^•^ANP;fTH : E' - I /^:*^,;(£% #s* LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Bhalf_ ea a _ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. SMi l3uM *qk *2o tfSE .*«*w** 1 JJJJJ, GLADSTONE-PARN AND THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. A GRAPHIC STORY OF THE INJUSTICE AND OPPRESSION INFLN TED UPON THE IRISH TENANTRY, AND A HISTORY OF THE GI- GANTIC MOVEMENT THROUGHOUT IRELAND, AMERICA AND GREAT BRITAIN FOR "HOME RULE," WITH BIOGRAPHIES OF THE GREAT LEADERS, GLADSTONE, PARNELL, DAVITT, EGAN, AND VERY MANY OTHERS. BY THE DISTINGUISHED AUTHORS, JOURNALISTS AND FRIENDS OF IRELAND, Hon. THOMAS POWER (f CONNOR, M. P., •v AND ROBERT McWADE, Esq., - Ex-President Municipal Council of Philadelphia, etc., etc. i GENERAL INTRODUCTION BY HON. CHARLES STEWART PARNELL M.P. Canadian Introduction by A. Burns, D. D.. LL.D. American Introduction by Prof. R. E. Thompson, D. D.. LI. I). PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED HUBBARD BROS., Publishers: PHILADELPHIA, BOSTON, CINCINNATI, KANSAS CITY AND ATLANTA G. L. HOWE, Chicago ; W. A. HOUGHTON, New York ; A. L. BANCROFT & CO., San Francisco. ^0 ft" 1 ««Ullv" !SSS«OTOjf/- Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by HUBBARD BROTHERS, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. 0. f HON. T. (' O'CONNOR. MP INTRODUCTION. 1HAVE pleasure in writing- a few lines of preface to Mr. T. P. O'Connor's volume. I know no one who is better fitted to present the case of Ireland, and especially the history of our movement, before the public of America. His vigorous and picturesque pen makes everything he writes lucid, interesting, and effective ; and he has had the advantage of himself taking a promi- nent and honorable part in many of the scenes he so graphically describes. I believe it espe- cially desirable to have our case properly stated to the American public at the present moment. No Irishman can speak too warmly of the ex- traordinary assistance that America has rendered to the cause of Ireland. The financial and moral support which our movement has received from the Great Republic has been recognized by eminent English Statesmen as an entirely new factor in the present movement, and as giving it g INTRODUCTION. a strength and a power of endurance absent from many previous Irish efforts. It is at mo- ments of crisis like the present, when other po- litical parties face the expense and difficulties of a political campaign with hesitation and appre- hension, that one really appreciates the enormous position of vantage in which American generosity has placed the Irish party. Then the unanimity of opinion both among the statesmen and the journalists of America has done much to en- courage men like Mr. Gladstone, who are fight- ing for the Irish cause, and to fill Ireland's enemies with the grave misgiving that the policy con- demned by another great and free nation may not be sound or just. For these reasons we are all especially desirous that American opinion should be made acquainted with the merits and facts of this great controversy, and the following pages are eminently calculated to perform that good work. Charles Stewart Parnell. London, August, 1886. A. BURNS, D. U., LL. D. CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. BY A. BURNS, D. D., LL. D., President Wesleyan Female College, Hamilton, Ont. Canada. THE following pages cover one of the most interesting periods in Irish history. The story related falls mainly within the memory of most of its readers, embracing scarce the last two decades. It is written by a university man of scholarly attainments, a brilliant journalist and author, one who, although comparatively a young man yet, is fairly entitled to say of most of the strug- gles and scenes he describes, quorum pars magna Jul The book may be taken as a representative putting of the great struggle now going on, and as such it may fairly claim the attention of all in- terested in the peace and prosperity of Ireland. None need be told that that land is now unhappy and somewhat disaffected. Her harp is on the willows, her songs are threnodies. Yet no one can become acquainted with her children without 10 CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. discovering that naturally they are cheerful, light- hearted and hopeful. Nor can you give to one of them a cup of cold water without waking a genuine inborn gratitude. Whether at home or abroad, the race is hopeful, grateful, and essen- tially patriotic. A kind word jr deed for Ireland will brighten the eye, quicken the pulse, arouse the enthusiasm, and win the affection of her chil- dren the world over. Have her critics furnished an adequate expla- nation of the present unhappy condition of such a people ? The passionate outbursts of her out- raged sons receive due prominence. Her agra- rian crimes are published far and wide. Bid: few pre candid enough to admit that the crimes of Ire- land are chiefly agrarian, and caused by the wholesale confiscation of her soil, and the strug- gles of the descendants of the real owners to re- gain the lands of their fathers. Goldwin Smith tells us "an alien and absentee proprietary is the immediate source of her troubles." " The owner- ship of land in that country is itself the heritage of confiscation, and of confiscation which has never been forgotten. The struggle is in fact the last stage of a long civil war between the con- quered race and an intrusive proprietary, which was closely identified with the political ascendency of the foreigner, and the religious ascendency of an alien creed." " The districts where agrarian violence has most prevailed have been singularly CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. ]\ free from ordinary crime. The Irish farmer has clung desperately to his homestead, eviction is to him destitution." "The crime (of the Irish) is solely agrarian. In the districts where it has been most rife, even in Tipperary itself, ordinary offences have been very rare," and he continues, "justice requires that we remember the training which the Irish as a nation have had, and of which the traces are still left upon their character. In 1 798 they were goaded into open rebellion by the wholesale flogging, half-hanging, pitch-capping and picketing which were carried on over a large district by the yeomanry and militiamen, who, as soon as the suffering masses began to heave with disaffection, were launched upon the homes of the peasantry." Irish history is little studied. Few even of my countrymen know anything of the history of our country. A partial excuse may be found in the fact that even in the schools of Ireland the history of the country is not found. Only as it may be considered necessary to explain English history is Ireland ever mentioned, and neither in common school -nor in university have the children of Ire- land the faintest opportunity to learn anything of their people, or the causes of the disaffection so generally prevalent. Traditions abound, but they are generally on sectarian lines, and theological bitterness, the worst of all, is usually added to political. 12 CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. The story that follows will be found real his- tory, the history of our own times. Every page will revive the memory of the stirring scenes of the last decade or two, and as a panoramic vision will fix in the mind the cause of events that had well-nigh passed from us forever. This work will be found exceedingly oppor- tune. Mr. Gladstone's bill for Home Rule in Ireland has been defeated at Westminster, and again by the people of England, because, as we verily believe, it was not understood by the Brit- ish people, while it was grossly misrepresented by those whose interests are at war with the enlargement of popular rights. The following pages will show the emptiness and absurdity of the war cries of the late conflict — " The Empire in Danger," " The Union in Dan- ger," "Protestantism in Danger" — all echoes of the Disestablishment Conflict of 1868, the recol- lections of which ought to have taught the pseudo- prophets wisdom and moderation. There never was a measure more grossly caricatured than the late bill for the relief of Ireland. It was all in vain that the leaders of Irish thought had declared both with pen and voice that " the proposed Irish Parliament would bear the same relation to the Parliament at Westminster that the Legislature and Senate of every American State bear to the head authority of the Congress in the capitol at Washington." All that relates to local business it CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. J 3 was proposed to delegate to the Irish Assembly; all questions of imperial policy were still to be left to the imperial government. It was all in vain that the acknowledged Irish leader, Mr. Par- nell, declared in the closing debate that the Irish people were content to have a Parliament wholly subordinate to the imperial Parliament ; that they did not expect a Parliament like Grattan's, which possessed co-ordinate powers. The words of some outraged exile in America or Australia fur- nished a sufficient pretext for the ungenerous but characteristic vote that followed. In this great struggle I am thoroughly in sym- pathy with my country. With the historian Lecky I believe that " the Home Rule theory is within the limits of the Constitution and supported by means that are perfectly loyal and legitimate." The British Colonies have secured it, and it is not too much to say that the bond of union be- tween the Colonies and the Empire depends on its existence. Canadian opposition to Home Rule would seem to show that the denial of the boon implies also the rejection of the Golden Rule. That permanent peace will ever come to Ire- land without it no sane man expects. No foreign power can govern Ireland. The experiment has surely been tried long enough. The unconquer- able spirit possessed so fully by the larger island is no less developed in Ireland. The spirit of |4 CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. the age only strengthens the spirit of indepen- dence, while the millions of her children on this side the Atlantic tell her that Home Rule is the only reasonable rule for freemen. Ireland needs rest. For a long time she has been under terrible provocation, and has suffered as no other country in Europe. She looks around for sympathy, and L is not wanting. But what she needs most is equitably yea, generous treatment at the hands of England. These pages will show that her poverty is largely the result of misgovernment. England needs the tranquillity of Ireland as much as Ireland herself does. Let Ireland be assured that her rights are to be sacredly respected ; that her wrongs are to be redressed by England, not grudgingly nor of necessity; that the elevation and comfort of her down-trodden children is to be considered a more pressing subject of legislation than the claims of an independent and irresponsible no- bility. She has given her Burkes, her Welling- tons, her Dufferins and her Tyndalls to enrich the Empire. Let her be told to call her children to the development of her own resources and the improvement of her own polity. Order will then soon come from chaos, and light from her sadly prolonged darkness, and the days of her mourning- will soon be ended. Thoroughly satisfied that a generous policy on the part of England, not merely permitting, but CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. jg encouraging Home Rule, would give to my country peace, prosperity, and enthusiastic loyalty, I take my place with those who plead for a sep- arate Parliament for Ireland, as Illinois, Ohio, and California have separate Parliaments, but still allied to the Imperial Parliament on the principle that binds Illinois, Ohio, and California to the United States of America. Less than that should not be accepted. More has not been asked by any of the leaders sketched in this work. I commend the work to the reader not because I can endorse every sentence that it contains, or approve of all the details of operation therein, for I have not studied carefully every page. But I heartily approve of the object aimed at, and believing that the present struggle is the old con- test of monopoly against the common weal, or, as it has been aptly put recently, of " the classes against the masses," I promptly take my place with the latter, and claim for my countrymen a respectful hearing. As in all past struggles for the enlargement of British liberties the terms "loyal" and "disloyal" have been called into active service, so it is to-day, and " Unionists " and " Loyalists " are posing as the legitimate opponents of Home Rule. These pretensions and assumptions have been torn into tatters a thousand times, and are as meaningless when so used as the terms "orthodox" and "heterodox" among speculative theologians. 16 CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. And as we scan the ranks of the men who on either side of the Atlantic are the self-constituted representatives of loyalty, and monopolize the term, we instinctively ask Risum teneatis ? Some, I admit, may honestly see in Home Rule the dis- memberment of the Empire and innumerable other evils. But I am firmly convinced that there are a thousand thousand good hearts and true, who, like myself, see in Home Rule and its con- comitant legislation not merely harmony and prosperity to Ireland, but an immeasurably brighter future and a more permanent stability to the British Empire. A. Burns. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Charles Stewart Pamell — His character for grip arid grit — His talents ■ — His appearance — His early life and education — His ancestry — Admiral Charles Stewart — Parnell's first tour in America — The Manchester Martyrs — Parnell's entrance into political life — Isaac Butt and the earlier movements for Home Rule — Parnell and Butt — Joseph Gillis Biggar — Enormous salaries paid to officials in Ireland — The policy of obstruction — Parnell's first speech in the House of Commons 25 CHAPTER II. The era of obstruction — The British House of Commons — Queen's speech — The vote on supplies — How obstruction helped Ire- land's cause — A happy hunting-ground — Flogging in the army — England's treatment of prisoners—The Mutiny Act — Making John Bull listen — The Transvaal bill — The Irish in England and Scotland — The Famine of 1879 — A crisis in Ireland's history — Mr. Butt's defects as a leader — Michael Davitt — The story of his early years — A Fenian movement — Davitt in prison — A ticket- of-leave — Irish-American organizations — Land League — " The Three F's " 7 8 CHAPTER III. The land war — The struggle of seven centuries — Illustrations from Irish history — Coin and livery — The wars under the Tudor dy- nasty — Feudal tenure — The Munster undertakers — The settle- ment of Ulster — The Commission of Inquiry — The perfidy of the Stuarts — Cromwell 111 Ireland — William III., Sarsfield, Limer- ick, and the Penal Code . . . . . . . .120 17 18 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. The destruction of Irish industries — An alien proprietary — English legislation for many years directed against Ireland's prosperity — Interference with Irish trade — The depopulation of the land — Woollen manufactures crushed out — Blow after blow dealt at nascent industries — Lord Dufferin on English jealousy of Ireland — Rack-renting, eviction and legalized robbery — Cruelties of the landlords — Dean Swift's pictures of Ireland in the eighteenth century — Beggary and starvation . . . . . -159 CHAPTER V. The story of Irish Parliament — Poyning's law — Molyneux's " Case of Ireland Stated " — Wood's Half- Pence — The condition of Catholics — The corruptions of the Anglo-Irish Parliament — The Irish Volunteers — The convention at Dungarvan — Grattan's Declaration of Rights — An independent Irish Parliament — Its happy effect on Irish industries and on business in general — Lord Fitzwilliam recalled — The rebellion of 1798 — Castlereagh — How the Union was brought about . . . . 177 CHAPTER VI. After the Union — Ireland heavily taxed for England's benefit — Shameful injustice — The degradation of the tenantry — Absentee- ism — Wholesale eviction — Coercion acts — Worse and worse — Wrong, poverty and hopeless misery — Catholic Emancipation — O'Connell the Liberator — The attitude of the Orange Tory party — O'Connell in Parliament ....... 226 CHAPTER VII. The great famine of 1845 — Only the culmination of evils — The pota- to-rot — The great struggle in England regarding the Corn-Laws — Protection versus Free Trade — Peel and repeal — Lord John Russell — His criminally stupid Irish policy and its bitter conse- quences — Tenant right the only remedy for Ireland's woes — Co- ercion as a cure for famine — The awful disasters of 1845 an & 1847 — Foolish doctrinaire policy of Russell — The Labor Rate act — The Fever — The Soup Kitchen act — Emigration — Death of O'Connell — Young Ireland — John Mitchel and Smith O'Brien — Great Britain the unchecked mistress of Ireland . . . 254 CONTENTS. 19 CHAPTER VIII. Resurrection — The Fenian movement — Gladstone's mental and moral characteristics — The disestablishment of the Irish Church — The Land Bill of 1870, and its fatal defects — The Home Rule movement originally started by Protestants — The Home Rule Association — A complete change of policy — No favors to be asked or accepted from either great English party . . . 289 CHAPTER IX. The old fight again — The crisis of 1879 — The election of Mr. Par- nell as chairman of the Irish party — Defects of Mr. Shaw as a political leader — The leaders decide to remain in opposition to both English parties — Mr. Shaw's friends sell themselves for place and pay — The hopeless differences between the Irish party and the English Liberals — Parnell's platform for settling the Irish land problem — English incapacity to deal with Irish ques- tions — The Disturbance Bill — Forster — Irish outrages — Irish members suspended and ordered to leave the House — Land Bill of 1881— No-Rent cry 308 CHAPTER X. In the depths — Merciless war between the Irish people and the au- thorities — Forster and Clifford Lloyd — " Harvey Duff" — Par- nell imprisoned — Parnell triumphant — The Phoenix Park mur- ders — Conservative rule and its benefits — Gladstone's new move- ment for conceding Home Rule — The situation in January, 1886 345 CHAPTER XI. The great Home Rule debate of 1886 — Gladstone, the Grand Old Man — His appearance — His qualities of mind and heart — John Morley — Joseph Chamberlain — Mr. Goschen — Hartington — Sal- isbury — Churchill — Justin McCarthy — Thomas Sexton — Arthur O'Connor — Timothy Daniel Sullivan — James O'Kelly — His sin- gular and checkered career as soldier, journalist, politician and parliamentarian — John Dillon — Edmund Leamy — E. D. Gray — T. M. Healy — William O'Brien — J. E. Redmond — T. Harring- ton — The Liberal Parliament of 1886 — Gladstone's grand speech — The debate — Hope again deferred 362 20 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XII. The appeal to the country — Gladstone's popularity with the masses — His brilliant campaign in Scotland — Splendid receptions at Man- chester, Liverpool, and elsewhere — Anti-Gladstonian efforts of Hartington, Chamberlain, Goschen, Churchill, Trevelyan and Bright — The Primrose League — The attitude of the agricultural laborer and the farmer — The democracy almost unanimously friendly to Ireland— The result of the midsummer elections of 1886 — Ireland not crushed — The revival of hope — Belfast riots — The outlook to-day 445 CHAPTER XIII. THE MOVEMENT IN AMERICA. American Introduction ......... 457 Parnell's Appeal to America — Founding of the Irish National League of the United States — The Buffalo Convention — The " No-Rent Manifesto" — The Chicago Convention — The League's Second National Gathering — Gloomy days for the League — End of the Land League of America — Birth and growth of the Irish Na- tional League of America — Hon. Alexander Sullivan's admin- istration — The emigration question — Irish-American leaders — Patrick Egan takes the reins — Dark days again dawn for the League — Public utterances of eminent Americans — To strengthen Gladstone's hands — Third Annual Convention of the National League — The League under John Fitzgerald's administration . 471 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGE RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE {Steel) Frontispiece, THOMAS POWER O'CONNOR s A. BURNS, D. D., LL. D 8 CHARLES STEWART PARNELL (Steel) 24 ISAAC BUTT — J. G. BIGGAR 53 JOHN DILLON — GEO. J. GOSCHEN 57 J. WAITE 7I LORD R. CHURCHILL — LORD HUNTINGDON 75 LORD SPENCER — MR. TREVELYAN 83 MICHAEL DAVITT 97 F. B. FREEHILL I0 3 SCENE IN IRELAND — FARMER'S CABIN „, RT. HON. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN „ s EVICTED — DRIVEN FROM THE HOUSE WE BUILT 131 W. REDMOND — J. E. REDMOND , 47 155 165 CELEBRATING MASS IN A CABIN LIFE IN IRELAND DESTITUTE FISHERMEN ,„ EVICTED — HOMELESS j8 3 HENRY GRATTAN l8g GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT 2 oi DANIEL O'CONNELL 24g DRINKING HIS HONOR'S HEALTH 259 THE OBNOXIOUS PROCESS-SERVER 2g3 NO RENT. 301 T. M. HEALY — JOHN GEORGE McCARTHY 313 MEETING OF LAND LEAGUE COMMITTEE .". 321 SOLICITING AID 329 LORD SALISBURY — Mr. FORSTER 333 21 22 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS JOHN MORLEY— SIR. W. V. HARCOURT 339 THOMAS SEXTON — W. H. O'SULLIVAN 371 A. M. SULLIVAN — T. D. SULLIVAN 403 GLADSTONE'S SPEECH 437 PARNELL'S NEW NATIONAL MAP 442 ROBERT M. McWADE 469 PATRICK A. COLLINS — THOMAS FLATLEY 47 o PATRICK EGAN — ALEXANDER SULLIVAN 475 JAMES MOONEY — JOHN J. HYNES 476 REV. PATRICK CRONIN — JOHN F. FINERTY 509 REV. CHARLES O'REILLY, D. D. — REV. THOMAS J. CONATY 510 WILLIAM J. GLEASON — HON. M. V. GANNON 545 REV. DR. GEO. C. BETTS — REV. P. A. McKENNA 546 COL. JOHN F. ARMSTRONG — PATRICK MARTIN 603 MICHAEL J. REDDING — MILES M. O'BRIEN 604 JAMES REYNOLDS — JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY 613 COL. W. P. REND — JOHN GROVES 614 ROGER WALSH — O'NEILL RYAN 651 JOHN FITZGERALD — JOHN P.SUTTON 652 REV. GEO. W. PEPPER — THOMAS H. WALSH 759 M. J. RYAN — E. JOHNSON 7C0 i/ " {J^^^4a CHAPTER I. CHARLES STEWART PARNELL. GRIP and grit : in these two words are told the secret of Mr. Parnell's marvellous success and marvellous hold over men. When once he has made up his mind to a thing - he is inflexible ; immovable by affection or fear or reasoning. He knows what he wants, and he is resolved to have it. Throughout his career he has often had to make bargains ; he has never yet been known to make one in which he gave up a single iota which he could hold. But it takes time before one discovers these qualities. In ordinary circumstances Mr. Parnell is apparently the most easy-going of men. Though he is not emotional or effusive, he is genial and unaffected to a degree ; listens to all comers with an air of real deference, especially if they be good talkers ; and apparently allows himself to follow implicitly the guidance of those who are speaking to him. He is for this reason one of the most agreeable of companions, never raising any difficulties about trifles, ready to subject his will and his conven- ience to that of others ; amiable, unpretending, a (25) 26 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. splendid listener, a delightful host. But all the softness and the pliancy disappear when the moment comes for decisive action. After days of apparent wavering, he suddenly becomes granite. His decision is taken, and once taken is irrevocable. He goes right on to the end, whatever it may be. In some respects, indeed, he bears a singular resemblance to General Grant ; he has his council of war, and nobody could be a more patient or more respectful lis- tener, and, ordinarily, nobody more ready to have his thinking done for him by others. But when affairs reach a great climax, it is his own judg- ment upon which he acts, and upon that alone. Mr. Parnell has not a large gift of expression. He hates public speaking, and avoids a crowd with a nervousness that sometimes appears almost feminine. He likes to steal through crowded streets in a long, heavy Ulster and a small smoking-cap that effectually conceal his identity, and when he is in Ireland is only happy when the quietness of Avondale secludes him from all eyes but those of a few intimates. From his want of any love of expressing himself, it often happens that he leaves a poor impression on those who meet him casually. More than one man has thought that he was little better than a simpleton, and their mangled reputations strew the path over which the Juggernaut of Parnell's fortunes and genius has mercilessly passed. He is incapable THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 27 of giving the secret of his power, or of explaining the reasons of his decisions. He judges wisely, with instinctive wisdom, just as Millais paints ; he is always politically right, because, so to speak, he cannot help it. This want of any great power and any great desire to expose the line of reason- ing by which he has reached his conclusions has often exposed Parnell to misunderstandings and strong differences of opinion even with those who respect and admire him. The invariable result is that, when time has passed, those who have dif- fered from him admit that they were wrong and he right, and once more have a fatalistic belief in his sagacity. Often he does not speak for days to any of his friends, and is seldom even seen by them. He knows the enormous advantage some- times of pulling wires from an invisible point. During this absence his friends occasionally fret and fume and wonder, whether he knows every- thing that is going on ; and, when their impatience has reached its climax, Parnell appears, and lo ! a great combination has been successfully laid, and the Irish are within the citadel of some time- honored and apparently immortal wrong. Simi- larly it is with Parnell's nerve. In ordinary times he occasionally appears nervous and fretful and pessimistic; in the hour of crisis he is calm, gay, certain of victory, with the fanaticism of a Mussul- man, unconscious of danger, with a blindness half boyish, half divine. 28 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Mr. Parnell is not a man of large literary reading, but he is a severe and constant student of scientific subjects, and is especially devoted to mechanics. It is one of his amusements to isolate himself from the enthusiastic crowds that meet him everywhere in Ireland, and, in a room by himself, to find delight in mathematical books. He is a constant reader of enoineerincr and other mechanical papers, and he takes the keenest in- terest in machinery. It is characteristic of the modesty and, at the same time, scornfulness of his nature, that all through the many attacks made upon him by gentlemen who wear their hearts upon their sleeves, he has never once made allusion to his own strong love of animals ; but to his friends he often expressed his disgust for the outrages that, during a portion of the agitation in Ireland, were occasionally committed upon them. He did not express these sentiments in public, for the good reason that he regarded the outcry raised by some of the Radicals as part of the gospel of cant for which that section of the Liberal party is especially distinguished. To hear a man like Mr. Forster refusing a word of sympathy, in one breath, for whole housefuls of human beings turned out by a felonious landlord to die by the roadside, and, in the next, demanding the suppression of the liberties of a nation be- cause half-a-dozen of cattle had their tails cut off; to see the same men who howled in delight be- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 29 cause the apostle of a great humane movement, like Mr. Davitt, had been sent to the horrors of penal servitude, shuddering over the ill-usage of a horse, was quite enough to make even the most humane man regard this professed love of an- imals as but another item in the grand total of their hypocrisy. Mr. Parnell regards the lives of human beings as more sacred than even those of animals, and he is consistent in his hatred of op- pression and cruelty wherever they may be found. His sympathies are with the fights of freedom everywhere, and he often spoke in the strongest terms of his disgust for the butcheries in the Soudan, which the Liberals, who wept over Irish horses, and Irish cows, received with such Olym- pian calm. In 1867 the ideas that had been sown in his mind in childhood first began to mature. His mother was then, as probably throughout her life, a strong Nationalist, and so was at least one of his sisters. Thus Mr. Parnell, in entering upon political life, was reaching the natural sequel of his own descent, of his early training, of the strongest tendencies of his own nature. It is not easy to describe the mental life of a man who is neither expansive nor introspective. It is one of the strongest and most curious peculiarities of Mr. Parnell, not merely that he rarely, if ever, speaks of himself, but that he rarely, if ever, gives any indication of having studied himself. His mind, if one may use the jargon of the 30 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Germans, is purely objective. There are few men who, after a certain length of acquaintance, do not familiarize you with the state of their hearts or their stomachs or their finances ; with their fears, their hopes, their aims. But no' man has ever been a confidant of Mr. Parnell. Any allusion to himself by another, either in the exu- berance of friendship or the design of flattery, is passed by unheeded; and it is a joke among his intimates that to Mr. Parnell the being Parnell does not exist. It is plain from the facts we have narrated that Parnell's great strength is one which lies in his character rather than in his attainments. Yet his wonderful successes won in the face of nu- merous and most bitter opponents testify to mental abilities of a very high order. Mr. Glad- stone has said of him, " No man, as far as I can judge, is more successful than the hon. member in doing that which it is commonly supposed that all speakers do, but which in my opinion few really do — and I do not include myself among those few — namely, in saying what he means to say." Mr. Parnell is moreover very strong in not saying the thing which should not be said. Too many of his countrymen, it may be safely as- serted, are of that hasty and impulsive tem- perament which may betray, by a word prema- turely spoken, some point which should have been held from the enemy, and which might easily THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE 31 have been made, at some later time, a stronghold of defence in the parliamentary contest. Mr. Parnell has few qualities which have hitherto been associated with the idea of a successful Irish leader. He has now become one of the most potent of parliamentary debaters in the House of Commons, through his thorough grasp of his own ideas and through his exact knowledge of the needs of his country. But Mr. Parnell has be- come this in spite of himself. He retains to this day, as we have before stated, an almost invin- cible repugnance to public speaking ; if he can, through any excuse, be silent, he remains silent, and the want of all training before his entrance into political life made him, at first, a speaker more than usually stumbling. His complete suc- cess in overcoming, not indeed his natural ob- jection to public speaking, but the difficulty with which his first speeches were marked, affords one of the many proofs of his wonderful strength and singleness of purpose.' It is not a little re- markable that his first successful speech was crit- icised for its vehemence and bitterness of tone, and for the shrillness and excessive effort of the speaker's voice. It seems probable that the embarrassing circumstances of his position while addressing an unsympathizing body of legislators, combined with a sense of his own inexperience, may have produced. the appearance of excessive vehemence of manner. 32 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Nature has stamped on the person of this re- markable man the qualities of his mind and tem- perament. His face is singularly handsome, and at a first glance might even appear too delicate to be strong. The nose is long and thin and carved, not moulded ; the mouth is well cut ; the cheeks are pallid ; the forehead perfectly round, as round and as striking as the forehead of the first Napoleon ; and the eyes are dark and un- fathomable. The passer-by in the streets, taking a casual look at those beautifully chiselled features and at the air of perfect tranquillity, would be inclined to think that Mr. Parnell was a very handsome young man, who probably had graduated at West Point, and would in due time die in a skirmish with the Indians. But a closer look would show the great possibilities beneath this face. The mouth, especially the under lip, speaks of a grip that never loosens ; the eye, when it is fixed, tells of the inflexible will be- neath ; and the tranquillity of the expression is the tranquillity of the nature that wills and wins. Similarly with his figure. It looks slight almost to frailty ; but a glance will show that the bones are large, the hips broad, and the walk firm ; in fact, Mr. Parnell tramps the ground rather than walks. The hands are firm, and even the way they grasp a pencil has a significance. This picture of Parnell is very unlike the por- traits which have been formed of him by the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 33 imagination of those who have never met him. When he was first in the storm and stress of the era of obstruction, he used to be portrayed in the truthful pages of English comic journalism with a battered hat, a long upper lip, a shillelah in his hand, a clay pipe in his caubeen. Even to this day portraits after this fashion appear in the lower-class journals that think the caricature of the Irish face the best of all possible jokes. Par- nell is passionately fond of Ireland ; is happier and healthier on its soil than in any other part of the world, and is almost bigoted in the intensity of his patriotism. But he might easily be taken for a native of another country. Residence for the first years of his life in English schools has given him a strong English accent and an essen- tially English manner ; and from his American mother he has got, in all probability, the healthy pallor, the delicate chiselling, the impassive look, and the resolute eye that are typical of the chil- dren of the great Republic. Such is the man in brief who to-day is perhaps the most potent personality in all the many na- tions and many races of the earth. The Russian Czar rules wider domains and more subjects ; but his sway has to be backed by more than a million armed men, and he passes much of his time shiv- ering before the prospect of a sudden and awful death at the hands of the infuriated among his own people. The German is a more multitude- 34 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. nous race than the Irish and almost as widely scattered ; but Bismarck requires also the protec- tion of a mighty army and of cruel coercion laws, and the German who leaves the Fatherland re- gards with abhorrence the political ideas with which Bismarck is proud to associate his name. Gladstone exercises an almost unparalleled sway over the minds, hearts, imaginations of English- men ; but nearly one-half of his people regard him as the incarnation of all evil ; and shallow- pated lieutenants, great only in self-conceit, dare to beard and defy and flout him. But Parnell has not one solitary soldier at his command ; the jail has opened for him and not for his enemies, and except for a miserable minority he is adored by all the Irish at home, and adored even more fer- vently by the Irish who will never see — in some cases who have never seen — the shores of the Green Isle again. In one way or another, through intermixture with the blood of other peoples, the Irish race can lay claim to some twenty millions of the human race. Out of all these twenty millions the people who do not re- gard Parnell as their leader may be counted by the few hundreds of thousands. In cities sepa- rated from his home or place of nativity by oceans and continents, men meet at his command, and spill their money for the cause he recommends. Meetings called under his auspices gather daily in every one of the vast States of America, in the great irish struggle. 