless agiiators in 
 that country. This at once aroused all the old Kilmainham 
 treaty excitement. In these debates Mr. Gibson, as he then 
 was, and Mr. Plunket were always in their element. Like 
 the great twin brethren who were always supposed to have a 
 special eye to the safety of Rome, and to interfere in person 
 where the fortunes of the ' Nameless City ' were going badly, 
 Mr. Gibson and Mr. Plunket were ever in the van of the 
 Conservative battle when an Irish question gave them the 
 chance of showing that the Conservative party really had 
 some of the old fighting spirit left in them. 
 
 The Kilmainham treaty was the greatest of blessings 
 to these two gentlemen. The curious resemblances that 
 existed between them increased their likeness to the Dioscuri, 
 and lent a piquant attraction to any of their united attacks 
 upon the Ministry accused of unholy compact with the Third 
 Party. Both represented the same constituency, both were 
 clever lawyers, both were exceptionally able speakers, both had 
 peculiarly eighteenth-century faces, both prided themselves 
 on their gifts of satiric speech, both were endowed with a 
 certain quality of theatrical display which enabled them to 
 make the very most of even the slightest rhetorical oppor- 
 tunity, both were law officers of the Crown under the late 
 Administration. 
 
 But just as Castor was not wholly like Pollux, or Pollux 
 like Castor, so Mr. Gibson and Mr. Plunket had certain 
 points of difference, which serve perhaps only to heighten the 
 
OBANGIJ AXD GREEN 325 
 
 general similitude. Mr. Gibson was, perhaps, the harder hitter ; 
 Mr. Plunket the more poetically minded. Mr. Plunket was 
 more showy than solid ; Mr. Gibson more solid than showy. 
 On this occasion both speakers were in full force. Mr. Gibson 
 attacked everybody fiercely — ^the Government, the Irish mem- 
 bers, and especially Mr. Herbert Gladstone, who had made a 
 speech at Leeds which stirred Mr. Gibson to a passion of in- 
 dignation. The Dioscuri raised the Kilmainham ghost again, 
 showed that it had been neither laid nor exorcised by all the 
 debates that had been devoted to it, and succeeded in bringing 
 up Mr. Forster. Mr. Forster had a peculiar affection for the 
 Kilmainham treaty topic. It enabled him to gratify his 
 sense of injury against the colleagues who did not properly 
 a.ppreciate his worth and his ability. Mr. Forster's speech 
 was a long attack upon Mr. Parnell, interrupted at one point 
 not undramatically. Mr. Forster had used words which, 
 whatever they were meant to convey, gave to their hearers the 
 impression that he charged Mr. Parnell with conniving at 
 murder. Mr. O'Kelly immediately and impetuously interrup- 
 ted him by crying out thrice, ' You lie ! ' and was at once 
 suspended. This debate took place on Thursday, the 22nd, 
 and the next day Mr. Parnell replied in a brief, quiet, composed 
 speech, in which he coldly repudiated Mr. Forster's insinua- 
 tions. 
 
 In the course of the debate some ingenious use was made 
 by Mr. Forster's opponents of former utterances of his own, 
 and journalistic comments upon them. Mr. Forster had 
 made a speech in March, 1864, defending Mazzini as a man 
 of high character, whose friend he should not be ashamed to 
 be, as he was not ashamed to be his acquaintance. This 
 declaration was made after long quotations had been read in 
 the House from Mazzini 's letter on ' The Theory of the 
 Dagger,' in which he had written, * Blessed be the knife of 
 Palafox ; blessed be in your hands every weapon that can 
 destroy the enemy and set you free. The weapon that slew 
 Mincovitch in the arsenal initiated the insurrection in Venice. 
 It was a weapon of irregular warfare, like that which three 
 
326 IB ELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 month? before the Eepubhc destroyed the minister Eossi in 
 Eome.' 
 
 These were the utterances of the man whom Mr. Forster 
 considered of high character, whose friendship he would not 
 repudiate. The quotation of these passages was appropriate. 
 They were not brought forward to convey the idea that Mr. 
 Forster approved of pohtical assassination ; that, of course 
 would have been absurd. The intention was to show how 
 easily such accusations are trumped up, and also how liable 
 English statesmen are to commend, or at least to condone, 
 principles of revolution in foreign states, which they view 
 in a very different light when they are applied at home. The 
 Kilmainhani treaty was not heard the last of in this debate. 
 It came up again and again. Whenever adventurous members 
 of the Opposition had nothing better to do or to talk about 
 they turned to the Kilmainhani treaty, and made it the sempi- 
 ternal text for attacks upon the Government. But no amount 
 of indignant inquiries or pertinacious onslaughts succeeded 
 in eliciting any further facts as to the alleged * treaty.' The 
 Government had given its explanation, and declined to amplify 
 it to suit the sensational and mysterious suggestions of an 
 incredulous Opposition. 
 
 Early in March the Parliamentary party lost one of its 
 most remarkable, and certainly one of its most picturesque 
 figures, by the resignation of Mr. John Dillon. Mr. Dillon's 
 appeara^nce singled him out at once, whether on the back 
 benches of the House of Commons, or on the crowded plat- 
 form of an Irish meeting, as a man remarkable among his 
 fellows. His grave, melancholy face, his intensely dark hair 
 and eyes, gave him as we have said a curiously Spanish air, 
 more appropriate to those stately faces that smile from the 
 canvases of Velasquez in the great gallery of Madrid than to 
 a nineteenth-century member for Tipperary. He was one of 
 the few followers of Mr. Parnell whose appearance in any 
 sense corresponded to the ideal picture of a member of a 
 revolutionary party. Those who watched liim in the House 
 of Commons felt instinctively that he would have found more 
 
ORANGE AND GREEN 327 
 
 fitting surroundings in some Jacobin convention, some Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety of the year 1793. Mr. Dillon's cha- 
 racter did not wholly belie his appearance. He was among 
 the extremest of the extreme section of Mr. Parn ell's following. 
 His speeches had raised fiercer controversy than those of any 
 of his colleagues. The son of a rebel of 1848, he inherited 
 all, and more than all, the uncompromising spirit of Young 
 Ireland, and he did not, in his early days in the House of 
 Commons profess any profound blessing in Parliamentary 
 agitation. Thirty years earlier he would have flung himself 
 enthusiastically into the movements of the national party ; 
 have matched passions with Mitchel ; perhaps have striven to 
 emulate the glowing oratory of Meagher, and have followed 
 Smith O'Brien from London to Ballingarry, and from Ballin- 
 garry to Van Diemen's Land. He should have played the 
 father's part, the father the son's. John Dillon the elder 
 had a belief in the sympathies of English statesmen and 
 politicians, of which his son inherited no jot. Had the elder 
 Dillon lived to carry out his cherished purpose of effecting a 
 lasting union between the representatives of Irish nationalism 
 and the leaders of the English Liberal party, the story of Irish 
 politics for the last twenty years might have been very different. 
 John Dillon the youngei was rumoured to be at odds with 
 Mr. Parnell on many points. People trJjied of him as being 
 anxious to set himself up as a rival to Mr. Parnell, as scheming 
 to wrest the leadership away from him. Mr. Dillon never 
 showed the least sign of any such purpose. Whenever he 
 found that his ideas were not in complete unison with those of 
 his chief, instead of thrusting himself forward and declaring 
 his own views, he simply held aloof and was silent. In the end 
 his health gave way, and retirement from political life became 
 inevitable. He had desired to resign more than once before, 
 but had been restrained by his friends ; now, however, the 
 condition of his health rendered rest imperative. Pie resigned 
 his seat, and went away to recover his strength in Italy and 
 Colorado ; and his vacant place was filled by Mr. Mayne, who 
 was of course an ardent Parnellite. 
 
328 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 In April, 1883, a measure was introduced and passed into 
 law with almost unrivalled rapidity. This was the Bill for 
 amending the law relating to explosives, which was introduced 
 by Sir William Harcourt on Monday, April 9, passed through 
 ail its stages in the Commons in less than two hours, was 
 sent to the Lords, and received the royal assent the next day. 
 
 There was reason for this unusual haste. Much had been 
 said and written for some time by a section of Irish- Americans 
 in New York about the introduction of dynamite into the 
 political difficulties between England and Ireland. Threats 
 to blow up London buildings were uttered at meetings of tlie 
 advocates of dynamite, and printed in their journals, but at 
 first little heed v^as paid to these utterances. On the night 
 of Thursday, March 15, 1883, however, an attempt was made 
 to blow up the offices of the Local Government Board at the 
 corner of Whitehall and Charles Street. No great damage 
 was done, and no lives were lost, but a great many windows 
 were broken. The wall and one room of the Local Govern- 
 ment Offices were considerably shattered, and for a time con- 
 siderable alarm was created. A simultaneous attempt to blow 
 up the Times office failed through the fortunate accidental 
 overturning of the infernal machine used, which prevented it 
 from operating. The same attempted explosions by dynamite 
 in Glasgow appeared to be in fulfilment of these threats, but 
 they did not arouse much public excitement. The Govern- 
 ment immediately offered the reward of 1,000/. for the ap- 
 prehension of the criuiinals, but no clue was obtanied, and 
 no information given. 
 
 It was confidently expected that the attempts would be 
 repeated, and every precaution was taken. At all the public 
 offices, important public buildings, and the residences of 
 statesmen, a military guard was placed, or where it existed 
 before was doubled. For some little time after the event 
 London presented an unwontedly military air. The presence 
 of so many soldiers in places where formerly no other guardian- 
 ship than that of the policeman was required lent London 
 something of the appearance of a Continental city. These 
 
ORANGE AM) GREEN 329 
 
 precautions, however, were not long maintained, and in a 
 short while London resumed its wonted aspect. The dyna- 
 mite difficulty was not at an end, unfortunately. In the first 
 week in April, 1883, the police succeeded in discovering a 
 conspiracy, in arresting eight men concerned, and in seizing 
 a large quantity of nitro- glycerine, which was manufactured 
 in Birmingham, and was being secretly conveyed to London. 
 
 It was impossible to identify the men arrested with the 
 perpetrators of the attempt upon the Local Government 
 Board and the Times office. But their connection with the 
 Irish-American advocates of dynamite was clearly esttiblished. 
 To meet what seemed like a wide-spread conspiracy the Ex- 
 plosives Bill was hurried through Parliament. Four of the 
 prisoners were sentenced to penal servitude for life : two were 
 acquitted. These sentences and the comprehensive powers 
 of the new measure did not, however, prevent further dyna- 
 mite crimes. The police made seizures of nitro -glycerine in 
 Leicester, and in Cupar, in Fife. Men were arrested in 
 Glasgow on the charge of being concerned in the outrages of 
 January. Four men were sentenced to penal servitude for 
 life for introducing explosive substances into England at 
 Liverpool. On October 30, 1883, two explosions took place 
 on the Metropolitan Eailway : one between ¥/estminster and 
 Charing Cross, the other between Praed Street and Edgware 
 Eoad. Both occurred almost at the same time, about eight 
 o'clock in the evening ; both did considerable damage to pro- 
 perty, and many human beings were injured, though no one 
 fatally. No trace of the perpetrators of this outrage was 
 discovered. 
 
 Towards the end of February in 1884 a yet bolder outrage 
 was attempted, which happily only partially succeeded. At a 
 little after one on the morning of Tuesday , February 26, an 
 explosion took place in the luggage-room of Victoria Station, 
 which wrecked a large part of the station, and destroyed a 
 considerable amount of property. Though it was at once 
 assumed that this was part of a dynamite plot, the destruction 
 of everything in the luggage-room was so great that absolute 
 
330 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 proof might have been difficult to obtain. The discovery of 
 infernal machines at Charing Cross, Ludgate Hill, and Pad- 
 dington stations supplied the necessary proofs. In the luggage- 
 room of each of these stations a portmanteau was discovered 
 containing a large quantity of dynamite connected with a 
 pistol and a clock timed to go oif at a certain hour. In each 
 of these cases the defective nature of the machinery employed 
 had happily prevented catastrophes which would in all prob- 
 ability have been far more dangerous than that at Victoria 
 Station. An attempt was made later on Blackfriars Bridge. 
 Early in 1885 two explosions took place in Westminster, one 
 in the great hall and one in the chamber of the House, which 
 did great damage and seriously injured two policemen. 
 
 No language can be too strong in condemnation of these 
 criminal attempts. The freedom and the future of Ireland 
 are not to be worked out by means abhorrent to all Christian 
 men. Every Nationalist, every one who believes that the 
 hour of Ireland's regeneration is daily, even hourly, drawing 
 nearer, who believes that in the immediate future the Parliament 
 of Ireland will be restored to her, can only feel horror at such 
 deeds. The cause of Ireland is not to be served by the knife 
 of the assassin and the infernal machine of the dynamitard. 
 
 ' In the month of May a fresh stimulus to popular excite- 
 ment was given by the case of the Kerry Sentinel. The 
 proprietor of this paper was Mr. Timothy Harrington, who 
 had suffered imprisonment in the preceding year for a speech 
 he delivered, and who was rewarded for his imprisonment by 
 being elected to represent Westmeath in Parliament, while 
 still confined in Mullingar Jail. The offence with Vv4hch the 
 paper was charged was the issue of certain seditious proclama- 
 tions alleging to emanate from the " Invincibles," calling upon 
 the people to assemble in a particular place for the purpose 
 of being sworn in, and threatening those who refused with 
 the fate of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke. The 
 sub-inspector of constabulary who examined this document 
 noticed that there were some lines at the top, impressed by 
 type but not marked in ink. which had evidently nothing to 
 
v 
 
 ORANGE AND GREEN 331 
 
 do with the purport of the proclamation. On carefully in- 
 vestigating these lines, he read the words, " Yours very truly, 
 Michael Davitt." As a letter from Mr. Michael Davitt had 
 appeared in the Kerry Sentinel and in no other local paper, 
 the sub-inspector at once concluded that the "Invincible'* 
 manifesto had been printed in the offices of the Kerry Sentinel, 
 He accordingly directed the seizure of the newspaper under 
 the powers allowed him by the Crimes Act. Mr. Edward 
 Harrington, editor of the paper and brother of the proprietor, 
 with a number of his compositors, was prosecuted. The case 
 of the defence was that the document, though undoubtedly 
 printed in the offices of the Kerry Sentinel, was so printed 
 without the knowledge of any of the responsible authorities 
 of the paper ; that it was done in all probability as a joke, as 
 otherwise the offenders would scarcely have been careless 
 enough to let it be so easily known where the proclamation 
 was printed, or where the alleged meetings of *' Invincibles " 
 were to take place. 
 
 * Mr. Edward Harrington, however, and his foreman were 
 sentenced to six months' imprisonment, and two compositors 
 to two months' imprisonment each. Energetic efforts were 
 made in Parliament by Mr. Harrington and his friends to 
 have the sentence mitigated, but the efforts were unsuccessful, 
 and Mr. Harrington suffered the full term of his imprisonment, 
 not being set at liberty until early in the following January. 
 
 ' Curious proof of Mr. Parnell's increased popularity was 
 given in July. On June 4 Mr. Healy, together with Mr. 
 Davitt and Mr. Quinn, was allowed to leave Richmond 
 Prison, after serving four out of the six months of imprison- 
 ment ordered in the sentence. A month later Mr. Healy 
 was elected member for Monaghan county, one of the strong- 
 holds of Ulster. Six months earlier, any one who should 
 have said that it would be possible for a Parnellite politician 
 to represent an Ulster county would have been laughed at 
 heartily for his folly ; but the seemingly impossible had come 
 10 pass. 
 