35 Canada, in Cape Colony; and the primeval woods of Australia have echoed to the cheers for his name. But this is but a superficial view of his power. A nation, under his guidance, has shed many of its traditional weaknesses; from being im- pulsive has grown cool and calculating ; from being disunited and discordant has welded itself into iron bands of discipline and solidarity. In a race scattered over every variety of clime and soil and government, and in every stratum of the social scale from the lowest to the highest, there are men of every variety of character and occupation and opinion. In other times the hatred of these men over their differences of method was more bitter than their hatred for the common enemy who loathed alike their ends and their means. Now they all alike sink into equality of agree- ment before the potent name of Parnell, high and low, timid and daring, moderate and extreme. Republics change their Presidents, colonies their governors and ministers ; in England now it is Gladstone and now it is Salisbury that rules; but Parnell remains stable and immovable, the apex of a pyramid that stretches invisible over many lands and seas, as resistless apparently as fate, solid as granite, durable as time. It was many years before the world had any idea of this new and potent force that was coming into its councils and affairs. Charles Stewart Parnell was born in June, 1846. He is descended 36 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. from a family that had long been associated with the political life of Ireland. The family came originally from Congleton, in Cheshire; but like so many others of English origin had in time proved its right to the proud boast of being Hibernior Hibernis ipsis. So far back as the beginning of the last century a Parnell sat for an Irish constituency in the Irish Parliament. At the time of the Union a Parnell held high office, and was one of those who gave the most substantial proof of the reality of his love for the independ- ence of his country. Sir John Parnell at the time was Chancellor of the Exchequer and had held the office for no less than seventeen years. It was one of the vices of the old Irish Parliament even in the days after Grattan had attained com- parative freedom in 1782 that the Ministers were creatures of the Crown and not responsible to and removable by the Parliament of which they were members. There was everything, then, in these years of service as a representative of the Crown to have transformed Sir John Parnell into a time- serving and corrupt courtier. But Sir John Bar- ington, the best known chronicler of the days of the Irish Union, describes Sir John Parnell in his list of contemporary Irishmen as " Incorruptible;" and " Incorruptible " he proved ; for he resigned office and resisted the Act of Union to the bitter end. A son of Sir John Parnell — Henry Parnell — was afterwards for many years a prominent THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 37 member of the British Parliament, became a Cab- inet Minister, and was ultimately raised to the Peerage as the first Baron Congleton. John Henry Parnell was a grandson of Sir John Parnell. In his younger days he went on a tour through America ; there met Miss Stewart, the daughter of Commodore Stewart, fell in love with her, and was married in Broadway. It is unnecessary to speak to Americans of the immortal " Old Iron- sides." Suffice it to say that the bravery, calm- ness, and strength of will which were characteris- tic of the brave commander of the " Constitution " are inherited by his grandson, the bearer of his name ; for the full name of Mr. Parnell, as is known, is " Charles Stewart Parnell." There was also something significant in the fact that the man who was destined to prove the most potent foe of British misrule in Ireland should have drawn his blood on the mother's side from a captain who was one of the few men that ever brought humili- ation on the proud mistress of the seas. The young Parnell, chiefly because he was a delicate child, was sent to various schools in England during his boyhood, and finally went to Cambridge University — the university of his father. Here he stayed for a couple of years, and for a considerable time thought of becoming a lawyer. But he changed his purpose, with a regret that sometimes even in these days of supreme political glory finds wistful expression. 38 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Almost immediately after his years at Cam- bridge he went abroad for a tour ; and like his father he chose America as the first place to visit. While travelling through Georgia — where his brother has now a great peach-orchard — he met with a railway accident. He escaped unhurt; but John, his elder brother, was injured; and John says to this day that he never had so good a nurse as " Charley." Then Mr. Parnell came back to his home in Avondale, County Wicklow, and gave himself up to the occupations and amusements of a country gentleman. At this time he was known as a reticent and rather retiring- young man. He must have had his opinions though; for he was brought up in a strongly political environment. Probably owing to her father's blood Mrs. Parnell had always a lively sympathy with the rebels against British oppres- sion in Ireland. She had a house in Dublin at the time when the ranks of Fenianism had been descended upon by the government ; and when in Green Street Court-house, with the aid of in- formers, packed juries, and partisan judges, the desperate soldiers of Ireland's cause were being consigned in quick and regular succession to the living death of penal servitude. There were in various parts of the city fugitives from what was called in these days justice ; and among the places where most of these fugitives found a temporary asylum and ultimately a safe flight to freer lands THE GREAT TRTSTI STRUGGLE: 39 and till better days was the house of Mrs. Parnell. Fanny Parnell is also one of the family figures that played a large part in the creation of the opinions of her brother. At an early age she showed her poetic talents ; and from the first these talents were devoted to the description of the sufferings of Ireland and to appeals to her sons to rise against Ireland's wrongs. When the Fenian movement was in its full strength it had an organ in Dublin called The Irish People ; and into the office of The Irish People Fanny Parnell stole often with a patriotic poem. In the midst of these surroundings came the news of the execution of the Manchester Martyrs. The effect of that event upon the people of Ire- land was extraordinary. The three men hanged had taken part in the rescue of two prominent Fenian soldiers. In the scrimmage a policeman, Sergeant Brett, had been accidentally killed, and for this accidental death several men were put on their trial for murder. The trial took place in one of the periodical outbursts of fury which un- happily used to take place between England and Ireland. The juries were prejudiced, the judges not too calm, and the evidence far from trust- worthy. Three men — Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien ■ — were sentenced to death. Though many hu- mane Englishmen pleaded for mercy, the law was allowed to take its course, and Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were executed. A wild cry of hate and 40 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. sorrow rose from Ireland. In every town multi- tudes of men walked in funeral procession, and to this day the poem of " God Save Ireland," which commemorates the memory of Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien, is the most popular of Irish songs. To anybody acquainted with the nature of Mr. Parnell it will be easy to understand the effect which such a tragedy would have upon his mind. If there be one quality more developed than an- other in his nature it is a hatred of cruelty. When he was a magistrate he had brought before him a man charged with cruelty to a donkey. Fanny Parnell was the person who had the man rendered up to justice, and her brother strongly sympathized with her efforts. The man was con- victed, and was sentenced to pay a fine of thirty shillings. The miscreant might as well have been asked to pay the national debt, and the fine was a sentence of prolonged imprisonment. The sequel of the story is characteristic of the family. Miss Parnell herself paid the fine and released' the ruf- fian. It was his strong sympathy with suffering and his hatred of cruelty that first impelled Mr. Parnell to lead the crusade against the use of the odious lash in the British army and navy. So deep, indeed, is his abhorrence of cruelty and even of bloodshed, that he is strongly opposed to capital punishment; and once, when one of his colleagues voted against a motion condemnatory of capital punishment in the House of Commons, he THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 41 expressed the hope, half joke, whole earnest, that some day that colleague might be taught a lesson by being himself hanged as a rebel. The Man- chester tragedy then touched Parnell in his most tender point, and from that time forward he was an enemy of English domination in Ireland. But he seemed to be in no hurry to put his convictions into action. He is not a man of ex- uberant enjoyment of life. He has too little imagination and too much equability for ecstasies, but he enjoys the hour, has many and varied in- terests in life, and could never, by any possibility, sink to a slothful or a melancholy dreamer. His proud and self-respecting nature, too, saved him from any tendency towards that wretched and squalid viciousness which is the characteristic of so many landlords' lives in Ireland. He is essen- tially temperate; eats but plainly, and drinks nothing but a small quantity of claret. Nor could he descend to the pure horsiness which makes so many country gentlemen regard the stableman's as the highest of arts and pursuits. One of the reasons why Mr. Parnell delayed his entrance into public life was the state of Irish politics at that moment. There was little move- ment in the country of a constitutional character. The representation was in the hands of knavish office-holders or office-seekers. The professions of political faith were so many lies, and the con- stituencies distrustful of all chance of relief from 42 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the Legislature, allowed themselves to be bought, that they might afterwards be sold. All that was earnest and energetic and honest in Ireland sought relief for her misery in desperate enter- prises, or stood aside until better days and more auspicious stars. Then the landlords of the coun- try remained entirely, or almost entirely, aloof from the popular movements. With the single exception of the late Mr. George Henry Moore, the representation of Ireland was abandoned by the country gentlemen, who in other times had occasionally rushed out of their own ranks and taken up the side of the people. It is a curious fact, but the man who, perhaps, had more influ- ence than almost any other in bringing Mr. Par- nell into the arena of Irish nationality, has himself proved a recreant to the cause. In 1871 was fought the Kerry election. This election marked one of the turning-points in the modern history of Ireland. During the Fenian trials Isaac Butt was the most prominent figure in defending the prisoners. He was a man who had started life with great expectations and supreme talents. Before he was many years in Trinity College, Ireland's oldest university, he was a pro- fessor ; he had been only six years at the bar when he was made a Queen's counsel. He was the son of a Protestant rector of the North of Ire- land, and adhered for some years to the prejudices in which he had been reared. In his early days THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 43 every good thing in Ireland belonged to the Protestants. The Catholics were an outlawed and alien race in their own country. O'Connell, not many years before, had carried Catholic emancipation, but Catholic emancipation was alive only in the letter. The offices— the judgeships, the fellowships in Trinity College, the shrievalties, everything of value or power — were still exclusive- ly in the hands of the Protestants. O'Connell, in 1843, was so thoroughly sick and tired of vain ap- peals to the English Legislature that he resolved to start once again a demand for a native Irish Legislature. He opened the agitation by a de- bate in the Dublin Corporation, and Butt, who was a member of that body, though he was but a young man, was chosen by the Conservatives to oppose O'Connell, and delivered a speech so effective that O'Connell himself complimented his youthful opponent, and foretold the advent of a time when Butt himself would be among the ad- vocates instead of the opponents of an Irish Leg- islature. It was not till a quarter of a century afterward that this prophecy was realized. Butt, immediately after the Fenian trials, began an agitation for amnesty, and in this way gradually went forward to a primary place in the confidence and in the affections of his countrymen. There were still some people who believed in the power and the willingness of the English Parliament to redress all the wrongs of Ireland, and there was 44 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. some justification for this faith in the fact that William Ewart Gladstone was then at the head of the English state, and was passing the Disestab- lishment of the Irish Church, the Land Act of 1870, and the Ballot Act, three measures which mark the renaissance of Irish nationality. But one of these very measures Isaac Butt was able to show was the very strongest proof of the neces- sity for an Irish Legislature. The Land Act of 1870 is an act the defects of which have passed from the region of controversy. Mr. Gladstone himself offered the strongest proof of its break- down by proposing in 1881 an entirely different Land Act. In fact it would not be impossible to show that in some respects the Land Act of 1870 aggravated instead of mitigated the evils of Irish land tenure. It put no restraint on the raising of rents, and rents were raised more mercilessly than ever; it impeded, but it did not arrest eviction ; it caused as much emigration from Ireland as ever. Yet all Ireland had unanimously demanded a dif- ferent bill. Mass-meetings all over the country had demonstrated the wish of the people, and ex- pectation had been wrought to a high point. The fruit of it all had been the halting and miserable measure of 1870. It was this fact that gave the farmers into the hands of Butt. The population of the towns was always ready to receive and to support any Na- tional leader who advocated an Irish Parliament; THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 45 indeed there is scarcely a year since the Act of Union in 1800 when the overwhelming majority of the Irish people were not in favor of the resto- ration of an Irish Parliament. At that moment, too, another force was working in favor of a re- newed agitation for Home Rule. The Protestants were bitterly exasperated by the Disestablishment of the Irish Church. Some of the more. extreme Orangemen had made the same threats then as they are making now, and, while professing the strongest loyalty to the Queen, had used lan- guage of vehement disloyalty. For instance, one Orange clergyman had declared that if the Queen should consent to the Disestablishment, the Orangemen would throw her crown into the Boyne. To the Irish Protestants Butt could ap- peal with more force than any other man. He was an Irish Protestant himself, brought up in their religious creed and in their political preju- dices. He made the appeal with success, and it was Irish Protestants that took the largest share in starting the great Irish movement of to-day. The Home Rule movement received definite form for the first time at a meeting in the Bilton Hotel on May 19, 1870. It was held in the Bilton Hotel in Sackville (now O'Connell) street, and among those who were present and took a promi- nent part were Isaac Butt, a Protestant ; the Rev. Joseph Galbraith, a Protestant clergyman and a Fellow of Trinity College; Mr. Purdon, a Prot 46 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. estant, and then Conservative Lord Mayor of Dublin ; Mr. Kinahan, a Protestant, who had been High Sheriff of Dublin ; Major Knox, a Protes- tant, and the proprietor of the Irish Times, the chief Conservative organ of Dublin, and finally Colonel' King Harman, a Protestant, who has since gone over to the enemy and become one of the bitterest opponents of the movement which he was largely responsible in starting. It was a Protestant, too, that won a victory that was decisive. In 1871 there was a vacancy in the representation of the County of Kerry. At once the new movement resolved to make an appeal to the constituency in the name of the revived de- mand for the restoration of an Irish Parliament. The friends of Whiggery, on the other hand, were just as resolved that the old bad system should be defended vigorously. And this elec- tion at Kerry deserves to be gravely dwelt on by those who regard the present movement as a sec- £> P tarian and a distinctly CathcJic movement. The Whig candidate was a Catholic — Mr. James Ar- thur Dease, a man of property, of great intellect- ual powers, and of a stainless character ; and Mr. Dease was supported vehemently and passion ately by Dr. Moriarty, the Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Kerry. The Home Rule candidate on the other hand was a Protestant — Mr. Rowland Ponsonby Blennerhassett ; and he had but few ad- herents among the Catholic clergy of the diocese ; THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. ^ and the clergy who did support him fell under the displeasure of their bishop. The struggle was fought out with terrible energy and much bitterness ; the end was that the feeling of Na- tionality triumphed over all the influence of the British authorities and of the Catholic bishop, and Blennerhassett, the Protestant Home Rule candi- date, was returned. Blennerhassett belonged to the same class as Mr. Parnell. He was-a landlord, a Protestant, and a Home Ruler. Mr! Parnell was a landlord, a Protestant, and a Home Ruler. The time had ap- parently come when constitutional agitation had a fair chance ; and when men of property who sym- pathized with the people would be welcomed into the National ranks. A few years after this came the general election, of 1874; and Mr. Parnell thought that his time of self-distrust and hesita- tion had passed ; and that he might put himself forward as a National candidate. But his chance was destroyed by a small technicality of which the government took advantage. It is the cus- tom in Ireland to appoint young men of station and property to the position of high sheriffs of the counties in which they live. The high sheriff cannot stand for the constituency in which he- holds office unless he be permitted by the Crown to resign his office. Mr. Parnell applied for this permission and was refused. And thus in all probability he was unable to represent his native 48 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. county in Parliament. But he had not long to wait. When a member of Parliament accepts office he has to resign his seat in the British Parliament and submit himself once more to the votes of his constituency. A Colonel Taylor, a veteran and rather stupid hack of the Tory party, was promoted by Mr. Disraeli to the position of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster — a well- paid sinecure — after many years' service as one of the whips of the party. Colonel Taylor was member for County Dublin. He had to seek re-election on his appointment to the chancellor- ship ; and Mr. Parnell resolved to oppose him. Mr. Parnell was beaten, of course, by a huge majority ; for in those days, though the majority of the people of County Dublin were, as they are now, energetic Nationalists, the franchise suffrage was so restricted that a small minority was able to always win # the seat. But Mr. Parnell had borne himself well in the struggle ; and though he was held to be absolutely devoid of speaking power, yet he made many friends and admirers by the pluck with which he fought a forlorn hope. The next year the man who had been chiefly instrumental in bringing him into public life died — honest John Martin. At the time of his death John Martin was member for County Meath. The county, always strongly National, looked for a man capable of stepping into the place of a noble patriot. Parnell was selected, THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 49 Parnell was now at last embarked on the career of an Irish politician. He had not been long in the House when he discovered that thing's were not as they should be, and that the movement, though it appeared powerful to the outside pub- lic, was internally weak and to some extent even rotten. Butt, the leader of the Irish party, was a man of great intellectual powers, and was hon- estly devoted to the success of the cause. He was ready also to work very hard himself, and he drafted all the bills that were brought in on va- rious subjects by his followers. But he was old, had lived an exhausting life, was steeped in debt, and had to divide his time and energies between the calls of his profession as a lawyer and his duties as a legislator. Such double calls are especially harassing in the case of a man who is at once an Irish lawyer and an Irish politician. The law courts are in Dublin, the imperial Parliament is in London ; the journey between the two cities, part by sea and part by land, is fatiguing even to a young man, and thus it was quite impossible that Butt could attend to his duties as a lawyer in Dublin and as a politician in London without damage to both. This seriously interfered with his efficiency, and was partly accountable for the break-down of himself and his party. But he had, besides, personal defects that made him unfit for difficult and stormy times. He was a soft-tempered, easy-going man who was without 50 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. much moral courage, incapable of saying No, and with a thousand amiable weaknesses which leaned to virtue«s side as a man, but were far from vir- tuous in the politician. As a speaker he was the most persuasive of men. He discussed with such candor, with such logic, with temper so beautiful, that even his bitterest opponents had to listen to him with respect. But the House of Commons has respect only for men who have votes behind them, and can turn divisions, and Butt was unable to turn divisions. This brings us to the second defect in the Home Rule party of Butt. Most of his followers were rotten office-seekers. When in 1874 Butt had an opportunity of getting a party elected he was beset by the great weakness of all Irish move- ments — the want of money. The electoral insti- tutions of England were, and to a certain extent still are, such as to make political careers impossi- ble to any but the rich or the fairly rich. The costs of election are large, members of Parliament have no salary, and living in .London is dear; and thus as a rule nobody has any chance of entering into political life unless he has a pretty full purse. The result was that when the contest came Butt was in a painful dilemma. The constituencies were all right, and were willing to return an hon- est Nationalist, but there were no honest candi- dates, for there was no prospect but starvation to anybody who entered into political life without THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 51 considerable means. Butt himself was terribly pressed for money at that very moment. He had to fly from a warrant for debt on the very morn- ing when Mr. Gladstone's manifesto was issued, and John Barry, now one of the members for County Wexford, tells an amusing tale of how he received the then Irish leader in the early morn at Manchester, where Barry lived. It was from England that Mr. Butt had to direct the electoral campaign, and his resources for the whole thing amounted to a few hundred pounds. To Ameri- can readers these facts ought especially to be told, for they serve two objects: First, they show how it is that though the feeling of Ireland has always been strongly National, representatives of these opinions have not found a place in Parlia- ment until a comparatively recent period; and secondly, because they bring out clearly the enor- mous influence which America has exercised in the later phases of Irish policy by her generous sub- scriptions to the combatants for human rights and human liberty in Ireland. The result of all these circumstances was that Butt was compelled to fight constituencies with such men as turned up, and in the majority of cases to be satisfied with the old men under new pledges. Of course, these old representativea were quite as ready to adopt the new princi- ples of Home Rule as they would have adopted any other principles that secured them re-election, 52 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. and through re-election the opportunity of selling themselves for office. Many of the members of the Home Rule party of 1874 were men, accord- ingly, who had been twenty or thirty years engaged in the ignoble work of seeking pay or pensions from the British authorities, and as ready as ever to sell themselves. Of course, such a spirit was entirely destructive of any chance of getting real good from Parliament. The English ministers felt that they were dealing with a set of men whose votes they could buy, and were not going to take any steps for the redress of the grievances of a country that was thus represented. It was no wonder, then, that when Mr. Parnell entered Parliament he at once began to meet with painful disillusions. Mr. Butt's plan of action was to bring forward measures, to have them skilfully and temperately discussed, and then to submit to the vote when it went against him. The Home Rule question was opened every year. Mr. Butt himself introduced the subject in a speech of'great constitutional knowledge, of intense closeness of reasoning, and of a statesmanship the sagacity of which is now proved by the adoption of Butt's views by the leading statesmen of England. Then the leaders of both the English parties got up; each in turn condemned the proposal with equal emphasis; the division was called; Whig and Tory went into the same lobby; the poor Irish party was borne down by hundreds of English THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 55 votes, and Home Rule was dead for another year. Parnell's mind is eminently practical. Great speeches, splendid meetings, imposing proces- sions—all these things are as nothing to him unless they bring material results. He was as great an admirer as anybody else of the genius of Isaac Butt, but he could see no good whatever in great speeches and full-dress debates that left the Irish question exactly where it was before. He saw, too, that Isaac Butt was the victim of one great illusion. Butt founded his whole policy on appeals to and faith in the reason of the House of Commons. Parnell saw very clearly that at that period the keeper of the conscience in the House of Commons on the Irish question was the division lobby. "Appeal to the good sense and good feeling of the House of Commons," said Butt; and the House of Commons replied by quietly but effectually telling him that it didn't care a pin about his feelings or his opinions — its resolution was fixed never to grant Home Rule to Ireland. Parnell naturally began to think of an opposite policy. "Attack the House through its own interests and convenience," said he to Butt, "and then you need not beg it — you can force it to listen." When Parnell entered into Parliament there was already another member there whose mind was of an even more realistic order than his own. At the general election of 1874 Joseph Gillis Big- 5G GLADSTONE— PARNELL. gar had been returned for the County of Cavan. Biggar is an excellent type of the hard-headed Northerner. He was all his life in the pork trade, and had the reputation of being one of the closest, keenest and most successful businessmen of Belfast. Biggar is not a man who has read much — he does not even read the newspapers which contain attacks upon himself; but he has an extremely shrewd, penetrating mind, a judg- ment that is often narrow but is nearly always sound, and that once formed is unchangeable by friend or foe. But above all things, Biggar has extraordinary and marvellous courage. This courage exhibits itself in small as well as in big things. He has the couragfe to refuse an exorbi- tant fare to a cabman or a fee to a waiter; will oppose the best friend as readily as the bitterest enemy if he think him wrong; can speak unpleas- ant truths without the least qualms; and is not so much indifferent as unconscious of what other people say about him. In these respects he was the very opposite of poor Butt, who was childishly sensitive to opinion either of friend or foe. Big- gar had been greatly disgusted with the way things were going in the House of Commons even before Parnell had become his colleague. He has a wonderfully keen eye in seeing through falsehood and pretense, and if he be once con- vinced that a man is dishonest he loathes him for- ever afterwards. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 57 Joseph Gillis Biggak was born in Belfast, on August i, 1828. He was educated at the Belfast Academy, where he remained from 1832 to 1844. The record of his school-days is far from satisfac- tory. He was very indolent — at least he says so himself— he showed no great love of reading — he was poor at composition, and, of course, ab- jectly hopeless at elocution. The one talent he did exhibit was a talent for figures. It was, per- haps, this want of any particular success in learn- ing, as well as delicacy of health, which made Mr. Biggar's parents conclude that he had better be removed from school and placed at business. He was taken into his father's office in the provision trade, and he continued as assistant until 1861, when he became head of the firm. Mr. Biggar's first attempt to enter Parliament was made at Londonderry in 1872. He had not the least idea of being successful ; but he had at this time mentally formulated the policy which he has since carried out with inflexible purpose — he preferred the triumph of an open enemy to that of a half-hearted friend. The candidates were Mr. Lewis, Mr. (afterwards Chief Baron) Palles, and Mr. Bio-oar. At that moment Mr. Palles, as Attorney-General, was prosecuting Dr. Duggan and other Catholic bishops for the part they had taken in the famous Gal way election of Colonel Nolan— and Mr. Biggar made it a first and indis- pensable condition of his withdrawing from the 4 58 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. contest that these prosecutions should be dropped. Mr. Palles refused; Mr. Biggar received only 89 votes, but the Whig was defeated, and he was satisfied. The bold fight he had made marked out Mr. Biggar as the man to lead one of the as- saults which at this time the rising Home Rule party was beginning to make on the seats of Whig and Tory. He himself was in favor of try- ing his hand on some place where the fighting would be really serious, and he had an idea of contesting Monaghan. When the general elec- tion of 1874, however, came, it was represented to Mr. Bigoar that he would better serve the cause by standing for Cavan. He was nominated, and returned, and member for Cavan he has since remained. Finally, let the record of the purely personal part of Mr. Biggar's history conclude with mention of the fact that, in the January of 1877, he was' received into the Catholic Church. The change of creed for a time produced a slight estrangement between himself and the other members of his family, who were staunch Ulster Presbyterians, and there were not w r anting mali- cious intruders who sought to widen the breach. But this unpleasantness soon passed away, and Mr. Biggar is now on the very best of terms with his relatives. Not long after the night of Mr. Biggar's cele- brated four hours' speech, a young Irish member took his seat for the first time. This was Mr. JTHE GREAT tRTRH STRUGGLE. 59 Parnell, elected lor the county ot Meath in suc- cession to John Martin. The veteran and incor- ruptible patriot had died a few days before the; opening of this new chapter in Irish struggle. There was a strange fitness in his end. John Mitchel had been returned for the county of Tip- perary in 1875. After twenty-six years of exile he had paid a brief visit to his native country in the previous year. He had triumphed at last over an unjust sentence, penal servitude, and the weary waiting of all these hapless years, and had been selected as its representative by the premier constituency of Ireland. But the victory came too late. When he reached Ireland to fight the election he was a dying man. A couple of weeks after his return to his native land he was seized with his last illness, and after a few days suc- cumbed, in the home of his early youth and sur- rounded by some of his earliest friends. John Martin had been brought by Mitchel into the na- tional faith when they were both young me-n. They had' been sentenced to transportation about the same time ; they had married two sisters ; they had both remained inflexibly attached to the same national faith throughout the long years of dis- aster that followed the breakdown of their at- tempted revolution. Martin, though very ill, and in spite of the most earnest remonstrances of friends, went over to be present at the death-bed of his life-long leader and friend. 60 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. At the funeral he caught cold, sickened, and in a few days died. He was buried close to Mitchel's grave. After Mr. Parnell's first election to Parliament, he, in common with his associate, Mr. Biggar, was deeply impressed by considering- the impotence that had' fallen upon the Irish party. Both were men eager for practical results, and debates, how- ever ornate and eloquent, which resulted in no benefit, appeared to them the sheerest waste of time, and a mockery of their country's hopes and demands. Probably they drifted into the policy of " obstruction," so called, rather than pursued it in accordance with a definite plan originally thought out. There was in the Irish party at this time a man who had formulated the idea from close reflection on the methods of Parliament. This was Mr. Joseph Ronayne, who had been an enthusiastic Young Irelander, and though, amid the disillusions that followed the breakdown of 1848, he- had probably bidden farewell forever to armed insurrection as a method for redressing Irish grievances, he still held by an old and stern gospel of Irish nationality, and thought that polit ical ends were to be gained not by soft words, but by stern and relentless acts. He, if anybody, de- serves the credit of having pointed out, first to Mr. Biggar and then to Mr. Parnell, the methods of action which have since proved so effective in the cause of Ireland. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 61 When one now looks back upon the task which these two men set themselves, it will appear one of the boldest, most difficult, and most hopeless that two individuals ever proposed to themselves to work out. They set out, two of them, to do battle against 650 ; they had before them enemies who, in the ferocity of a common hate and a common terror, forgot old quarrels and obliterated old party lines ; while among their own party there were false men who hated their honesty and many true men who doubted their sagacity. In this work of theirs they had to meet a perfect hurricane of hate and abuse; they had to stand face to face with the practical omnipotence of the mightiest of modern empires ; they were accused of seeking to tram- ple on the power of the English House of Com- mons, and six centuries of parliamentary govern- ment looked down upon them in menace and in reproach. In carrying their mighty enterprise,. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar had to undergo labors and sacrifices that only those acquainted with the inside life of Parliament can fully appre- ciate. Those who undertook to conquer the House of Commons had first to conquer much of the natural man in themselves. The House of Commons is the arena which gives the choicest food to the intellectual vanity of the British sub- ject, and the House of Commons loves and re- spects only those who love and respect it. But 62 • GLADSTONE— PARNELL. •the first principle of the active policy was that there should be absolute indifference to the opin- ion of the House of Commons, and so vanity had first to be crushed out. Then the active policy demanded incessant attendance in the House, and incessant attendance in the House amounts almost to a punishment. And the active policy required, in addition to incessant attendance, considerable preparation ; and so the idleness, which is the most potent of all. human passions, had to be gripped and strangled with a merciless hand. And finally, there was to be no shrinking from speech or act because it disobliged one man or offended another; and therefore, kindliness of feeling was to be watched and guarded by re- morseless purpose. The three years of fierce conflict, of labor by day and by night, and of iron resistance to menace, or entreaty, or blandish- ment, must have left many a deep mark in mind and in body. " Parnell," remarked one of Ills' fol- lowers in the House of Commons one day, as the Irish leader entered with pallid and worn face, "Parnell has done mighty things, but he had to go through fire and water to do them." Mr. Biggar was heard of before Mr. Parnell had made himself known ; and to estimate his character — and it is a character worth study — one must read carefully, and by tire light of the present day, the events of the period at which he first started on his enterprise. In the session of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. (33 1875 he was constantly heard of; on April 27 in that session he " espied strangers ; " and, in ac- cordance with the then existing rales of the House of Commons, all the occupants of the different galleries, excepting those of the ladies' gallery, had to retire. The Prince of Wales was among the distinguished visitors to the assembly on this particular evening, a fact which added considera- ble effect to the proceeding of the member for Cavan. At once a storm burst upon him, be- neath which even a very strong man might have bent. Mr. Disraeli, the Prime Minister, got up, amid cheers from all parts of the House, to de- nounce this outrage upon its dignity ; and to mark the complete union of the two parties against the daring offender, Lord Hartington rose imme- diately afterwards. Nor were these the only quarters from which attack came. Members of his own party joined in the general assault upon the audacious violator of the tone of the House. Mr. Biggar was, above all other things, held to be wanting in the instincts of a gentleman. " I think," said the late Mr. George Bryan, another member of Mr. Butt's party, "that a man should be a gentleman first and a patriot afterwards," a statement which was, of course, received with wild cheers. Finally, the case, was summed up by Mr. Chaplin. "The honorable member for Cavan," said he, '" appears to forget that he is now admitted to the society of gentlemen." This was 64 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. one of the many allusions, fashionable at the time — among genteel journalists especially — to Mr. Biggar's occupation. It was his heinous of- fence to have made his money in the wholesale pork trade. Caste among business men and their families is regulated, both in England and Ireland, not only by the distinction between wholesale and retail, but by the particular article in which the trader is interested. It was not, therefore, surprising that an assembly which tol- erated the more aristocratic cotton should turn up its indignant nose at the dealer in the humbler pork. But much as the House of Commons was shocked at the nature of Mr. Biggar's pursuits, the horror of the journalist was still more ex- treme and outspoken. " Heaven knows" (said a writer in the World), "that I do not scorn a man because his path in life has led him amongst pro- visions. But though I may unaffectedly honor a provision dealer who is a Member of Parliament, it is with quite another feeling that I behold a Member of Parliament who is a provision dealer. Mr. Bio-o-ar brines the manner' of his store into this illustrious assembly, and his manner, even for a Belfast store, is very bad. When he rises to address the House, which he did at least ten times to-night, a whiff of salt pork seems to float upon the gale, and the air is heavy with the odor of the kippered herring. One unacquainted with the actual condition of affairs might be forgiven if THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 65 he thought there had been a large failure in the bacon trade, and that the House of Commons was a meeting of creditors, and the right honorable gentlemen sitting on the Treasury Bench were members of the defaulting firm, who, having con- fessed their inability to pay ninepence in the pound, were suitable and safe subjects for the abuse of an ungenerous creditor." These words are here quoted by way of illus- trating the symptoms of the times through which Mr. Biggar had to live, rather than because of any influence they had upon him. On this self-re- liant, firm, and masculine nature a world of ene- mies could make no impress. He did not even take the trouble to read the attacks upon him. The newspapers of the day were full of sarcasm against Mr. Biggar, the chief points made against him being directed at his alleged " grotesque ap- pearance " and "absurdity." Indeed, the impres- sion made upon such Americans as have derived their information regarding Irish affairs chiefly from the London periodicals has been that Mr. Biggar was a man of no sort of intelligence, and of no possible weight in Parliamentary counsels, but that he was simply a hornet who was always ready to sting John Bull's leathern sides. That this hornet was a sore annoyance it was very evident. That he was fearless and persistent was equally plain. No man was more ready to assert Biggar's lack of scholastic acquirement 66 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. than he himself was prompt to admit the fact. Even the proud title of " father of obstruction " has been denied him, since obstructive action has long been recognized as a legitimate weapon in the hands of otherwise hopeless legislative mi- norities. Mr. BiofS'ar's real title to eminence lies largely in his persistence. He is emphatically a vir tenax propositi. Others may have had more definite plans for the future of Ireland. Others may have far excelled him in political skill and tactics. Beyond a doubt there are many others who surpass him in the gifts and graces of oratorical display. He does not despise these gifts ; he simply does not possess them, and he knows the fact right well. Another point in his favor is his singleness of purpose and childlike simplicity of character. A certain un-Irish insen- sibility to attack has also helped Mr. Biggar. The attacks made in the House of Commons in his own hearing- neither touch him nor an- ger him. The only rancor he ever feels against individuals is for the evil they attempt to do to the cause of his country. This little man, calmly and placidly accepting every humiliation and insult that hundreds of foes could heap upon him, in the relentless and untiring pursuit of a great purpose, may by-and-by appear, even to Englishmen, to merit all the affectionate respect with which he is regarded by men of his own country and principles. Before he was long a member THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. , gy of Butt's party he had seen that more than half the number were rascally self-seekers who didn't mean a word of what they said, and who were only looking out for the opportunity to don the English livery. And here, perhaps, it would be as well to pause for a moment and explain to an American reader what are the means which a British o-overnment has at its disposal for corrupting political oppo- nents. Few Americans realize the splendor of the prizes that are at the disposal of the British .authorities. Americans know that members of Parliament are paid no salary; they hear the boasts of the enormous and immaculate purity of public life in England; and they, many of them, infer that political life in England is preceded by the vows of purity and poverty. As a matter of fact, there is no country in the world in which politics has prizes so splendid to offer. The sala- ries reach proportions unexampled in ancient or modern times. The Lord Chancellor of England, for instance, has a salary of fifty thousand dollars a year as long as he is in office, and once he has held office — if it be only for an hour — he has a pension of twenty-five thousand -dollars a year for the remainder of his days. The Lord Chancellor, besides, has extraordinary privileges. He is the head of the judiciary of the country; he is Speaker of the House of Lords ; he is a peer with right of succession to his children ; he is a member of the* (58 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. cabinet. The Speaker of the House of Commons has a salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a year, a splendid house in the Parliament buildings; tire and light and coal free ; and when he retires he gets a pension of twenty thousand dollars a •/ear for life and a peerage. Several of the cab- inet ministers receive salaries of twenty-five thousand dollars a year. The Lord Chief-Justice of the Queen's Bench gets a salary of forty thousand dollars a year, and the puisne judges get a salary each of twenty-five thousand dollars a year. In Ireland — one of the poorest countries in the world — the official salaries are on almost an equal scale of extravagance. The Lord-Lieutenant re- i ives a salary of one hundred thousand dollars a year and many allowances. The Chief Secre- tary for Ireland receives a salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a year, with many allowances. The Lord Chancellor has a salary of forty thou- sand dollars a year during office, and, as in the case of the Lord Chancellor of England, has a pension for life even if he have held the office for but an hour; the pension is twenty thousand dol- lars a year. The Chief-Justice of the Queen's Bench Court has a salary of twenty-five thousand dollars a year ; and the puisne judges, who, as in England, hold their offices for life, have a salary of nineteen thousand dollars a year. The Attor- .ney-General in Ireland has a nominal salary of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 09 $12,895, but he has fees besides ior every case in which he prosecutes ; and, as times of disturbance bring many prosecutions, he thrives on the un- happiness of the country. Frequently the salary of the Irish Attorney-General, in times of dis- quiet, has run up to fifty thousand dollars in the year, or even more. Then, as everybody knows, England has innumerable colonies, and in all her colonies there are richly paid offices. The average salary of a governor of a colony is twenty-five thousand dollars, and there are chief-justiceships, and puisne judgeships, and lieutenant-governor- ships, and a thousand and one other things which can always be placed at the disposal of an obe- dient and useful friend of the administration. The difficulty of the Irish struggle will be understood when it is recollected that, in antago- nism to all this, the Irish people have nothing to offer their faithful servants. In Ireland there are, practically speaking, no offices in the gift of the people. From the judgeships down to a place in the lowest rank of the police, everything is in the gift of the British government. Nor is this all. The Irish patriot, up to the last year, always ran the risk of collision with the authorities, and, in consequence, faced the chances of imprisonment. Mr. Parnell has been in prison ; Mr. Dillon has been twice in prison ; Mr. O'Kelly has been in prison ; Mr. Sexton has been in prison ; Mr. William O'Brien has been in prison ; Mr. Healy has been 70 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. in prison; Mr. Timothy Harrington has been three times in prison ; Mr. Edward Harrington has been in prison ; Dr. O'Doherty was sent to penal servitude in '48 ; Mr. j. F. X. O'Brien was sent to penal servitude in 1867, having first been sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. Out of the eighty-six Irish members of the present Irish party no less than twenty-five have been, on one excuse or other, and for longer or shorter terms, imprisoned by the British authorities. The choice, then, of the Irish politician lay between wealth, dignity, honors, ease, which were offered for traitorous service by the British government, and the poverty and hardship and lowliness, with a fair prospect of the workhouse and the gaol, which were the only rewards of the faithful servant of the Irish people. Isaac Butt himself was a signal and terrible example of what Irish patriot- ism entails. We have already described how hard he had to work in his closing days to meet the strain of professional and political duties. When he was wrestling with the growing disease that ultimately killed him, he was beset by duns and bailiffs, and his mind was overshadowed with the dread thought that he had left his children unprovided for. And to-day, in poverty — perhaps in misery — they are paying the penalty of having been begotten by a great and a true Irishman. Any man of political experience or reading will know how easy it is for a government to rule a J. WAITE, Treasurer Victoria Branch, Irish National League THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 73 country if it have the gift of wealth to bestow, or the curse of poverty to entail. In our own days we have seen France ruled for twenty years by an autocrat through bayonets and offices ; and the offices were just as important an element in the governing as the bayonets. The fears of the timid, the hopes of the corrupt, are the founda- tions of unjust government in all ages. If Amer- icans be sometimes impatient at the duration of British domination and the helplessness of Irish efforts to overthrow it, they must always take into account the vast influence which an extremely wealthy country has been able to exercise over an extremely poor country by the gift of richly- dowered office. As soon as Biggar found that the new race of so-called Nationalists were of exactly the same brood as those who had gone before he made up his mind that these men would do nothing for Ireland, and he took his own course. Biggar' s mind is essentially combative. He is utterly with- out the Christianity of spirit that suggests the acceptance of a blow on one cheek after being struck on the other, and he was brooding over some means by which he could give these insolent Englishmen blow for bbow. But the member for Cavan has not a mind of much initiative, and he was helpless until he had the assistance of Mr. Parnell. A few nights before Parnell took his seat the 74 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. House of Commons was engaged in the not un- familiar task of debating- a. Coercion Bill for Ire- land. A Coercion Bill in these days was not thought much about ; it was not felt as much of a hardship on the English side nor as much of an outrage on the Irish. Such was the poor spirit of the Irish representatives of these days that Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, the Conservative Chief Secretary, who was passing the bill through the House ol Commons, used frequently to be com- plimented by so-called Irish National Represent- atives for his courtesy; the- least little concession was hailed as an example of whole-souled gen- erosity ; and if an Irish member ventured to put the government to any inconvenience, by asking for the postponement of the discussion or by "obstructing" in any way the progress of busi- ness, he was at once pounced upon by his col- leagues and charged with ungenerous and irra- tional obstinacy. There was among the party at the time a shrewd and witty Corkman named Joseph Ronayne. Ronayne had been one of the party that in 1848 wanted to fight against the intolerable wrongs of Ireland. Time had brought the philosophic mind so far that Ronayne saw some hope in constitutional agitation ; but he was quite as fierce and quite as masculine a Nationalist as ever. He had a sharp and humorous tongue. The compliments that were poured on the Eng- lish Chief Secretary at the moment when he was THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 75 depriving- Irishmen of the fundamental rights of citizens roused his gorge, and he compared them to the shake-hands which the convict gives to the hangman immediately before his execu- tion. Biggar was not the man to pay such compli- ments, to consult the ease of ministers, or to have regard to what used to be called the tone of the House. He resented frankly and irreconcilably the coercion of his country; he hated the man who proposed it; he didn't care a farthing what the House of Commons liked or disliked ; his policy was to fight the bill clause by clause, line by line, in season and out of season, with the con- venience of the House and against the conven- ience of the House ; and with absolute disregard of protest or plaint, of compliment or threat. It was on the night of April 22, 1875, that he first got the opportunity of putting this policy into effect. Mr. Butt asked Mr. Biggar to speak against time on a Coercion Bill. Mr. Butt had probably little idea at that moment of what he was doing. It was on this eventful night that one of the most singular and most potent political births of our time saw the light. On that night Parliamentary obstruction was born. Mr. Bi^'o-ar rose at five in the evening. One of the writers of this work happened to be in the Speaker's gallery of the House of Commons on this evening and remembers the speech very well 5 76 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. The subject was Irish coercion, but Mr. Biggar seemed to be giving his opinion on every subject under heaven. For instance he happened to stumble across something of a religious character, and thereupon he gave the House the benefit of his views on the great question of Ritual which divides the two schools of religious thought in the Established Church of England. It is probable that Mr. Big-o- a r could not tell the difference be- tween a Hig;h and a Low Churchman ; and that if he could know the difference, he would not re- gard it as of the least importance. But he man- aged to dissertate on the subject for several sen- tences, and so filled up a portion of the time. At last his voice began to fail, and a friend who was watching the game resolved to come to his assistance. According*- to the rules of the House of Commons forty members is the quorum at a debate. The forty members need not be in the House itself. They may be dining or wining, en- joying a cigar in one of the smoke-rooms or en- gaged in study in a room in the library; but when a count is moved they all hurry in ; the Speaker counts ; if there be forty members present, the debate croes on, and the greater number of mem- bers scuttle back to the half-eaten chop or the half-smoked cigar ; while if there be not forty, the House stands adjourned. A count takes about five minutes, three minutes being; allowed to the members to assemble from the different places of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 77 retreat. These five minutes Mr. Biggar utilized in recovering- breath. But again his voice began to fail, and the Speaker thought he had him in a trap. He declared that the member for Cavan was out of order ; his remarks were inaudible and no longer reached the chair. But Mr. Biggar was equal to the occasion. He moved up closer to the chair, and as the Speaker had not heard his previous observations obligingly offered to repeat them all over again. It was five minutes to 9 o'clock when Mr. Biggar resumed his seat ; he had spoken nearly four hours. This was the beginning of the new era. Hence Mr. Biggar is known by the proud title of the " Father of Obstruction." It was a few nights after this that Charles Stewart Par- nell took his seat for the first time as a member of the House of Commons. It was characteristic of his whole future that he spoke the very first night of his entrance into the House, and that his first speech was a vigorous protest against a Coercion Act for Ireland ; for the discussion of the question was still proceeding on which Mr. Biggar had made his historic speech, and his dogged courage had found the necessary supplement in the bold, daring, and inventive brain of the young member for County Meath. The hour had come ; and the man. CHAPTER II. THE ERA OF OBSTRUCTION. BEFORE the policy of Parliamentary ob- struction is properly understood the reader must have some acquaintance with the rules and manners of the British House of Commons. The House of Commons meets for a period generally beginning the first week of February, and ending in the second week of August each year. It meets for five out of the seven days of the week for the transaction of business. On every one of those days except Wednesday the hour for assembling is 10 minutes to 4 o'clock. The sitting has no definite time of closing, and cases have been known where it has been ex- tended to forty-one hours, or almost two days, continuously. The House cannot adjourn unless on a motion carried by the members present. So rigid is this rule that a story is told how, on one occasion, the Speaker was left alone in his chair; the official whose duty it was to move the ad- journment having forgotten to attend to do so, and that official had to be sent for, in order that the necessary formality might be complied with. 78 THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 79 On Wednesdays the House meets at 1 2 and closes at 6 o'clock. The business of the House is divided into two categories, viz. : First, what is called government business ; and, secondly, the business of "private" members. Mondays and Thursdays throughout the session are what are called "Government Nights," and on these occasions the business of the executive administration has precedence over all others. Tuesdays and Fridays are private members' nights, and on these occasions the business of the private members has priority over that of the government. On the nights devoted to the private members the business usually con- sists of resolutions upon some of the questions of the day which are not yet actually ripe for legis- lation. A member makes, say, a motion calling for the abolition of capital punishment; or for a change in the licensing laws ; or for the cessation of the traffic in opium ; or for the abolition of the House of Lords ; or for the disestablishment of the church; or for some such kindred purpose. Members sometimes make an attempt to carry their proposals into law, and introduce bills for that object ; but, generally speaking, the efforts of members are confined to abstract motions. Tuesday night belongs entirely to private mem- bers — the government not even making an at- tempt to get any portion of the time for the transaction of its own work. On Friday nights, gQ GLADSTONE— PARNELL. however, the government sometimes succeeds in getting- through a few of its proposals. "Supply," or "appropriation" as it is called in America, is put down for that night. It is a principle of the English Constitution that the statement of a grievance shall precede supply. On Friday nights, accordingly, before the government are able to get a penny of money from the House, they have to listen to anything that a private member has to say. Sometimes half a dozen motions on half a dozen different subjects are put upon the paper, and are discussed. A private member even has the right to stand up in his place, and talk about any subject without putting a notice upon the paper. It thus very often hap- pens that the discussion of a grievance proceeds till 1 2 or i o'clock at night ; and when the debate has been extended to this period the government give up the project of getting money ; and there- upon no supply is taken that night. There is another, rule which has a most im- portant effect upon the transaction of business in the House of Commons. This is " the half-past 12 o'clock rule," under which no business that is opposed can be taken. The Cabinet proposes, for instance, a bill for the future government of Ireland. At once a member of the Tory party, or of the Liberals who are opposed to it, puts down an " amendment " moving that the bill in question be read that day six months, which is the official THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. gj way of moving the rejection of the measure. As long as this amendment appears upon the paper the bill cannot be taken after half-past 12 o'clock at night. An amendment of the kind is what is known in Parliamentary vocabulary as a " block- ing" motion. It often happens that a bill which is very much objected to seems to have a chance of coming on about half-past 11 or 1 2 o'clock. When this occurs a number of members opposed to it immediately begin to talk against time, with the result that half-past 1 2 o'clock is reached ; then the bill has to be postponed till another day. Wednesday, to a great extent, is a dies non in Parliament. It is entirely given up to private members, and the subjects discussed are usually something in the nature of a fad or crotchet or an " ism." A change in the ecclesiastical law and other pious matters used to form the leading sub- jects of discussion-, and this earned for Wednes- day the reputation of being the special day for religious bills. At a quarter to 6 on the Wednes- day the debate, if proceeding, has to cease upon any bill which is the subject of discussion. Ac- cordingly, whenever a division is not considered desirable on that day, a speaker will get up about 5 o'clock or later, and talk on until a quarter to 6. The debate has then to be interrupted, and thus a division is avoided. Between a quarter to 6 and 6 business can be done to which no objection is made; and often that short space of time is occu 82 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. pied most usefully by a member of the government or private member in getting- a bill through its final stage. But if any member get up and use the words, " I object," the bill cannot be advanced any stage, and is postponed till another day. The first thino- to be remembered about the House of Commons is, that it is a machine en- tirely incapable of transacting the amount of work put upon it. The affairs of India, colonial rela- tions, international relations, the domestic affairs of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales — all these subjects have to be dealt with in one single Parliament. Frequently there are questions which involve such pith and moment as a threat- ened war between England and Russia, down to the less significant matter of a complaint about the defective paving of a street in London, or the neglect of a pauper in an Irish workhouse. There is no division between imperial and local government such as there is in the United States. In fact, the imperial Parliament is in the same position as the Congress at Washington would be if the State Legislatures throughout the whole country were abolished, and their work trans- ferred to the central assembly in the national capitol. The result of the arrangement of the imperial legislature is, that the main work of government is to attempt a victory in an ever- failing race with time. The history of every administration and, indeed, of every session of Parliament is the same. g 2 o i X n ET o *h Cfl o J? H *> M ^ < M 1 r >< a > H X THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. gg The basis of the policy of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar was, that the Irish party should take ad- vantage of the way in which the rules of the House of Commons thus left the Enohsh ministries at the mercy of any resolute body of men. They pointed out to Mr. Butt that his annual debates were not advancing the Irish cause by one step, and that he must adopt entirely different methods if he hoped to succeed in his mission. Mr. Butt, however, was a man of amiability that reached to weakness. He knew that a policy of this kind could not be carried out without coming into fierce collision with the House of Commons, even without evoking a storm of interruption and of passion there, too, and an equally violent storm of passion outside. Kindly himself, he trusted to conciliation, and he had not the nerve to face the frowns and the hootings of men with whom he was in daily intercourse. For a long time Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar pressed their views upon the Irish leader over and over aeain, but with no satisfactory result ; and they finally came to the conclusion that it was perfectly impossible to hope for anything from Mr. Butt's initiative, and that they must take the work in hand themselves. It was acting upon these ideas that Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar started the movement known as the " Policy of Obstruction." They began by blocking every bill brought in by the government. This single step alone created a revolutionary #6 * GLADSTONE— PA RN ELL. change in the situation. Up to this time the gov- ernment had been able to get through some of their bills at whatever hour of the sitting- they came on — whether i or 2 or 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. Now, however, their operations could not reach beyond half-past 12 o'clock. This is how the new and the old system worked. Sup- pose half a dozen government bills put clown on Monday or Thursday night; under the old system four or five of these bills would have a fair chance of being- considered on the same night. Under the new system it rarely happened that more than one of the bills was even discussed. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar were there to speak at length, sometimes for an hour, other times for two hours, and frequently talking even nonsense. The result was, that a debate, which began at 5 o'clock and was expected to finish at 8 o'clock, would be prolonged by these indefatigable talkers until 1 1 or 1 2 o'clock, and then some one of their friends would start up at midnight, and, by speaking till half-past 1 2 o'clock, prevent the gov- ernment from bringing on bill No. 2. In the House of Commons talk begets talk, and the speeches of the Irish members always resulted in eliciting speeches from the English members. Sometimes the speeches of their opponents took the form of violent attack and personal vitupera- tion, but Mr. Parnell and Mr. Bigfgar did not care a pin. In fact they were only too delighted, for THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. gy those attacks not only wasted time in themselves, but produced that feverish temper in the House during which abundant speech became inlectious. Whenever, too, there were little interstices of time, which in the easy-going good old days the government were able to fill up with little bills, there was either Mr. Parnell or Mr. Biggar ready to stand up and fill in the chasm, and so prevent the bills from coming on. "Supply" was their happy hunting-ground. On every item which gave the least promise of fruitful discussion they raised a debate. This was especially the case with Irish supply. On the votes for the constab- ulary, or for the state prosecutions, or for money to the Chief Secretary, they initiated discussions that dragged into the light every dark place in the English administration of Irish affairs. That put the government upon their defence, and sometimes kept the subject of Ireland before the House and the country for weeks in succession. The vote for the police alone has been known to occupy a week in discussion ; and the entire Irish votes have rarely taken less than three or four weeks in stormy times. Nothing will bring more clearly before the mind of the reader the difference between the old and the new time than a single incident that occurred with regard to these Irish estimates. One night Mr. Butt and his followers were dining In the House of Commons. They had intended to raise 88 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. some kind of a debate upon the government of Ireland upon the Irish estimates. In the middle of the dinner somebody came, breathless and dis- mayed, to announce that the Irish estimates had all passed through in the course of a few minutes without a word of comment or a whisper of disap- proval. It was fortunate for Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar that at this time also the government, which at the moment belonged to the Conserva- tive party, resolved to bring in a series of measures which were of much length and vast perplexity. Some of these measures, besides, raised questions upon which Mr. Parnell knew some feeling would be raised in Enoland. He had known of the ex- istence for a long time of a party violently opposed to flogging in the army — an odious institution, which survived in England alone, of all civilized countries in the world. Mr. Parnell readily con- cluded from this that if he raised a debate upon flogging in the army he would be followed by a certain number of Englishmen ; that they would talk and divide along with him, and that in this way the progress of any bill in which flogging in the army was mentioned might be indefinitely delayed. Another subject on which he knew there was a great deal of feeling was the treatment of pris- oners. English feeling generally was confined to dissatisfaction at the manner in which untried prisoners were treated under the prison rules ; THE GREAT IRTSH STRUGGLE. §9 but the Irish Nationalists had a further and even more serious grievance : that was, the treatment of political prisoners. Almost alone among - the civilized nations of the earth England had up to this time confounded the political and the ordinary prisoners. Men of high character, whose only offence was to feel for the deep distress and the wrongs and miseries of their country and too eag-erly desire to redress them — men of educa- tion, good social position, and refined minds — were compelled by the British government to herd with the murderer and the burglar and the lowest and vilest scum of English society. Ac- cordingly Mr. Parnell was able to organize con- siderable support both amongst the English and Irish members in favor of attacks upon the prison discipline of the country. Finally during the Conservative regime the annexation of the Trans- vaal was accomplished. It is needless now to arofue the ricrht or the wrongf of that act. The iron hand of time has crushed its advocates. But when the annexation first took place public opinion in England was not ripe, and information did not exist. The only persons who were pre- pared to give the annexation any effective oppo- sition were a small group of Radicals, chief among whom was Mr. Leonard Courtney, now Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. The forcible conquest of any people against their will was naturally repugnant to Irish National- 90 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. ists, and thus they were drawn to the side of the Boers from the very first. A junction of their forces with their English Radical allies made it possible to embitter and prolong the fight. These preliminary observations will enable the reader to understand the 1-ine of tactics now adopted by the Irish obstructives. Every year the House of Commons has to pass what is called the " Mutiny Act." This act establishes the discipline of the British army ; and under the British Constitution the army cannot exist with- out the annual passage of this act. The act was originally passed for the purpose of maintaining the control of Parliament over the standing army. If this act should cease to exist the soldier would again become a private citizen, subject only to the common law, and could no longer be punished for disobeying his officers or even quitting the colors. The Mutiny Act in the present form con- sists of about 193 clauses, and in its old shape it was about the same length. But up to the advent of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Bia-aar it was regarded as simply a piece of formality that was hurried through in inaudible whispers from the Speaker and imaginary ayes and noes of the members of the House. In fact, it probably never at any period occupied more than ten minutes of the many months during which Parliament sits. But Mr. Parnell, casting his eyes through its innumer- able clauses, discovered the section maintaining THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 91 flogging in the army. He at once saw the im- portance of the point ; raised the question again and again ; was attacked furiously by the Conser- vative Ministers, and for a long time was left alone by the members of the English parties, and even by the members of the Irish party too. The Minister for War at this period was a man now known as Lord Cran brook, but then Mr. Gathorne Hardy. Lord Cranbrook is a man of vacuous mind and boisterous temper. To watch him well there night after night — compelled to argue and reargue with tortured reiteration in reply to Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar — was, to use a colloquial expression, like the sight of a hen on a hot grid- iron. He would try this form, then that form in treating this obstinate and terrible Irish group. He was civil, and they replied with equal civil-ity, but at the same time with equally lengthy speeches. He sulked in silence, and then they moved mo- tions for adjournment of the debate or of the House that compelled him to answer. He was violently angry, and then he exposed himself to merciless torture. Night after night, week after week, month after month, the Mutiny Bill dragged its slow length along, not passing itself and not permitting any other measure to pass. The same thing took place with regard to other measures. The introduction of a Prison's Bill removing the control of prisoners from local authority to the Home Office, or, as it would be 92 GLADSTONE— PAftNELL. called in America, to the i p irtment of the In- terior, afforded an opportunity for raising the question of prison discipline. Again night after night, week after week, and month after month passed, and still the Prisons Bill had not got through its innumerable clauses. And, finally, there was the Transvaal Bill, with its multi- farious clauses also ; and in its case likewise night after night, week alter week, and month after month almost passed, and still the bill had not become a law. It was the policy of himself and Mr. Biggar (as he told one of the writers of this work when they were travelling over to Ireland together to organize the great election campaign of 1885) always to avoid stand-up fights with the Govern- ment. The work of delaying legislation and wasting time was clone more effectively in quiet- ness and without any of these great struggles. This remark of Mr. Parnell's is quite characteris- tic of the man's whole nature and policy. The showy fights were not to his taste half as much as the quiet and unseen work ; for the quiet and unseen work produced practical results, whereas the showy fights sometimes were not so effective. In one respect this criticism upon his own policy was not altogether correct. These showy fights had the effect of drawing the attention of all man- kind to the Irish question, and had a second, and even equally important effect — they "enthused" THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 93 the Irish race at home and abroad. When Mr. Parnell came to America in 1880, Wendell Phillips best pithily described the effect of Mr. Parnell's action, when he said he had come to see the man who had made John Bull listen. And the second effect is best shown by the extraordi- nary union of the Irish nation now in his support. In the midst of the struggle between the active section, as the Obstructives were called, of the Irish party, and the loggards, or trimmers, or traitors, who formed the bulk of that party, Mr. Butt died. Mr. Parnell was still at this time a young man and had only made a short record. The country was not yet quite certain of his power to take the position of leader. In addition to all this the then Home Rule Party consisted mostly of men who disliked him personally and loathed his policy. Under these circumstances it was vain to think of his being' appointed the leader; and Mr. William Shaw was elected as a stop-gap leader. The reasons for this election were, that Mr. Shaw was a Protestant, supposed to be very rich, and that he had a moderate mind and an easy and genial temperament. Under the rules of the Irish party the leader is elected for only one year, and the time was bound soon to come when Mr. Shaw would have once more to submit his claims for the position of chief. The selection was perhaps the best that could have n made at the time. Mr! Shaw was not with- 6 94 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. out many admirable qualities. He, however, was too cautious and timid, and had not imagination or mind large enough for the sublime and gigantic evils that had now to be grappled with once and for all. The year 1879 marked a crisis in the history of Ireland. Owing to circumstances which will be presently detailed the potato crop has occupied in Irish life a position of extraordinary importance. With- out any exaggeration the potato crop may be described as the thin partition which used to di- vide large masses of the Irish people from whole- sale starvation. The years 1877-78 had both been years in which the crops had largely failed to come up to the expectations of the people. The following table will prove this fact conclu- sively : Value of Potato Crop. 1876 , #60,321,910 1877 26,355,110 1878 .' 