 ' The choice of the Nationalist candidate was in itself 
 
332 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 peculiar. Instead of attempting the attack upon Ulster with 
 some mild-mannered politician, the Nationalists put forward 
 one of the most extreme and uncompromising of Mr. Parnell's 
 lieutenants. Mr. Healy had, however, special qualifications 
 for the position. He was well known to be a master of the 
 Land Act, to have worked long and hard at it in the House 
 of Commons, and to be the author of the Healy clause. He 
 had been personally complimented at Westminster by the 
 Prime Minister himself upon his knowledge of that measure, 
 a knowledge not only far beyond that of his own leader, or 
 of any of his colleagues, but said at the time to be beyond 
 that of any member of the House, with the exception of Mr. 
 Gladstone himself, and of Mr. Law. When Monaghan was 
 left vacant by the resignation of Mr. Litton, appointed to a 
 place of profit under the Crown, the Nationalists resolved 
 to contest the seat, and to put Mr. Healy forward as their 
 champion. 
 
 ' The campaign was skilfully managed. Mr. Healy went 
 through the county Monaghan, accompanied by Mr. Parnell, 
 making speeches everywhere on the Land question. Little 
 was spoken of beyond the services rendered by Mr. Healy 
 to the Land Bill, and the strong necassity that existed for 
 still further amending and improving that measure. Vexed 
 questions were kept in the background ; the Land question 
 alone was insisted upon, and on the Land question Monaghan 
 county was won for the Parnell party. A very little later, 
 seat after seat in Ulster was to be won upon Home Rule and 
 Home Eule alone. The feelings with which this victory were 
 regarded in England were sufficiently represented by a cartoon 
 in Punch, in which Mr. Parnell was represented as cutting 
 a square piece marked Monaghan out of Mr. John Bull's 
 overcoat, and observing, " Bedad, I've been and spoilt his 
 Ulster anyhow." 
 
 * Mr. Healy's vacant place in Wexford was immediately 
 filled by Mr. Redmond, brother oi the member for New Ross, 
 who was elected in his absence, by a large majority over the 
 Liberal candidate, The O'Connor Don, an Irish gentleman of 
 
OBANGE AND GREEN 333 
 
 old family and great position in Wexford. Mr. Redmond, 
 the newly-elected member, was an exceedingly young man, 
 not long of age.' At the time of his election he was in 
 Australia with his brother, carrying on an active campaign 
 in favour of the national cause.' The Parnellite party was 
 strengthened later on in the year by the return of Mr. Small 
 for Wexford county, of Mr. Lynch for Sligo county, and of 
 Mr. McMahon foi Limerick. 
 
 ' On July 4 a banquet was given by the Mayor and Corpo- 
 ration of Cork to celebrate the opening of the Lidustrial 
 Exhibition. The city of Cork had been very anxious to 
 obtain the privilege of being the scene of the Royal Agricul- 
 tural Society's Show for 1883. When, however, it was de- 
 cided that the Agricultural Show was to be held in Limericl:, 
 the Cork Corporation resolved to hold an Lidustrial Exhibition, 
 as some compensation to themselves and their fellow- towns- 
 men for the loss of the other attraction. The arrangements 
 for the Exhibition were successfully carried out ; it was 
 opened by Lord Bandon with great success on July 2, and 
 the banquet was the justifiable celebration of a well- organised 
 and happily- completed enterprise. 
 
 * It was not a little curious to find the name of Mr. Parnell 
 prominent among the distinguished guests, who included 
 Lord Bandon and the Earl of Dunraven, as well as moderate 
 Home Rulers like Mr. Shaw and Colonel Colthurst, who had 
 but little reason to love the party which Mr. Parnell repre- 
 sented. That Mr. Parnell should be present at the banquet 
 was only natural ; he was member for the city, and the Mayor 
 and Corporation were strongly national. But it was surprising 
 to find men of such markedly different opinions, prominent 
 members of the landlord class, which it was Mr. Parnell's 
 aim to destroy, consenting to take part in any ceremony in 
 which he had a share. The fact, slight though it was, served 
 to show how very much the position of Mr. Parnell had been 
 strengthened of late. 
 
 ' Early Ih August the Government, after pleasing one party 
 in Ireland by the Tramways Act, succeeded in giving more 
 
334 IRELAND 8TXCB THE UNION 
 
 general satisfaction by accepting the tender of the City of 
 Dubhn Steam Packet Company for the carriage of the mails 
 as heretofore between H :)lyhead and Kingston. This fine line 
 of boats was exceedingly popular with those whose business 
 in life frequently called upou them to cross St. George's 
 Channel, and there was general discontent expressed in Ireland 
 when it was announced that the Government, in renewing the 
 contract for the carriage of the mails, was about to accept the 
 tender of another company, whose boats might be less suitable 
 for passenger traffic. The dissatisfaction was so general that 
 the Government consented to reconsider its decision, and the 
 result was that the contract was renewed with the original 
 Company. It was a curious experience for the Government 
 to have to deal with a question on which practically the whole 
 of Ireland was in agreement, and they undoubtedly acted 
 wisely in taking a step which- gave satisfaction to Irishmen of 
 every variety of political party or opinion. 
 
 * By the death of Mr. Hugh Law in September, the Govern- 
 ment lost a zealous and valuable public servant, and the Irish 
 Lord Chancellorship one of the ablest holders of that office. 
 Mr. Law's name will be especially remembered for the signal 
 service he rendered to two Liberal Governments, first by his 
 drafting of the Bill disestabhshing the Church in Ireland, and 
 secondly by his drafting and management of the Land Bill of 
 1880.' 
 
 Towards the end of the year the old Orange and Green 
 feud was revived in Ireland with peculiar animosity. It had 
 never, indeed, died out, but of late years its old ferocity seemed 
 to have faded. Ever since 1795, when the first Orange lodge 
 was founded in Armagh, after the ' Battle of the Diamond,' 
 Orangeism had become an important factor in the political 
 situation of Ireland. The Orangemen were the legitimate 
 successors of the old English ' garrison,' of the chivalry of 
 the Pale, of the Cromwellians of the plantations, of the 
 Scotch ' settlers.' The guiding principle of Orangeism was 
 antagonism to Catholicism. It supported the Penal Laws 
 while they still existed ; it struggled hard argainst their repeal ; 
 
ORANGE AND GREEN 335 
 
 it represents to-day the spirit which animated and inspired 
 the Penal Laws. 
 
 The entertaining inspector of pohce who has introduced 
 himself to contemporary literature as ' Terence M'Grath,' 
 gives, in his * Pictures from Ireland,' a sketch of a typical 
 Orangeman, which, coming from such a source, cannot be 
 considered to be biassed by any undue prejudice against the 
 Orange institutions. ' From the time when he was old 
 enough to throw a stone at a Catholic procession on Patrick's 
 Day, the most stirring incidents of McGettigan's life have 
 been connected v/ith the annual commemoration of the twc 
 victorious engagements fought by the much-lauded and sorely 
 execrated monarch. . . . The village of Juliansborough is a 
 well-known Protestant stronghold ; and, though a Pioman 
 Catholic chapel stands about half a mile away, no one of that 
 benighted faith would have the audacity to pass through the 
 village to his devotions during the month of July. . . . The 
 principles of the Orange Society are " civil and religious 
 liberty," and McGettigan flatters himself that he adopts them 
 to the fullest extent. . . . But with "■ Papishers " it is a dif- 
 ferent thing. That every one of these followers of the Scarlet 
 Woman is destined to eternal perdition is as firm an article 
 of belief with William McGettigan as that the evening and 
 the morning were the first day ; and he feels that, in doing 
 all that in him lies to obstruct the religious practices of 
 Popery, and otherwise make the lives of the Papishers a 
 burden to them, he is simply doing his duty as a good citizen. 
 . . . Patrick's Day passed, McGettigan bears no violent malice 
 against his Catholic neighbours. He has even walked to 
 market on more than one occasion with members of that faith. 
 But with the heat of June his sentiments become less dormant, 
 and with the first of July sets in a period of intolerance that, 
 for thirty days at least, subverts his reason. 
 
 ' During this time a Sister of Mercy with a cu :> of water 
 in the desert would be an unwelccme sight ; and a general 
 inclination to wade knee-deep in Catholic blood is acco npanied 
 by a worship of the Orange lily as real as the "idolatry" 
 
^'^e IIlELAyD SINCE THE UNION 
 
 that he so bitterly condemns. . . . The clergyman of his 
 church has a certain influence with him, but it is in exact 
 opposition to that pastor's attitude towards the Orange Society. 
 The basis of his faith is the warrant and rules of his lodge, 
 and while cursing his Eoman Catholic opponents he never 
 imagines that his religion is as much a religion of hatred as 
 the gloomy frenzy of the Puritans or the tribal ferocity of the 
 ancient Jews. ... In his political principles he is torn by 
 conflicting emotions. . . . He approves of tenant right, fixity 
 of tenure, freedom of sale, and vote by ballot. So far he is 
 Liberal, but he votes with the Conservatives ; for is not the 
 extension of the franchise a Liberal proposal that would, in 
 proportion to the lowness of level at which the line is drawn, 
 increase the number of Catholic votes ? And did not the 
 Liberals disestablish the Church that seemed to McGettigan 
 an evidence of Protestant ascendency that gratified his vanity, 
 and assented to the principles of the Orange Society, in which 
 all sections of Protestants could meet on common grounds ? 
 McGettigan calls himself a thorough Loyalist, but his feelings 
 towards England are exactly identical with his feelings and 
 attitude towards the Church. He is loyal to Protestant 
 England because she represents to him Protestantism versus 
 Popery. If she became Roman Catholic he would hate her 
 with all his heart ; and if she grants Home Rule he will vote 
 for the removal of the Union Jack from Orange processions.' 
 Such is the picture, drawn in no unfriendly spirit, by a writer 
 as bitterly opposed to the national party as McGettigan him- 
 self, of the Orange agitation of the North of Ireland, the 
 member of a secret society as fatal in its way to the well-being 
 of the country as the Ribbon lodges themselves. How little 
 the loyalty of the Orange Society could be depended upon was 
 shown in 1835, when the Orange plot to place the Duke of 
 Cumberland upon the throne instead of Queen Victoria was 
 discovered and defeated. 
 
 ' Mr. Parnell's victory at Monaghan aroused the greatest 
 excitement in the North of Ireland. The Orange lodges were 
 resolved to challenge Mr. Parnell's alleged pov/er in Ulster, 
 
OkANGE AND QitEEN 33t 
 
 and whenever a Nationalist meeting was organic 3d for any 
 Ulster town an opposition Orange meeting was got up for the 
 same time and place. Such demonstration and counter- 
 demonstration on the part of the Green and Orange parties 
 was in the highest degree prejudicial to the public peace. 
 For generations the hostility between Orange and Green had 
 run too fiercely to be smoothed down by the soft-spoken lyric 
 of Thomas Davis, and the feeling had now been exceptionally 
 stimulated by what the Orange lodges regarded as the Par- 
 nellite invasion of Ulster. In the month of September 
 Orange and Green meetings were held at Dungannon and 
 Omagh, and only the effective presence of military and con- 
 stabulary prevented some serious breach of the peace. 
 
 ' At this critical juncture Sir Stafford Nortlicote, as leader 
 of the Opposition, undertook a crusade into Ulster against the 
 Irish policy of the Government. The English Conservative 
 press commended Sir Stafford Northcote highly for repeating 
 Mr. Gladstone's Midlothian tactics in Ulster ; while Liberal 
 journalism contented itself chiefly with good-humouredly 
 bantering the leader of the Opposition on his Irish crusade. 
 Sir Stafford Northcote was never meant to be an agitator, nor 
 were his crusade speeches in themselves of a very dangerous 
 character. But they succeeded in arousing all the old party 
 passions. The Monaghan election had been a severe blow to 
 the Orange garrison in Ulster, and they were eager to efface 
 its recollection by any means in their power. Orange riots 
 followed Sir Stafford Northcote's progress through the North 
 of Ireland. In one of these a convent in Belfast was attacked, 
 and the lady superior, who was ill, died of the alarm and the 
 excitement. Sir Stafford Northcote and the speakers who 
 accompanied him inflamed the Orange mobs they addressed, 
 not merely against the Nationalist party, but against the 
 Government which supported, abetted, and basely yielded to 
 the demands of the national party. The very fact of such a 
 crusade being undertaken roused the Orange lodges to enthu- 
 siasm. Other speakers, less temperate and judicious than 
 Sir Stafford Northcote, did much by impetuous and unreasoned 
 
S38 IRELAND SI^CE THE XINION 
 
 harangues to rouse the spirit of faction, and for a time the 
 situation in Ulster almost suggested the beginning of a civil 
 war. 
 
 'Whenever a Nationalist meeting was called a counter 
 Orange demonstration was summoned, and in spite of all the 
 efforts of the authorities violent physical contests often took 
 place between the followers of the two factions.' The Orange 
 party were inspired by the double purpose of fighting the 
 Nationalists and harassing the Government. Whenever a 
 national meeting was announced to be held in Ulster the 
 Orange party immediately organised a counter-meeting, to 
 oppose what they chose to call the invasion of their county. 
 
 To appreciate properly the situation, it must be remem- 
 bered that even in Orange Ulster something like half of the 
 population were Catholics, and that when the new franchise 
 came into effect the majority of votes would no longer be the 
 privileged possession of the supporters of the Orange lodges. 
 The Nationalist leaders always found in Ulster large audiences 
 of Nationahsts ; Mr. Healy's election for Monaghan showed 
 that Orangeism could not always turn the scale against the 
 men who had made the Land agitation. It was perfectly clear 
 that if National and Orange meetings Were held on the same 
 day and in the same locality without precautions, it would be 
 impossible to preserve peace. The Orange leaders wrote and 
 spoke in a way which showed that they were determined to 
 rival the wildest utterances ever made on the national side. 
 A national meeting was announced to be held in Kosslea, in 
 Fermanagh, on October 16, 1883. Lord Kossmore, the Grand. 
 Master of the Orangemen of the county Monaghan, and a 
 justice of the peace, signed a proclamation calling upon the 
 Orangemen to oppose the meeting. It was evident that a 
 crisis was at hand, and the Irish Executive poured a large force 
 of military and police into the district, who succeeded in 
 keeping the two crowds apart in spite of the attempts of Lord 
 Eossmore to bring about a collision. 
 
 The account of the proceedings of the Orange meeting on 
 that day is extraordinary. * Some pistol-shots were fired into 
 
ORANGE AND GREEN 3B9 
 
 the air in the outskirts of the crowd, and immediately the fire 
 was taken up by several hundred persons throughout that va^t 
 assemblage. Pistols and revolvers were produced on all sides, 
 and a continuous fusillade was maintained for nearly fifteen 
 minutes. The leaders endeavoured to stay the deafening 
 discharge, but for some time without effect.' Lord Crichton 
 and other Orange leaders on the platform were obliged to stoop 
 down for fear of being shot by their own adherents. ' When 
 the excitement subsided several Protestant clergymen came 
 to Lord Crichton and asked him could he prevail on the 
 Orangemen to stop firing. Lord Crichton, spreading out his 
 hands, called out in as loud a voice as he was able to com- 
 mand, "For God's sake, men, will you listen to what I say, 
 and stop the firing? " ' Lord Eossmore's speech, which was 
 interrupted at one point for some ten minutes by the firing of 
 hundreds of revolvers, was specially violent. ' He thought it 
 was a great pity that the so-called Government of England 
 stopped loyal men from assembling to uphold their institutions 
 here, and had sent down a handful of soldiers, whom they 
 could eat up in a second or two if they thought fit.' For 
 Lord Eossmore's conduct he was removed from the commis- 
 sion of the peace by the Government, to the great indignation 
 of the Orange lodges and their leaders. The tenor of Orange 
 talk became more violent. A circular, signed by Captain 
 Charles Alexander, advised the Orangemen in every district 
 to enrol themselves into an armed volunteer force, to provide 
 stores of arms, and to create, in fact, a complete military 
 organisation. Lord Enniskillen, the Orange Grand Master, 
 repudiated the circular on the ground that it contained ' pro- 
 posals of an illegal character ; ' but the fact that such a cir- 
 cular could have been issued, and such proposals seriously 
 entertained, is in itself sufficiently curious. 
 