3S.S97.S60 It will therefore be seen that by 1879 there had been two bad seasons; and three bad seasons in Ireland as it then was were sufficient to make ail the difference between the chance of weather- ing the storm and going down in awful ship- wreck. But the year 1879 disappointed all the expectations that had been formed of it. The potato crop, instead of rising, went down to a lower point than it had reached even in the dis- astrous year of 1877. The figures are: THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE 95 Value of Potato Crop. 1879 ... $15,705,440 In other words two-thirds of the potato crop had not come to maturity, and in some parts of the country it had entirely disappeared. Thus Ireland stood face to face with famine. The time had come now for making a choice between either of two courses, each of which presented enormous difficulties and terrible dangers. Either the country had to remain quiet and sub- missive to the decree of British law and of Irish landlords, when the result would probably be a considerable amount of starvation, an enormous number of evictions, and an immense amount of emigration, as well as the break-down of all spirits and of all hopes in the people. The other course was that of passive resistance to the law of eviction, and of strong- agitation which would make the landlords pause in their tyranny, and compel the British Parliament to bestow reform. The latter course could not be entered upon without the risk of violent collision with the law and the chances of penal servitude and perhaps death on the gallows ; and above all, without the sickening dread when the hour of trial came that the people might prove unequal to the opportun- ity, and allow themselves to be again driven back by the dark night of hunger and of despair. If Mr. Butt had remained at the head of affairs it is more than probable that the first of these two 90 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. courses would have been adopted. It was the only course that recommended itself to timid and constitutional lawyers like him, and to all the other large sections of society in Ireland, that always wish to avoid open collision with the great powers of the British government. But Mr. Parnell is a very different type of man to Mr. Butt. His iron nerve and his daring mind induced him to believe that the bold course was the true course, that eviction should be grappled with, that the landlords and the law should be encountered, and that in this way the threatened famine of 1879, in place of being a night of darkness and despair, might make a morning of hope and resurrection to the Irish people. His choice of weapons was largely influenced by a very remarkable man who at about this time began to have considerable influence over the course of Irish affairs. This was Michael Davitt. The life of Michael Davitt is in many respects like that of hundreds of thousands of Irishmen. Evic- tion, Exile, Poverty — these are its main features. Michael Davitt was born at Straid, in the County Mayo, in the year 1846. That year, as will be seen afterwards, was one of Ireland's darkest hours. Famine was in the country; thousands were dying in every hospital, work- house, and jail, and the roads were literally thick with the corpses of the unburied. The landlords were aggravating this terrible state of things by MICHAEL DAVITT. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 99 their merciless eviction of all their helpless ten- antry whose means of living and power of paying their rent had been entirely destroyed by this economic cyclone. The father of Davitt was one of these victims. Davitt's earliest recollection is of an eviction under circumstances of cruelty and heartlessness. He was but four years of age when his father was -turned out of his house and farm. It was the curious irony of fate that he afterwards held a Land League meeting at Straide, and that the platform from which he spoke stood on the very spot where he had first seen light. His family emigrated to Lancashire, where to-day there are thousands of other Irish' families who sought refuge in English homes from their own country. The fate of the Irish in England has been one of the many tragedies in the sorrowful history of the Irish race. Coming mostly frpm the country and from rural pursuits, the Irish exiles were thrown into the midst of large manu- facturing industries. For such industries of course they had had no training whatever. The result was that the only work they could obtain was the work which was hardest and worst paid. To- day, if you pass through a Lancashire, Northum- brian, or Scotch district you will find that the stokers in the gas-works, the laborers in the blast furnace and chemical works are nearly all men of Irish birth and descent — people or the sons of people who were driven from Ireland by hunger 100 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. and by eviction. In his early years Davitt led the same life as that of the other Irishmen around him. As soon as he was able to work he had to be sent to the mill in order to eke out the scanty subsistence of his family. While employed in the mill his arm was caught in the machinery and wrenched off. This misfortune, terrible as it was, perhaps influenced his life for the future. He was taken away from the mill, and was able in this way to devote time to the improvement of his mind. He was living- at this time at Has- lingden, a town in the Lancashire constituency, which is represented at present by the Marquis of Harrington. He was employed there for some years in a stationer's shop and afterwards as a letter-carrier. In Haslingden there is a large Irish population, and the young Irish boy grew up amid Irish surroundings and Irish influences. However, it was not until one night he attended a meeting addressed by an Irish orator that he really began to have strong political opinions. This orator told him the history of his country, of her wrongs, of her plans, of her hopes. The whole soul of the young man was fired; his im- pressions were crystallized into convictions, and from that time forward he was an ardent Irish Nationalist. It is a singular circumstance that the man who gave to Davitt this new birth of conviction afterwards proved recreant to the cause; for the orator who first made Davitt THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE iqi an Irish Nationalist was Mr. John O'Connor Power. In those days there was no place in politics for an honest Irish Nationalist save in the ranks of the revolutionary party. That party found some of its bravest and fiercest recruits amon«- the Irish in England, and Davitt was one of them. The English Branch of the Fenian organization contemplated some of the most desperate enter- prises of the movement. Among many other plots they resolved to make an attack on Chester Castle, where there used to be a large supply of arms. Davitt, although very young at the time, was one of those who were present at the tryst- ing-place. He escaped arrest at this time, and then he became prominent by his energy and talents, and after a while was one of the foremost organizers of the movement. He was mainly concerned in the purchase of arms and their transportation to Ireland to prepare men for the fight, which was then supposed to be ripening fast. One evening he was arrested at a London railway station and was brought before the courts on the charge of levying war against the Queen. The main evidence against him was that of Corydon, an infamous ruffian, who first joined and then sold the organization. From the onset Davitt knew there was no escape?. In his "Leaves of a Prison Diary," which contains an account of his life, he describes his feelings at this terrible hour : 102 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. "I recollect," he writes, "having occupied the half-hour during which the jury was considering whether to believe the evidence of respectable witnesses or accept that of a creature who can be truly designated a salaried perjurer in my case, in reading the inscriptions which covered the walls of the cell — the waitinor-room of fate — in Newgate prison, to which I was conducted while my future was being decided in the jury-room overhead. Every available inch of the blackened mortar contained, in few words, the name of the writer, where he belonged to, the crime with which he was charged, the dread certainty of conviction, the palpitating hopes of acquittal, or the language of indifference or despair. What thoughts must have swept through the minds of the thousands who have passed through that cell during the necessarily brief stay within its walls! Loss of home, friends, reputation, honor, name — to those who had such to lose ; and the impend- ing- sentence of banishment from the world of pleasure or business for years — perhaps forever — with the doom of penal degradation, toil, and suffering in addition ! " Yet, despite all these feelings that crowd upon the soul in these short, fleeting, terrible moments of criminal life, the vanity — or what shall I term it? — of the individual prompts him to occupy most of them in giving a short record of himself, his crime or imputed offence, scratched THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. JQo upon these blackened walls, for other succeeding unfortunates to read! !( Most of these inscriptions were in slang, showing that the majority of those who had writ- ten them were of the criminal order, and guilty of some, if not of the particular, offence for which they were doomed to await the announcement of their punishment within that chamber of dread expectancy. Not a few, however, consisted of declarations of innocence, invocations of Divine interposition, appeals to justice, and confidence in the ' laws of my country ; ' while others denoted the absence of all thoughts except those of wife, children, or sweetheart. Some who were await- ing that most terrible of all sentences — death — could yet think of tracing the outlines of a scaffold amidst the mass of surrounding inscriptions, with a ' Farewell to Life ' scrawled underneath. Giv- ing way to the seeming inspiration of the place, and picturing jurors' faces round that dismal den — dark and frowning, into which the sun's rays never entered, lit only by a noisy jet of gas which seemed to sing the death-song of the liberty of all who entered the walls which it had blackened ■ — I stood upon the form which extended round the place and wrote upon a yet uncovered por- tion of the low sloping roof: 'M. D. expects ten years for the crime of being an Irish Nationalist and the victim of an informer's perjury. — July, 1870/ From the ghastly look of the place, the 104 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. penalty I was about to undergo, and my own thoughts at the moment, I might have most ap- propriately added the well-known lines from the ' Inferno,' which invite those who enter its portals of despair to abandon hope." The anticipations in this heart's cry proved cor- rect. Davitt was found guilty and was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude. Replying in the month of May last (1886) to Lord Randolph Churchill's incitements to civil war, Mr. Davitt gave a scathing reply, and at the same time a neat summary of his miseries in penal servitude. " The treason for which I was tried and con- victed in 1870 was more justifiable in reason and less culpable to law than the treason which this ex-cabinet minister commits in telling the people of Ulster that they will be entitled to appeal to the arbitrament of force if the imperial Parliament passes a certain law. In 1870, when I was tried in London, the Castle system of government still obtained in Ireland — a system of rule which, by the measure which the Prime Minister of England — -(loud cheers) — has introduced for the better government of Ireland, is now proved to be un- just and unconstitutional. Nevertheless, I was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude for sending firearms to Ireland to be used against a system of government in that country which was not objectionable to the minority, but which was looked upon by the mass of the Irish people as a F. B. FREEH1LL, M. A., President Irish National League, New South Wales. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 107 tyranny. (Applause.) Now, what will be the position of this precious ex-minister of the Crown in 1887 if he be true to his words in sending fire- arms to the North of Ireland? (Applause.) Lord Churchill will be in insurrection against his :>wn Queen and country. (Hear, hear.) He •vill not be in revolt against a despotic Castle system, but against the legally-constituted Irish Parliament, and, therefore, this treason which he •commits by anticipation will have no earthly justification or extenuation. (Cheers.) Well, I will give the noble lord some friendly advice to- night — (laughter) — based upon a good deal of prison experience. (Renewed laughter.) I will assume that in 1887, when Paddington's lordly representative wiH become a rebel against impe- rial authority, Mr. Gladstone will be Prime Minis- ter of England. (Cheers.) He was England's Prime Minister in 1870, when I left the Old Bailey to undergo penal servitude. If Lord Randolph Churchill receive the same sentence for a similar offence without any justification for committing it, I will tell him what he will have to undergo. (Hear, hear.) If he is treated in prison as I was under Mr. Gladstone's adminis- tration, he will be chained to a cart with murder- ers and pick-pockets for the first four years of imprisonment, and if he goes through that ordeal without quarrelling with his new chums — (laughter and loud applause) — it may be his good fortune, 108 GLADSTONE— PA RNELL. as it was mine, to be in six years' time piomoted to the position of turning a wringing machine in the Dartmoor convict laundry. (Loud laughter and applause.) Well, after seven years and eight months' imprisonment, I hope he will be released on ticket-of-leave, as I was, and then, perhaps, it may be my duty, rising from the opposite benches of the Irish Parliament — (cheers) — to do for him what he did for me in 1 88 1 , when he called upon the then Chief Secretary of Ireland to send me back to penal servitude to undergo fifteen months' additional imprisonment." (Cheers.) Several attempts were made to procure Davitt's release from prison, which attempts failed for years ; but at last, on the morning of December 19, 1877, the governor of Dartmoor jail brought Davitt the information that he was a free man. The release, however, was not unconditional. He was let out on a ticket-of-leave. This at the time might well have appeared nothing more than a hollow formality. But it afterwards proved to be a grim* safeguard for Davitt's political orthodoxy in the future. After his release he took to lectur- ing. In the course of time his family had been further scattered, and having first left Ireland for England they had subsequently quitted England for America. They were settled in Manayunk, Pennsylvania. Davitt went over to America to see his mother and sister, and also probably with the view to his career thereafter. When he ar- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 109 rived in America he had not more than a few acquaintances in the country. The chief of these was Mr. James O'Kelly, then connected with the New York press, now a member of the British House of Commons. At this time there had come an important crisis in the history of Irish-American organizations. A large number of the men who had been en- gaged in revolutionary effort had made up their mind that the liberation of Ireland could not for the moment be advanced by immediate resort to physical force. Several of the men of the keenest intelligence and of thoughtful and states- manlike minds had come to the conclusion that other devices should be employed. Of these men perhaps the most noteworthy was Mr. John Devoy. It required some courage to preach to men of the revolutionary party any doctrine save the attempt to liberate Ireland by force of arms. Constitutional agitators had been proved in so many cases liars and traitors that constitutional agi- tation was regarded by vast numbers as a delusion and a snare ; and any plan that had even the least approach to constitutional agitation in its character was condemned beforehand. But some of the leading spirits of the revolutionary party were men above the cant of faction or the emptiness of phrases. They saw that the Land question was, after all, the fundamental question with the vast mass of the Irish people ; that that was the ques- 1 1 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. tion which touched their hearts, their homes, and their daily lives, and that accordingly, if some movement were started in which the land would play a prominent part, the adhesion of the farmers to the National movement would be easily ob- tained. Revolutionists were accordingly advised to take up the agitation of the Land question as the best means by which they could reach the goal of National revival. This was known at one time as "the new departure." Mr. Davitt was brought into contact with the men of this new school ; his mind was captured by the idea ; and when he returned to Ireland it was with a determination to put this new plan of action into operation. For a year he met with but little success ; the revolutionaries would not accept his plan because it was too constitutional The con- stitutionalists rejected it as too revolutionary. The period of Davitt's arrival in Ireland was the period of dark distress from the failure of the crop which has been already described. Another event which lent force to Davitt's ideas was the action of the land-owners. They proceeded to deal with their tenantry in exactly the same way as they had done at all previous periods of dis- tress. That is to say, they took advantage of their tenants' distress to drive them out of their holdings. This will be seen more plainly by put- ting side by side the increase of the distress and the number of evictions: THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE H3 No. of Evictions Year. Value of Potato Crop. by Families. 1876 $60,321,910 1,269 1877 26,355,110 1,323 1878 35.897,5 DO 1.749 1879 15,705,440 2,667 From this short table it may be gathered that the number of evictions increased in exact pro- portions to the deepening of the distress. Davitt saw how this state of things could be used for the purpose of advancing his ideas. He after- wards thus describes his mode of action : " I saw the priests, the farmers, and the local leaders of the Nationalists. I inquired and found that the seasons of 1877 and 1878 had been poor, and that a famine was expected in 1879. All the farmers and cotters were in debt to the landlords and the shopkeepers. One day in Claremorris, County Mayo — it was in March, 1879 — I was in company with John W. Walsh, of Balla, who was a commercial traveller. He is now in Australia in the interests of the Land League. He knew the circumstances of every shopkeeper in the west of Ireland — their poverty and debt, and the pov- erty of the people. He gave me a good deal of valuable information. I met some farmers from Irishtown, a village outside of Claremorris, and talked to them about the crops and the rent. Everywhere I heard the same story, and I at last made a proposition that a meeting be called in Irishtown to give expression to the grievances of the tenant farmers, and to demand a reduction of 114 GLADSTONE— PARNELE. the rent. We were also to urge the abolition of landlordism. I promised to have the speakers there, and they promised to get the audience. I wrote to Thomas Brennan, of Dublin, John Fer- guson, of Glasgow, and other Irishmen known for their adherence to Ireland's cause, and I drew up the resolutions. The meeting was held and was a great success, there being between ten thousand and twelve thousand men present. In the pro- cession there were fifteen hundred men on horse- back, marching as a troop of cavalry ; and this feature, inaugurated at Irishtown, has been con- tinued ever since at every meeting of the Land League. The meeting was not fully reported in the Dublin papers, but was, as far as the object went, a success ; for the landlords of the neigh- borhood reduced the rents 25 per cent." From this meeting at Irishtown grew the great Land League movement. However, Davitt had yet to gain the adhesion of the Parliamentary leader. The fierce obstructive fights in the House of Commons happened by a fortunate coincidence to be going on exactly at the same time as the threatened famine and the increasing evictions prepared the mind of Ireland for a new land movement. These struggles had roused the spirit and the hopes of the people, and they were above and beyond all pointing to the possibility of their finding a leader who had the necessary courage, determination, and skill to lead a new MR. JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN. M. P. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 115 land movement to victory. Mr. Davitt early appreciated the fact that if he were to make a successful land movement he should secure the leadership of Mr. Parnell for it, as he alone among the Parliamentarians of that day had the necessary magnetism and other qualities lor such an arduous and perilous enterprise. But he did not find in Mr. Parnell immediate assent to his proposals ; for Davitt's schemes, not merely in their means but in their ends, went far beyond any plans that had yet been formulated by any Irish organization or any Irish politician. The Land reformers in Ireland had always demanded as the goal and limit of its efforts what came to be known as the " Three F's ; " that is to say, Fixity of tenure, Free sale, and Fair rent. The demands for these con- cessions had been urged for more than forty years, and had formed the subject of innumerable bills in the House of Commons, of countless mis- sions, and of many successive agitations ; and in 1879, when Davitt was preparing the new move- ment, the three " F's " seemed nevertheless to be as far off realization as ever. Davitt's startling proposal was that in place of urging this moderate demand, which appeared unattainable, they should advance to a far more drastic proposal for the settlement of the land question. This suggestion, curiously enough, had first been made by English statesmen. John Stuart Mill, the great English economist, Mr. Bright, the great English tribune, 116 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. had both suggested that the real and final remedy for the land struggle of Ireland was the establish- ment, through the state, of that system of peasant proprietors which had brought wealth and inde- pendence out of poverty and servitude in France, Germany, and Austria. Davitt now proposed to drop the proposal for the three Fs, and to stop nothing short of the declaration that the occupy- ing tenantrv of Ireland should be transformed into proprietors of the soil. Mr. Parnell, although he is bold and audacious in enterprise, is a cool and cautious calculator of means towards ends. Up to this time he had never dreamt of making a step beyond the demand for the three F's ; and he long hesitated before he could accept the pro- posal of Davitt ; but at last he embraced Davitt's programme; he went to a meeting at Westport, and preached the doctrine of peasant proprietor, and so the most popular figure of Ireland had crossed the Rubicon : the land movement now must go on to great victory or disastrous shame. Thus it was that the great Land League move- ment took its start. It was a movement that grew rather than was made. The circumstances of the time made it necessary. All that was wanted was now supplied. There was a leader of the necessary boldness and adroitness to direct and to guide it ; and soon from one end of Ireland to another there were bodies of farmers ready to go in for the struggle. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. }] 7 Matthew Harris is one of the most interesting and striking figures of the Irish movements of the last thirty years. During all this period he has devoted himself with self-sacrificing and unremit- ting zeal to the attainment of complete redress of his country's grievances. In this respect poli- tics are with him an absorbing passion, almost a religion. In the pursuit of this high and noble end he has risked death, lost liberty, ruined his business prospects. Eager, enthusiastic, vehe- ment, he has at the same time that grim tenacity of purpose by which forlorn hopes are changed into triumphant fruitions. He has fought the battle against landlordism in the dark as well as in the brightest hour with unshaken resolution. Reared in the country, from an early age he saw landlordism in its worst shape and aspect ; his childish recollections are of cruel and heartless evictions. Thus it is that in every movement for the liberation of the farmer or of Ireland during the last thirty years he has been a conspicuous figure, as hopeful, energetic, laborious in the hour of despair, apathy, and lassitude, as in times of universal vigor, exultation, and activity. Matthew Harris made war on landlordism, which in the county of Gal way had been particu- larly atrocious for many years before the Land League was thought of; and in this way his ac- tions became the germ of a new movement. And now we have come to a point in our nar- 118 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. rative that makes it necessary to give a short his- torical retrospect. How comes it that the Land question in Ireland has grown to be a question of life and death to the Irish people ? Is the land system in Ireland the same as in America or in other countries ? And how is it that there has grown up between the landlord and the occupier of the Irish soil a feud so bitter, a hatred so deadly? These questions compel a short sketch of the land struggle. A short sketch, indeed ; and yet any sketch, however long, would, in point of fact, be all too brief to convey any adequate idea of the wretched history of Ireland's wrongs. For the struggle in Ireland, from the very outset, has been a land struggle. Every combination against the Saxon invader has been a land league ; almost every new creation in the Irish peerage has been simply the transfer of some land grabber into the galaxy of the Anglo-Hibernian aristocracy. It is a mis- erable story, sickening in its details ; but there is no alternative. Any view of the situation which leaves out of the account this loner catalogue of the crimes of the rich man against the poor man in Ireland must altogether fail of its purpose. The sketch is brief, not for lack of material to make it long ; but our purpose in this book is not to repeat in detail the old story of shame and crime and misery. Our narrative is not designed as a chronicle of Ireland's wrongs so much as a THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. H9 new gospel of hope, and a prophecy of future peace and prosperity for that unhappy country. The situation at present is, indeed, full of hope and promise; but the full end is not yet attained. The goal seems near at hand ; but the need for united action, wise counsels, persistence and pa- tience, was never greater than now. England has been forced to hear Ireland's complaints ; her best statesmen have been found not unwilling to concede the essential part of what Ireland claims ; and even the majority of those who oppose most strongly the plans of settlement which have been offered profess to object to the details of those plans rather than to the essential principles in- volved. There is, then, every reason for the friends of Ireland to be of good cheer. CHAPTER III. THE LAND WAR. THE history of Ireland for centuries — the his- tory of Ireland to-day — is largely the strug- gle for the possession of the land. Behind the Land question stands the larger and higher ques- tion of National rights ; but the land struggle has always been present to add fierceness to the de- sire for National liberty. The possession of the land forms in most coun- tries the ground and bottom subject of struggle ; but the fierceness of the fight is naturally pro- portioned to the prominence which agriculture holds in the economy of a state. In countries with huge manufacturing industries the struggle for the land has not the same intensity as in coun- tries where farming is the main if not the sole re- source of the people. Again, the keenness of land struggles is proportionate to the other dif- ferences in the combatants by which it may be accompanied. There are states where the strug- * gle between the owner and the occupier of the soil is a struggle between men of the same race and the same creed ; and naturally struggles in (120) THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 121 such countries have not the terrible and passion- ate hatred of struggles in countries where the di- vergence of interest is accompanied by difference of faith and blood. And finally, the battle for the land is fiercest of all in a country where the power on the side of the owner is that of another and a foreign nation. In Ireland all the conditions that make the land-owner fierce and relentless coexist. The ownership of the soil was transferred from the Catholic and the Celt to a Protestant and a Saxon ; the occupier of the soil was robbed of his heritage in a land where the cultivation of the soil was the one and only means of making a liveli- hood, and all this was done through the agency of England and in the interests of Englishmen and English policy. The struggle between the native race of Ireland and the intrusive English landlord-class for the possession of the soil of that oppressed country may be said to date from 1169, when Richard Fitzstephen landed near Wexford with the advance party of Strongbow's famous bands. The first invaders were Norman and Welsh rather than English ; and the first enemies they met were Danes rather than Irish. Still from this time dates the attempt (long continued, but for centuries unsuccessful) to substitute feudal laws and the feudal land tenure for the semi-communal land systen? which was that of the native Irish popu- lation. From this seed sprang the baleful upas 122 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. tree of English oppression, which was destined to overshadow the whole country for ages. There is little doubt that the first cause of the difficulty between the English and natives was largely a misapprehension The Anglo-Normans were ignorant of the Irish land tenures, and of their system of septs and tribes ; and they seem never to have suspected that there was any people in the world which did not hold their land by a tenure like their own. Dermod MacMorrough is said to have given Strongbow his only child Eva in marriage, and with her to have granted certain lands in perpetuity. Now it is most certain, first, that the lands which Dermod is said to have granted were never his ; and next that if they had been his, he would have had no right, by Irish law, to convey them out of his sept. The Norman feudal laws, however, would have made Eva sole heiress of her father's power (a thing unknown in old Irish law), as well as the inheritress of all the lands in his kingdom. Quite in the same line of stupidity and ignorance has been the much more recent experience of the British in India, where, for more than a century, they kept confis- cating and granting lands to which they had no right. Until very recent years they seem to have had no conception or suspicion of the fact that they were violating all the immemorial land laws and traditional rights of an ancient and intelli- gent people, and making deep wounds which THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 123 the East Indian races will never forget nor forgive. As early as 121 7 marks of strong mutual hatred between the Irish and Anglo-Irish begin to appear. All through the later feudal reigns there were fre- quent deeds of blood. The English looked upon the Irish as no better than wild beasts ; and the Irish returned their scorn with the bitterest hatred. The " great Talbot," immortalized by Shakes- peare, was in truth an able soldier, though feeble in council; yet towards the Irish people he acted with extreme barbarity. An old Irish chronicle says that he was " a son of curses for his venom, and a devil for his evil deeds ; and the learned say of him that there came not from the time of Herod [Pilate], by whom Christ was crucified, any one so wicked in evil deeds." It is not necessary to go back to the first in- vasion of Ireland by the English or even to some centuries later in order to find the origin of the present land system. For several centuries after the English had invaded Ireland the English kings had but a small extent of territory; and their authority was shadowy and shifting. More- over the English invaders in time mingled with the Celtic inhabitants ; adopted their customs, their dress, and their sentiments ; took their wives from among them ; and in time were so thoroughly transformed that they were described in the well- known phrase, Hiberniores Hihernis ipsis. But the English authorities looked on these proceed- 124 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. ings with evil eye ; passed laws inflicting heavy fines upon the English settlers who thus inter- mingled with the Irish race. Indeed they went even further; for one of the laws passed in the reign of Henry VI. made it felony on the part of an English merchant to sell his goods to an Irish- man. The relations between the English settled in the counties around Dublin — the region was known as The Pale — and the Irish throughout the rest of Ireland, throughout all those centuries, were those of perpetual and incessant war. The Irish were regarded as enemies whom it was lawful to rob and to slay and desirable to exter- minate. Then, as for many centuries afterwards, it was the policy of English statesmen and soldiers to exterminate the Irish race from the face of Ire- land and substitute therefor a purely English population. The Irish were foreigners in every sense of the word. The whole policy of this period is put with excellent terseness and lucidity by Sir John Davies. Sir John Davies was At- torney-General of the English authorities in the reign of James I., and he has left most interesting . and valuable accounts of his times. " In all the Parliament Rolls," he writes, " which are extant, from the fortieth year of Edward III., when the statutes of Kilkenny were enacted, till the reign of King Henry VIII., we find the de- generate and disobedient English called rebels ; but the Irish which were not in the King's peace THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 125 are called enemies. Statute Kilkenny, c. i, 10 and ii ; 2 Henry IV., c. 24; 10 Henry VI., c. 1, 18 ; 18 Henry VI., c. 4, 5 ; Edward IV., c. 6 ; 10 Henry VII., c. 17. All these statutes speak of English rebels and Irish enemies ; as if the Irish had never been in the condition of subjects, but always out of the protection of the law, and were indeed in worse case than aliens of any foreign realm that was in amity with the crown of Eng- land. For by divers heavy penal laws the English were forbidden to marry, to foster, to make gos- sips with the Irish, or to have any trade or com- merce in their markets or fairs ; nay, there was a law made no longer since than the twenty-eighth year of Henry VIII., that the English should not marry with any person of Irish blood, though he had gotten a charter of denization ; unless he had done both homage and fealty to the King in the Chancery, and were also bound by recogni- zance with sureties, to continue a loyal subject. Whereby it is manifest, that such as had the gov- ernment of Ireland under the crown of England did intend to make a perpetual separation and enmity between the English and the Irish, pre- tending, no doubt, that the English should in the end root out the Irish ; which the English not be- ing able to do, caused a perpetual war between the nations, which continued for four hundred and odd years, and would have lasted to the world's end, if in the end of Queen Elizabeth's reign the 126 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Irish had not been broken and conquered by the sword, and since the beginning of his majesty's reign been protected and governed by the law." It will be remarked that in the extract just given Sir John Davies illustrates his statements with true lawyer-like accuracy by references to the leading cases which corroborate them. In the same series of historical tracts — as they are called — in which he lays the foregoing propositions down, he illustrates the ideas of the times still more clearly by quoting some well-known trials in which there was an Englishman of The Pale on one side and an Irishman on the other. In the one case the Irishman sues the Englishman for trespass ; and the plea of the Englishman is not a denial of the offence but that the Irishman is not an Englishman nor a member of five families whom the English King Henry II. exempted from the laws against the Irish ; and the plea being es- tablished the Irishman is non-suited. In the sec- ond case an Enolishman is charged with the mur- der of an Irishman ; and his plea is a confession of guilt as to the murder accompanied by the de- mand that, as the murdered man was an Irishman, the punishment should not be death but the pay- ment of a fine. On the other hand the Irishman that killed an Englishman was always hanged. Indeed there are several statutes that openly preached the assassination of Irishmen found THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 127 within English territory as a duty and a service to the state. Thus in the reign of Edward IV. a statute was passed, intituled — " An Act that it shall be law- full to kill any that is found robbing by day or night, or going or coming to rob or steal, having no faithfull man of good name or fame in their company in English apparrel : " Whereby it was enacted — " That it shall be lawfull to all manner of men that find any theeves robbing by day or by night, or going or coming to rob or steal, in or out, going, or coming, having no faithfull man of good name in their company in English apparrel upon any of the liege people of the King, that it shall be lawfull to take and kill those, and to cut off their heads, without any impeachment of our Sovereign Lord and King, his heirs, officers, or ministers, or of any others." "Thus, in truth," justly comments Daniel O'Connell, " the only fact necessary to be ascer- tained, to entitle an Englishman to cut off the head of another man, was, that such other should be an Irishman. For if the Irishman was not rob- bing, or coming from robbing, who could say but that he might be going to rob ; ' in, or out,' as the statute has it. And the Englishman — the cutter-off of the head — was made sole judge of where the Irishman was going, and of what he in- tended to do. The followers of Mahomet, with regard to their treatment of their Grecian sub- ]28 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. jects, were angels of mercy when compared with the English in Ireland. Care was also taken that no part of the effect of the law should be lost by the mistaken humanity of any individual English- man ; for an additional stimulant was given by the following section of the Act : " 'And that it shall be lawful by authority of the said Parliament to the said bringer of the said head, and his ayders to the same, for to destrain and levy by their own hands, of every man having one plow-land in the barony where the said thief was so taken, two-pence, and of every man hav- ing half a plow-land in the said barony, one- penny, and every other man having one house and goods to the value of fourty shillings, one- penny, and of every other cottier having house and smoak, one half-penny.' " There was one other provision of the English dealings with the Irish people which was as de- structive to prosperity as those cited were to the safety of Irish life. It has been the constant refrain of those who have demanded land reform for many generations that the Irish tenant gained nothing from industry ; that a premium was placed upon laziness, for, as the tenant made the land more fertile, the landlord came and pocketed the increase by raising the rent. At an early stage in Irish history the Irish tenant had to live under this destructive condition. Again let us go to the writings of an English official for our description of this grievance. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 129 "The most wicked and mischievous custom of all was that of Coin and Livery, which consisted in taking of man's meat, horse meat, and money, of all the inhabitants of the country, at the will and pleasure of the soldier; who, as the phrase of the Scripture is, did eat up the people as it were bread ; for that he had no other entertain- ment. This extortion was originally Irish; for they used to lay bonaght* upon their people, and never gave their soldiers any other pay. But when the English had learned it they used it with more insolence, and made it more intolerable ; for this oppression was not temporary, nor limited either to place or time; but because there was everywhere a continual war, either offensive or defensive, and every lord of a county, and every marcher, made war and peace at his pleasure, it became universal and perpetual ; and indeed was the most heavy oppression that ever was used in any Christian or heathen kingdom.— And there- fore, vox opprcssorum, this crying sin did draw down as great, or greater plagues upon Ireland, than the oppression of the Israelites did draw upon the land of Egypt. For the plagues of Egypt, though they were grievous, were but of short continuance; but the plagues of Ireland lasted four hundred years together." The natural consequences followed; they may * « Bonaght" was the Irish term for billeting of soldiers, with a right to be maintained in food. I30 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. as well and cannot be better described than in the words of Davies : " This extortion of Coin and Livery produced two notorious effects : first, it made the land waste ; next, it made the people idle ; for when the husbandman had labored all the year, the soldier in one night consumed the fruits of all his labor, longiqiie perit labor irritus anni. — Had he reason then to manure the land for the next year? Or rather, might he not complain as the shepherd in Virgil : " ' Impius hrec tarn culta novalia miles habebit? Barbaras has segetes ? En quo discordia cives Perduxit miseros ? En queis consevimus agros ? ' "And hereupon of necessity came depopulation, banishment, and extirpation of the better sort of subjects ; and such as remained became idle and lookers-on, expecting the event of those miseries and evil times, so as their extreme extortion and oppression hath been the true cause of the idle- ness of this Irish nation, and that rather the vulvar sort have chosen to be beggars in foreign countries than to manure their fruitful land at home." It will probably occur to the reader that the horrible oppression thus inflicted on the Irish must have been largely the result of their own folly or ferocity. It will be answered that it was a case of constant and incessant war between two forces equally barbarous, relentless, and irrecon- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. \%\ citable, and that if the Irish were savagely treated and regarded as foes to be exterminated by the English of The Pale, it was because the English of The Pale were as savagely treated by the Irish and equally regarded as wild beasts to be extir- pated. But against this theory we call in again the evidence of the English monarch's Attorney- General : " But perhaps," writes Sir John Davies, antici- pating this objection, "the Irish in former times did wilfully refuse to be subject to the laws of Eng- land, and would not be partakers of the benefit thereof, though the Crown of England did desire it ; and therefore they were reputed aliens, out- laws, and enemies. Assuredly the contrary doth appear." And in page 101 he expressly declares, — "That for the space of two hundred years at least, after the first arrival of Henry II. in Ireland, the Irish would have gladly embraced the laws of England, and did earnestly desire the benefit and protection thereof; which, being denied them, did of necessity cause a continual bordering war be- tween the English and Irish." And finally he admirably sums up the whole case when he writes : "This, then, I note as a great defect in the civil policy of this kingdom ; in that for the space of three hundred and fifty years at least after the conquest first attempted, the English laws were |32 GLADSTONE— PARNEI/L not communicated to the Irish, nor the benefit and protection thereof allowed unto them, though they earnestly desired and sought the same : for as long as they were out of the protection of the law, so as every Englishman might oppress, spoil and kill them without control, how was it possible they should be other than outlaws and enemies to the Crown of England ? If the king would not admit them to the condition of subjects, how could they learn to acknowledge and obey him as their sovereign ? When they might not con- verse or commerce with any civil man, nor enter into any town or city without peril of their lives, whither should they fly but into the woods and mountains, and there live in a wild and barbarous manner? " Before leaving this part of the subject there is one other point that deserves to be noticed. The continuance of the destructive estrangement al- ready described between the English authorities and the Irish population was not merely against the wishes of the Irish but possibly also against the wishes of English kings and of prudent Eng- lish ministers. It was the great Lords who really stood between the two peoples. Thus the reason why that wise monarch, King Edward III., did not extend the benefit of English protection and Eng- lish law to the Irish people was, that the great Lords of Ireland, the Wicklows, the Stanleys, and the Rodens of the day, certified to the king, — THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 133 "That the Irish might not be naturalized, with- out being of damage or prejudice to them, the said Lords, or to the Crown." This point is put still more clearly in the history of Ireland written by a Protestant clergyman, named Leland : "The true cause which for a long time fatally opposed the gradual coalition of the Irish and English race, under one form of government, was, that the great English settlers found it more for their immediate interest, that a free course should be left to their oppressions ; that many of those whose lands they coveted should be considered as aliens ; that they should be furnished for their petty wars by arbitrary exactions ; and in their rapines and massacres be freed from the terrors of a rigidly impartial and severe tribunal." These extracts sufficiently indicate the rela- tions that existed between the English conquerors and the Irish inhabitants. It was not unnatural under such circumstances that the territories of the English kin^s did not increase ; at one time they had fallen as low as four counties out of the entire country. The wars of the Roses too so much occupied the attention of the English at home that the Irish were able to drive the English out of town after town, and finally out of county after county until the reign of Henry VIII. The reign of Henry VIII. was marked by several rebellions against the English authority. 134 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. In the course of these rebellions many severe battles were fought ; Irish chiefs were conquerors and conquered ; if they conquered they were ac- cepted, if they were conquered they were brought • to London and after a short period in the Tower were hanged as traitors at Tyburn. In this way the seeds were sown of severe and bitter trouble in the reign of Elizabeth. By this time too the design of extending the Protestant religion in Ireland and crushing the Catholic had taken shape; and wars ensued which were embittered by re- ligious passion and by the still more destructive factor of greed for land. It is not our purpose to detail the history of these wars. They have im- portance for the present purpose only in so far as they bear upon the land struggle and explain the state of the land question as it exists to-day. Suffice it then to say that all the great families of Ireland, and in particular the great Anglo-Irish families, rose in succession against the Queen's power. Of all these chiefs the most important was Shane O'Neill. Shane O'Neill is one of the great men of human history. With his cunning he baffled the skilful councillors of Elizabeth; in bat- tle after battle he conquered the largest and bravest armies the British Queen could send against him, and finally, when he had become master of all Ulster, he ruled it with greater order than had ever been even approached before his time. In the end, after many changes of fortune, his forces were THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 135 routed; he himself, Hying before the triumphant English army, was assassinated, and his kingdom was broken up and scattered. A short time previously rebellions under the Geraldines had been beaten in the southern parts of the country. With the defeat of the O'Neill the conquest of Ireland by Elizabeth was complete, and then Eliza- beth proceeded to carry out the second part of the English policy. This was to transfer the owner- ship, and, so far as possible, the occupation of the soil from the native Irish to English lords and English husbandmen. Thus began the first great era of confiscation and plantation. A preliminary to these steps was deemed necessary. There was a series of expeditions to the different parts of Ireland, which should prepare them still better for the new regime. These expeditions had purposes as fell and were carried out by means as execrable as any re- corded in history. The purpose was not simply to break the forces or quell the spirit of the native population : the object was to actually clear the island of Irish settlers by a war of extermination. Previously and simultaneously was there made another and a disastrous change in the Irish law. " Before the introduction of the feudal English system of tenure," writes T. M. Healy, "the lands of Ireland belonged to the clans of Ireland. The chief, subject to certain privileges appur- tenant to his chieftaincy, held only as trustee for 136 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the tribe, and if by his misfeasance he became personally dispossessed, the rights of his people were in no wise affected. When, however, the councillors of Elizabeth determined to subjugate the entire island, and to substitute British for Brehon law throughout its whole extent, prince and people alike suffered when defeated. Victory for the English resulted in the dispossession and spoliation of the clansmen as well as of the chiefs who led them to the battle; English adventurers, by the Queen's patent, obtained lordship and dominion over the conquered territory ; and clan ownership gave place to private property in land." And now for the military expeditions which were to complete the work that had been begun by the conquest of O'Neill and the change in the land law. These expeditions, like other events already recorded, we can describe, fortunately, not in the hot language of modern Irish writers, but in the frigid and unadorned characters of the Englishmen who themselves enacted them and immediately after described them. Mr. Froude transcribes from his own report the following letter written in the year 1576, by Malby, the President of Connaught : "At Christmas," he wrote, "I marched into their territory [Shan Burke's], and finding courteous dealing with them had like to have cut my throat, I thought good to take another course, and so THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 137 with determination to consume them with fire and sword, sparing neither old nor young, I entered their mountains. I burnt all their corn and houses, and committed to the sword all that could be found, where were slain at that time above sixty of their best men, and among them the best leaders they had. This was Shan Burke's country. Then I burnt Ulick Burke's country. In like manner I assaulted a castle where the earrison surrendered. I put them to the misericordia of my soldiers. They were all slain. Thence I went on, sparing none which came in my way, which cruelty did so amaze their followers, that they could not tell where to bestow themselves. Shan Burke made means to me to pardon him, and forbear killing of his people. I would not hearken, but went on my way. The gentlemen of Clanrickard came to inc. I found it was but dallying to win time, so I left Ulick as little corn and as few houses standing as I left his brother, and what people was found had as little favor as the other had. It was all done in rain, and frost, and storm, journeys in such weather bringing them the sooner to submission. They are humble enough now, and will yield to any terms we like to offer them." There are descriptions of similar expeditions in Munster. They are also drawn by English, hands. It is a report by Sir George Carew, the English General. 138 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. "The President having received certaine infor- mation that the Mounster fugitives were har- boured in those parts, having before burned all the houses and corne, and taken great preyes in Owny Onubrian and Kiiquig, a strong and fast countrey, not farre from Limerick, diverted his forces into East Clanwilliam and Muskeryquirke, where Pierce Lacy had lately beene succoured ; and harassing the country, killed all mankind that were found therein, for a terrour to those as should ofive releefe to runagate traitors. Thence wee came into Arleaghe woods, where wee did the like, not leaving behind us man or beast, corne or cattle, except such as had been conveyed into castles." — Pacata Hibcrnia, 659. " No spectacle," writes Morrison, an English Protestant historian of these wretched times, "was more frequent in the ditches of the towns, and especially in wasted countries, than to see multitudes of these poor people, the Irish, dead, with their mouths all colored green by eating nettles, docks, and all things they could rend above ground. " And now that the native race had thus been destroyed, there comes the result for which the destruction had taken place. Confiscation follows extirpation. "Proclamation," says Godkin, in his "Land War," " was made throughout England, inviting 'younger brothers of good families' to undertake THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 139 the plantation of Desmond — each planter to ob- tain a certain scope of land, on condition of set- tling thereupon so many families — ' none of the native Irish to be admitted.' Under these condi- tions, Sir Christopher Hatton took up 10,000 acres in Waterford ; Sir Walter Raleigh, 1 2,000 acres, partly in Waterford and partly in Cork ; Sir William Harbart, or Herbert, 13,000 acres in Kerry; Sir Edward Denny, 6,000 acres in the same county; Sir Warren St. Leger, and Sir Thomas Norris, 6,000 acres each in Cork ; Sir William Courtney, 10,000 acres in Limerick; Sir Edward Fitton, 11,500 acres in Tipperary and Waterford ; and Edmund Spenser, 3,000 acres in Cork, on the beautiful Blackwater. The other notable undertakers were the Hides, Butchers, Wirths, Berkleys, Trenchards, Thorntons, Bourch- ers, Billingsleys, etc. Some of these grants, es- pecially Raleigh's, fell in the next reign to Richard Boyle, the so-called 'great Earl of Cork ' — proba- bly the most pious hypocrite to be found in the lono- ro ll f the ' Munster Undertakers.' " And so ended the first great work of trans- ferring the soil of Ireland. The work continued throughout the three following reigns. The Irish hailed the accession of the son of the Catholic Mary of Scotland with great joy and hopes for a happier era for their faith and coun- try, but they were destined to be cruelly and quickly undeceived. One of the earliest acts of 140 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the King- was a declaration that liberty of con- science was not to be granted ; but it soon be- came evident that the policy of Anglicising Ire- land begun in the previous reign was to be carried out in the present in a thorough and systematic manner. The King had fixed his eyes on Ulster as a fitting quarter in which to carry out a scheme of plantations, and a scheme for getting rid of the native chiefs was speedily developed. This was found in the discovery of an anonymous letter conveniently discovered at the door of the Coun- cil Chamber in Dublin Castle, disclosing a con- spiracy on the part of the Earls of O'Neill and O'Donnell against the authority of the Crown. No evidence was then nor has been since discov- ered, of this alleged conspiracy, but the earls were at once proclaimed traitors and fled the kingdom with their families and a few friends and retainers. Ulster was nbw ready to James' hand. It was described as a fertile province, well watered, plentifully supplied with all the necessaries for man's subsistence, and yielded abundant products for purposes of commerce. The lands were in- deed occupied by the Irish natives, who had on the King's accession been assured in their possession of their fields on a tenure which would remain un- affected by the submission or rebellion of their chiefs. But they could be easily dealt with. A proclamation was issued confiscating and THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. -^ vesting in the Crown six counties in Ulster — Tyrone, Derry, Donegal, Armagh, Fermanagh, and Cavan, comprising in all three and three- quarter millions of acres. The scheme of settle- ment was carefully designed to avoid the errors of former plantations. Those in previous reigns had been acknowledged failures, by reason of the enormous size of the grants made to the " under- takers." The " undertakers," as Sir Walter Ra- leigh and his countrymen were called, found their grants too large to settle and farm personally. They returned for the most part to England, took no trouble to plant English farmers in the land, suffered the Irish to remain on the land, and drew their rents in peace. In Ulster, however, the tracts were to be of manageable extent ; the natives were to have lo- cations of their own to which they were to be removed ; the new settlers, drawn from England and Scotland, were to be massed and grouped together for mutual protection. The escheated lands were to be divided into lots of from 1,000 to 2,000 acres, at rents of \%d. to 2%d. per acre, and distributed partly among the new settlers, partly among English servitors, and partly among the~ well-affected natives. Every "undertaker" bound himself to plant on the soil a certain num- ber of fee-farmers, lease-holders, artisans, and laborers, down to the lowest grade ; all grantees and their tenants were to take the oath of su- 1 42 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. premacy, and none, were permitted to employ natives or Catholics in any capacity whatsoever. Of the three and three-quarter millions of acres which were confiscated, about one-fifth was valua- ble or "fat" land, and this was mainly appor- tioned in this manner. Fifty Englishmen and fifty-nine Scotchmen (the needy countrymen of the King) got among them 162,500 acres. The most noticeable names among the English plant- ers were Powell, Heron, Ridgway, Willoughbie, Parsons, Audley, Davis, Blennerhasset, Wilson, Cornwall, Mansfield, and Archdale, and among the Scotch Douglas, Abercorn, Boyd, Stewart, Cunningham, Rallston, and the prolific breed of the Hamiltons, who obtained estates by the thousand acres in every one of the six counties, and whose descendants are to be found to-day in every office of profit and emolument in the country. Sixty servitors, or persons who had served the Crown in a civil or military capacity, swallowed up 50,000 acres, and among these were some of the prominent organizers of this wholesale plun- der and some of the cruel enemies and oppressors of the Celtic population. Chief amongst these were Sir Toby Caulfie.ld, Sir William Parsons, surveyor-general of the lands, ancestor of the present Lord Rosse, Sir Robert Wingfield, astute legal sycophant, Sir John Davis, Sir Henry Fol- liot, the merciless Sir Arthur Chicester, lord THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 143 deputy and superintendent of the plantation, and captains and lieutenants of lesser fame, Cooke, Atherton, Stewart, Vaughan, Browne, Atkinson, etc. Seventy-seven thousand acres fell to the share of the Protestant bishops, deans and chap- ter, who had already obtained possession of all the Catholic churches and abbeys throughout the island. Trinity College, Dublin, founded in the late reign, obtained 30,000 acres (47,101 acres were reserved for corporate towns), and the 286 so-styled loyal Irish received about 180 acres each, of what, it may be safely asserted, was the most unprofitable portion of the "lean." The Corporation of the City of London, and the twelve City Guilds, the Companies of Skinners, Fishmongers, Haberdashers and the like, took up the whole county of Derry, 209,800 acres in ex- tent, and absentee proprietors on a large scale have drawn rents from that time to the present from lands they have never seen. Meantime, the native peasantry were driven out of their tribal lands, the rich glens of Antrim, the meadow lands of Fermanagh, the fertile plains of Armagh, into the waste-lands, mountain, moor, bog, marsh of these and the adjoining counties. Shielded, favored, and aided by the law, the success of the plantation made itself apparent when in a few years commissioners were sent down to report progress. The English and 144 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Scotch grantees were actually occupying their lands with their wives and families. The village of Derry had become the town of " London- derry," with ramparts twelve feet thick, and bat- tlemented gates. Castles, mansions, farm-houses, sprang up everywhere ; millwheels turned, or- chards bloomed, villages and towns rose all around. Nevertheless the strict letter of the scheme was not and could not be carried out. Sufficient laborers of British birth could not be obtained, and numbers of the natives had to be employed as " hewers of wood and drawers of water," and also as tenants, who, in order to remain in their beloved homes, were willing to pay double rents to new masters. And many English and Scotch tenants, failing to obtain from the large proprie^ tors the long leases guaranteed to them by the terms of the act of settlement, sold their interest in their holdings to the Irish and others, and re- tired in disgust from the country. It was mainly in this manner sprang up the custom of Ulster Tenant-right as a part of the unwritten law of the province, destined to share largely in the causes which operated to contrast the well-being of its land-occupiers with the insecurity and misery of the same class in other parts of Ireland. The effect of the Ulster settlement was to create a lesser Britain in Ireland, composed of men whose very proximity to their plundered THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 145 neighbors seemed to arouse their worst passions of hatred and sectarian bitterness. It deprived the native Irish of all title to the lands which their race had held from time immemorial, and reduced them at one sweep from the position of owners of the soil they tilled to that of outlaws or tenants- at-will, only countenanced through sheer neces- sity, and established between Ulster and the other provinces of Ireland a contrast at once pro- found and painful, and a discord of religion, feel- ing and nationality which has often manifested themselves since in civil disorder and disgraceful feuds, and which are only slowly disappearing in our own day. The coffers of James were so well filled with the profits of the Ulster settlement — with the pro- ceeds of the sale of broad acres and brand-new baronetcies — that his eyes turned to the other parts of Ireland for similar spoil. And a system of plunder by legal chicanery was invented. The counties still inhabited by the native Irish were Wicklow, Wexford, and those lying along the left bank of the Shannon, viz., Leitrim, Longford, and the western portion of Westmeath, Kings, and Queens Counties. "A Commission of Inquiry into Defective Titles " was sent down into these districts with directions to collect evidence as to the holding- of the land therein, and what title the Crown had in any part of the same. It was gravely asserted 140 GLADSTONE- PARNELL. that, whereas the Anglo-Norman settlers to whom the Plantagenet Kings granted these lands 300 years back had in later evil days been driven from their grants by the original native owners, and retired to England, the deserted"" lands had, through the action of various statutes against absentees, reverted to the Crown. To give an appearance of legality to the pro- ceedings of the Commission, juries were empan- elled and forced to gfive verdicts in favor of the Crown ; witnesses were compelled to supply satisfactory evidence — the means employed for the purpose being of the most revolting descrip- tion. Courts-martial were held before which un- willing witnesses were tried on charges of treason, imprisoned, pilloried, branded with red-hot irons, and even put to death, some being actually roasted on gridirons over charcoal fires. A horde of " discoverers" sprang up whose business it became to pick holes in men's titles to estates, sharing the proceeds with the King. Every legal trick and artifice was unscrupulously resorted to. The old pipe-rolls in Dublin and the patent rolls in the Tower of London were searched to dis- cover flaws in titles, clerical errors, inaccurate wording, every defect in fact which might frighten the present holder of the land into paying a heavy amount for a fresh patent, or, failing his ac- quiescence, would entitle the handing over of his estate to some " discoverer," willing to lay down THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 147 a round sum for it. By such means as these over 430,000 acres were confiscated in the coun- ties above mentioned. The old proprietors were required to sign surrenders of their lands, and after setting apart a considerable portion for glebes, etc., and a fourth part for English " under- takers," the remainder was restored to " the more deserving " at fixed rents. In Longford the natives obtained less than one- third of the land promised them, in Leitrim half, in Queens county about two-thirds. In Wexford thirty-one " undertakers " obtained 33,000 acres, and only fifty-seven natives received any land at all, and that to the amount of 24,615 acres of the most unprofitable portion. The residue of the in- habitants of this county, some 14,500 persons, were given merely the choice of being evicted or becoming tenants-at-will. Many of the old pro- prietors took to the woods and became " outlaws;" others like the tribe of the O'Moores in Queens county were transplanted bodily into Kerry. In Wicklow the O'Byrnes, whose estates cov- ered half the county, were imprisoned on a charge of conspiracy, trumped up against them by Sir William Parsons, Lord Esmond, Sir Richard Graham and other prominent undertakers, on the evidence of notorious thieves. They were ulti- mately declared Innocent and set at liberty, but their lands had been in the meantime declared forfeit and divided between Parsons and Esmond, and were not afterwards restored to them. 148 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. The King profited immensely by the various fines and forfeitures, and the customs duties swelled in a single year from ^50 to ,£10,000. The plantation policy flooded Ireland with a host of impecunious Englishmen and Scotch- men — admittedly the scum of both nations — debtors, bankrupts, fugitives from justice, land- jobbers and land-speculators, who soon, through ownership of land, secured power, influence and rank. They held aloof from the natives, culti- vated the " Castle," and were the embryo of the Protestant ascendency and aristocracy of later days. More than half the present Irish peerage sprang from such beginnings, of which two ex- amples will serve as types of the whole. The most remarkable of the new nobility was Richard Boyle. He was the son of a Herefordshire squire, fled from England on account of his perjuries and forgeries, and landed in Dublin with only a few pounds in his pocket. He man- aged to get the office of deputy escheator of the lands of Munster, fraudulently became pos- sessed of a considerable extent of forfeited Irish estates ; and though imprisoned for felony six times in five years cheated justice, ingratiated himself with the various lord-deputies, and finally became first Earl of Cork and a privy-councillor. Of the same kidney was William Parsons, an- cestor of the Earls of Rosse. An English ad- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 149 venturer, arriving in Ireland with only £40 in his pocket, he married a niece of the Surveyor- General, succeeded to that office, and became a commissioner of the escheated lands in Ulster, obtaining for himself 1,890 acres in Tyrone, and 2,000 acres in Fermanagh alone. Ultimately through means as unscrupulous as those by which he deprived the O'Byrnes of their lands he se- cured over 8,000 acres and amassed an immense fortune. The system of " inquiry into defective titles " in Leinster had proved so remunerative that James determined to extend it to hitherto un- touched parts of the island. The province of Connaught was the only one which had not been planted. The proprietors had in 161 6 made a surrender of their lands to the King to receive new patents, for which they paid fees amounting to ,£3,000. Owing, however, to the neglect of the clerks in Chancery, neither the surrenders nor regrants were enrolled, and the titles were all declared defective and the lands held to be vested in the Crown. A proclamation was issued for a new plantation, but the alarmed proprietors, aware that it was money the King was most in need of, offered him a bribe of £10,000 (equal to £100,000 at the present day) to induce him to abandon his design. The death of James put an end to the negotiations, and it was reserved for his son, Charles I., to replenish the royal 150 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. coffers at the expense of the Connaught land- owners. His agent in this matter was the no- torious Wentworth, who carried out his policy of " thorough " by dragooning both the Irish Parliament and the Irish Church, forcing the one to vote enormous subsidies, and the other to ac- cept his ideas in matters of religion. Under threats of confiscation, various subsidies were ob- tained, but at last after an elaborate hunting up and inquiry into old title-deeds and royal grants, the whole of Connaught was declared to be the property of the Crown ; and Commissioners with Wentworth at their head went into the province to find verdicts for the King. These were ob- tained by the same means as had succeeded in Leinster, extreme resistance being only met with in Gal way alone, where juries were fined ,£4,000 apiece, and lodged in prison until the fines were paid, or their decisions retracted. The landlords at last submitted, paid heavily in fines, gave up a portion of their estates for Church purposes, and were so left in peace. The Irish met this ill-treatment on the part of the perfidious Stuart with a loyalty that may be de- scribed according- to taste as generous Q r imbecile. When the rebellion broke out in England, Charles appealed for help to his subjects in Ireland. They rose in arms, both Catholic and Protestant, and came nearer to victory than they had been for many a long year ; and then, when Charles THE tiKEAT IRISH STRUGGLE. ]r^ was defeated and beheaded, Vae victis was the cry. Oliver Cromwell came to Ireland. He suc- ceeded in quelling the revolt in favor of the King after the most wholesale massacres ; and then oc- curred the greatest scheme of confiscation yet de- scribed in the history of the Irish nation. The whole of Ireland, 20,000,000 acres, was declared forfeit, and three-fourths of the inhabitants were to be expelled. Exemption was made in favor of some husbandmen, plowmen, laborers, and artificers, who would be necessary to the new planters, and of a few well affected to the Com- monwealth. The Irish soldiers who laid down their arms were forced to enlist for foreign ser- vice. The widows, wives and families of the sol- diery to the number of 100,000 souls were trans- ported to the West Indies to be the slaves or mistresses of the planters there. The rest of the Irish people — of Munster, Leinster, Ulster — gentle and simple, land-owners and burgesses, Presby- terians and Catholics, were forced, ia the depth of the winter of 1655, to leave their homes, and cross the Shannon to allotments assigned to them in Clare and Connaught, the most barren portions of all Ireland, where they were hemmed in by the sea on the one side and a ring of soldiers on the other, who had orders to shoot down all who attempted to cross the boundary. The evacuated land, 15,582,487 acres in extent, was then dis- tributed, the government first reserving to itself 152 