 ' The Executive did their best to deal with the serious diffi- 
 culty in an impartial manner. Whenever it was considered 
 that meetings thus organised and counter-organised would lead 
 to disturbance, they adopted the plan of proclaiming both 
 meetings. One prominent Orangeman, Lord Eossmore, who 
 
 z2 
 
:U0 IBELAND SINGE THE UNION 
 
 had distinguislied himself by his efforts to disturb the peace, 
 and by his defiance of the law's authority, was promptly re- 
 moved from his position as justice of the peace — a step which, 
 while it roused the greatest anger in the Orange lodges, served 
 to show even the most extreme of its opponents that the 
 Executive was holding its scales with justice, and was pre- 
 pared to tolerate no infringement of the law from any political 
 party in the island. 
 
 ' The English press on the whole was pretty unanimous in 
 its condemnation of the action of the Orange leaders. The 
 journals devoted to the Ministry were, naturally, especially 
 warm against a series of assaults directed quite as much 
 against the existing Government as against the Irish Nation- 
 alists ; and even the most strenuous journalistic adherents of 
 the Opposition were compelled to censure the manner in wliich 
 the politicians of the school of Lord Kossmore had chosen to 
 defend their principles. A paper like Punch, which miy be 
 regarded as expressing pretty fairly what the bulk of the 
 country feels at any given moment on any given question, 
 was especially severe in its condemnation of the Orange policy, 
 and of the professing loyalty which was even more dangerous 
 to law and order than avowed disloyalty. 
 
 ' When the year ended the situation in Ulster was still 
 unsettled. Lord Eossmore, smarting under his dismissal from 
 the justiceship of the peace, was becoming more violent than 
 ever in his attacks upon the Government. Orange manifestoes 
 of exceptionally warlike character were freely circulated, and 
 a pair of meetings, Nationalist and Orange, which were 
 announced to be held at Dromore on the first day of the new 
 year, were looked forward to by impartial politicians with 
 well -justified alarm.' The counter-meetings were held at 
 Dromore, in Tyrone, on January 1, 1884. Police and military 
 held the ground to prevent hostilities ; but several attacks 
 were made upon the Nationalists by the Orangemen, who had 
 to be driven back by the bayonets of the police and the sabres 
 of the cavalry. Li one of these encounters a young Orange- 
 man named Giffen, who had been brought in — like many 
 
ORANGE AND GREEN 341 
 
 others— from another district to swell the Orange levees for 
 the occasion, was mortally womided and died shortly after. 
 The Government then adopted the plan, whenever Orange 
 and Green counter-meetings w^ere announced, of proclaiming 
 both meetings ; breaches of the peace were thus prevented, 
 though the Nationalist party strongly protested against a 
 policy which allowed the Orangemen to silence any national 
 meeting by merely announcing opposition, and thus calling 
 down a Government proclamation on both alike. 
 
 * One of tlie latest events of the year was also one of the 
 most remarkable — the solemn presentation to Mr. Parnell of 
 the long-collected, much-discussed testimonial. A banquet to 
 Mr. Parnell was given in the Rotunda, Dublin, on Tuesday, 
 December 11. The testimonial, originally intended to be 
 limited to some fourteen thousand pounds, had swelled to 
 some thirty-eight thousand pounds. Mr. Parnell's speech on 
 this occasion came, like so many other of his utterances, upon 
 the world somewhat in the nature of a surprise. It had been 
 confidently expected in many quarters that the tone of Mr. 
 Parnell's speech would be, if not exactly conciliatory towards 
 the Government, at least uttered in no unfriendly or unsym- 
 pathetic spirit. The speech, however, was given in most 
 uncompromising terms. 
 
 ' Mr. Parnell began by contrasting the position of the Irish 
 question at that moment with its position three years before, 
 when the Land League was founded. But though much had 
 been done since to further the well-being of Ireland, there 
 was yet much to do. There must be no more coercion, and 
 there must be no more emigration. On this latter point Mr. 
 Parnell had the strong support of the majority of the Roman 
 Catholic bishops in Ireland, who, in a circular issued in July, 
 had declared themselves very strongly opposed to the Govern- 
 ment emigration policy. Mr. Parnell sharply censured the 
 conduct of Mr. Trevelyan. Between Mr. Trevelyan and Mr. 
 Forster there was this great difference, that while Mr. Forster 
 always tried to overwhelm his opponents by saying that his 
 great ambition was to enable every one in Ireland to do what 
 
S42 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 they had a legal right to do, Mr. Trevelyan's great ambition 
 appeared to be to prevent anybody in Ireland from doing what 
 he had a legal right to do. In support of this charge, he 
 adduced the case of the imprisonment of Mr. Timothy 
 Harrington, of the seizure of the Kerry Sentinel and the 
 imprisonment of its editor — '* as well might you flog a school- 
 master because an idle schoolboy drew an idle picture on his 
 slate "—for the proclamation of the Nationalist meetings in 
 the North of Ireland. 
 
 ' But, in spite of the Government, the national position 
 was a strong one, and its cause a winning one. Even coercion 
 could not last for ever, but if it were to be renewed it should 
 be by a Tory and not a Liberal Government. ''Beyond a 
 shadovv^ of doubt it will be for the Irish people in England — 
 separated, isolated as they are — and for your independent 
 Irish members, to determine at the next General Election 
 whether a Tory or a Liberal English Ministry shal rule Eng- 
 land. This is a great force and a great power. This force 
 has already gained for Ireland inclusion in the coming Fran- 
 chise Bill. We have reason to be proud, hopeful, and energetic, 
 determined that this generation shall not pass away until it 
 has bequea.thed to those who come after us the great birth- 
 right of national independence and prosperity." Such was 
 the tenor of Mr. Parnell's utterances. 
 
 ' The emphatic vigour of this speech naturally roused the 
 greatest excitement in both countries. The Free^nan' s _ Jour- 
 nal, after declaring that the banquet would "live in the memory 
 of all who were present, and in the records of the time, as the 
 most magnificent of Irish national demonstrations," added 
 that Mr. Parnell's speech " demolishes the fictions about pacts 
 and treaties with the Government like so many houses of 
 cards." The English papers for the most part were surprised 
 by Mr. Parnell's tone. The Times declared that " no more 
 uncompromising defiance was ever flung in the face of a nation 
 or a Government," but consoled itself by believing that Mr. 
 Parnell had " overrated his strength," while his attack upon 
 the Irish Executive might " be taken as a proof that Lord 
 
ORANGE AND GREEN 343 
 
 Spencer's administration in Ireland is an obstacle the Land 
 League party cannot get over." 
 
 ' Perhaps the most remarkable utterance of the London 
 press, however, was an article in the Fall Mall Gazette, 
 entitled '' The Master of the Situation." It said, " The young 
 Irish squire of English education and American descent " was 
 * * in some respects the most interesting figure in the empire . . . 
 One of the youngest members of the House of Commons . . . 
 he is, beyond question, one of the most powerful. . . . He is 
 not only the chief of a devoted party, as much the * un- 
 crowned king of Ireland ' as in the days before Kilmainham, 
 but he aspires, not without solid ground for his ambition, to 
 play the part of a Parliamentary Warwick', and to pose as the 
 master of the situation in the Imperial Parliament." " One- 
 half of our recent mistakes," the Fall Mall went on to say, 
 ** have arisen from our not taking sufficient account of Mr. 
 Parnell and the people who think with Mr. Parnell. ... It 
 would be equally irrational to wax wroth at what is described 
 as his ' malevolent language,' or the * brutality ' of his vitu- 
 peration. We gave them the plank bed, the solitary cell, and 
 prison fare. They give us in return ' vulgar obloquy and 
 truculent abuse.' So far as the exchange goes we have so 
 much the best of it that we need not be too squeamish about 
 the quality of their compliments." The article concluded by 
 saying that though " Mr. Parnell's claim to be master of the 
 situation cannot be fully recognised until he gives proof that 
 he can hold together a party which has never before been held 
 together for any length of time," yet, ''should Mr. Parnell 
 really unite Irishmen, and teach them submission and loyalty 
 to their own leader, he will do more for Ireland than anything 
 he has as yet even attempted." ' 
 
344 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 CHAPTEE XXin. 
 
 HOME BULE. 
 
 It is not necessary for my present purpose to give more than 
 a cursory glance at the events since the Conservative accession 
 in' 1885. The difficulties of the Government were growing 
 greater. Mr. William O'Brien succeeded in exposing a ter- 
 rible record of offence on the part of certain officials of 
 Dublin Castle — a record which showed the existence of a 
 horrible condition of corruption in certain phases of viceregal 
 society. Mr. William O'Brien, in the face of great difficulty, 
 proved his case with a result which caused a considerable 
 scattering of certain Crown officials. It became daily and 
 hourly more obvious that the Irish difficulty was only growing 
 greater. Mr. Trevelyan, weary of a post for which he was 
 quite unsuited, gave up the Irish Secretaryship for the 
 Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, and was succeeded 
 in Dublin Castle by Mr. Campbell Bannerman. Mr. Campbell 
 Bannerman had not a very long term of office. 
 
 The Government had exhausted it? mandate, and was 
 near its doom. It fell, curiously enough, not upon any of the 
 great questions with which it had dealt, not upon its Irish 
 policy nor its policy in Egypt, but upon Mr. Childers' Budget. 
 On June 8, 1885, the Government was defeated by a majority 
 of twelve, and a few days later Lord Salisbury accepted 
 office, and Lord Eandolph Churchill became to all intents and 
 purposes the leader of the Conservative party. At first the 
 attitude of the new Government was friendly towards Ireland. 
 Its leaders expressed themselves severely upon Lord Spencer's 
 administration. 
 
 The new Viceroy, Lord Carnarvon, was known to have 
 strong Home Rule leanings. The attitude of conciliation did 
 not last very long. After a vexed existence of a few months it 
 became obvious that the Conservative Government were more 
 anxious to be out of office than in. It was soon apparent that, 
 
HOME RULE 345 
 
 overburdened by its difficulties, the Conservative Government 
 was riding for a fall. It was doomed to die like its predecessor, 
 actually if not nominally upon the Irish question. It had 
 dallied with that question helplessly, aimlessly, inconsistently. 
 In "the person of Lord Carnarvon the Government coquetted 
 with Home Rule, interviewed Irish leaders, and promised, in 
 that delightfully indefinite way which is the joy of Conserva- 
 tive statesmen, all sorts of speedy blessings for Ireland. The 
 negotiations which Lord Carnarvon opened up with the Home 
 Rule leaders are matters of history. 
 
 It was not, indeed, in Lord Carnarvon's power to pledge 
 the Government of which he was a member to any particular 
 course of action ; it would hardly have been in Lord Salisbury's 
 power to do so much ; but it would be idle to consider as 
 serious the feeble defence raised in certain Conservative 
 quarters, when the secret was no longer a secret, that Lord 
 Carnarvon was simply making a stroke off his own bat oat 
 of a purely personal curiosity to learn what Mr. Parnell's 
 opinions upon the Irish question were. Mr. Parnell's opinions 
 upon the Irish question were fairly well known, and it would 
 be absurd indeed to suppose that the Lord Lieutenant of 
 Ireland, in seeking out a formal interview with the leader of 
 the Irish people, had attached no greater significance to the 
 act than would belong to a meeting between two wholly 
 obscure and uninteresting private individuals. 
 
 However, the Conservative Government, after well-nigh 
 committing itself to a policy of Home Rule through the 
 speeches of its leaders and the action of its Viceroy, took fright. 
 Those who were chiefly responsible for directing its action 
 saw or thought they saw that Ireland was too unpopular to 
 be safely patronised yet, and the Government swung round the 
 political circle with amazing alacrity. 
 
 Lord Randolph Churchill, imitating the example of Lord 
 Iddesleigh, organised a crusade in the North of Ireland. 
 Lord Iddesleigh was a mild man and an urbane politician, but 
 he succeeded in sowing the seeds of riot and disturbance in 
 the North of Ireland. If he could accomplish so much, what 
 
346 IBELANB SIXCE THE UNION 
 
 might not Lord Eandolph Churchill accomplish ? He did 
 accomplish much. He stirred up all the worst passions ; he 
 incited to riot and civil war ; he prophesied for the Orange 
 party laurel victory if they were firm in denying the law and 
 authority of Parliament ; he cheered their hearts with stirring 
 citations from the poet Campbell, and leaving behind him any 
 number of texts on which appeals to riot and outrage might 
 be based, returned home in triumph. 
 
 Sir Michael Hicks-Beach announced the intention of the 
 Government to ask for power to suppress the National League. 
 This was a dramatic touch intended for the gallery, which 
 Sir Michael knew well enough could come to nothing. On 
 January 27 the Government were defeated by a majority of 
 seventy-nine on Mr. Jesse Ceilings' amendment to the Queen's 
 Speech, and Mr. Gladstone returned to power. 
 
 It was known by this time that Mr. Gladstone's views 
 upon the Irish question had been greatly extended. Mr. 
 Gladstone had never been a hard-and-fast opponent of Home 
 Eule, and it was obvious to those who had studied his career 
 with any care for the last few years, that his mind was more 
 and more inclining in favour of the extension of local govern- 
 ment in Ireland, in the direction desired by the Irish people, 
 as the only possible solution of the Irish difficulty. Rumours 
 of all kinds had spread abroad during the duration of Lord 
 Salisbury's Government as to the nature of Mr. Gladstone's 
 views upon the Irish question, and as to the precise form in 
 which Mr. Gladstone would, when ho had the power, shape his 
 plans for the better government of Ireland. 
 
 All doubts were soon to be set at rest. The new Glad- 
 stone Government at once adopted an attitude of the strongest 
 sympathy with Ireland. Loi'd Aberdeen, who was appointed 
 Lord Lieutenant, was destined to be one of the very few 
 Viceroys whose names are dear to the Irish people. It was 
 soon known that the Government had a Home Eule Bill in 
 preparation ; soon known too that the projected measure was 
 the cause of many dissensions in the Cabinet, which eventuated 
 in the retirement of Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Trevelyan from 
 
HOME RULE 347 
 
 the Ministerial ranks. All manner of rumours as to the 
 precise nature of the measure which was to mark a new era 
 in Irish history were abroad ; all speculations were satisfied on 
 Thursday, April 8, 1886. 
 
 The history of modern times affords no parallel to the 
 exciting scene which the House of Commons presented on 
 that afternoon. There were many members whose memories 
 of the struggles on that battle-ground went back to the days 
 when Lord Palmerston was summarily dismissed from office 
 in 1851, and to the wild excitement which followed Mr. Lowe's 
 hour of more than Koman triumph, when his purple face and 
 silver hairs flamed comet-like across the political horizon, and 
 carried destruction to Mr. Gladstone's Government in its wake. 
 There are even some who recalled the feverish passions, the 
 bitter animosities, and fiery enthusiasms of the days of the 
 first Keform Bill. But no man's memory could conjure from 
 the past any scene of excitement comparable to that which 
 St. Stephen's witnessed on that memorable Tlmrsda3^ 
 
 When the time came for the Speaker's little procession to 
 enter the Chamber, it seemed to be threading its way to the 
 table with difficulty through a human sea. The House has 
 been crowded before often enough during its history. Eecent 
 years have more than once witnessed occasions on which it 
 has been described as full to overflowing. But such fulness 
 was almost emptiness as contrasted with the choking closeness 
 with which it was packed on April 8, 1886. The officials of 
 the House have assured curious inquirers that never before 
 has there been any instance of the floor of the House being 
 filled with chairs for the accommodation of its members. 
 There were twenty-eight chairs on the floor on Thursday. 
 Could their number have been multiplied by ten they would not 
 have been equal to the demand there was for them. One of 
 the most peculiar features of the event was the voluntary 
 suffering which legislators inflicted upon themselves in order 
 to obtain good places for the great occasion. One member 
 actually got to Westminster at half-past five in the morning : 
 the majority of the Irish m embers were there by six. Members 
 
348 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 who arrived at eight found that they were too late to obtain a 
 good seat, and by a little after nine o'clock there was not a 
 place of any kind to be had. Such unwonted attendance was 
 a decisive tribute to the absorbing interest of the day. 
 
 The aspect of the Chamber when Mr. Gladstone entered 
 was exceptionally curious. Almost all those on his own side, 
 even rebellious Whigs and disaffected Radicals, rose to their 
 feet and hailed him with applause — an example that was in- 
 stantly followed by all the Irish members. By an odd chance 
 the composition of the House was such that it appeared as if 
 the whole House rose to greet Mr. Gladstone. The explanation 
 of this curious phenomenon was in this wise. The Irish 
 members present in full force had not only occupied all the 
 seats below the gangway on the Opposition side of the House, 
 but had flowed across the Rubicon of the gangway and occupied 
 a surprisingly large propoition of the seats above it. Thus a 
 large bulk of the Conservative members were driven into the 
 upper galleries, into the twenty- eight seats on the floor of the 
 House, and into the standing places below the Bar and behind 
 the Speaker's chair. 
 
 It was this combination of fortuitous circumstances which 
 gave such an apparently comprehensive character to Mr. 
 Gladstone's welcome, and which must have been not a little 
 puzzling to the unsophisticated eyes of strangers in the gal- 
 leries. 
 
 The oratorial capacity of Mr. Gladstone was never more 
 strikingly manifest than during the course of the three hours 
 and twenty-five minutes which his speech occupied. He was 
 excessively pale and his voice was very hoarse at first, but he 
 soon assumed complete command over its tones, and then the 
 House listened to one of the greatest speeches of our century. 
 The inflections of the voice were marvellously controlled : the 
 tones rose and fell, now in what seemed like almost sibyllic 
 exultation, anon dying down to some pathetic whisper, low 
 but perfectly audible; every gesture furthering the dramatic 
 intensity of the words the speaker was using. On Mr. 
 Gladstone's own following the Prime Minister played as upon 
 
ROME RULE 349 
 
 some favourite instrument. Even the large proportion of the 
 disaffected forgot their differences for the moment — actually 
 lost their heads under the glamour of the performance— and 
 cheered as lustily as the rest. Only the Conservatives sat 
 stiffly and unmoved. 
 
 Neither the history of the reign nor the history of the 
 century afford any parallel to the scene of this day. The 
 records of contemporary events afford many examples of 
 great and stirring moments in the chronicle of the Commons 
 Chamber at Westminster. The introduction of great measures 
 of social political reform, the debates which have been big with 
 the fates of Ministers, and which have resulted in the overthrow 
 of administrations that seemed yesterday to be deeply rooted 
 in popular favour, the explanations consequent upon moment- 
 ous resignations, all these varied means of arousing intense 
 political excitement have each in their turn thronged the 
 panelled room with members and lined the walls with the 
 breathless spectators of epoch-making episodes. But the 
 rise of no measure and the fall of no Minister have ever 
 stirred St. Stephen's to such fever-fire of excitement as that 
 which animated it all through the long hours of that Thurs- 
 day's life. Neither the introduction of the first Eeform Bill, 
 with all the fervid emotions of the consequent debates, nor 
 the excitements of such Parliamentary catastrophes as the 
 dismissal of Lord Palmerston in 1851 and the defeats of Mr. 
 Gladstone in 1866 and 1885, can be fairly said to offer even a 
 distant parallel to the passions, the enthusiasm, the fear and 
 hope and fury and exultation which swept the surface and 
 stirred the depths of the greatest legislative assemblage of 
 modern times. 
 
 Most of those present had taken part in all the thrilling 
 incidents that have marked the stormy course of Parlia- 
 mentary history for the past six years. The House of 
 Commons has outwatched the stars while the battle for Irish 
 rights has raged below ; night has faded into dawn and dawn 
 become noon, and the day's strength waned into evening, and 
 through night to dawn again, while some fierce Parliamentary 
 
850 IRELAND SINGE THE UNION 
 
 struggle has been foagiit out. The representatives of the Irish 
 nation have been again and again expelled from the Chamber 
 amidst wild scenes of passion and tumult. Few who shared 
 in those tumultuous emotions will forget the two fateful hours 
 in which successive Ministries fell on the cause of coercion 
 before the votes of an united Irish party. All these scenes 
 and incidents are graven upon men's memory, but no one of 
 them, not the fiercest and stormiest, could for a moment 
 compare with the keen, almost agonising, excitement and the 
 vast historical dignity of the scene which the House of 
 Commons presented at four o'clock on the afternoon of 
 Thursday, the ever-memorable 8th of April. 
 
 One great fact rises distinctly, star-like, out of all the 
 confusion and passion and heart-burning and heart-uplifting 
 of that memorable day — the fact that a great English Minister, 
 the foremost and most famous statesman of his age, has 
 recognised, speaking to an attentive Senate, to an attentive 
 nation, to an attentive world, the right of the Irish people 
 to self-government. That great historic fact is at once the 
 triumph and the justification of an oppressed but an uncon- 
 quered nationality. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the particular measure which 
 Mr. Gladstone has introduced, whatever may be its ultimate 
 fate in the House of Commons or in the House of Peers, 
 whatever modifications, improvements, extensions, it may be 
 found capable of sustaining are all but details, vastly important 
 in themselves, but for the moment unimportant in contrast 
 with the stupendous, the monumental importance of the recog- 
 nition by the foremost of English statesmen of that right of 
 Ireland to make her own laws for her own people, which for 
 so many centuries has been so persistently, so bloodily, denied 
 to her. There are certain hours in the lives of great men 
 which are in themselves epochs, hours when a single speech 
 is more momentous, more far reaching, than half a dozen 
 revolutions. Such was the hour which but a year ago re- 
 versed the verdict of seven centuries ; such was the speech 
 in which Mr. Gladstone apologised for the folly of eighty-six 
 
H03IE RULE 351 
 
 years of false and fatal union, and frankly recognised, late in 
 the day, indeed, but not too late, that Ireland contained a 
 people ' rightly struggling to be free.' 
 
 The great Prime Minister had the advantage of addressing 
 the greatest speech of his life to the largest audience that was 
 ever gathered together within the precincts of the popular 
 assembly. An observer in one of the choking spaces set apart 
 for strangers, looking down upon those packed benches, upon 
 that floor where, for the first time within memory of man, seats 
 had been placed for members upon the blocked gangways, 
 upon the thickly-clustering groups behind the Speaker's chair 
 and below the bar, upon the overflowing passages and groaning 
 galleries, might well have imagined that so full a House could 
 scarcely be made fuller even by the addition of a solitary indi- 
 vidual. In sober fact, it would have been hard indeed to find 
 room for another human being in the dense assemblage, or for 
 the over-taxed and enervating atmosphere to afford him a life- 
 sustaining supply of oxygen, if room had been found for the 
 sole of his foot. 
 
 But crowded though the Chamber was, and crowded, too, 
 with perhaps the most remarkable throng of men that has 
 ever been gathered together within the walls of Westminster, 
 it was for some of those present more closely crowded and 
 with a yet more eminent congregation. The mind's eye of 
 many an Irish member, gifted for the moment by fancy with 
 the powers of second sight, peopled it with further presences. 
 As the gaze wandered over that vast sea of human faces they 
 seemed to change to faces scarcely less familiar, though they 
 have long been strange to sunlight and starlight, and in a 
 moment a new and more Imperial Parliament, a Parliament 
 not of the quick but of the dead, was summoned, and this 
 new ' call of the House ' evoked from the long avenues of the 
 past a world of stately shadows. The Irish benches, crowded 
 with enthusiastic colleagues rallying in exultation around the 
 chosen leader of their country and their cause, seemed to give 
 place to a legion of mighty and mournful phantoms. 
 
 The white-haired, blind old man, whose stalwart frame 
 
36^ IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 was bowed by sorrow and whose sightless gaze had in it such 
 a wistful pathos, was not he the exiled Earl whose grave in 
 Roman earth is now the shrine of so many pilgrimages ? Near 
 him, his soldier's face writhed with pain or poison, came the 
 great kinsman of his House, Owen Eoe. Sarsfield, with the 
 blood of Landen on his breast and hand ; Talbot of Tirconnell's 
 weary, haughty face ; Eoger Moore, handsome, chivalrous, 
 devoted ; William Molyneux, with the ' Case of Ireland ' in 
 his grasp ; the small fervid figure of the Dean of St. Patrick's, 
 with ' fierce indignation ' blazing in his wild dark eyes ; Lucas, 
 with his volume clasped in his embrace ; the gallant bearing 
 of Charlemont ; Grattan, in the uniform of the Volunteers ; 
 Flood, restless and repentant ; Curran, swaying with stormy 
 eloquence — these and many others floated by in proud suc- 
 cession. 
 
 With them were yet livelier and loftier presences. Edward 
 Fitzgerald, his comely body gashed with more scars than 
 CaBsar's, and by baser hands ; Tone, with that grim wound in 
 his throat ; Bagenal Harvey and Father John ; the Brothers 
 Sheares, in death as in life undivided ; and Emmet, with the 
 livid circle round his young neck. On they came, the long 
 line of martyrs who had died to defeat the fatal principle 
 which the Act of Union formulated, and who seemed now to 
 rise from their graves at the sound of the knell of that 
 principle. 
 
 Nor were the phantoms of such fancy confined alone to 
 one side of the House, nor to the Irish benches. Across the 
 floor, even on the seat where the Ministers of the hour were 
 grouped together, the eye of fancy seemed to discern the 
 benign shadows of the illustrious dead. Chesterfield and 
 Fitzwiliiam stood there side by side. The genius of Charles 
 James Fox seemed to hover like an inspiring influence about 
 the bowed form of the Prime Minister, and the likeness of 
 Burke leaned over to prompt his brilliant biographer and 
 follower with his silver voice, and to encourage him with his 
 golden counsel. A few more ominous and forbidding shapes 
 were huddled together in angry companionship upon the 
 
HOME RULE 353 
 
 Opposition side of the House, lurking furtively in the dark 
 spaces behind the Speaker's chair. Cornwallis and Castle- 
 reagh and Pitt, Stafford and Essex, and Perrot, and Bagnal, 
 Cromwell and William of Nassau, with such baser spectres as 
 Sirr, and Swan, and Higgins, emerged momentarily from the 
 darkness and vanished again with the fitful confusion of a 
 dream. 
 
 All this ghostly army, multiplying in bewildering rapidity, 
 swayed and floated silently forward, their pale faces shining 
 with wild emotions of hope and exultation and hate. Then a 
 great cry rose up, a fierce, tumultuous yell of triumph and 
 salutation ; the grey ghosts seemed to shudder at the sound, 
 and swiftly vanished as the clamour rose to their place of 
 shades. St. Stephen's was itself again, and the assembled, 
 living, breathing multitude were — the mnjority of them — 
 cheering themselves hoarse in welcome of Mr. Gladstone, who 
 had just risen to his feet. Irishmen who listened to the 
 orator, and heard the impassioned words in which an English 
 Minister, for the first time in the face of all the world, re- 
 cognised the rights of the Irish people, felt that indeed the 
 mighty dead might well be content with tliat day's business, 
 and might, indeed, if it were permitted to them, quit their 
 resting-places to share in the triumph of a day which marks 
 an epoch m Irish history — an epoch which seems as if it were 
 destined to end the old evil order of repression and revolution, 
 and open the new order of freedom and of hope. 
 
 At this point my record pauses. Everyone knows the 
 fortunes of the pf.rticular measure which Mr. Gladstone in- 
 troduced ; everyone might, I should imagine, be able to predict 
 the inevitable results of the introduction of that measure. 
 The Irish question has passed since the 8th of last April 
 into a wholly new phase. The struggles not merely of five 
 years but of eighty-five years, not merely since the Union but 
 for many centuries, are practically at an end. Those were 
 the struggles of the Irish people, alone, unaided, to plead 
 their cause and to obtain justice. With the recognition by a 
 great English Prime Minister of the justice of Ireland's 
 
 A A 
 
354 IRELAND SINCE TIIR UNION 
 
 appeal and the righteousness of her cause, the whole aspect of 
 the longest political struggle in history changes. A vast pro- 
 portion of the English people are henceforward in sympathy 
 with the Irish people ; all those who are most closely identified 
 with the cause of progress, the love of liberty, and the inte- 
 rests of civilisation are eager to allow to Ireland the right to 
 manage Irish affairs according to Irish ideas. This is a great 
 triumph for Ireland and England alike. England no less 
 than Ireland should be eternally grateful to the great states- 
 man who has undone so much evil, who has healed so great a 
 hurt, who has atoned for so much injustice, who has united 
 two hostile nationalities, and has, while freeing Ireland from 
 her unhappy servitude, strengthened the empire which it is 
 his duty to serve. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABE 
 
 Abercrombie, Sir Ralph, sent over to 
 
 take conimnnd of the troops in 
 
 Irehind, 49 
 Aberdeen, Lord, his viceroyalty of 
 
 Ireland, 20,21; one of the few 
 
 Viceroys dear to the Irish people, 
 
 84(5 
 Addison, Joseph, 264 
 * All the Talents,' ministry of, 83 ; 
 
 their resijjjnation, 84 
 Althorpe, Lord, carries a vote for 
 
 public works in Ireland, 171 ; on 
 
 the Arms Bill, ib. 
 American Civil War, 181-182 
 Amurath succeeding Amurath, 83 
 Anne, Queen, statesmen of, 9, 15 
 Aristophanes, 111 
 Arminius, 6 
 Armstroni^, Captain, 50 
 Ath 01. e, capture of, 1 
 Aughriin, rout of, I 
 Austerlitz, battle of, 82, 83 
 
 Back Lane Pai lianient, concessions 
 to, made witli one hand and 
 taken awav wiih the other, 42, 
 43 
 
 ♦ Baratarlcum,' 25, 2fi, 29 
 
 B iretii, JdSv'pli, 31 
 
 Barriimtim, Sir Jonah, his eloquent 
 de-cripti( n < f he last scene in the 
 Irish House of Commons, 64 
 
 Barron, Sir H. VV., mutiou of, 173 
 
 Bastille, fall of the, 40 
 
 Beacon field, Lord, on Shell, 99 ; his 
 letter to the l>uke of Marlborough, 
 228-2o0 ; appeal to the country 
 on the Irish question, "228-231 ; 
 his keen political foresight, 230 ; 
 his brilliant and bitter speech 
 against Mr. Gladstone's Govern- 
 ment, 255, 256 
 
 BEE 
 
 Beauclerk, Topham, 3l 
 
 Bedford, Duke of, succeeds Lord Har- 
 wicke in the Lieutenantship, 83 ; 
 earns a dishonourable immor- 
 tality, ib. 
 