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the cities, church-lands, tithes, and the four coun- ties of Dublin, Kildare, Carlow and Cork. The cities were afterwards cleared of their inhabitants (who were nearly all of English descent) and sold to English merchants. The other twenty- three counties were then divided between those "adventurers" who had advanced money (amounting to ^360,000) to the Parliamentary army and the Parliamentary troops in lieu of arrears of pay due to them amounting to £1,- 550,000. County Louth was given wholly to the adventurers, and the counties of Donegal, Derry, Tyrone, Leitrim, Fermanagh, Cavan, Monaghan, Wicklow, Wexford, Longford, Kilkenny and Kerry wholly to the soldiers. Then Antrim and Limerick and the nine counties lying diagonally between them, viz., Down, Armagh, Meath, West- meath, Kildare, Carlow, Kings, Queens, and Tip- perary were divided amongst both classes of claimants. Afterwards portions of Connaught, viz., the county of Sligo and parts of Mayo and Leitrim, were taken from the transplanted Irish to satisfy arrears of pay due to part of the English army who had fought in England during the civil war. Debentures were issued in recognition of each claim, and localities assigned to each regi- ment. These debentures were put up to auction, and large estates were put together by the pur- chase of them. And yet the plantation failed in its main object, THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 353 as previous ones had done, through the gradual absorption of the planters among the native Irish notwithstanding strict prohibitions against mutual intercourse. And many estates through purchase or marriage fell again into the hands of old masters. Forty years after the settlement, it is related that numbers of the children of Crom- well's soldiers could not speak a word of English. Thus ended the last great unsettlement of the Irish land. In the reion of William III. there were some large confiscations, but they sunk into insignificance beside the wholesale confiscations in the days of Elizabeth, James and Cromwell. The reign of William III. is mainly remarkable for the passing of what is known as the Penal Code. The horrors of this code are increased by the fact that it was passed in spite of the solemn compact between the English and the Irish. In the civil war between James II. and William III. the Irish with characteristic imbecility had fought on the side of the State. The final issue was before the city of Limerick, which was defended by Sarsfield, an Irish general of genius. After a long siege it was finally agreed that the garrison should surrender with all the honors of war, and that in return they should get con- cessions establishing fully their religious liberty. The first article of the new treaty provided that "the Roman Catholics of this kingdom shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of religion 154 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. as are consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II., and their Majesties, as soon as their affairs will permit them to summon a Parliament in this kingdom, will endeavor to procure the Roman Catholics such further security in that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance upon the ac- count of their said religion." The ink of this was scarcely dry when Catholics were ordered at the meetinof of the Irish Parliament to take an oath denying the Catholic doctrine of transub- stantiation and pronouncing the sacrifice of the Mass damnable and idolatrous. No Catholic could, of course, take such an oath, and the de- sired result was brought about. The Irish Par- liament consisted exclusively of Protestants. The penal code first took precautions against the education of Catholics. They were forbidden to keep school in Ireland and were prohibited at the same time to send their children to be edu- cated abroad ; then they were disarmed, and statutes were passed prohibiting the makers of weapons from receiving Catholic apprentices, and that authorized the authorities to search for arms in the houses of Catholics by night and by day. Catholic priests were commanded to leave the kingdom before May 9th, 1668. The bishops and priests who ventured to enter the country were subjected to imprisonment and banishment for the first offence, and put to death on the second. In THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 157 the reien of Anne the code was rendered still more severe. In order further to prevent the chance of education, a Catholic could not employ or act as a private tutor. He could not buy land, and if he did possess land he was obliged to leave it in equal parts among all his children, so that the papist land might be distributed and have no chance of accumulating. Then there was an atrocious law by which an eldest son, on becoming a Protestant, could obtain possession of the entire land and disinherit the rest of his relatives. A Catholic could not have a lease for more than thirty-one years. All the Civil Service, all the Municipalities, all the Army and the Navy, and the Professions, except that of medicine, were closed to the Catholics. A Catholic could not go more than five miles from his house without a pass- port. He could not keep a horse above the value of ^5. If the farm of a Catholic yielded one-third more than the yearly rent a Protestant by swearing to that fact could evict him ; and ii a Protestant could be proved guilty of holding an estate in trust for a Catholic he could be dis- possessed. The Penal Code invaded domestic life. A son becomine a Protestant could demand one-third of his father's income ; a wife be- coming a Protestant was free from her husband's control and could demand alimony. The decrees against priests were rendered also severe ; 3,000 were registered, and others were liable to death, 158 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. and in order that no further priests might be ordained no bishop was allowed in the country. Under these laws there grew up the hateful race known to Irishmen as Priest-Hunters, who for the sake of fifty pounds' reward in the case of a bishop, twenty in the case of a priest, and ten pounds in that of a school-master, betrayed min- isters of religion and the humble promoters of education to the authorities. The Catholics refused to conform to these hideous laws. Mass was said on the mountains with scouts watching to see whether the British soldiers were approaching, and many priests fell martyrs to their creed. Finally the Catholics were prevented from voting for members of Parliament or members of cor- porations. The whole code was well summed up by the judge who declared that the law did not suppose the existence of any such person as an Irish Roman Catholic, nor could the people even breathe without the surveillance of the govern- ment. T 1 CHAPTER IV. THE DESTRUCTION OF IRISH INDUSTRIES. 'HE final result of it all — -the massacre, the X confiscation, the Penal Laws — was that at the beginning of the eighteenth century the Irish Catholics were owners of just one-seventh of the soil of Ireland. On the other hand, the landlords were placed in a position that developed between them and the tenantry the worst and the fiercest passions. They were foreigners, and they had acquired the lands of the natives by robbery or by massacre. They were Protestants, and the Penal Code, making the Catholic religion a legal offence, gave to the Protestant creed a social as- cendancy. On the one side the landlords re- garded themselves as by race and by creed ele- vated as much above the tenant as ever had South Carolina planter been over negro slaves ; and on the other hand the tenant saw in the landlord a tyrant with the hated additions of foreign blood and a different creed. From this evil state of things grew up the melancholy relations between the Irish landlord and the Irish tenant which have produced in Ireland a more morbid condition of 159 1(30 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. things than exists in any other part of the world and involved the two classes in a persistent, re- lentless, sanguinary war, which is not even yet closed, the landlords on their side treating the tenants as creatures, not merely of another race and creed, but of another and inferior species. They inflicted upon them sufferings that few men would care to inflict on the lower animals ; and the tenants responded by forming assassination lodges and perpetrating murders cold-blooded, systematic, unrepented. " Of all the fatal gifts," says Mr. Froude, deal- ing with this part of the case, " which we bestowed on our unhappy possession [Ireland], the greatest was the English system of owning land. Land, properly speaking, cannot be owned by any man — it belongs to all the human race. Laws have to be made to secure the profits of their industry to those who cultivate it ; but the private property of this or that person is that which he is entitled to deal with as he pleases ; this the land never ought to be and never strictly is. In Ireland, as in all primitive civilizations, the soil was divided among the tribes. Each tribe collectively owned its district. Under the feudal system the proprietor was the Crown, as representing the nation ; while subordinate tenures were held with duties attached to them, and were liable on their non-fulfil- ment to forfeiture. In England the burden of defence was on the land. Every gentleman, ac- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 1^ cording to his estate, was bound to bring so many men into the field properly armed and accoutred. When a standing army was substituted for the old levies, the country squires served as unpaid magistrates on the commission of the peace. The country squire system was, in fact, a develop- ment of the feudal system ; and, as we gave the feudal system to Ireland, so we tried long and earnestly to give them our landownership. The in- tention, doubtless, was as good as possible in both cases, but we had taken no trouble to understand Ireland, and we failed as completely as before. The duties attached to landed property died away or were forgotten — the ownership only re- mained. The people, retaining their tribal tra- ditions, believed that they had rights upon the land on which they lived. The owner believed that there were no rights but his own. In Eng- land the rights of landlords have similarly sur- vived their duties, but they have been modified by custom or public opinion. In Ireland the pro- prietor was an alien, with the fortunes of the resi- dents upon his estates in his hands and at his mercy. He was divided from them in creed and language ; he despised them, as of an inferior race, and he acknowledged no interest in common with them. Had he been allowed to trample on them, and make them his slaves, he would have cared for them, perhaps, a*s he cared for his horses. But their persons were free, while their 1(32 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. farms and houses were his ; and thus his only object was to wring out of them the last penny which they could pay, leaving them and their children to a life scarcely raised above the level of their own pigs." Meantime the British authorities took care to aggravate all the evils of the land system by an- other set of laws. Manufactures might have drawn away a section of the people from agricul- ture, and would thus have relieved the pressure upon the soil. There would then have been less of the competition which placed the tenantry at the mercy of the landlords : the landlords would have been compelled to offer the tenant lower rents: and thus manufactures would have fulfilled a double purpose — they would have given employ- ment to the persons immediately engaged in the manufactories, and would have made life easier to those outside manufacturing - altogether : to those especially who were engaged in cultivating the soil. But even this outlet was forbidden, and a series of laws were passed, the effect and the deliberate object of which were to kill Irish manufactures. The attempts of England to interfere with Irish trade were made in two directions, namely, through legislative enactments in the English Parliament, and through the sinister influence of England over a too servile Irish Parliament. Looking at the relative commercial positions of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 1 fto England and Ireland at the present day, we are apt to overlook the fact that they were considered on terms of greater natural equality in past years, and that any advantage was rather on the side of the now poorer country. England had always been jealous of the least prospect of Irish prosperity ; but it was only in the reign of Charles II. that- any direct attempt was made to interfere with her growing industries. Ireland was, as of old, " rich in cattle ; " and at this time had a larore cattle-trade with England. Acts were passed in 1660-3 prohibiting all exports from Ireland to the colonies, also prohibiting the importation into England of Irish cattle, declaring the latter to be "a publtck nuisance;" likewise forbidding the importation of Irish sheep, beef, pork, and, later on, of butter and cheese. Ire- land was also omitted from the " Navigation Act," in consequence of which no goods could thenceforward be carried in Irish-built ships under penalty of forfeiture of ship and cargo. The result of these acts was to destroy the shipping trade of the country at a blow, and to so reduce the value of cattle in Ireland that " horses which used to fetch thirty shillings each were sold for dog's meat at twelve pence each, and beeves that before brought fifty shillings were sold for ten." Unable to make a profit from growing cattle, the Irish turned their pastures into sheepwalks, 164 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. and set to work to improve their woollen manu- factures with such success that the angfer and jealousy of English traders were once more ex- cited, and the ruin of this trade also was decided on. An address was presented in 1698 by both English Houses of Parliament to William III., complaining of the injury done to the English woollen trade by the growth of that trade in Ire- land, recommending its discouragement, and the encouragement, in lieu thereof, of the linen trade, to which both Houses promised their utmost assistance. To this address His Majesty vouch- safed the following gracious reply : " I shall do all that in me lies to discourage the woollen man- facture in Ireland, and encourage the linen man- ufacture there, and to promote the trade of England." In view of promises of encouragement of the linen trade, the Irish Parliament, moved on by the King's Irish ministers, placed forthwith a pro- hibitive duty on all flannels, serges, and such like woollen stuffs ; but, not content with this, the English Parliament passed an act prohibiting the export of Irish wool or woollen goods to any port in the world, except a few English ports, and for- bidding its shipment from any but five or six ports in Ireland. It might have been expected that the promise to promote Irish linen industry would have been honorably kept. But the promise was distinctly THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. J (55 violated. The importation of foreign linens into the kingdom was encouraged, and a disabling duty was laid on Irish sail-cloth, in which branch of the linen trade Ireland had prospered so much as to supply sails for the whole British navy. It was, however, not only in these large indus- tries that the infatuated jealousy of England was felt ; such smaller matters as the Irish trade in glass, cotton, beer, and malt being struck at by heavy prohibitive duties. " England," says Froude, writing of these laws, " governed Ireland for her own interests ... as if right and wrong had been blotted out of the statute book of the uni- verse." The general result of these successive blows at nascent Irish industries was most disastrous. The mischief was dealt, not so much on the crushed Celtic race, as on the wealthy citizens of the towns and seaports, English-descended, and the main- stay of English ascendancy. The destruction of the woollen and linen trades fell most severely on the Protestants, and in fifty years as many as 200,000 persons left the country for North America, where they afterwards formed the back- bone of resistance to England in the War of Inde- pendence. We conclude by summarizing this sad relation of facts in the words of Lord Dufferin : " From Queen Elizabeth's reign until within a few years of the Union, the various commercial 10 \QQ GLADSTONE— PARNELL. confraternities of Great Britain never for a mo- ment relaxed their relentless grip on the trades of Ireland. One by one each of our nascent in- dustries was either strangled in its birth or bound to the jealous custody of the rival interest in England, until at last every fountain of wealth was hermetically sealed, and even the traditions of commercial enterprise have perished through desuetude. What has been the consequence of such a system, pursued with relentless pertinacity for over 250 years ? This : that, debarred from every other trade and industry, the entire nation flung itself back on 'the land' with as fatal an im- pulse as when a river whose current is suddenly impeded rolls back and drowns the valley it once fertilized."* " The entire nation flung- itself back on the land," with the result that the tenants were placed at the absolute mercy of the landlords. Deprived of every other form of making a livelihood, the possession of land meant the chance of life ; the want of land, the certainty of death. With such a population craving for land as hope, food, life, the landlord was in a position as supreme as the armed keeper of the stores might be with the famished victims of a shipwreck on a raft in the middle of the ocean : and most cruelly did the landlord use the omnipotence which British laws * "Irish Emigration, and the'Tenure of Land in Ireland." THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 167 had thus placed in his hands. The pictures of Irish life in the eighteenth century are drawn, as those of the preceding centuries, mainly by Eng- lish and Protestant hands ; and they give pictures almost as horrible of the manner in which a nation can be murdered. Rack-renting' and eviction and robbery by act of Parliament had been sub- stituted for massacre by the sword, but the re- sults remained the same: the people were de- stroyed. Above all, one great weapon of the days of the gentle and poetic Spenser and of the pious Cromwell still remained. Famine was at once a means and a result. English writers of the eighteenth century teem with denunciations of the rack-renting and the other cruelties inflicted by landlords upon the tenants. Bishop Berkeley describes the landlords as " men of vulturine beaks and bowels of iron." Swift, writing about 1724, said: " These cruel land- lords are every day unpeopling the kingdom, for- bidding their miserable tenants to till the earth, ao-ainst common reason and justice, and contrary to the practice and prudence of all other nations, by which numberless families have been forced to leave the kingdom, or stroll about and increase the number of our thieves and beggars. . . . The miserable dress and diet and dwellings of the peo- ple ; the general desolation in most parts of the kingdom ; the old seats of the nobility and gentry all in ruins, and no new ones in their stead ; the 16$ GLADSTONE— PARNELL. families of farmers, who pay great rents, living in filth and nastiness, upon buttermilk and potatoes, without a shoe or stocking to their feet, or a house so convenient as an English hogsty to receive them — these, indeed, may be comfortable sights to an English spectator, who comes for a short time only to learn the language, and returns back to his own country, whither he finds all our wealth transmitted. . . . Nostra miseria magna est. There is not one argument used to prove the riches of Ireland which is not aTocncal demonstration of its poverty. . . . The rise of our rents is squeezed out of the very blood and vitals and clothes and dwell- ings of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars. . . . ' Ye are idle, ye are idle,' answered Pharaoh to the Israelites, when they complained to His Majesty that they were forced to make bricks without straw." It was the sight of mis- eries such as these that suggested to Swift his most savage and most terrible satire. It is worth while oivino- an extract from his " Modest Pro- posal for Preventing the Children of the Poor from being a Burden to their Parents." It is a most eloquent picture of Ireland in those days : "The number of souls," he writes, "in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders ; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couple who are able to maintain their THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. \Q$ own children (although I apprehend there cannot be so many under the present distresses of the kingdom). . . . The question, therefore, is how this number (one hundred and twenty thousand children annually born) shall be reared and pro- vided for? — which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impos- sible by all the methods hitherto proposed. . . . I do therefore offer it to the publick consideration, that, of the one hundred and twenty thousand chil- dren already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed. . . . That the remaining one hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. . . . I have reckoned, upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh twelve pounds, and, in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, will increase to twenty- eight pounds. I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and, therefore, very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, have the best title to the children." After dilating on the succulent properties of infant flesh for nurses : " I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farm- ers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included ; and I believe no gentleman would re- 170 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. pine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, I have said, will make four dishes of excellent, nutritive meat, when he has only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord and grow popular among the tenants; the mother will have eisrht shillings neat profit, and be fit for work till she produces an- other child." He then suggests to the " more thrifty (such as the times require) to flay the car- cass, the skin of which, artificially dressed, would make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen ; " " the establishment of shambles, butchers being sure not to be wanting," and the " buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife as we do roasting pigs." Having thus disposed of the infants, he came to the grown-up portion of the " beggars," and at the suggestion of " a very worthy person, a true lover of his country," recommends that "the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads and maidens, not exceeding four- teen years, nor under twelve — so great a number of both sexes being ready to starve in every county for want of work and service. . . . Neither, indeed, could he deny that if the same use were made of several plump, young girls in this town [Dublin], who, without one single groat to their fortunes, cannot stir abroad without a chair, and appear at a play-house and assemblies in foreign THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 171 fineries which they never will pay for, the king- dom would not be the worse." And lastly, as to " these vast number of poor people who are aged, diseased, and maimed," he was " not in the least pained upon that matter, because it was very well known that they were every day dying and rot- ting by cold, famine, and filth, and vermin, as fast as could be reasonably expected." "Such," comments Healy, in his "Word for Ireland," " is the picture of Irish wretchedness when our population was only one million and a half, and before the phrase ' congested districts ' was invented." The result of this state of things was that semi- starvation was chronic throughout Ireland and absolute famine periodic. In 1725-26-27-2% there were bad harvests ; and in 1 739 there was severe frost. In every one of these cases there was famine. In 1 739 there was a prolonged frost, with the result that in 1740-41 there was one of the most severe famines in Irish history. This was the first occasion on which was observed the phenomenon that, as will be seen afterwards, has played a terrible and important part in Irish life. The frost brought on potato-rot, and the potato- rot brought on universal famine. There are plenty of contemporaneous records of the suffer- ing which this created. "Want and misery in every face, the rich unable to relieve the poor, the roads spread with dead and dying ; mankind of 172 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the color of the weeds and nettles on which they feed ; two or three, sometimes more, on a car, going to the grave, for the want of bearers to carry them, and many buried only in the fields and ditches where they perished. Fluxes and malig- nant fevers swept off multitudes of all sorts, so that whole villages were laid waste. If one for every house in the kingdom died, and that is very probable, the loss must be upwards ol 400,000 souls. This is the third famine I have seen in twenty years, and the severest ; these calamities arise from the want of proper tillage laws to pro- tect the husbandmen." " I have seen," says Bishop Barclay, " the laborer endeavoring to work at his spade, but fainting for the want of food, and forced to quit it. I have seen the aged father eat- ing grass like a beast, and in the anguish of his soul wishing for his dissolution. I have seen the helpless orphan exposed on the dunghill, and none to take him in for fear of infection ;' and I have seen the hungry infant sucking at the breast of the already expired parent." " I am well acquainted," said Fitzgibbon in the Irish House of Commons, in 1787 — a man who will reappear as one of the most violent sup- porters of British rule in Ireland — " with the prov- ince of Munster, and I know that it is impossible for human wretchedness to exceed that of the miserable peasantry of that province. I know that the unhappy tenantry are ground to powder THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 175 by relentless landlords. I know that far from being able to give the clergy their just dues [Protestant tithes], they have not food or raiment for themselves ; the landlord grasps the whole. The poor people of Munster live in a more abject state of poverty than human nature can be sup- posed able to bear ; their miseries are intoler- able." These sufferings led to reprisals on the part of the tenants ; and from this period there dates the rising of the organizations which grave back assas- sinations in answer to rack-rents and eviction. "White Boys," "White Feet," "Peep-of-DayBoys," " Hearts of Steel" — these are among the many designations which these bodies were called by. They were sometimes founded by Catholics and sometimes by Protestants. The " Hearts of Steel," for instance, were all Protestants, who rose against the exactions on the estates of Lord Doneoal. The Irish Parliament answered the ex- cesses of the tenants by laws the savagery of which can scarcely be understood at this day. Death became a penalty for the most trivial offence, and every assize was followed by num- bers of executions. This, then, was the condition to which British law, confiscations, and the land system had brought the Irish nation. The vast majority of the natives were in a state of beggary and starvation. The land was over- run ; manufactures were dead ; between the land- 176 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. lords and the tenants there raged civil war. All these phenomena will unfortunately reappear in the earlier part of the present century. For the present we have to pause to describe a brilliant but too brief interval in the tale of monotonous gloom. We have to tell the story of the Irish Parliament CHAPTER V. THE STCRY OF THE IRISH PARLIAMENT. IT will not be necessary for the purposes of this book to trace the history of the Irish Parlia-, ment back to the dim ages in which it took its origin. It will suffice for our purpose to start from the point when the controversy between the demands of an Irish Parliament for supremacy in Ireland and the demands of the English Parlia- ment to control its proceedings came to be a burning question. The first great enactment which limited the power of the Irish Parliament is known as Poyn- ing's Law. This was passed in the reign of Henry VII. The Irish had taken the side of the Pretender Perkin Warbeck, and Sir Edward Poyning had been sent over by the King to put down the rebellion. Poyning, after some doubt- ful successes in the field, called together a Parlia- ment in Drogheda, and immediately induced it to pass a series of severe enactments against the native Irish and those English who had taken up their side and their habits. It has been seen in a preceding chapter how efforts had been made 177 178 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. by means of the most savage laws to keep up the separation between the two races, and how, in spite of these things, the two races had com- bined and had gradually melted in spite of their different origins into one common nationality. In a Parliament which had met in the city of Kil- kenny in the reign of Edward III., the act known as the Statute of Kilkenny had been passed, by which it had been made high treason to bring up, marry with, foster or stand sponsor to a Celtic native of Ireland. It was also enacted that any Englishman who should dress himself after the fashion of the Irish people, adopt an Irish name, speak the Gaelic tongue, wear a moustache, as was the custom in Ireland, or ride without a sad- dle, as was also an Irish custom, had his property confiscated or was imprisoned for life if he was poor. Poyning's Parliament confirmed the Statute of Kilkenny, with important modifications made necessary by the failure of the previous enact- ment. For instance, the portions of the Statute of Kilkenny were omitted which prohibited the use of the Irish language, for by this time that language had become common even in the Eng- lish pale, and the Custom of riding without a sad- dle had also become so general that it was deemed hopeless to try to prevent it. The im- portant business, however, done by the Parlia- ment of Drogheda was the passing of an act THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 179 which made two memorable and fatal laws. First, no Parliament was in future to be held in Ireland "until the chief governor and council had certified to the King, under the Great Seal, as well the causes and considerations as the acts they designed to pass, and till the same should be approved by the King and Council." The effect of this act was that when any bill was passed by the Irish Parliament, it had to be approved by the English Privy Council, and the act had to be for- warded to England for the purpose of receiving their sanction or disapproval. Often bills were returned by the Privy Council completely di- vested of their original meaning. -On being re- turned to the Irish House of Commons no further alteration in the bill was permitted. The effect of this disastrous act was to deprive the Irish Parliament of any real power; the au- thority given to the English Parliament was fre- quently^and scandalously used, and prevented the application to Ireland of any of that broadening of popular liberties which had become apparent in England. For a considerable period the Eng- lish settlers in Ireland raised some objection to this degradation of their Parliament— for it was their own Parliament— but in later years they fully accepted it. It was made up of men of their creed and race. The Parliament was deemed by them to serve a useful purpose, because it was through the decrees of that body they were able 180 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. to finish by chicanery the transfer of the soil that had been begun by the sword. The Irish Parlia- ment was employed to pass acts of attainder and forfeiture by which the estates of the Catholic Irish landlords were handed over to the English Protestant settlers, to confirm the defective titles that had been won on the field or in the law courts, and finally to pass the penal code by which the Catholics were excluded from the ownership of property and all possible share in the govern- ment of their country. But as time went on, the Irish Protestants found that the authority of the English Parliament was intended for use against all men of Irish birth whatever their creed or their orio-inal de- scent. The great positions of the country — the judgeships, the bishoprics, the places in the House of Peers and the House of Commons, the com- mands in the army and the navy, and all the high offices of state, were, in most cases, conferred on Englishmen. Englishmen were the "fathers in God " of dioceses that they never saw ; sate for constituencies which they had never cast eyes upon ; drew the salaries of offices in which they had never done a day's work; and outside all these great things stood shivering the Irish Prot- estants of English blood, naked and scorned. Meantime, the poverty of the country became daily deeper; the exaction of rent grew more difficult ; the kingdom was infested with bands of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 181 wandering beggars ; and gentlemen of title, long descent and of ancestral homes sharing- in the general ruin, found the refusal of all positions a serious agorravation of their misfortunes. In the days of Dean Swift the government of Ireland was almost entirely in the hands of the Arch- bishop of Armagh, Primate Boulter. The cor- respondence of this prelate survives, and through it we are enabled to get many valuable glimpses of what the government of Ireland meant in his days. " Boulter," writes Lecky, in " Leaders of Public Opinion in Ireland," "was an honest but narrow man, extremely charitable to the poor, and liberal to the extent of warmly advocating the endowment of the Presbyterian clergy; but he was a strenuous supporter of the Penal Code, and the main object of his policy was to prevent the rise of an Irish party. His letters are chiefly on questions of money and patronage, and it is curious to observe how entirely all religious mo- tives appear to have been absent from his mind in his innumerable recommendations for church dignities. Personal claims, and above all the fitness of the candidate to carry out the English policy, seem to have been in these cases the only elements considered. His uniform policy was to divide the Irish Catholics and the Irish Protes- tants, to crush the former by disabling laws, to destroy the independence of the latter by con- ferring the most lucrative and influential posts J82 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. upon Englishmen, and thus to make all" Irish in- terests strictly subservient to those of England. The continual burden of his letters is the neces- sity of sending over Englishmen to fill important Irish posts. " The only way to keep things quiet here," he writes, "and make them easy to the Ministry is by filling the great places with natives of England." He complains bitterly that only nine of the twenty-two Irish bishops were Eng- lishmen, and urges the Ministers " gradually to get as many English on the Bench here as can decently be sent hither." On the death of the Chancellor, writing to the Duke of Newcastle, he speaks of "the uneasiness we are under at the report that a native of this place is like to be made Lord Chancellor." "I must request of your Grace," he adds, "that you would use your influence to have none but Englishmen put into the great places here for the future." When a vacancy in the See of Dublin was likely to occur he writes: "I am entirely of opinion that the new archbishop ought to be an English- man either already on the bench here or in Eng- land. As for a native of this 'country I can hardly doubt that, whatever his behavior has been and his promises may be, when he is once in that sta- tion he will put himself at the head of the Irish interest in the church at least, and he will natur- ally carry with him the college and most of the clergy here." EVICTED— HOMELESS. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. jg;"} Up to this time the protests against the degra- dation of the Irish Parliament had been confined to the native Irish. In a famous assemblage, known as the Confederation of Kilkenny, the claim of the Irish Parliament to the exclusive power to make laws for Ireland had been asserted ; and it was laid down with even more emphasis in a Parliament called together by James II. during his war with William III. It was not till 1 698 that the first Protestant voice was raised in em- phatic protest. The author of this protest was Molyneux — one of the members for Trinity Col- lege ; Molyneux was, of course, a Protestant; no- body but a Protestant at the time had a seat in the Parliament. He was a man of great learning and ability ; of which among many other proofs is the fact that he was the " ingenious friend" to whom Locke dedicated his immortal essay. Moly- neux in his book, " The Case of Ireland Stated," laid down the claim of the Irish Parliament in clear and unmistakable lan In 1821 the question was again raised, O'Connell showed that Ireland had seven millions to England's twelve millions of popula- tion ; and that on this basis of population Ireland should have 291 members; and that taking rev- enue and population as joint basis, Ireland should have 176 members. As a matter of fact, she never since the Union had more than 105. The scheme by which Ireland was cheated in the question of debts is well summarized in the following extracts from Mitchell's " History of Ireland:" "In 18 1 6 was passed the act for consolidating the British and Irish Exchequers — it is the 56th George III., cap. 98. It became operative on the 1st January, 181 7. " The meaning of this consolidation was — charging Ireland with the whole debt of England, pre-union and post-union ; and in like manner charging England with the whole Irish debt. " Now, the enormous English national debt, both before and after the Union, was contracted for purposes which Ireland had not only no in- terest in promoting, but a direct and vital interest in contravening and resisting ; that is, it had been 228 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. contracted to crush American and French liberty, and to destroy those very powers which were the natural allies of Ireland. " But this is not all. We have next to see the proportions which the two debts bore to each other. It will be remembered that, by the terms of the so-called 'Union,' "I. Ireland was to be protected from any liabil- ity on account of the British national debt con- tracted prior to the Union. " II. The separate debt of each country being first provided for by a separate charge, Ireland was then to contribute two-seventeenths towards the joint or common expenditure of the United Kingdom for twenty years ; after which her con- tribution was to be made proportionate to her ability, as ascertained at stated periods of revision by certain tests specified in the act. " III. Ireland was not only promised that she never should have any concern with the then ex- isting British debt, but she was also assured that her taxation should not be raised to the standard of Great Britain until the following conditions should occur : " i. That the two debts should come to bear to each other the proportion of fifteen parts for Great Britain to two parts for Ireland ; and, " 2. That the respective circumstances of the two countries should admit of uniform taxation. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 229 "It must be further borne in mind that, pre- vious to the Union, the national debt of Ireland was a mere trifle. It had been enormously in- creased by charging to Ireland's special account, first, the expenses of getting up the rebellion ; next, the expenses of suppressing it ; and, lastly, the expenses of bribing Irish noble lords and gentlemen to sell their country at this Union. Thus the Irish debt, which before the Union had been less than three millions sterling-, was set down by the Act of Union at nearly twenty-seven millions. "On the 20th of June, 1804 (four years after the Union had passed), Mr. Foster, Chancellor of the Irish Exchequer, observed, that whereas in 1794 the Irish debt did not exceed two millions and a half, it had in 1803 risen to forty-three mil- lions ; and that during the current year it was increased to nearly fifty-three millions. " During the long and costly war against France, and the second American war, it happened, by some very extraordinary species of book-keeping, that while the English debt was not quite doubled, the Irish debt was more than quadrupled; as if Ireland had twice the interest which England had in forcing the Bourbons back upon France, and in destroying the commerce of America. "Thus, in 18 1 6, when the Consolidation Act was passed, the whole funded debt of Ireland was found to be ,£130,561,037. By this management 230 Ct.ADSTONE— PARNELL. the Irish debt, which in 1S01 had been to the British as one to sixteen and a half, was forced up to bear to the British debt the ratio of one to seven and a half. This was the proportion re- quired by the Act of Union as a condition of sub- jecting Ireland to indiscriminate taxation with Great Britain. Mr. Gladstone sums up admirably in the Liver- pool speech already quoted the immediate con- sequences of the Union : "How have we atoned," he asked, "since the Union for what we did to bring- about the Union ? Now, mind, I am making my appeal to the honor of Englishmen. I want to show to Englishmen who have a sense of honor that they have a debt of honor that remains to this hour not fully paid. The Union was followed by these six conse- quences — firstly, broken promises ; secondly, the passing of bad laws ; thirdly, the putting down of liberty ; fourthly, the withholding from Ireland benefits that we took to ourselves ; fifthly, the giving to force and to force only what we ought to have given to honor and justice ; and, sixthly, the removal and postponement of relief to the most crying grievances. (Cheers.) I will give you the proof in no longer space than that in which I have read these words. Broken promises — the promises of the Roman Catholics of eman- cipation and the promise of endowment. Eman- cipation was never given for twenty-nine years. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 231 It would have been given if the Irish Parliament had remained — you would have been given it in the time of Lord Fitzwilliam. It was never given for twenty-nine years after the Union, but no endowment. Well, you will say, and I should say, ' for that I cannot be sorry.' (Cheers.) I cannot wish that the Roman Catholics should have received endowment. But on the other hand, it was a base thing to break your promises to them. Passing bad laws — yes, slow as it was to pass good laws, the English Parliament could pass bad laws quick enough. In 1815 it passed a law most oppressive to the Irish tenant. It was the only law relating to the Irish land of any con- sequence that ever received serious attention until the year 1870. Restraint of liberty. What happened after the Union? In 1800 the people met largely in Dublin. Almost all the Roman Catholics of wealth and influence in the country, and a great deal of the Protestant power, too, met in Dublin for the purpose of protesting aeainst the Union. Not the slightest heed was given to their protest. In 1820 there was a county meeting of the shire of Dublin for the purpose of paying compliments to George IV. The people moved a counter-resolution and this counter-resolution complained of the Act of Union. The sheriff refused to hear them, re- fused to put their motion, left the room, and sent in the soldiers to break up a peaceful county 232 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. meeting. (Shame.) Oh, it is shame, indeed Fourthly, they withheld from Ireland what we took ourselves. We took the franchise. The franchise in Ireland remained a very restricted franchise until last year. In England it had been largely extended, as you know, by the Acts of 1867 an d 1868. In England you thoroughly re- formed your municipalities, and have true popular bodies, but in Ireland the number of them was cut down to twelve, and after a battle of six years, during which Parliament had to spend the chief part of its time upon the work, I think about twelve municipalities were constituted in Ireland with highly restricted powers. Inequality was branded upon Ireland at every step. Education was established in this country, denominational education, right and left, according as the people desired it; but in Ireland denominational educa- tion was condemned, and until within the last few years it was not possible for any Roman Catholic to obtain a degree in Ireland if he had received his education in a denominational college. "Such is the system of inequality under which Ireland was governed. We have given only to fear what we ought to have given to justice. I refer to the Duke of Wellington, who, in 1821, himself said with a manly candor, that the fear of civil war and nothing else was the motive for, I might almost say, for his coercing the House of Lords, certainly for bringing the House of Lords, THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 933 to vote a change which it was well known that the large majority of them utterly detested. Well, sixthly, we shamefully postponed the relief of crying grievances— yes, we shamefully postponed it. In 18 1 5 we passed an act to make infinitely less independent the position of the Irish tenant. Not till 1843 did we inquire into his condition. Sir Robert Peel has the honor of having ap- pointed the Devon Commission — that Devon Commission represented that a large number of the population of Ireland were submitting with exemplary and marvellous patience — these peo- ple whom we are told you cannot possibly trust — were submitting with marvellous and unintel- ligible patience to a lot more bitter and deplora- ble than the lot of any people in the civilized world. Sir James Graham in the House of Commons ad- mitted that the description applied to three and a half millions of the people of Ireland, and yet with all that we went on certainly doing a great deal of good, improving the legislation of this country in a wonderful manner, especially by the great struggle of Free Trade, but not till 1870 was the first effort made— seventy years after the Union — to administer in any serious de- gree to the wants of the Irish tenant, the Irish occupier — that means in fact the wants and ne- cessities of the mass of the people of Ireland. (Cheers.) I say that that is a deplorable narra- tive, it is a narrative which cannot be shaken. I 234 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. have been treading - upon ground that our an- tagonists carefully avoid. It is idle to say that we have done some good to Ireland. Yes, we have done some good to Ireland by the Land Act of 1870 and 1 88 1, and by the Disestablishment of the Irish Church we have done some good to Ireland, and by the Enlargement of Maynooth grants Sir Robert Peel did good to Ireland. Yes, and it is the success of these very acts alone that the Paper Unionists can claim as showing that we have done good to Ireland. These very acts are down to the present day denounced by the tory party — the Church Act as sacrilege, the Land Act as confiscation. (Cheers.) I humbly say it is time that we should bethink ourselves of this question of honor and see how the matter stands, and set very seriously about the duty, the sacred duty, the indispensable and overpowering duty of effacing from history, if efface them we can, these terrible stains which the acts of England have left upon the fame of England, and which constitute the debt of honor to Ireland that it is high time to consider and to pay." We have already spoken of the first charge of Mr. Gladstone against the Union, that of broken promises with reference to Catholic emancipation. The second charge is that of making bad laws, which for the most part were ap- plied to the occupation of land. The new Parlia- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 235 ment had scarcely been in existence twenty years when already there had been passed a whole new code of laws, the main purpose of which was to enable landlords to get rid of their ten- ants at the very earliest moment possible. In 1816 an act was passed which gave the landlords power they never had before to distrain. Under this act the landlords were able to do things that must be astonishing to Americans with their protection in the homestead laws for a man's household and instruments of labor. Under the statute referred to the landlord had the power to seize growing crops, to keep them till reaped, to save and sell them when reaped, and to charge upon the tenant the accumulation of expenses. Under this act the landlord had the power to ruin the tenant by seizing his growing crop. A.nother statute, however, was necessary to complete the authority of the land- lord and the helplessness of the tenant. Under an act passed in 1818 the landlord received the power to turn his tenant out of his holding. Act followed act then, in quick succession, for .the purpose of making eviction easy. Under one, for instance, if a landlord brought an action against a tenant for ejectment, he had the power to make the tenant give security for costs. The working of this was that he did not have money saved sufficient to defend a case. The case was adjudicated against him as though he had no de- 236 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. fence. In other words in the condition in which the Irish farmers then were, this act gave the landlord a certainty of a verdict in his favor in all cases in which he might care to go to law. Then another act diminished the time which could elapse between the landlord obtaining his verdict and the tenant leaving his fields and house. Thus at every point the landlord was armed cap- a-pie ; the tenant was defenceless. Never in the history of mankind was there a code more com- plete in the interests of one class and against the interests of another. The law was well summed up by an Irish judge. "The entire landlord and tenant code," said Baron Penne- father, " goes to give increased facilities to the landlords." It should be remarked, too, that these laws were not only different from the laws of all other civilized countries in enabling- the landlord to throw the tenant and his family on the world starving and penniless, but they were different even from laws passed in the landlords' favor by the landlords of England. "The laws," said Mr. W. Pickens, in his " Economy of Ireland," " in the landlords' favor are already more summary and stronger than they are in England, and he is yet calling for additional assistance." The tenant then, in Ireland, stood in a unique position. Eorming as he did more than half the population he was left absolutely at the mercy of the landlord. Ignorant and timid in THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 237 most cases he had never gone more than a few miles beyond the limits of his own farm ; he had never learned any occupation but that of farming. In other countries he could find in a near town a factory which opened wide its doors to willing la- bor. But, as has been seen, the Union had com- pleted the work that the laws of the Imperial Parliament had begun. Manufactories were in ruins ; the looms were silent ; the artisan either fled to other countries or remained in the towns to increase the ever-growing army of deso- lation. To the peasant, then, eviction meant emigration, if by some lucky chance the landlord had left him so much money as would pay for his passage to America, and in the vast majority of cases the tenant had to starve or enter the work-house. To be allowed to remain in his farm was life ; to be evicted was death. The landlord then, by the code of the Imperial Parlia- ment, was given power of life or death over the tenant. It has already been shown how this terrible au- thority, for which no body of men would be fitted, was especially dangerous in the hands of such a body as the Irish landlords had become under the Union. Every day they were more and more divorced from the people in sympathy and in interest, and thus it was that the Irish landlords perpetrated upon the Irish tenants cruelties that seem doings of human beings without hearts to 238 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. feel, and without consciences to reproach. It has been seen through various quotations from the days of Spenser down to those of Lord Clare, who* helped to carry the Union, that the landlords had shamefully rack-rented their tenants during all their history. The reader will not forget such sentences as these. Edmund Spenser said : "The landlords there most shamefully rack their ten- ants." Dean Swift uses these words: "Rents squeezed out of the blood and vitals and clothes and dwellings of the tenants, who live worse than English beggars." To these may be added two quotations, the one from a great American and the other from a great English writer. Benjamin Franklin said : " The bulk of the people are ten- ants, extremely poor, living in the most sordid wretchedness, in dirty hovels of mud and straw, and clothed only in rags. . . . Had I never been in the American colonies, but were to form my judgment of civil society by what I have lately seen, I should never advise a nation of savages to admit of civilization, for I assure you that in the possession and enjoyment of the various comforts of life, compared to these people, every Indian is a gentleman, and the effect of this kind of civiliza- tion seems to be the depressing multitudes below the savage state, that a few may be raised above It. Arthur Young wrote : " It must be very ap- parent to every traveller through the country that THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 239 the laboring poor are treated with harshness, and are in all respects so little considered, that their want of importance seems a perfect contrast to their situation in England. A long series of op- pressions, aided by many ill-judged laws, have brought landlords into a habit of exerting a very lofty superiority, and their vassals into that of an almost unlimited submission ; speaking a lan- guage that is despised, professing a religion that is abhorred, and being disarmed, the poor find themselves "in many cases slaves even in the bosom of written liberty." But evil as was the system before the Union, it became still worse after the Union, when the landlords had no longer the Irish population around them to look on in reproach and gradually to punish by the use of constitutional weapons. One of the. main causes of this was the increase of absenteeism. On this subject we have abun- dant material for forming a judgment. In a well- known work — " Dalton's History of the County Dublin " — a comparative table is drawn up of the annual absentee rental: 1691, ,£136,018; 1729, ,£627,799; 1782, ,£2,223.222; 1783, ,£1,608,932; 1804, £"3,000,000; 1830, ,£4,000,000; 1838, ,£5,- 000,000. Absentee landlords naturally had no feeling about their tenants except that of drawing as much money from them as they could. And this is one of the many reasons why the Irish landlord 240 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. compares unfavorably with the English landlord. In England, with all his faults, the landlord is al- ways conscious of the sense of his social obliga- tions to his tenantry. Thus in hard times the English landlord and the English farmer have managed to divide their loss between them, and in sickness and misery the children of the English farmer or of the English laborer have been vis- ited by the Ladies Bountiful of the landlord's house. But in Ireland the absentee-landlord never saw his tenants. To him they were mere ciphers, representing so much money for his interests and his pleasures. Testimony is unanimous as to the terrible state of things which was in this manner brought about ; and the testimony is often strongest from English pens. " Landlords in Ireland, among the lesser orders, extort exorbitant rents out of the bowels, sweat and rags of the poor, and then turn them adrift ; they are corrupt magistrates and jobbing grand-jurors, oppressing and plundering the mis- erable people." — Bryan's View of Ireland. " The Irish country gentleman," says the Dub- lin Pilot of 1833, "is, we are sorry to say, the most incorrigible being that infests the face of the globe. In the name of law he tramples on jus- tice ; boasting of superiority of Christian creed, he violates Christian charity — is mischievous in the name of the Lord." So speak these writers about the Irish landlord. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE 241 The House of Commons Committee of 1824, after having carefully taken the evidence, said : " The situation of the ejected tenantry, or of those who are obliged to give up their small holdings in order to promote the consolidation of farms, is necessarily most deplorable. It would be impos- sible for language to convey an idea of the state of distress to which the ejected tenantry have been reduced, or of the disease, misery or even vice which they have propagated where they have settled ; so that not only they who have been ejected have been rendered miserable, but they have carried with them and propagated that misery. They have increased the stock of labor, they have rendered the habitations of those who have received them more crowded, they have given occasion to the dissemination of disease, they have been obliged to resort to theft and all manner of vice and iniquity to procure subsist- ence ; but what is perhaps the most painful of all, a vast number of them have perished of want." By-and-by will be seen the terrible Nemesis which came upon the Irish people owing to a flagrant violation of all law and all sense in these proceedings. This state of affairs, attested to by the statements of travellers and the evidences given before committees, laid the foundation for one of the most wide-spread and horrible famines in human history. Meantime, what had the 242 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Imperial Parliament been doing? Despite all the testimony of travellers, despite all the evi- dence of witnesses, in spite of all the reports of committees, Parliament refused to do one single thing, to pass one single act for the relief of the Irish tenant. All this time the Imperial Parliament had been busy with another form of legislation. The Act of Union had been passed in spite of the wishes of the Irish people. It was a government of tyranny and not of Union, and accordingly it pro- voked revolts and had to be maintained by the same methods as are sacred to despotism through- out all the world's history. The landlords, driv- ing out a number of starving and desperate wretches, upon the world without the protection of the laws or hope from the legislature, turned them into criminals of the most desperate char- acter. Wholesale eviction led to the formation of secret societies in which the tenant sought to inspire in the mind of the landlord that fear of wrong-doing and cruelty which under a native legislature would have been imposed by the laws. With these inevitable outbreaks of frenzy, igno- rance and despair the Imperial Parliament showed itself extraordinarily ready to deal, but always in the same senseless and heartless way. Coercion Act followed Coercion Act. In 1800, 1801, 1802, 1803, 1804 an d 1805 the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. It was again suspended from 1807 to THE. GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 243 1810; from 1814 to 181 7; from 1822 to 1828; from 1829 to 183 1 ; from 1833 to 1835. There were in addition several other and special Coer- cion Acts. Often there were two Coercion Acts enforced in the same year. In the first year of the Union five exceptional laws were passed. Many of these acts abolished trial by jury, some established martial law. Transportation, flog- ging, death were the common sentences. We will now draw up a list of the Coercion Acts, passed during the Act of Union : 1800 to 1805. Habeas Corpus Suspension. Seven Coercion Acts. 1807. February 1st, Coercion Act. Habeas Corpus Suspension. August 2d, Insurrection Act. 1808-9. Habeas Corpus Suspension. 18 14 to 18 1 6. Habeas Corpus Suspension. Insurrection Act. 181 7. Habeas Corpus Suspension. One Coercion Act. 1822 to 1830. Habeas Corpus Suspension. Two Coercion Acts in 1822, and one in 1823. 1830. Importation of Arms Act. 1 83 1. Whiteboy Act. 1 83 1. Stanley's Arms Act. 1832. Arms and Gunpowder Act. 1833. Suppression of Disturbance. 1833. Change of Venue Act. 1834. Disturbances, Amendment, and Con- tinuance. 244 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. 1834 1835 1836 1838 1839 184O 184I 184I 1843 1843 Acts. 1844 1845 Works 1845 1846 1847 1848 1848 1848 1848 1849 1850 1851 1853 1854 1855 1856 1858 i860 Arms and Gunpowder Act. Public Peace Act. Another Arms Act. Another Arms Act. Unlawful Oaths Act. Another Arms Act. Outrages Act. Another Arms Act. Another Arms Act. Act Consolidating all Previous Coercion Unlawful Oaths Act. Additional Constables near Public Act. Unlawful Oaths Act. Constabulary Enlargement. Crime and Outrage Act. Treason .Amendment Act. Removal of Arms Act. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. Another Oaths Act. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. Crime and Outrage Act. Unlawful Oaths Act. Crime and Outrage Act. Crime and Outrage Act. Crime and Outrage Act. Peace Preservation Act. Peace Preservation Act. Peace Preservation Act. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 245 1862. Peace Preservation Act. 1862. Unlawful Oaths Act. 1865. Peace Preservation Act 1866. Suspension of Habeas Corpus Act 1866. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 1867. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 1868. Suspension of Habeas Corpus. 1870. Peace Preservation Act. 1871. Protection of Life and Property. 1 87 1. Peace Preservation Con. 1873. Peace Preservation Act. 1875. Peace Preservation Act. 1875. Unlawful Oaths Act. 1 88 1 to 1882. Peace Preservation Act (sus- pending Habeas Corpus). 188 1 to 1886. Arms Act. 1882 to 1885. Crimes Act. 1886 to 1887. Arms Act. Under a system like this it was inevitable that there should be discontent ; and, whenever there seemed even a chance of success, open rebellion. In most of the active insurrections Irish Protes- tants took a leading- part. Of the heroic men who sacrificed their lives to rescue their country from the dread evils that the Act of Union was inflicting upon it the best remembered is Robert Emmet. Emmet was a young man of good family and position; and had inherited from his father what was considered a good fortune in those days. In conjunction with Thomas Addis Emmet, 246 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. who still is remembered as one of New York's greatest lawyers — he and several other Protes- tants attempted a rebellion ; the rebellion failed, and he was hanged in Thomas street, Dublin. The spot is still pointed out; is the object of reverent attention ; and the memory of Emmet is celebrated every year in almost all the important cities of America. Meantime the condition of the country grew worse from day to day. In 1817 there was an extensive famine ; and it is recorded that the people in several parts of the country were well content to live on boiled nettles. In 1822 there was an even severer and more extensive famine. Sir John Newport, a well-known and prominent member of the Imperial Parliament, attempted over and over again to extort some attention from the Legislature to the dreadful state of things in Ireland. He pointed out that in one parish fifteen had already died of hunger ; that twenty-eight more were past recovery ; that 1 20 were down in famine fever. He went on to state another fact which throws a lurid lio-ht on the state to which the Union had reduced the Irish people ; in one parish he said the priest had given extreme unction — the sacrament which is administered in the Catholic Church to those only who are in almost certain danger of imme- diate death — to every man, woman and child in the place ; every one of them he expected to THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 247 die. But the Imperial Parliament, which had undertaken the government of Ireland, had no remedy to offer for this state of things. A com- mittee was appointed ; evidence was taken, some specimens of which have already been quoted; but the one thing the Legislature had to offer as a remedy for the national disease of hunger was a small grant of money in the shape of alms. The close of the war with Napoleon aggravated all the evils from which the Irish farmer was suffering, by causing a great depreciation in the price of agricultural produce; and also by the removal of the one reason the British authorities had for being ordinarily civil to the Irish nation. And thus the country went down deeper daily in the slough of poverty, despond, despair. Taxes were rising, rents increasing. The drain on the country through absenteeism in each successive year became larger, and entire or partial famine followed each other at shorter intervals and with intensified suffering. The picture is com- pleted by the passage of Coercion laws in the abundance already set forth, so as to stifle the voice of impatient and savage hunger, and by the sanguinary crimes in which tiger passions and tiger appetites avenged or sought to protect themselves. The assizes rarely ended without the hanging of several unhappy peasants. The fate of the Irish peasant came to this ; he begged the right to eat two meals of potatoes '248 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. and salt in his own land and out of the earnings of his own arms and capital. For potatoes were all that the landlords left to the consumption of the tenants ; occasionally the peasant was refused even this small privilege ; with wife and child was put on the roadside to die. Then he went to the assassination lodge ; and risked, and perhaps lost, life to defend the right to two meals of po- tatoes daily. This tale of wrong, poverty and hopeless mis- ery became so loud and plain that in 1810 the Repeal of the Union, the fatal act by which the sufferings of the country had been so terribly ag- gravated, was demanded at a great meeting in the city of Dublin, at which Protestants and Catholics joined in equally fervent denunciation of the de- struction of the Irish Parliament. But the demand fell upon deaf ears, and that policy was plainly hopeless. By a number of circumstances not re- quiring elaborate description, Catholic Emancipa- tion was held to be a more practicable reform, and was pushed to the front of all other Irish demands. The leader of this great movement was Daniel O'Connell. O'Connell is one of his- tory's most marvellous products. In physique he had the stamp of strength and greatness. Tall, brawny, muscular, active, he was of dauntless courage, of exhaustless industry, of never-sleeping energy. His oratory, perhaps, has received more unanimous and more lofty eulogy than that of any DANIEL O'CONNELL, THE GREAT IRISH AGITATOR. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 25] other leader in history. He was equally potent with a great monster gathering of his own people on the Irish hillside and in the House of Com- mons, surrounded by foes and compelled to ad- here most closely to dry statement of fact. He had every quality of the orator — an abounding humor, immense powers of pathos, close reason- ing, masterly preparation and skilful presentation of facts. Laughter and tears followed each other in rapid succession when he addressed his own people, and when he confronted opponents there was no fallacy which he was not able to pierce and annihilate. In addition to all this he had great organizing genius. Above all things, he was rich in the orator's mightiest weapon ; his voice was like the sound of some strange music ; powerful as an organ — as varied in tone as the violin ; as artfully modulated as the throat of the prima donna. Armed with the single weapon of his tongue alone, he achieved some of the great- est victories of history. For nearly half a century he exercised over a race, mobile, impatient, often desperate, a dictatorship as complete as ever Czar has been able to wield by the aid of multitudinous armies, vast fleets, ubiquitous police. He wrung from the greatest and the most hostile Ministers, and from the even more violently hostile King of England, one of the greatest triumphs of modern politics. He was able to raise the income of a principality from his self-ordained subjects, and he 15 252 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. was able finally to soar away from all rivals as an Alpine mountain from the plains below. The final event that precipitated Catholic eman- cipation was the Clare election. In England when a member of Parliament accepts a high office he has to vacate his seat, and submit him- self once more to his constituency. Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, the member for County Clare, had been appointed to the presidency of the Board of Trade. He was a popular Irishman, a good land- lord, a staunch friend to Catholic claims, and of personally estimable character. But some daring spirit suggested that the great Agitator himself should stand for the vacancy. It was known that, as a Catholic, he could not take. his seat; but it was assumed that the experiment would bring things to a crisis, and compel the wavering gov- ernment finally to yield. After a contest of un- exampled excitement, O'Connell was returned. The world was astounded ; the Orange party in Ireland was driven almost out of its senses, and statesmen at last saw that Catholic emancipation could no longer be delayed. O'Connell after an interval presented himself at the bar of the House of Commons. He was asked to take the oath which was still in existence. This oath declared that the King of England was head of the Church and that " the sacrifice of the mass was impious and idolatrous." It was an oath which of course no Catholic could take, and O'Connell rejected THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 2hD it. He was refused admission ; and when finally Catholic emancipation was carried, the English ministers took a last and a mean revenge by tacking on a provision which prevented the act from being retrospective, and thereby compelled O'Connell to be elected over again. So ended the first great struggle after the Union. Ireland gave herself up to a delirium of joy; O'Connell was idolized; was given the sobriquet of the Liberator, by which he was pop- ularly known for the rest of his life ; and it was supposed that, after the long night, the sun of Ireland was at last high in the heavens. In the next chapter it will be seen how bitterly these hopes were disappointed ; how the real roots of Irish maladies were untouched ; how the disease went on o-ettinp - aggravated until it ended in one of the most awful tragedies in history. CHAPTER VII. THE GREAT FAMINE. THE dreadful famine of 1845 was only the culmination of evils. The distress of the country for many years had been great. It was officially reported in 1824 " that a very consider- able proportion of the population, variously esti- mated at a fourth or a fifth of the whole, is con- sidered to be out of employment ; that this, combined with the consequences of an altered system of managing land, produces misery and suffering which no language can possibly describe, and which it is necessary to witness in order fully to estimate. The situation of the ejected ten- antry, or of those who are obliged to give up their small holdings in order to promote the con- solidation of farms, is most deplorable. It would be impossible for language to convey an idea of the state of distress to which the ejected tenantry have been reduced, or of the disease, misery, or even vice which they have propagated where they have settled ; so that not only they who have been ejected have been rendered miserable, but they have carried with them and propagated 254 THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 255 that misery. They have increased the stock of labor, they have rendered the habitations of those who have received them more crowded, they have given occasion to the dissemination of disease, they have been obliged to resort to theft and all manner of vice and iniquity to procure subsist- ence; but what is perhaps the most painful of all, a vast number of them have perished of want." The Poor Law Inquiry of 1835 reported that 2,235,000 persons were out of work and in dis- tress for thirty weeks in the year. The Devon Commission reported that it " would be impossible to describe adequately the sufferings and priva- tions which the cottiers and laborers and their families in most parts of the country endure," " their cabins are seldom a protection against the weather," "a bed or a blanket is a rare luxury," "in many districts their only food is the potato, their only beverage water." " Returning noth- ing," Mr. Mill writes of the Irish landlords, " to the soil, they consume its whole produce minus the potatoes strictly necessary to keep the in- habitants from dying of famine." It was this state of affairs between the landlord and tenant that gave to the potato its fatal importance in the economy of Irish life. All the wheat and oats which were grown on the land must go to the payment of the rent ; and also so much of the potato crop as was not required to keep the tenant and his family from absolute starvation. 