 Beresford, Lady Frances Maria, mar- 
 ried to Henry Flood, 23 
 
 Berwick, Duke of, 4 
 
 Besshorough Commission, t'l ', 277 
 
 Biggar, Mr., his loyalty .'<nd devotion 
 to Mr. Parneil, 227 ; the ideal 
 lieutenant of the leader of a small 
 minority, ib. ; a successful trader, 
 235 ; suspended, 260, 264 ; wordy 
 wrangle between him and Mr. 
 Milbank, 2')6 ; prosecution of, for 
 a violent attack upon Lord 
 Spencer, 311 
 
 Bodenstown churchyard, 55 
 
 Bolingbroke, 32 
 
 Bond, Oliver, 43, 46 ; seizure of, 49, 
 50 ; death in Newgate, 51, 58 
 
 Boswell's Life of Johnson, 31 
 
 Boulter, Primafe, 24 
 
 Bowe-!, Lord Chance lor, 10 
 
 Bowes Csniith), a Hercules in a 
 leather apron, 137 
 
 Boycott, Captain, treatment of, by 
 Lord Earne's tenantry, 250 ; as- 
 sisted bv the Orangemen of the 
 North, 251 
 
 ' Boycotting,' its principle not aggres- 
 sive, 251, 27o 
 
 Boyle, Dr., on the eviction of Irish 
 peasants, 171 
 
 Boyne Water, tii^h' by, 1 
 
 Boynton, ' the ianLniishing,' married 
 to the Duke of Tirconnel, 2 
 
 Bradlaugh, Ch.ir!es, 260 
 
 Brei^an, Joseph (Joe Brenan), 13 t ; a 
 
 man of many and varied gifts, 
 
 135 ; loved by ' Mary of the 
 
 Nation,'' ib. ; at Mrs. Heron's 
 
 A A2 
 
356 
 
 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION. 
 
 BEE 
 
 supper-rooms, 135, 136, 138 ; his 
 insurrection, 139; escapes to Ame- 
 rica, 140 ; marries, but not ' Mary 
 of the Nation,^ ib. ; his blindness 
 and death, ib. 
 
 liret Harre, his ' argonauts,' 178 
 
 Brett, Serj^eant, accidentally killed by 
 the rescuers of Kellv and Deasy, 
 191-192 
 
 Brian Boroimhe, 125-126 
 
 Bright, John, 144 ; his power and 
 following greatly increased, 156 ; 
 regarded as the champion of ad- 
 vanced thought and the apostle 
 of the new ideas, ib. ; liis speeches 
 on Irisli questions, 157-164 ; sur- 
 prising change of front in his 
 later utteranci s, 157, 158, 163, 
 164, 167, 168 ; his conduct towards 
 the Land League and Home 
 Rulers, 158, 159, 161, 168, 164, 
 167, 168 ; his tribute to Mr. John 
 Dillon, 165, 246 ; his efforts on 
 behalf of the men of M:inchester, 
 193 ; criticism of Mr. Gladstone's 
 list of measure?, 202 ; his speech 
 in support of Mr. Forster's Coer- 
 cion Bill, 261-263 
 
 Brillat Savarin, 147 
 
 Brophy, Hugh, 188 
 
 Browning, Robert, quoted, 136 
 
 Brownlow, Mr., his Bill for reclama- 
 tion of waste lands in Ireland, 170 ; 
 a futile attempt at remedial legis- 
 lation, ib. 
 
 Buckingham, Duke of, 2 
 
 Bunting, Mr., his collection of the 
 national music of Ireland, 67 
 
 Burgh, Hussey, 28, 33 ; fine simile of, 
 30, 62 
 
 Buried cities, 17 
 
 Burke. Kdmund, genius of, 10 ; on 
 the Penal Code, 14 ; the greatest 
 of Irishmen, 18 ; his famous letter, 
 25 ; on Sir Hercules Langrishe, 
 28, 31 ; his reply to the Duke of 
 Bedford, 83 ; richl^'-coloured 
 periods of, 127 ; his silver voice 
 and golden counsel, 352 
 
 Burke, Mr. T. H., assassination of, in 
 Phoenix Park, 301-303, 817-319, 
 321 
 
 Butler, Simon, 43 
 
 Butt, Mr. Isaac, 145 ; character and 
 career of, 218; unwisely neg- 
 lected by the Conservative 
 
 CAT 
 
 leaders, 214 ; chosen leader of the 
 Home-Rule movement, 215, 217 ; 
 did not make much use of his 
 opportunities, 220 ; his p'acid 
 leadership, 221 ; severs himself 
 from the unpopular action of liis 
 fellow-members, 226 ; death of. 
 227, 235 
 
 Byrne, Miles, 48 ; a ready and daring 
 colleague of Emmet, 70, 120 
 
 Byron, Lord, captivated by the story 
 of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 45 
 
 California, 178 
 
 Campbell Hannerman,, Mr. succeeds 
 Mr. Trevelyan in the Irish Secre- 
 taryship, 344 
 
 Campbell, Thomas, Lord Randolph 
 Churchill's stirring quotations 
 from, 346 
 
 Canada, England threatened with loss 
 of, 121 ; Fenian attempts on, 182- 
 183, 190 
 
 Canning, George, 99 
 
 Capel, Lord, Viceroy of Ireland, 8 ; 
 Parliament of, 8, 9 
 
 Captain Moonlight, 290 ; identilied 
 with a man named Connell, and 
 arrested, ib. ; turns informer, ib. 
 
 Carew, Shapland, his reply to Castle- 
 reagh's offer of a bribe, 59 
 
 Carey, James, arrest of, 315 ; turns 
 informer, 318, 319 ; reveals the 
 details of the Phoenix Park assas- 
 sination, 319; his evidence, 319- 
 320 ; his dramatically tragic fate, 
 322, 323 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, his ' French Revo- 
 lution' quoted, 293 
 
 Carnarvon, Lord, his South African 
 Confederation Bill, 225 ; becomes 
 Viceroy of Ireland, 344 ; known 
 to have a strong Home- Rule-lean- 
 ing, ib. ; opens up negotiations 
 with the Home-Rule leaders, 345 
 
 Cartouche, 189 
 
 Casanova, his escape from durance, 189 
 
 Cashel, rock of, its similarity to the 
 Athenian Acropolis, 274 
 
 Castlereigh, 59, 64 ; death of, 69; his 
 unpopularity, 254 
 
 Castor and Pollux, 324 
 
 Catholic disabilities, 6-13, 39 
 
 Catholic Emancipation, 68, 69, 75, 92, 
 94, 95 ; becomes law, 100 
 
INDEX. 
 
 357 
 
 CAT 
 
 Catholic University in Ireland, pro- 
 posed charter for, 205, 207 
 
 Catiline ci nsuring Cet hegus for trea 
 SO!., 285 
 
 Caullie'd, James, Earl of Charlemont, 
 28, 30, 31, 40 ; gal'ant bearing of, 
 852 
 
 Cavendish, Lord Frederick, succeeds 
 Mr. Forster as Irish Secretary, 
 300 ; arrival in Dublin, 301 ; 
 assassination of, in Plicenix Park, 
 301-303, 317-318, 321-322 
 
 Cellini, Benvenuto, his escape from 
 durance, 189 
 
 Cethegus and Catiline, 285 
 
 Chalmers, Dr., 99 
 
 Chamberlain, Mr , 230; his retirement 
 from Mr. (lladstone's Cabinet, 
 346 
 
 Chanson de Roland, translation of, 57 
 
 Cliarlemont, Lord. See Caultield, 
 James 
 
 Charles I. and the Five Members, 
 266 
 
 Charles II., Court of, 2 ; reign of, 5, 7 
 
 Chartist movement in England, 112 
 
 Chatham, genius of, 27 
 
 Chatterton, at eighteen, 135 
 
 Chester Castle, capture of, planned by 
 the Fenians, 190 
 
 Chesterfield, Lord, on landlords and 
 Whiteboys, 15 ; his beneficent 
 viceroj^alty of Ireland, 20 ; his 
 verses on Molly Lepell, 32; 
 vision of, 352 
 
 Churchill, Lord Randolph, leader of 
 the Conservative party in the 
 House of Commons, 314; his 
 crusade in the north of Ireland, 
 345 
 
 Cicero, 56, 99, 127 
 
 Clanricarde, Lord, his daughter mar- 
 ried to Patrick Sarsfieid, Earl of 
 Lucan, and afterwards to the 
 Duke of Berwick, 6 
 
 Clare election, the, 94-97 
 
 Clare, Lord, the basest of Pitt's tools 
 against the Irish, 49, 59 ; death 
 of, 69 
 
 Clontarf meeting, dispersal of, 115, 
 116 
 
 Cobden, Richard, death of, 156, 261 
 
 Coercion Bill, Mr. Forster's, 254, 255, 
 258-272 ; passed, 273 
 
 Cork Examiner, the most important 
 paper in tb-2 south of Ireland, 198 
 
 DAV 
 
 Cornwallis, 58, 59 
 
 * Corrig-an-Aifrion,' or the Mass-stone, 
 13 
 
 Corry, a tool of the Castle, 62 ; his 
 clumsy falsehoods, 63 ; his duel 
 with Gra' tan, 64 
 
 Corydon, the informer, 190 
 
 Courtney, Mr. Leonard, 224, 225 ; his 
 appointment as Under Secretary 
 for the Home Dep;irtment, 255 
 
 Cowen, Mr. Joseph, his strenuous at- 
 tack at "Newcastle on the (lovern- 
 ment policy of coercion, 281 , 282, 
 287 
 
 Cowper, Lord, Viceroy of Ireland, 
 254 ; his resignation, 299 , 300 
 
 Crawford, Mr. Sharman, his Bill to 
 amend the law relating to land- 
 lord and tenant, 172 ; his leuant- 
 Right Bill, 172-173 ; his liill to 
 regulate the Ulster custom, 173 
 
 Crimean War, outbreak of, 151 ; end 
 of, 152 
 
 Croke, Archbishop of Cashel, his ap- 
 proval of the Ladies' Land 
 League, 274, 275 ; condemns the 
 No-rent Manifesto, 288; on the 
 invention andoxagL.eration otout- 
 rages, 291 ; induces Mr. Dillon to 
 withdraw his intended resigna- 
 tion, 309 
 
 Cromwollian massacres in Drogheda, 
 2 ; atrocities, 47 
 
 Cromwell's Ironsides, 2 
 
 Curran, John Philpot, his heroic and 
 desperate sino;le handed fight for 
 the men of Ninety-eight, 54 ; his 
 efforts for Wolfe Tone, 55 ; his 
 poem of ' The Deserter,' 56 ; care?r 
 of, ib,, 72 ; opposed to Emmt^t's 
 love for his daughter, 73, 74 ; 
 apparition of, 352 
 
 Curran, Richard, son of John Philpot 
 Curran, 73 
 
 Curran, Sarah, daughter of John 
 Philpot Curran, 6 ; the idol of 
 Emmet's heart, 72-73 ; marries 
 another, 74 
 
 Danton, words of, 87 
 
 Daunt, Mr. O'Neill, his story of the 
 Catholic and Protestant school- 
 fellows, 13 
 
 Davis, Thomas, his lyric on the grave 
 of Wolfe Tone, 55 ; one of the 
 
358 
 
 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION. 
 
 DAY 
 
 « 
 
 founders of the Nation newspaper, 
 118; the most genuine Irish 
 poet since Moore, 128 ; death of, 
 129 ; soft-spo:;en lyric of, 337 
 
 Davitt, Michael, 228 ; his uncom- 
 promising oppo if ion to all in- 
 timidation, 251, 257 ; arrest of, 
 2G7, 268 ; elec'eil member of 
 Parliament for M.'.-uh, 294 ; not 
 allowed to take hi-i -eat, ib. ; 
 rumoured release of, 299 ; advo- 
 cates the nntionalisation ol the 
 land, 309 ; a large part of his life 
 passed in pri'jon, 312 ; imprison- 
 ment, ih. ; relense, ih. ; content 
 to act loyally witli Mr, Parnell, 
 313 ; letter in the Kerry Sentinel, 
 331 ; released from prison, ih. 
 
 Dawson, Mr. Charles, M.P., a strong 
 Nationalist, elected Lord Maj'or 
 of Dublin, 289, 292, 304 ; pro- 
 clama*ions of, 306, 307 
 
 Deasy, Captain, a prominent Fenian, 
 arrested, 191 
 
 Derby, Lord, Hi 
 
 Desmoulins, Camille, 111 
 
 Devon Commission, 172, 173 
 
 Dickens, Charles, deeply affected by a 
 speech of O'Connell, 92, 102 
 
 Dilke, Sir Charles, proclaims himself a 
 Kepubli<'an,222, 2 A ; in the South 
 African d<-bate, 224, 225 
 
 Dillon, John Blake, one of the founders 
 of the iV-aitoMnewspaper, 118 ; his 
 personal appearance, 119; de- 
 clines to censure the Phoenix 
 Society, 155 ; in Parliament, 157; 
 a great admirer of nnd im]ilicit 
 believer in John Bright, 157-158, 
 164, 167 ; sudden death of, 165 ; 
 Mr. Bright's tribute to, 165-167, 
 246 ; his belief in the sympathies 
 of English statesmen, 327 
 
 Dillon, John (son of the above), 
 his siugnlarly impressive appear- 
 ance, 119 ; paternal inheritance, 
 235 ; his Kildare speech, 245, 246 '; 
 his reply to Mr. Forster's attack, 
 246, 247; suspended. 268, 269; 
 his series of speeches in Ireland 
 supporting the Land League, 
 275 ; arrested and imprisoned, 
 ib.; repudiates Mr. Gladstone's 
 misstatements, and his compli- 
 ments founded thereon, 286 ; ar- 
 reslei and imprisoned, ib. ; in 
 
 EMM 
 
 Kilmainham, 288, 290, 292, 294; 
 release, 299 ; freedom of the 
 city of Dublin conferred upon 
 him, 305 ; induced to withdi-aw 
 or postpone his intended resig- 
 nati m, 309 ; resignation of his 
 seat in Parliament, 326 ; his pic- 
 turesque personal appearance, 326, 
 827 ; goes away to Italy and Colo- 
 rado, 327 
 
 Dioscuii, the, 325 
 
 Disraeli, Mr., his keen political in- 
 sight, 156 . appeals to the country 
 on the Irish Church qnesrion, 
 199 ; speech on Mr. Gladstone's 
 Irish Universitv Education Bill, 
 209, 210. See also Beaconsfidd, 
 Lord. 
 
 Doheny, Michael John, the corn- 
 pan on in misfortu e of James 
 Stephen'^, 149 ; dosi^rii.tion of, m the 
 Hue and Cry, ib ; his fascin;;tuig 
 story of the ' Pel 'u's Track,' ib ; 
 goes to the United Irtates, 151 
 
 Popping, Bishop of Meath, his procla- 
 mation from the puljiit, 10 
 
 * Drapier's Letters,' the, 20 
 
 Droghi da, Cromwellian massacres in, 
 2 ; siege of, 4 
 
 Duflfv, Edward, the life and soul of the 
 Fenian movement west of the 
 Shannon, 188 
 
 Duffv, Sir Charles Gavan, on Irish po- 
 verty, 110, 111 ; oneof the found- 
 ers of the Nation newspaper, 118 ; 
 bis description of I homas Davis, 
 ib. ; and of the e'der Dillon, 119 ; 
 on John Pigot, 123 ; finds fame 
 and fortune in Victoria, 133 ; a 
 conspicuous champion of tenant- 
 right, 144 ; account of M'Manu.s' 
 escape from his Australasian 
 prison, 171 ; 285 
 
 Dugald Dalgetty, 32 
 
 Dungannon, Convention at, 33 
 
 Dynamite explosions, 328-330 
 
 Emmet, Robert, his affianced bride, 
 46 ; at Dublin University, 66 ; 
 his friendship with Thomas Moore, 
 67 ; his insurrection and its pur- 
 pose, 70, 71 ; flight of, 72 ; his 
 love for Sarah Curran, 72, 73 ; 
 execution of, 73 ; his letter to 
 Richard Curran, 73, 74 ; his dying 
 
INDEX. 
 
 359 
 
 EMM 
 
 request, 74 ; his daring attempt 
 and its failure, 75, 81, 88 ; tra- 
 ditions of, 129 ; scene of his exe- 
 cution, 179 ; apparition of, 352 
 
 Emmet, Thomas Addis, 46 ; banished, 
 61, 68 
 
 Eviction in full swing, 141 
 
 Feni, semi-mythic chivalry of the, 177 
 Fenian Brotherhood, the, origin of the 
 
 title, 177, 178 
 Feniatiisni, rise of, 165 
 Finigan, Mr., nie.nber for Ennis, sus- 
 pended, 270 
 Fionn, the >on of Coul, 177 
 Fitzgerald, Lady Edward, 6, 45, 46 
 Fitzgerald, Lord Edward, 44 ; the 
 ideal hero of romance, 45 ; his 
 wife, 46, 46 ; death of, 60, 68 ; his 
 grave, 73, 127, 179 ; house where 
 he met his deatli, 179 ; appari- 
 tion of. 362 
 Fitzgerald, Mr. Vesey, member for 
 Countv Chire, bis seat contested 
 bv O'Connell, 95 
 Fitzgibbon, Black Jack, 49, 69, 69 
 Fitzmaurice, Lord Edmond, 258 
 Fitzwilbam, Lord, his beneficent 
 
 viceroyalty of Ireland, 20, 352 
 Flood, Henry, 21-25 ; accepts office, 
 28 ; his (luarrel with Grattan,28, 
 29, 34, 35 ; retires from the Irish 
 and finds a seat in the English 
 Parliament, 36 ; death of, 37 ; 
 his far-seeing statesmanship, 62 ; 
 apparition ot, 352 
 Foley, Mr., his designs for O'Connell's 
 
 statue, 304 
 Forster, Mr. W. E., 202 ; his appoint- 
 ment to the Irish Secretaryship, 
 236, 238, 239, 244, 245*; his 
 attack on Mr. Dillon, 245-247 ; 
 receives the nickname of ' Buck- 
 shot,' 247 ; daily more unpopular, 
 254 ; his proposed revival of 
 Coercion, 254-257 ; introduces 
 his first Coercion mea^ure, 258- 
 260 ; sits doubled \\\\ 265 ; 
 moves third reading of Hill, 273 ; 
 his incurable cecit}' to the signs 
 of the times, 289 ; more unpopu- 
 lar than ever, 293 ; his journey 
 of inspection into County Clare, 
 ih. ; abusive epithets levelled at 
 him by transatlantic journalists, 
 
 GDA 
 
 297 ; resignation of Irish Chief 
 Secretaryship, 299, 300 ; series of 
 attempts to assassinate, 317 ; and 
 their failure, 317, 319; his ad- 
 ministration, however well-in- 
 tended, unsuccessful, 322 ; his 
 fondness for the Kilmainham- 
 treaty topic, 325 ; his attack on 
 Mr. Parnell, ib. ; bis defence of 
 Mazzini, 325-326 ; his plea in 
 answer to opp< nents, 341 
 
 Fottrell, Mr. (Jeorge, Secretary to the 
 Irish Land Commission, remark- 
 able par'phlet of, published under 
 the semblance of official authority, 
 296 ; resignation of his secretary- 
 ship, 297 
 
 Fox, Charles James, 38 ; yenius of, 
 82 ; commanding influence of, 
 83 ; death and burial in West- 
 minster Abbev, 83, 84 ; genius of, 
 362 
 
 Freemin's Journal, the, 21, 235, 296 
 
 French Revolution, the, 40, 46, 86, 87, 
 293 
 
 Froude, James Anthony, the most 
 famous and the most unfair of 
 anti-Irish historians, 52, 53 
 
 F's, the three, 276, 2'8 
 
 Galland, his'Mille et Une Nuits,' 
 31 
 
 Gavelkind, law of, enforced on estates 
 of Irish Catholics not having 
 Protestant heirs, 1 1 
 
 General Klection of 1865, 156 
 
 Genlis, Madame de, statements of, 45 
 
 George I., 10, 15 
 
 George II., his Iri-h Parliament, 25 
 
 George 111., 10, 29, 52; stubborn 
 folly of, t;9, 75, 76. 84 
 
 George IV., the basest of the Georges, 
 90 
 
 George, Mr. Henry, arrested by mis- 
 take, 308 
 
 Geraldine, house of, 44, 45, 60, 127 
 
 Gibbon, Edward, irritating effect 
 upon him of Pitt's unalterable 
 composure, 81 
 
 Gibson, Mr., 324, 325 
 
 Gladstone, VViiliam Ewart, on the 
 state of Ireland under Grattan's 
 Parliament, i'7-19, 38 ; on VVulfe 
 Tone, 42 ; on the oratory of 
 Richard Lalor Sheil, 99; be -omes 
 
360 
 
 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION. 
 
 GLA 
 
 a f-upporf^er of advanced Radical 
 ideas, 166 ; his process of conver- 
 sion, ib. ; his Land Act of LS? 0, 
 175 ; the most advanced thinker 
 and keen-sighted statesman in tlie 
 House of Commons, 194 ; resolu- 
 tions regarding the Established 
 Church in ireland, 199 ; in a 
 moo 1 for great legislation, 202, 
 203; his Irish Universitv Edu- 
 cation Bill, 204-207, 208-211 ; 
 dislike and dread of, among Irish 
 Protestants, 212,223; acccjit.-ince 
 of office in 1880, 239; his Mid- 
 lothian speeches and Lord 
 lieaconsfield, 255 ; defends the 
 policy of the Government, 2i:6; 
 on the Irish question, 25K-2r)7 ; 
 moves to declare urgency for the 
 Coercive Bills, 260 ; justifies the 
 introduction of (yoerci'U and 
 den<iunces Mr. Prirnell and 
 Mr. Biggar, 263, 264; liis pas- 
 sionate oratory, 264, 268-272 ; 
 accident to, 272 ; his 1881 
 Budget, 276 ; introdnccs the 
 New Land Bill, ib. ; his Leeds 
 campaign against the Iri h Par- 
 liamentary party, 281-285 ; his 
 speech at Guildhall, 287, and 
 announcement of Mr. Parnell's 
 arrest, ib. ; correspondence with 
 Mr. Smythe of Westme^th, 295 ; 
 conspicuous for his readiness to 
 admit an error, 299 ; his return 
 to power, 346 ; his views on the 
 Irish question greatly widened, 
 ih. ; impressive scene in the 
 House of Commons on the in- 
 troduction of his measure for 
 Home Rule in Ireland, 347-354 ; 
 his oratorical capacity never 
 more strikii^gly .manifest, 348 ; 
 the greatest speech of his life, 
 351 
 
 (ilad stone, Mr. Herbert, speech at 
 Leeds, 325 
 
 Goderich administration, temporary 
 and trumper}', 95 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 22, 31 
 
 Gordon, General, in Ireland, 252 ; 
 proposal of, 253 
 
 Gor>t, Mr., 324 
 
 Grammont, his ' Memoirs,' 2 
 
 Graft an's fnther, a fierce-tempered, 
 narrow-minded man, 26 
 
 HAE 
 
 Grattan, Henry, 18 ; his speech on the 
 triumph of Irish independence, 
 20, 21 ; tlie greatest Irish states- 
 nian of his age, 25-29 ; be- 
 comes leader of the Patriot party, 
 28 : his quarrel wi h E'cod, 28- 
 29, 33-37 ; his great objects, 40 ; 
 eli'orts for the removal of Catholic 
 disabilities, 44 ; comes to the 
 front again, 61-65 ; his speech in 
 r( ply '■ Corry, (j3 ; his duel with 
 Cony in Phoenix Park, 64, 65- 
 66 ; his fir' t appearance in the 
 English Mouse of Commons, 82 ; 
 commands of, 101 ; apparition 
 of, o52 
 
 Grattan, Mr. Henrv, son of the above, 
 170 
 
 Grattan's Parliament, 17-19, <66 
 
 Gray, Mr. E. D. (Home Ruler), pro- 
 prietor of the Freemaris Jour- 
 nal., 235 ; committed by Justice 
 Lawson for contempt of court, 
 305 ; released after two months' 
 imprisonment, 306 
 
 Gray, Phil, a serviceable messenger, 138 
 
 Gray, Sir John, proprietor of the 
 Freeman s Journal, 144 
 
 Gr<elev, Horace, 121 
 
 Greer, Mr., 144 
 
 Grenville, Lord, 82, S3 
 
 Griffin, Gerald, his novel of 'The 
 Collegians ' quoted, 142 
 
 Griffiths' ( Sir Richard) valuation, 171, 
 218-249 
 
 Hafiz, 124 
 
 Hamilton, 2 
 
 Harcourt, Lord, 28 
 
 Harcourt, Sir William, 267, 268 ; in- 
 troduces the Arms Bill iu the 
 Commons, 273 ; his Bill for 
 amending the law relating to ex- 
 plosives, 328 
 
 Hardwicke, Lord, Lord-Lieutennnt- 
 e-hip of, 80 ; frees Ireland from 
 his obnoxious presence, 83 
 
 Hardy, Mr. Francis, on Lord Charle- 
 mont, 31 
 
 Harmau, Colonel King, regards a seat 
 for Sligo as his personal property, 
 234 
 
 Harrington, Mr. Edward, editor of 
 the Kerry Sentinel, imprison- 
 ment of, 331, 342 
 
INDEX. 
 
 361 
 
 HAR 
 
 Harriniiton, Mr. Timothy, proprietor 
 of the_ A'erry Sentinel, imprison- 
 ment of, 830, 342 ; rewarded by 
 beinir elected to reprc'^ent VVcst- 
 mcath in -Piirliament, SoO 
 
 Hartin;j;ton, Lord, attacks the ob- 
 structive policy of the Irish 
 members, 258 ; liis griml}'- erect 
 attitude, 266, 272 
 
 Harvey, Baicenal, 51, 58, 352 
 
 Healy, Mr. (H.)uie Kuler), career of, 
 234, 265 ; suspended, 273 ; his 
 amendments to Mr. Gladstone's 
 new Land Bill, 279; warrant for 
 his arrest, 286 ; imprisonment 
 of, and its result, 311-313; 
 elected memljer for Mona^han 
 Count}', one of the strongholds of 
 Ulster, 331, 332 ; his mastery 
 and consummate knowledge of 
 the Land Act, 332 
 
 Hearts of Steel, 15 
 
 ' Hedge-schools,' 13 
 
 Heliogabalus, court of, 32 
 
 Hennessy, Sir John Pope (Governor 
 of the Mauritius ), distinguished in 
 parliamentary life for the skill and 
 ability of his obstructive tactics, 
 223 
 
 Henry VIIL, King, 45; act of, 
 109 
 
 Herbert, Mr. Auberon, proclaims 
 himself a Republican, 222, 264 
 
 Heron, MiS., her earing-house at 
 Cork, 135-136, 138 
 
 Hervey, Frederick, Earl of Bristol, 
 and Bishop of Derry, 31, 32 ; his 
 later career and (ieath, 37 
 
 Hervey, Lord, his Memoirs of the 
 Reign of (jcor.^Lie IL, 31 ; the 
 ' Sp'>rus ' of Pope, 32 
 
 Hicks-Beach, Sir Michael, his j proposal 
 to suppress ihe Irish National 
 League, 346 
 
 Higgins, Francis, editor of the Free- 
 mans Journal, a traitor, 50 
 
 Hill, Sir George, recognises and 
 betrays Wolfe Tone, 54 
 
 Hoche, General, 47 
 
 Holfmann, weird stories of, 124 
 
 ' Home Rule,' becomes the shibboleth 
 of the new Irish party, 243 
 
 Home Rule Bill, ]\Ir. 'Gladstone's, 
 346-354 
 
 Home-Rule movement, 2 '5, sqq.', 
 platl'urm of, 215-210; demand 
 
 JOY 
 
 of the partv not a very appall in ;• 
 
 one, 217, 345 
 Horsman, Mr., 173 
 Huddys, the. Lord Ardilaun's bai'i!!' , 
 
 murder of, 291, 306 
 Hugo, Victor, on Ireland, 273; visited 
 
 by Mr. Parnell, ib. 
 Humbert, General, 51 
 Hume, Mr., denounces the Ministry 
 
 for their coercive policy towards 
 
 Ireland, 171 
 Hurlingham, pi^'eon-shooting at, 252 
 Hutchinson, Helv, 16 
 Huy, 6 
 
 Iddeslp:igh, Lord, 845. See also 
 
 Northcote, Sir StatFord 
 Inchiquin, Lord, brother of Mr. 
 
 Smith O'Biieri, 125, 153 
 Irish baliail lifeauire, 2, 5 
 Irish Church discs ablished, 202 
 Irish legend, 17 
 Irisli National Land League formed, 
 
 228 ; declared an illegjil body, 288 
 Irish Xationa' League established, 
 
 308 ; its programme and objects, 
 
 ib. 
 Irish Peoph newspaper, established 
 
 by Stephens, 1^5 ; police descent 
 
 on its offices, 18) 
 Irish Republican Brv)therhood(LR.B.), 
 
 177 
 Ii'ish Wnr'd, ' he ( Xew York journal), 
 
 297-298 ; 309 
 Ivanhoe, 260 
 
 Jackson, Mr., an English clergyman, 
 fate of. 43 
 
 James I., King, his creation of Irish 
 boroughs, 16 
 
 James 1 1., King, 1 
 
 Jason, legend of. 30, 62 
 
 Jenkins, Mr. EdwMrd, his political 
 tergiversation, 224, 225 
 
 Johnson, Dr., 23, 31 
 
 Johnson, Mr. William M., Solicitor- 
 General for Ireland, returned for 
 Mallow, 314 
 
 Jones, Paul, 29, 86 
 
 Joyce country, the, 291, 306 
 
 Joynes, Mr., assistant-master at Eton, 
 arrested by mistake, 308 ; pub- 
 lishes a litt'e book upon the Iri.sh 
 question, and resigns his post, ib. 
 
862 
 
 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION. 
 
 KAV 
 
 Kaa'ANAGh, Michael, car-driver, his 
 evidence of the Phoenix Park 
 murders, 318 
 
 Ke.-'ts, John, at eighteen, 135 
 
 Kellv, Colonel Thomas, a cons;iicuous 
 Fenian leader, arrested at Man- 
 ( h^ster, 191 
 
 Ketiealy. EdAvard Vaughan. 118 
 
 Keoi^b. Mr. William, 145 ; made Irish 
 Snjicitor-lieneral, 146 ; made a 
 Judge, 14/ 
 
 Kerry Sentinel, case of the, 330, ?81, 
 347 
 
 Kiikham, Charles J., a follower of 
 •^tf'phens in the Fenian move- 
 ment, 183 ; account of, ib. ; speech 
 at M jllinalione, ib., 187; cap- 
 ture of, 188 ; his imprisonment 
 and release. 307-308 ; death and 
 funeral, 308 
 
 Killegrew, 2 
 
 ' Kilmainhnm Treaty,' the supposi- 
 titi.ais, 299, 320, 324. 325, 326 
 
 Kihvarden. Lord, Cldel Justice of the 
 King's Bench, dragged from his 
 carri ge and killea, 72 
 
 Koran or death, 8 
 
 Kosciusko, 127 
 
 Laboucheke, Mr., 258, 287 
 
 Ladi s' Land League, 274 ; members 
 of, imprisoned, 288 ; declines to 
 admit defeat, 293 ; abolished by 
 Messrs. Parnell and Dillon, ih. 
 
 Lake, General, successor to Sir Ralph 
 Abercrombie, 49 
 
 Lalor, Fintan, 129, lol 
 
 Land League, the, 228, 239 sqq. ; de- 
 clared an illegal body, 28« ; sup- 
 pression of, 289, 290,'301 
 
 Land Question, the, 168-176 
 
 Landen, battle of, 6 
 
 Langrishe, Sir Hercules, a colleague 
 of Flood, 25 ; Burke's eulogium 
 on, 28 
 
 Law, Mr. Hugh, Irish Lord Chan- 
 cellor, 332 ; death of, 334 
 
 Lawson, Mr. Justice, commits Sheriff 
 (iray to prison for contempt of 
 Court, r,05. '-!06 ; attempt to as- 
 sassinate, 310 
 
 Leck\ , Mr., on the Irish borough 
 system, 16 ; his essay on Grattan, 
 26 ; on Henry Flood, 36 ; on the 
 hish Penal Code, 40, 63 ; on the 
 
 MAO 
 
 eloquerce of Meagher, 126, 127 
 on the Home Rule theory, 218 
 
 Ledru Rollin, declaration of, 121 
 
 Legion Club, he, 23 
 
 Lely, S'.r Peter, his be.'uities, 2 
 
 Lepell, the beautiful INIoUj^, married 
 to Lord Hervcy, 32 
 
 Limerick, siege of, 1-4 ; treaty of- 
 5-9 
 
 Lloyd, Major Cliff- ird, extraordinary 
 circular of, 296 
 
 Locke, John, 19 
 
 Louis XIV., 5 
 
 Louis XVI., execution of, 86 
 
 Lovelace, Ricdmrd, quo > d, 189 
 
 Lowe, Robert, hi- tierce attack upon 
 the Irish Chun/h, 199 ; his hour 
 of more than Ro >'an i riumph, 347 
 
 Luby, Thomas Clarke, accompanies 
 James Stephens on his-' tour of 
 personal inspection ' in Ireland, 
 152 ; a conspic-ous follow r this 
 in the Fenian movement, 183- 
 185 ; arrested, 187 ; sentenced 
 to twenty years' penal servitude, 
 190 
 
 Lucan, Earl of. See Sarsfield, Patrick 
 
 Lucan, La-y, 6. See also Clanri- 
 carde 
 
 Lucas, Frederick, proprietor of the 
 Tablet, 144 ; one of the most up- 
 riglit and pure-minded of politi- 
 cians, 145 
 
 Lucas, Samuel, founder of ihe Free- 
 VMii's Journal, 21, 23, 26 ; 352 
 
 Luxembourg, G 
 
 Lytron, P^dward Bulwer, Lord, his 
 poem of ' St. Stephen's ' quoted, 92 
 
 Macaulay on Patrick SarsfieLl, Earl 
 of Lucan, 6 ; on Addison, 264 
 
 MacCartby, Denis Florence, a con- 
 tributor to the Nation, 123 ; death 
 
 . t, m 
 
 Madrid, Gallerv of, 119,326 
 
 M'Mauus, Terence Bellew, trans- 
 ported to Van Dienien's Land, 
 131; escapes to California, 178; 
 closing j^ears and death, 178, 179; 
 funeral cortege through Dublin to 
 Glasnevin, 179, 180 
 
 M'Naniara, Major, declines to contest 
 Clare, 96 
 
 MacNevin, 46 ; banished, 51 ; a con- 
 tributor to the Nation, 123, 125 
 
INDEX. 
 
 863 
 
 MAG 
 
 Maguire, Mr. John Francis, 145 ; 
 leader of the Irish p n ty, 174 ; 
 strikes the first serious blow 
 against the Established Church 
 io Ireland, 198 ; ■withdraws hia 
 resolutions in favour of Mr. Glad- 
 sroiie's, 199 
 
 Mallow, one of the most ])eculiar con- 
 stituencies in thes nth of Ireland, 
 314 ; election for, o 14-3 15 
 
 Mangan, Clarence (a contributor to 
 the Nation), bis brilliant and un- 
 happy giuius, 123 ; oescrib d by 
 Sir Charles Gavaa Dufty, 124 
 
 Marseillaise, the, 48 
 
 Miirtin, John, 130 ; transported, 181 ; 
 elected for Meath, 217 ; death of, 
 133, 221 
 
 * Ma ry of the Nation ' and Joe Brenan, 
 
 135, 140 
 
 Mass- stone, the, 13 
 
 Math{?\v, Faiher, the inaugurator of 
 the temperance movement, 112; 
 I! akes common cause with 
 O'Connell, 113 
 
 Maynooth Grant, increaseil, 84 ; again 
 reduced, 85 
 
 Mayo, Lord. Irish Secretary, his occult 
 phrase about ' levelling ixp,' 198 
 
 Mazzini and Mr. Forster, 325-326 
 
 M'Cabe, Archbi>hop of Duldin, de- 
 nounces the participation of 
 women in political strife, 274 
 
 MacLarthy, Mr. John George, a very 
 moderate Home Kuler, member 
 for Mallow, 314 
 
 Meagher, Thomas Francis, speech of, 
 50; his eloquence, 126 ; his speech 
 against O'Connell's doctrine of 
 passive resistance, 127 ; his 
 speeches not studied as they de- 
 serve, 127-128 ; endeavour to 
 raise an armed rebellion, 131 ; 
 speech from the dock, ib. ; trans- 
 ported, ih. ; in the American civil 
 war, 132, 182 ; curious and grimly 
 inapprojjriate end of his brilliant 
 career, 1 33 ; his description of 
 Terence Bellew M -Manns, 178 
 
 * Memory of the Dead, The,' one of the 
 
 best and bravest of Irish re- 
 bellious ballads, 48 
 
 *M'Grath, Terence,' his ' Pictures from 
 Ireland ' quoted, 335-336 
 
 M'Hale, John, Archbishop of Tuam, 
 early training of, 13, 14 
 
 NAG 
 
 Milbank, Sir Frederick, and Mr. 
 Biggar, 266 
 
 Mill, -lohn Stuart, 156-157 ; his ex- 
 ertions to save the men of Man- 
 chester, 193 ; not re-elected for 
 Westminser, 200 ; 208 
 
 Mirabeau, pntest of, 46, 99 ; his 
 shilling sentences, 127; saying of, 
 155 
 
 Mitciiel, John, fine words of, 5 ; re- 
 places Thomas Davis on the 
 Nation, 129 ; starts the Untied 
 Irislniuni, ih. ; ar/ ested, tried, and 
 transported, 130 ; no attempt to 
 rescue him, ib., 134 ; effects his 
 escape while a prisoner on 
 parnle, 132 ; his return to Ireland 
 and death, 133; unknown to the 
 large bulk of the Irish peasantry, 
 139 ; saying of, 141 ; disqu;ilified 
 to sit in P;irliament, 133, 295 
 
 Mitchell-Henry, Mr., 216-217 
 
 Moira, Lord, protest of, 49 
 
 Molvneux, William, his ' Case of Ire- 
 'land.' 19, 20, 33, 352 
 
 Monteagle, Lord. See Spring Rice, Mr. 
 
 Moore, Georae Henry, leader of the 
 Irish Parliamentary part}', 174 
 
 Moore, Roger, 352 
 
 Moore, Thomas, on Sheridan's wife 
 and Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 45 ; 
 at Dublin University, 66 ; his 
 friendship with Robert E;nnut, 
 67 ; his song of 'The Irish P, a- 
 sant to his Mistress,' 195 ; his 
 Vale of A voca, 220 
 
 Mountain (cobbler), a grimly appro- 
 priate rame, 137 
 
 Mpyers. Dr., i.ord Mayor of Dublin, 
 gives his casting-vote against 
 conferring the freedom of the cit}' 
 upnu Mr. Parnell and Mr. Dillon, 
 288-289 ; is refused the customary 
 vote of thanks on his retirement 
 from office, 292 
 
 iMurcer, Henri, 124 
 
 Murphy, Father John, 51, 352 
 
 Murphy, Fa' her Michael, supposed to 
 be invulnerable, 51 
 
 Musgrave, Sir Richard, his work on 
 the Hebellionof Ninetv-eight, 77, 
 78 
 
 Nagi.e, Pierce, the infamous informer, 
 180 ; betrays Stephens to the 
 Government, 185 
 
364 
 
 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION 
 
 NAP 
 
 Napier, Mr., Irish Attorney-General, 
 174 
 
 Napoleon, Emmet's interviews with, 
 70 ; defeats the allied armies at 
 Austerlitz, 82, 83 
 
 Nation, the, newspaper, 48, 1 14, 1 15, 
 119 ; puWication of the first 
 number, 120 ; motto of, ib. ; con- 
 tributors to, 121-120 ; tilled a 
 great want in Trelnnd, 122, 139; 
 upholds its traditions of Nation- 
 alism through lonsf years under 
 disheartening conditions, 234 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, 99 
 
 Newton, Sir John, presides over a 
 se'ect committee to inquire into 
 Irish agricultural distress, 169 
 
 Norburv, Judge, his brutal interrup- 
 tions to Emmet's address at his 
 trial, 73 
 
 No-rent Manifesto, the, 288 ; the 
 clergy entirely against it, ib.; 292 
 
 Northcote, Sir Stafford, his appeal 
 against obstruction, 266 ; his 
 crusade into Ulster, 337. See 
 also Iddesleigh, Lord. 
 
 Oakboys, 15 
 
 O'Brien, William, editor of United 
 Ireland.ZlZ ; committed for trial, 
 314 ; returned by a large majority 
 for Mallow, 315 ; his exposure 
 of official corruption at Dublin 
 Castle, 344 
 
 O'Brien, William Smith, comesforward 
 as a prominent fic:ure in Irish 
 politics, 125, 126,129; tries to 
 raise an armed rebellion, 131 ; 
 transported to Van Diemen's 
 Land, ib. ; receives his pardon, 
 lo3 ; death of, ib. ; anecdote of, 
 138 ; 148, 149 ; allowed to return 
 to Ireland, 153 ; his speech at 
 Clonmel, 154; his appeal to the 
 Irish people against the Phoenix 
 conspiracy, 154-155 
 
 « Obstruction,' 223, 224 
 
 O'Callaghan, Mr., 6 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, uncle of the libera- 
 tor, romantic career of, 86 
 
 O'Connell, Daniel, declaration of, 42 ; 
 his parentage and eirly career, 
 85-91 ; growing influence of, 89 ; 
 unworthy passages in his life. 90, 
 10 1 ; his oratorical powers, 92 ; 
 
 O KE 
 
 his duel with Mr. D'Esterre, 93 -, 
 his first appearance in the English 
 House of Commons, 93-95; 
 re-elected and takes his seat, 101 ; 
 portrait of, ib. ; 109, and Father 
 Mathew, 112, 113; his monster 
 meetings, 114 ; never intended 
 to use force, 115, 121 ; his dis- 
 persal of the Chmtarf meeting, 
 116 ; imprisoned, ib. ; waning ip- 
 fluence, ib.\ his hopeless passion 
 for a young girl, 117 ; his death 
 at Genoa, ib. ; alarmed at the 
 growing popularity of the Nation 
 newspaper, 120, 121 ; and Smith 
 O'Brien, 125-126 ; unveilingof his 
 statue in Dublin, 304, 305 ; his 
 societies for the promotion of 
 Catholic Emancipation, 308 
 
 O'Connell, John, son of Daniel 
 O'Connell, interrupts a speech of 
 Meagher's, 128 
 
 O'Connell, Morgan, father of Daniel 
 O'Connell, 85 
 
 O'Connell, Morris, eldest son of Daniel 
 O'Connell's grandfather, 85 
 
 O'Connor, Arthur, 48, 61, 58, 120 
 
 O'Connor, Mr. T. P. ( Home Ruler), his 
 ' Life of Lord Beaconslield,' 233 
 
 O'Doherty, Kevin Izod, 120 ; trans- 
 ported, lol ; still living, 133 
 
 O'Donoghue, the, 165, 180 ; speech of, 
 261, 269 
 
 O'Donovan Rossa, Jeremiah, 152 ; 
 sentenced to penal servitude for 
 life, 190; disqualified to sit in 
 P;irlianieni, 294 
 
 O'Flaherty, Mr. Edmund, 145 ; made 
 Commissioner of Income Tax, 
 146 ; his flight to Denmark and 
 to America, 147 
 
 O'Gorman Mahon, Colonel, r mark- 
 able adventures of, 97 ; rifty 
 years ago. 98 ; 235 
 
 O'Hagan, John, his impassioned 
 poems in the Nation newspaper, 
 57, 123 ; his translation of the 
 * Chanson de Roland,' ib. ; takes 
 service under the English Go- 
 vernment, ib. 
 
 O'Hagan, Thomas (afterwards Lord), 
 his brilliant defence of Daniel 
 O'Sullivan, 155 
 
 O'Kelly, Mr. James (Home Ru'er), 
 adventurous career of in foreign 
 parts, 234, 235 
 
INDEX. 
 
 365 
 
 O LB 
 
 O'Leaiy, John, a follower of Stephens 
 in the Fenian movemenr, 183 ; 
 character and career of, 184, 187; 
 sentenced to twenty years' penal 
 servitude, 190 
 
 OMahony, John, at Paris with 
 James Stephens, 150-151; in 
 America, 177; sonit thing of a 
 Gaelic scholar and student, ih. 
 
 Omar, 8 
 
 Oran.ue Societj', the, origin of, 77 : in- 
 tolerable cruelties of, 88 ; revival 
 of the feud, 334, >iqq. 
 
 Ormond admin istrafii)n, 3 
 
 Ormontl, last Duke of, his vicerovalty, 
 9 
 
 O'Sullivan, Daniel, defended by Mr. 
 Thomas O'Hagan, 155 ; sentenced 
 to ten years' penal servitude, ih. 
 
 Othman, 8 
 
 Palafox, 325 
 
 Pall Mali Gazette on Mr. Parnell, 343 
 Palmerston, Lord, death of, 156 ; his 
 summary dismissal from office, 
 347, 349 
 Parnell. Charles Stuart, 90, 97; 
 family and parentage, 220 ; elec- 
 ted member of parliament for 
 Meath, 221 ; attracts no notice 
 at first in the House, ih. ; but 
 gradually forces his way till his 
 name begins to be talked about, 
 ib. ; not to be howled or shouted 
 down, 222 ; opposition to the 
 Prison O de and Army and Navy 
 Mutiny Bills. 224 ; to the South 
 African Confederation Bill, 225- 
 226 ; his mission to America, 
 228 ; real leader of the Irish 
 party, 229, 230; his popularity 
 through Ireland, 232 ; his fol- 
 lowers, 233-236, 245 ; motion 
 of, 247 ; his pale, unmoved face, 
 264 ; 265 ; speech erroneously 
 attributed to, 2G7 ; question on 
 Mr. Michael Davitfs imprison- 
 ment, 267, 268; suspended, 269, 
 270 ; his visit to Paris and in- 
 terviews with the Archbishop 
 and with Victor Hugo and M. 
 Rochefort, 273 ; explains his 
 views to the Newcastle conven- 
 tion, 282 ; enthusiastic reception 
 at Dublin, 283 ; entry into Cork 
 
 riT 
 
 ■with Father Sheehy, 284; Mr. 
 Gladstone's censure of, 281-285 ; 
 his attack at Wexf)rd on Mr. 
 Gladstone, 285-286 ; arrested and 
 conve3'ed to Kilm inhani, 286 ; 
 signs the No-rent Manifesto, 
 287-288 ; his name removed 
 from the Commission of the 
 Peace for the Coun*-v of Wick- 
 low, 288; in Kilmainham, :?1»0; 
 292, 294 ; release on paro'e 
 and return to Kilmainliam, 
 298 ; unconditional relea e, 2'i9 ; 
 freedom of the city v*f l)u Lu 
 conferred uj on him, 305 ; on the 
 Irish National Leigue, 308 : his 
 views on the land question. hO;» ; 
 315 ; accompanies Mr. Healy cu 
 his Monaghan campaign, ;> >2 ; 
 a guest at the banquet to celebrate 
 the openinu' of the Cork In his- 
 trial Exhibition, 333; bamiuet lo, 
 at Dublin, and presentatinii of tha 
 testimonial, 341 ; his speech on 
 the occasion, 341-342 ; opinions 
 of the Irish and English press, 
 842-343 
 
 Parnell, Miss Anna (sister of the 
 above), President ot the Ladies' 
 Land League, 274, 293 
 
 Parnell, Sir Henry, the first Lord 
 Congleton, 220 
 
 Parnell, Sir John, 59 
 
 Parnell, Thomas, the poet, 220 
 
 Parthenope, 33 
 
 Pascal, 147 
 
 Peel, Sir Robert, 95 ; opposes O'Con- 
 nell's taking his seat under the 
 new oatlis, 100, 101 ; his -con- 
 temptuous inquiry in Parliament, 
 120, 121, 172 
 
 Penal Laws, the, 1-14 
 
 Perceval, Spencer, 84 
 
 Persius, 147 
 
 Petrarch, Lord Charlemont's transla- 
 tions of, 31 
 
 Petronius, 24 
 
 Philippe Egalite, daughter of, 45, 46 
 
 Phoenix Conspiracy, the, 152, sqq., 
 177 
 
 Phoenix-Park murders, 301, 302, 317, 
 318, 320-322 
 
 Pigot, John, ' the woman's ideal of a 
 patriot,' 123 
 
 Pitt, William, his tools against the 
 Irish, 49 ; his pledge to Ireland in 
 
366 
 
 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION. 
 
 PLA 
 
 securing the Union, 68 ; his re- 
 signation, 69 ; return to office, 76, 
 77,81, 82 ; death of, 83, ^7 
 
 Playfair, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Lyon, 
 208 ; takes the Speaker's place, 
 265, 266 
 
 Plunket, Mr., 324, 825 
 
 Poe, Ediiar Allan, 123, 124 ; his poem 
 of ' The Raven ' quoted, 123 
 
 Ponsonbj', 18 
 
 Pope, Alexander, his satire on Lord 
 Herve.v, 32 
 
 Poyning's Act, rejieal of, 2 
 
 Pri e, Mr. Bonamy, 277 
 
 Pulteney, h's duel with Lord Hervey, 
 32 ; his secession from the House 
 of Commons, 2 7 
 
 Punch, cartoon in, 332 ; severe in its 
 condemnation of the Orange 
 policy, 340 
 
 QuiNN, Mr. J. P., Secre*^ary of the 
 Land League, arrested ai.d con- 
 veyed to Kilmainham, 286 ; pro- 
 secution of, 311 ; released from 
 prison, 331 
 
 Reade, Charles, his novel of ' The 
 Cloister and the Hearth,' 227 
 
 Redmond, Mr., elected member for 
 Wexford, 332, 3i]3 
 
 Repeal of tlie Union, 92, 113 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 31 
 
 Reynolds, Ti omas, spy, 49, 50 
 
 Ribbonmen. 88 
 
 Ribbon Society, the, 141-142 
 
 Richey, Mr., on the fu ility of certain 
 cl'tuses in the Irish L;ind Act of 
 1870, attempting to create a pea- 
 sant proprietorship, 176 
 
 Richmond Conin ission, t'e, 277 
 
 Richter, Jean Paul, his ' Flower, Fruit, 
 and Thorn Pieces,' 146 
 
 Robinson, Chief Ju-tice, 10. 
 
 Roche, Father Philip, 51 
 
 Rochefort, M., interview with Mr. 
 Parnell, 273 
 
 Roe, Owen, 3.')2 
 
 Rogers, Mr. Tho o'd, 258 
 
 RoBsmore, Lord, Orange proclamation 
 and speech, 338, 339 ; removed 
 from the commission of the peace, 
 339-340 
 
 Rouget de Lisle, 48 
 
 SHE 
 
 Rousseau, Jean Baptiste, his poem to 
 posterity, 22 
 
 Rowan, Hamilti n, his escape to Ame- 
 rica, 43 ; Curran's defence of, 56 
 
 Row'ev's poems, 135 
 
 Russell. Lord John, caniesthe Repeal 
 of the Test and Corporation Acts, 
 95 ; his suggestion to O'Connell, 
 ib. ; sett'es the Irish Tithe Ques- 
 tion, 108; his 'Durham letter,' 
 144; plan for kidnapping him, loO 
 
 Sadleth, James, brother of John Sad- 
 lelr, 145, 146; expelled from the 
 House of Commons, 147 
 
 Sadleir. John, 115; his remarkable 
 ability and audacity, ib. ; made a 
 Lord of the Treasury, 146 ; his 
 wholesale forgery and embezzle- 
 ment, ib. ; supposed suicide, ib. ; 
 and doubts respecting it, 146-147 
 
 Salisbury, Lord, 280, 281; on Mr. 
 Gladstone's complaints of Mr. 
 Parnell, 285 ; accepts office, 344, 
 345 
 
 Sarsfield, Patrick, Earl of Lucan, his 
 def nee of Limerick, 1-6 ; death 
 ft; 6-8; 352 
 
 Saturn, 87 
 
 Scicvola, !30 
 
 Sell Her, his immor'r.l heroine, 196 
 
 Scullabogue, 52, 53 
 
 Secret Societies, 142 ; growth of, 289, 
 290, 301 
 
 Seward, William Henrv, 121 
 
 Sexton, Mr. (Home Ruler), 233 ; a 
 contributor lo the Naiion news- 
 paper, 234; elected member of 
 parliament for Sligo, in opposition 
 to Colonel King Harnian, 234 ; 
 275 ; arrested and conveyed to 
 Kilmainham, 286 
 
 Shakespeare, quoted, 4, 5,52, 61, 83, 
 90, 131, 189, 233 
 
 Shaw, Mr. ('sensib e Shaw'), cho.^en 
 leai'er of the Irish party in Mr. 
 Butt's stead, 227 ; his leadershii) 
 merely nominal, 229, 230, 232, 
 233, 236, 277 
 
 Shearps, the brothers John and Henry, 
 50, r>l ; pre ent at the execution 
 of Louis XV^I., 86; in death as 
 in li'e undivideil, 352 
 
 Shee, Serjeant his Tenant Compen- 
 sation Bill, 174 
 
INDEX, 
 
 367 
 
 SHE 
 
 Sheehy, Father E'.ujjene, arrested and 
 imprisoned, 275 ; set free, 283 ; 
 commences a crusade against the 
 Government, 284 ; liis entry into 
 Cork, ib. 
 
 Sheil, Richard Lai or, on Wolfe Tone, 
 44; his attack on the Duke of 
 York, 79, 80 ; his description of 
 the O'Gorman Miihon, 98 ; his 
 eloquence and genius, 99 ; his 
 brilliant and fascinating picture 
 of the Clare contest, 100 
 
 Shepp^^rd. Jack, prison-breaking feats 
 of, 189 
 
 Shepstone, Sir Theophilus, his annex- 
 ation of the Transvaal, 225 
 
 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 45 
 
 Sieves, Abbe, 219 
 
 SiiT, Major, infamies of his ganj;, 48, 
 50, 72, 7o, 88, 94 ; spectre of, 353 
 
 Skibbereen Literary Society, 152, 153 
 
 'Sli.tbli Cuiliun,' signature of Mr. 
 O'Hagan, 57 
 
 Smith O'Brien. See O'Brien 
 
 Smith, Svdney, on the exactions of 
 the Irish Church, 104 
 
 Smyrna Bay, 33 
 
 Smyth, Mr. P. J., an earnest and 
 active Nationalist, effects the 
 rescue of Irish political pri.-oners, 
 131 ; his later life only melan- 
 choly, 132 ; speech abounding in 
 sneers against England, 180, 181 ; 
 dies the pi seem an of an English 
 Government, 181 ; 216-217 
 
 Smythe, Mrs. Henry, murder of, 295 
 
 Somerville, Sir William, Irish Secre- 
 tary, 173 
 
 Spencer, Lord, succeeds Lord Cowper, 
 as Lord-Ueutenant of Ireland, 
 300, 301 ; survey s a terrible scene 
 from the windows of the Vice- 
 regal Lodge, 302 ; Mr. Biggar's 
 attack on, 311, 342-343, 344 
 
 ' Speranza,' nom-de-guerre of Lady 
 Wilde in the Nation, 121 
 
 •Sporus,' Pope's nickname for Lord 
 Hervey, 32 
 
 Spring Rice, Mr., afteiwards Lord 
 Monteagle, 170 
 
 Stephens, Jatnts, 148-150; at Paris, 
 150 ; returns to Ireland on ' a 
 tour of personal inspection,' 151- 
 152 ; finds ready confederates, 
 152; leader of the Phoenix Society, 
 ib. ; not disheartened by tempo- 
 
 TON 
 
 rary defeat, 177; establishes the 
 l7-ish People nowspiper, 185 ; be- 
 traved bv Pierce Naglo, ib ; flight, 
 186-187"; capture, 188 ; and 
 escape, 189 
 
 Stepniak, the Russian Nihilist, his 
 record of 'Russia under the 
 Tzars,' 75 
 
 Stone, Primate, his base and profli- 
 gate character. 24 
 
 Sullivan, Mr. A. M., on the varieties 
 of Ribbonism, 143 ; on the fune- 
 ral of Terence Bp lew M'Manas, 
 179 ; his account of J( ill ii< ) Ltary, 
 184, and of Thomas Clarke 1 uby, 
 184-185; on thePaniellitcop]) si- 
 tion to the Prison Code and Army 
 and Navy Mutiny Bills, 224, 269 ; 
 defends the Ladies' Land League, 
 274 ; compelled by ill- health to 
 resign his seat in Parliament, 
 294 
 
 Sullivan, Mr. T D. (H(me Ruler), 
 touching poem by, 194 ; proprie- 
 tor of the Nation, 234 ; a true 
 poet of the people, ib. 
 
 Surrey, Earl of, 45 
 
 Swift, Jonathan, on the Iri.>h bishops, 
 19 ; his services to Ireland, 20, 
 21, 24 ; his list of friends, 26, 33; 
 his small fervid figure, 352 
 
 Swinburne, Algernon Charles, his 
 ' Appeal to England ' on behalf 
 of th- men of Manchester, 193 
 
 * Syndercombe, Letters of,' 25 
 
 Talbot, Richard, Duke of Tirconnel, 
 2, 3 ; death of, 4 ; his weary, 
 haughty face, 352 
 
 Thackeray, W. M . on John Dillon 
 ihe elder, 119; on the Eastern 
 Counties' train , 258 
 
 Times newspaper, the, i)rophe.>ies 
 the gradual extinction of the 
 Celtic Irishman, 141 ; its un 
 timely and unseemly merriment 
 over Mr. Smith Bri'n's speech 
 atClonnul, 154; on Mr. Parnell's 
 Sfteech at the Rotunda Banquet, 
 342 
 
 Tirconnel, Duke of. See Talbot, 
 Richard 
 
 Tithe War, the, 102, sqq. 
 
 Tone, Iheobald Wolfe, 41 ; his tem- 
 porary exile in America, 43,^44 ; 
 
B68 
 
 IRELAND SINCE THE UNION. 
 
 TOU 
 
 his widow, 46 ; protests against 
 the title of 'citizen,' ib.; in France, 
 47 ; his arrest and sentence, 54 ; 
 his death in prison, 55 ; his grave, 
 i6.,58, 61, 179; 352 
 
 Toussaiut, L'Ouverture, 96 
 
 Townsliend, Lord, Viceroyaltv of, 24- 
 25, 29^ 
 
 Traill, Mnjor, R.M., cnrions picture of 
 his daily life, 295-296 
 
 Treaty of Limerick, 4-9 
 
 Trevelj'an, Mr. G. O., appointed 
 Chief Secretary fa- Ireland, 303 ; 
 praise due to, 305 ; his great 
 ambition, 342 ; gives up the Irish 
 Secretaryship, 314; retirement 
 from Mr. Gladstone's Cabinet, 
 346 
 
 Turk, the ' unspeakable,' 31 
 
 Tyrtaeus, 48, 178 
 
 Ulster tenant-right cuftom, 240, 
 243, 278 
 
 Union, the, 56 
 
 United Ireland, the most advanced of 
 the National newspapers, pro- 
 scribed, 288 ; suppressed and 
 seized, but continues to appear 
 surreptitiously, 297, 313-315 
 
 United Irishman newspaper, started 
 by John Mitchel, 129 
 
 United Irishmen, Society of, founded 
 by Wolfe Tone, 41-43, 55 
 
 * Usher Maillard, shifty,' 293 
 
 Vklasquez, 119, 326 
 Vergniaud, shining sentences of, 127 
 Vernon, Lieut.-Col., testimony of, 78 
 Victoria, Queen, visit to Dublin, 134 
 Volunteer movement in Ireland, 29-38 
 
 ZUL 
 
 Wali.enstein's horse, 280 
 
 Walpole, Horace, 31 
 
 Washington, George, 29, 33 
 
 Wellesle}', his Lord-Lieutenantship, 
 88 
 
 Wellington, Duke of, 95 
 
 Whiteboys, 15 
 
 Wide, Lady, a contributor to the 
 Nation newspaper, 121 
 
 Wilkes, John, his answer to a threat 
 of Luttrell's, 59 
 
 Wiliinm III., King, 3, 6 ; no excuse 
 for, 8, 9 ; his camp at Exeter, 77 
 
 Williams, poetry of, in the Nation,\'2') 
 
 Wingfield, Hon. Lewis, his powerful 
 novel, ' Mv Lords of Strogue,' 52, 
 53 
 
 Wolfe, Rev. Mr., nephew of Lord 
 Kilwarden, tragic fate of, 72 
 
 Wolfe Tone. See Tone 
 
 Wolseley, Sir Garnet, proposal to con- 
 fer the freedom of the city of 
 Dublin on, 309 ; withdrawn 
 owing to a current rumour, con- 
 tradicted by Sir Garnet, 310 
 
 Wood's copper money, 20 
 
 Wordsworth quoted, 96 
 
 Woulfe, Stephen, phrase of his in Par- 
 liament chosen as a motto for the 
 Nation newspaper, 120 
 
 York, Duke of, his ostentatious 
 patronage of the Orange Society, 
 78 ; i/t articulo mortis, 79, 80 
 
 Young, Arthur, on the condition of 
 the Irish peasantry, 14 
 
 Young Ireland, 101 
 
 ZoLULAND, policy of the Government 
 in, 324 
 
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