256 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. The potato was well suited for the position of the tenant. It produced a larger amount per acre than any other crop ; it suited the soil and the climate. The potato meant abundant food or starvation, life or wholesale death. It was the thin partition between famine and the Irish people. The plant had its bad qualities as well as its good ; it was fickle, perishable, liable to whole- sale destruction, and more than once already had given proof of its terrible uncertainty. The readi- ness of the potato to fail was the main factor in Irish life, not merely in the epoch with which we are now dealing, but in a period a great deal nearer to our own time. But in 1845 tne fields everywhere waved green and flowery, and there was the promise of an abundant harvest. There had been whispers of the appearance of disease; but it was in coun- tries that in those days appeared remote — in Belgium or Germany, in Canada or America. In the autumn of 1845 ft ma de its appearance for the first time in the United Kingdom. It was first detected in the Isle of Wight, and in the first week of September the greater number of the potatoes in the London market were found to be unfit for human food. In Ireland the autumnal weather was suggestive of some calamity. For weeks the air was electrical and disturbed: there was much lightning, unaccompanied by thunder. At last THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 257 traces of the disease: began to be discovered. A dark spot— such as would come from a drop of ac id — was found in green leaves; the disease then spread rapidly, and in the time there was nothing in many of the potato-fields but withered leaves emitting a putrid stench. The disease soon appeared on the coast oi Wexford, and before many weeks were over re- ports of an alarming character began to come from the interior. The plague was stealthy and swift, and a crop that was sound one day the next was rotten. As time passed on the disaster spread ; potatoes, healthy when they were dug and pitted, were found utterly decayed when the pit was opened. All kinds of remedies were pro- posed by scientific men — ventilation, new plans of pitting and of packing, the separation of the sound and unsound parts of the potato. All failed ; the blight, like the locust, was victor over all obstacles. At this moment England was in the very agony of one of her greatest party struggles. The advent of the Irish famine was the last event that broke down Peel's faith in protection. When these warnings of impending disaster and these urgent prayers for relief came from Ire- land, Peel was in the unfortunate position of being convinced of the danger, and at the same time impotent as to the remedies. He was at that moment in the midst of his attempts to carry 258 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. over his colleagues to free trade ; and so his hands were tied. He did propose that the ports should be opened by order in Council, but to this proposal he could not get some of his colleagues to agree. Then there came a min- isterial crisis : Peel resigned ; Lord John Russell was unable to form an administration ; and Peel again resumed office. The result ol these various occurrences was that the ports were not opened and that Parliament was not summoned ; and thus three months — every single minute of which involved wholesale life or death — were allowed to pass without any effective remedy. Under such circumstances, O'Connell and the leaders of the National party were justified in drawing a contrast between this deadly delay and the promptitude that a native Legislature would have shown. " If," he exclaimed at the Repeal Association, " they ask me what are my propositions for relief of the distress, I answer, first, Tenant-right. I would propose a law giving- to every man his own. I would give the land- lord his land, and a fair rent for it; but I would give the tenant compensation for every shilling he might have laid out on the land in permanent improvements. And what next do I propose? Repeal of the Union." And then he went on : " If we had a Domestic Parliament, would not the ports be thrown open — would not the abun- dant crops with which Heaven has blessed her be THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 259 kept for the people of Ireland — and would not the Irish Parliament be more active even than the Belgian Parliament to provide for the people food and employment? " The opening hours of the next Parliamentary session were sufficient to damp all hopes. On means of affording relief the Queen's Speech was vague ; but on the question of Coercion it spoke in terms of unmistakable plainness. "I have observed," said that document, " with deep regret, the very frequent instances in which the crime of deliberate assassination has been of late committed in Ireland. It will be your duty to consider whether any measures can be devised calculated to give increased protection to life and to bring to justice the perpetrators of so dread- ful a crime." The characteristic contrast be- tween the tender solicitude of the Government for the landlords, and its half-hearted regard for the tenants — at the moment when of the tenants a thousand had died through eviction and hunger for every one of the landlords who had met death through assassination — roused the bitterest resentment in Ireland. "The only notice," ex claimed the Nation, " vouchsafed to this country is a hint that more gaols, more transportation and more gibbets might be useful to us. Or, possibly, we wrong the Minister ; perhaps when her Majesty says that 'protection must be af- forded to life,' she means that the people are not 260 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. to be allowed to die of hunger during the ensu- ing summer — or that the lives of tenants are to be protected against the extermination of clear- ing landlords— and that so ' deliberate assassi- nation ' may become less frequent ; — God knows what she means." The measures for limiting the distress were, first, the importation of corn on a lowered duty; and, secondly, the advance of two sums of 50,000/., one to the landlords for the drainage of their lands, and the other for public works. The ridiculous disproportion of these sums to the magnitude of the calamity was proved before very long; but to all representations the Govern- ment replied in the haughtiest spirit of official optimism. " Instructions have been given," said Sir James Graham, " on the responsibility of the Government to meet any emergency." Only one good measure was covered by the generous self- complacency of this round assertion. Under a Treasury minute of December 19, 1845, ^ ie Min- istry had instructed Messrs. Baring and Co. to purchase 100,000/. worth of Indian corn. This they introduced secretly into Ireland, and its dis- tribution proved most timely. The Irish mem- bers pressed for more definite assurances. But their suggestions and Peel's beneficent intentions were frustrated by the fatal entanglement of Irish sorrows in personal ambitions and partisan war- fare. Peel had put forward the Irish famine as THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE 261 the main reason for his change of opinion on the Corn Laws ; and the Irish famine became one of the great debatable topics between the adherents of free trade and of protection. All the organs of the landlords in Ireland united in the state- ment that the reports of distress were unreal and exaggerated. " The potato crop of this year," wrote the Evening Mail (1845), " ^ ar exceeded an average one ; " " the corn of all kinds is so far abundant" — which, indeed, was quite true — "the apprehensions of a famine are unfounded, and are merely made the pretence for withholding the payment of rent." Some days after it re- peated, "there was a sufficiency, an abundance of sound potatoes in the country for the wants of the people." "The potato famine in Ireland," exclaimed Lord George Bentinck, " was a gross delusion ; a more gross delusion had never been practised upon any country by any Government." "The cry of famine was a mere pretence for a party object." " Famine in Ireland," said Lord Stanley, " was a vision — a baseless vision." Nothing brings the position of the Irish tenant with more terrible clearness to the mind than the fact that the awful warning of 1845 nac ^ to be unheeded. In 1846 the potato was still cherished as the single resource of the peasant. In his circumstances the potato, and the potato alone, offered him hope. Contemporary testimony is unanimous in de- 262 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. scribing the peasants as working at that period with a determination to risk all on the one cast that exhibited a whole people in a state of desperation. "Already feeling the pinch of sore distress, if not actual famine, they worked as if for dear life ; they begged and borrowed on any terms the means whereby to crop the land once more. The pawn-offices were choked with the humble finery that had shone at the village dance or christening feast ; the banks and local money- lenders were besieged with appeals for credit. Meals were stinted ; backs were bared." The spring was unpromising enough. Snow, hail and sleet fell in March. But when the summer came, it made amends for all this. The weather ii June was of tropical heat; vegetation sprang up with something of tropical rapidity; and everybody anticipated a splendid harvest. To- wards the end of June there was a change for the worse. So also in July, there was the alter- nation of tropical heat and thunder-storm, of parching dryness and excessive rain. After this there was a continuous downpour of rain. Still the crop went on splendidly; and all over the country once again wide fields promised exuber- ant abundance. In the early days of August symptoms of coining disaster were seen. A strange portent was seen simultaneously in several parts of Ire- land. A fog — which some describe as extremely THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 2GP, white and others as yellow — was seen to rise from the ground ; the fog was dry, and emitted a disagreeable odor. The fog of that night bore the blight within its accursed bosom. The work of destruction was as swift as it was uni- versal. In a single night and throughout the whole country the entire crop was destroyed, al- most to the last potato. "On the 27th of last month" (July), writes Father Mathew, "I passed from Cork to Dublin, and this doomed plant bloomed in all the luxuriance of an abundant harvest. Returning on the 3d instant (August), I beheld with sorrow one wide waste of putre- fying- vegetation." Some of the people rushed into the towns, others wandered listlessly along the high roads in the vague and vain hope that food would some- how or other come to their hands. They grasped at everything that promised sustenance ; they plucked^ turnips from the fields; many were glad to live for weeks on a single meal of cab- bage a day. In some cases they feasted on the dead bodies of horses and asses and dogs ; and there is at least one horrible story of a mother eating the limbs of her dead child. The characteristic merriment of the peasantry totally disappeared. People went about, not speaking even to beg, with a " stupid, despair- ing look ; " children looked " like old men and women ; " and even the lower animals seemed to ■264 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. feel the surrounding despair. Parents neglected their children, and in a few localities children turned out their aged parents. But such cases were very rare, and in the most remote parts of the country. There are, on the other hand, numberless stories of parents willingly dying the slow death of starvation to save a small store of food for their children. The workhouse was then, as now, an object ot loathing. Within its walls take refuge the vic- tims of vice and the outcasts of the towns. En- trance into the workhouse was regarded not merely as marking social ruin, but moral degra- dation. Fathers and mothers died themselves, and allowed their children to die along- with them within their own hovels, rather than seek a refuge within those hated walls. But the time came when hunger and disease swept away these pre- judices, and the people craved admission. Here, again, hope was cheated; the accommodation in the workhouses was far below the requirements of the people. At Westport 3,000 persons sought relief in a single day, when the work- house, though built to accommodate 1,000 per- sons, was already " crowded far beyond its ca- pacity." The streets were crowded with wan- derers sauntering to and fro with hopeless air and hunger-struck look. Driven from the work- houses, they began to die on the roadside, or within their own cabins. Corpses lay strewn by THE GREAT IRISfl STRUGGLE. 265 the side of once-frequented roads, and at doors in the most crowded streets of the towns. Dur- ing that period, roads in many places became as charnel-houses, and car and coach drivers rarely drove anywhere without seeing dead bodies strewn along- the roadside. In the neiehbor- o fc> hood of Clifden one inspector of roads caused no less than 140 bodies to be buried which he found along the highway. It was a common occurrence to find on opening the front door in early morn- ing, leaning against it, the corpse of some victim who in the night-time had rested in its shelter. Men with horse and cart were employed to go around each day and gather up the dead. The bodies of those who had fallen on the road lay for days unburied. Husbands lay for a week in the same hovels with the bodies of their un- buried wives and children. Often when there was a funeral it bore even ghastlier testimony to the terror of the time. " In this town," writes a correspondent from Skibbereen, " have I wit- nessed to-day men, fathers, carrying perhaps their only child to its last home, its remains enclosed in a few deal boards patched together; I have seen them, on this day, in three or four instances, carrying those coffins under their arms or upon their shoulders, without a single individual in at- tendance upon them ; without mourner or cere- mony — without wailing or lamentation. The people in the street, the laborers congregated 266 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. in the town, regarded the spectacle without sur- prise ; they looked on with indifference, because it was of hourly occurrence." Meantime, what had Government been doing? They had been aggravating nearly all the evils that were causing so rich a harvest of suffering and death. Donations to the amount of ^100,000 had been given from the Treasury under Peel in aid of subscriptions raised by charitable organiza- tions. A more important step was the setting on foot of works for the employment of the destitute. Lord John Russell suddenly closed the works which had been set on foot by Peel. At the time there were no less than 97,900 persons employed on the relief works ; and the effect of adding this vast army of unemployed to the population whose condition has just been described can be imag- ined. Russell's policy was announced on August 17, 1846; and, well-intentioned as his scheme doubt- less was, there was scarcely a sentence in it which did not do harm. The Government did not pro- pose to interfere with the regular mode by which Indian corn and other kinds of grain might be brought into Ireland. The Government proposed " to leave that trade as much at liberty as pos- sible." " They would take care not to interfere with the regular operations of merchants for the supply to the country or with the retail trade." Relief works were to be set on foot by the Board THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 267 of Works when they had previously been pre- sented at presentment sessions. For these works the Government were to advance money at the rate of 3^ per cent, repayable in ten years. In the poorer districts the Government were to make grants to the extent of ,£50,000. The evil effects of this legislation were not long in showing themselves. The declarations with regard to non-intervention with trade were espe- cially disastrous. The price of grain at once went up, and while the deficiency of food was thus enormously increased, speculators were driven to frenzy by the prospect of fabulous gains. Wheat that had been exported by starving tenants was afterwards reimported to Ireland ; sometimes be- fore it was finally sold it had crossed the Irish Sea four times — delirious speculation offering new bids and rushing in insane eagerness in search of the daily increasing prices. Stories are still told of the ruin that was the Nemesis to some of the greedy speculators in a nation's starvation. More than one who kept his corn obstinately in store while the people around him were dying by the thousand, when he at last opened the doors found, not his longed-for treasure-house, but an accumulation of rotten corn. "A client of mine," writes Fitzgibbon, "in the winter of 1846-47 be- came the owner of corn cargoes Q f such number and magnitude that if he had accepted the prices pressed upon him in April and May, 1847, ne 16 268 GLADSTONE— PARNEI. I.. would have realized a profit of ,£70,000. He held for still higher offers, until the market turned in June, fell in July, and rapidly tumbled as an abundant harvest became manifest. He still held, hoping for a recovery, and in the end of October he became a bankrupt." Thus did this man's fatal avarice overreach itself and ruin him. The Government did not interfere with the regular mode by which Indian corn might be brou o-ht into Ireland. In Cork alone one firm was reported to have cleared ,£40,000, and an- other ,£80,000, from corn speculations. The reason for the non-intervention with the supply of Indian corn was that the retail trade might not be interfered with ; and at this period retail shops were so few and far between for the sale of corn that the laborer in the public works had sometimes to walk twenty or twenty-five miles in order to buy a single stone of meal. Meantime a bitter calamity was added to those from which the people were already suffering. Pestilence always hovers on the flank of famine, and combined with wholesale starvation there were numerous other circumstances that rendered a plague inevitable — the assemblage of such im- mense numbers of people at the public works and in the workhouses, the vast number of corpses that lay unburied, and finally the consumption of unaccustomed food. The plague which fell upon THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 269 Ireland in 1846-47 was of a peculiarly virulent kind. The name applied to it at the time sufficiently signified its orio-in. It was known as the " road fever." Attacking as it did people already weak- ened by hunger it was a scourge of merciless severity. Unlike famine, too, it struck alike at the rich and poor — the well-fed and the hungered. Famine killed one or two of a family; the fever swept them all away. Food relieved hunger; the fever was past all such surgery. The people, worn out by famine, had not the physical or mental energy even to move from their cabins. The panic which the plague every- where created intensified the miseries. The annals of the time are full of the kindly, but rude attempts of the poor to stand by each other. It was a custom of the period to have food left at the doors or handed in on shovels or sticks to the people inside the cabins ; but very often the wretched inmates were entirely deserted. Lying beside each other, some living and some dead, their passage to the grave was uncheered by one act of help, by one word of sympathy. "A terri- ble apathy hangs over the poor ; starvation has destroyed every generous sympathy ; despair has made them hardened and insensible, and they sullenly await their doom with indifference and without fear. Death is in every hovel ; disease and famine, its dread precursors, have fastened 270 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. on the young and the old, the strong and the feeble, the mother and the infant ; whole families lie together on the damp floor devoured by fever, without a human being to wet their burning lips or raise their languid heads ; the husband dies by the side of the wife, and she knows not that he is beyond the reach of earthly suffering ; the same rag covers the festering remains of mortality and the skeleton forms of the living, who are uncon- scious of the horrible contiguity; rats devour the corpse, and there is no energy among the living to scare them from their horrid banquet ; fathers bury their children without a sigh, and cover them in shallow graves round which no weeping mother, no sympathizing friends are grouped ; one scanty funeral is followed by another and another. Without food or fuel, bed or bedding, whole families are shut up in naked hovels, drop- ping one by one into the arms of death." Before accommodation for patients "approached anything like the necessity of the time, most mournful and piteous scenes were presented in the vicinity of fever hospitals and workhouses in large towns. Day after day numbers of people, wasted by famine and consumed by fever, could be seen lying on the footpaths and roads waiting for the chance of admission ; and when they were fortunate enough to be received their places were soon filled by -other victims!" "At the gate leading to the temporary fever THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 271 hospital, erected near Kilmainham, were men, women and children, lying' along the pathway and in the gutter, awaiting their turn to be admitted. Some were stretched at full length, with their faces exposed to the full glare of the sun, their mouths opened, and their black and parched tongues and encrusted teeth visible even from a distance. Some women had children at the breast who lay beside them in silence and appa- rent exhaustion — the fountain of their life being- dried up ; whilst in the centre of the road stood a cart containing a whole family who had been smitten down together by the terrible typhus, and had been brought there by the charity of a neighbor." Outside the workhouses similar scenes took place. "Those who were not admitted — and they were, of course, the great majority — having no homes to return to, lay down and died." Admission to the fever hospital and to the workhouse was but the postponement or often the acceleration of death. Owing to the unex- pected demands made upon their space, the offi- cials of these institutions were utterly unable to adopt measures for diminishing the epidemic. The crowding rendered it impossible to separate even the dead and the dying — there were not beds for a tithe of the applicants ; and thus the epidemic was spread and intensified. " Inside the hospital enclosure" (the fever hospital at 272 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Kilmainham), says a writer, "was a small, open shed, in which were thirty-five human beings heaped indiscriminately on a little straw thrown on the around. Several had been thus for three days, drenched by rain, etc. Some were uncon- scious, others dying" ; two died during the night." " We visited the poorhouse at Glenties " (county of Donegal), says Mr. Tuke, "which is in a dreadful state ; the people were, in fact, half starved, and only half clothed. They had not sufficient food in the house for the day's supply. Some were leaving the house, preferring to die in their own hovels rather than in the poorhouse. Their bedding consisted of dirty straw, in which they were laid in rows on the floor, even as many as six persons being crowded under one rug. The living and the dying were stretched side by side beneath the same miserable covering." The general effect of all this is summed up thus pithily but completely in the report of the Poor Law Commissioners for 1846: "In the present state of things nearly every person admitted is a patient ; separation of the sick, by reason of their number, becomes impossible; disease spreads, and by rapid transition the workhouse is changed into one large hospital." Workhouses and hospitals were not the only institutions which were filled. The same thing happened to the gaols. The prison came to be* regarded as a refuge. Only smaller offences THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 273 were at first committed ; and an epidemic of glass-breaking set in. But as times went on, and the pressure of distress became greater, graver crimes became prevalent. Thus sheep- stealing grew to be quite a common offence ; and a prisoner's good fortune was supposed to be complete if he were sentenced to the once loathed punishment of transportation beyond the seas. The Irishman was made happy by the fate which took him to any land, provided only it was not his own. But the prisons, without a tithe of the accom- modation necessary for the inmates, became nests of disease ; and often the offender who hoped for the luck of transportation beyond the seas found that the sentence of even a week's imprisonment proved a sentence of death. The total deaths between 1841 and 1851 from fever were 222,029. But, allowing for deficient returns, 250,000 — a quarter of a million of people — perished from fever alone. The famine and the fever were naturally accom- panied and followed by other maladies which re- sult from insufficiency and unsuitability. of food. The potato blight continued with varying viru- lence until 1S51, its existence being marked by the prevalence in more or less severe epidemics of dysentery, which carried off 5,492 persons in 1846, 25,757 m ^47, the annual totals swelling, until in 1849 the deaths from this disease alone 274 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. amounted to 29,446; cholera, which destroyed 35,989 lives in 1848-49; small-pox, to which 38,275 persons fell victims in the decennial pe- riod between 1841 and 1851. It should be added that as a direct consequence of the famine many thousands suffered severely from scurvy, and the terrible mortality of these epidemics, especially of the fever, led to the most repulsive methods of dealing with the dead. The hideous magnitude of the sufferings of Ireland at that moment was bound to increase the tendency to discord. The young and strong and brave can never reconcile themselves to the gospel that there is such a thing in this world as inevitable evil. The sight of so many thousands of people perishing miserably naturally sug- gested a frenzied temper, and the extreme course that such a temper begets. Among the young men, therefore, who o-athered round the leaders of the Nation newspaper, there was a constant feeling that enough was not being done to save the people. O'Connell was now approaching the close of a long and busy life. One of the great causes of the split between Young and Old Ireland was in reference to what are called the " peace resolutions." Some of the utterances of the Young Irelanders had suggested the em- ployment ot physical force under certain circum- stances ; and O'Connell insisted upon the Repeal Association solemnly renewing its adhesion to THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 275 the resolutions. These resolutions, passed at its formation, laid down the doctrine that no po- litical reform was worth purchasing by the shed- ding of even one drop of- blood. It is hard to believe that O'Connell ever did accept in its en- tirety the doctrine that physical force was not a justifiable expedient under any imaginable cir- cumstances. O'Connell probably meant to say, that Ireland was so weak at that time when com- pared to England, that an exercise of physical force could have no possible chance of success, and that it was as well to reconcile the people to their impotence by raising it to the dignity of a great moral principle. From this time forward there were rival organizations, rival leaders and rival policies in the National party. O'Connell did not survive to see the complete wreck of the vast organization which he had held together for so long a period. Rarely has a great, and on the whole successful, career ended in gloom so unbroken. He worked on as ener- getically as ever, for he was a man whose indus- try never paused. But both he and his policy had lost their prestige. The young and ardent began to question his power, and still more to doubt his policy. Then came 1846 and 1847, with the people whom he had pledged himself to bring into the promised land of self-government and prosperity dying of hunger and disease, fleeing as from an accursed spot, or bound to 276 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the fiery wheel of oppression more securely than ever. On April 3d, 1846, he delivered a length- ened speech to the House of Commons, of - which an entirely inaccurate description is given in Lord Beaconsfield's " Life of Lord George Bentinck." However much the voice and other physical attributes of O'Connell may have appeared to have decayed, this speech, in its selection of evi- dence, and in its arrangement of facts, and its presentation of the whole case against the land system of Ireland, may be read even to-day as the completest and most convincing speech of the times on the question. He spoke in the House of Commons for the last time in Feb- ruary, 1847, anc l tne nex t day was seriously ill. He went abroad, and was everywhere met by demonstrations of respect and affection. But his heart was broken. A gloom had settled over him which nothing could shake off. He died at Genoa, on May 15th, 1847. His last will was that his heart should be sent to Rome, and his body to Ireland. He lies in Glasnevin Cemetery. The removal of his imposing personality from Irish politics aggravated the dissensions between Old and Young Ireland. The evils of the country grew daily worse ; hope from Parliament died in face of a failure so colossal as that of O'Connell ; and some of the Young Irelanders, seized with despair, resolved to try physical force. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 277 The apostle of this new gospel was John Mitchel — one of the strangest and strongest figures of Irish political struggles. He was the son of an Ulster Unitarian clergyman ; and he was one of the early contributors to the Nation, and started a paper on his own account. In this paper insurrection was openly preached ; and es- pecially ' insurrection against the land system. The people were asked not to die themselves, nor let their wives and children die, while their fields were covered with food which had been pro- duced by the sweat of their brows and by their own hands. It was pointed out that the reason why all this food was sent from a starving to a prosperous nation was that the rent of the land lord might be paid, and that the rent should therefore be attacked. The Ministry, in order to cope with the results of a period of universal hunger and disease, suc- ceeded in having 1 a whole code of coercion laws passed. The Cabinet had changed its political complexion. Lord John Russell had been the leader of the Whigs in the triumphant attack on coercion ; and now transformed from the leader of Opposition to the head of the Government, brought in coercion bills himself. It has been already told how, when O'Connell was tried and convicted by packed juries and par- tisan judges, the Whig leaders in the House of Commons denounced jury-packing as the vilest 278 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. and meanest of expedients to crush political op- ponents ; within a year or so of these declarations the Whigs were packing juries before partisan judges, and were getting verdicts to order which sent political opponents beyond the seas. There was in these years in Dublin a sheet called the World, a blackmailing organ. Its editor — a man named Birch — had been tried and convicted of attempting to obtain hush-money from helpless men and women whom chance had placed in his power. Lord Clarendon, the Whig Lord Lieu- tenant, was forced to confess in a trial in public court some years afterwards, that he had given Birch between ^2,000 and ^3,000 to turn his slanderous pen against the leaders of the Young- Ireland party. Mitchel was brought to trial ; Lord John Rus- sell pledged himself that it should be a fair trial. He had written, he declared, to Lord Clarendon that he trusted there would not arise any charge of any kind of unfairness as to the composition of the juries, as, for his own part, "he would rather see those parties acquitted than that there should be any such unfairness." Yet was the pledge most flagrantly broken ; and the packing of the jury of John Mitchel under the premier- ship of Lord John Russell was as open, as relent- less, as shameless, as the packing of the jury of O'Connell under the premiership of Sir Robert Peel. The Crown challenged thirty-nine of the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 279 jurors, with the final result that there was not a single Catholic on the jury, and that the Prot- estants were of the Orange class who would be quite willing- to hang Mitchel without the for- mality of trial. Mitchel was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation ; in a few hours after the sentence he was on the way already to the land to which he was now exiled. His own expectation was that the Government would never be allowed to con- quer him without a struggle, and that his sen- tence would Tbe the longed-for and the necessary signal for the rising. But it was deemed wisest by the other leaders of the Young Ireland party that the attempt at insurrection should be post- poned. By successive steps, however, these men were in turn driven to the conviction that an attempt at insurrection should be made. Mr. Smith O'Brien was the member of an aris- tocratic family. His brother afterwards became Lord Inchiquin, and was the nearest male relative to the Marquis of Thomond. For years he had been honestly convinced that the Liberal party would remedy all the wrongs of the Irish people. But as time went on, and all these evils seemed to become aggravated instead of relieved, he was driven slowly and unwillingly into the belief that the legislative Union was the real source of all the evils of his country. By successive steps he was driven into the ranks of Young Ireland, and 280 - GLADSTONE— PARNELL. by degrees into revolution. When he, Mr. John Blake Dillon, Mr. D'Arcy M'Gee, and Mr. (now Sir) Charles Gavan Duffy were finally forced into the attempt to create an insurrection, they had a strong feeling that they were called upon to make it rather through the calls of honor than the chances of success. The attempt at all events proved a disastrous failure. After an attack on a police barrack at Ballingarry, the small force which O'Brien had been able to call and keep to- g-ether was scattered. He and the greater num- ber of the leaders were arrested after a few days, and were put on their trial. The juries were packed as before, the judges were partisans, and O'Brien and the rest were convicted, were sen- tenced to death, and, this sentence being com- muted, were transported. This was the end of the Young Ireland party. The party of O'Con- nell did not survive much longer. In 1847 there was a general election. The account of that elec- tion is one of the most depressing and most in- structive chapters in Irish history, and makes sev- eral years of Irish history intelligible. The idea of the Young Irelanders was an inde- pendent Irish party. But O'Connell's heirs, as he himself, taught a very different creed. It was O'Connell's persistent idea that his supporters were justified in taking offices under the Crown. It is easy to understand his reasons for adopting such a policy. When O'Connell started his po- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 281 litical career, every post of power in Ireland was held by the enemies of the popular cause. All men in any public position, great or small, were 'Protestants, and most of them Conservatives. Ireland had all the forms which in England are the guarantees of freemen and freedom, but these forms became the bulwarks and instruments of tyranny. It was in vain that there were in Ire- land judges who had the same independence of the Crown as their brethren in England, if, from political partisanship, they could be relied upon to do the behests of the Government. Trial by jury was a " mockery, a delusion, and a snare," if it meant trial by a carefully selected number of one's bitterest political and religious opponents. And no laws could establish political or social or religious equality when their administration was left to the unchecked caprice of political partisans. O'Connell thought, therefore, that one of the first necessities of Irish progress was that the judiciary and the other official bodies of the country should be manned by men belonging to the same faith and sympathizing- with the political sentiments of the majority of their countrymen. O'Connell was the leader of a democratic move- ment with no revenue save such as the voluntary subscriptions of his followers supplied. It was not an unwelcome relief to his cause if occasion- ally he was able to transform the pensioners on his funds into pensioners on the coffers of the 282 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. State. At this period the Irish leader had a much more circumscribed class from which to draw his Parliamentary supporters than at the present day. There were large classes of the ' population who, while they had the property qualification, were in other respects entirely un- suited for the position of members of a popular party. The landlords were almost to a man on the side of existing abuses, and the greater num- ber of the members of this body whom O'Connell was able to recruit to his ranks were usually men of extravagant habits and of vicious lives, and politics was the last desperate card with which their fortunes were to be marred or mended. It was all very well for half a million of people to meet O'Connell at the monster meetings, and to show that he commanded, as never did popular leader before, the affections, the opinions, and the rio-ht arms of a unanimous nation. But when it came to the time for obtaining a Parliamentary supporter for his struggle with English Ministries, it was not upon the voice of the people that the decision rested. He could carry most of the counties, even though support of him meant sen- tences of eviction and of death, or of exile to his adherents. In the boroughs it was half a dozen shopkeepers, face to face with always impending bankruptcy, who. had the decision of an election. Finally, O'Connell, in this matter of place-hunting, as in so many others, was led astray by reliance THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 283 upon the English Whig party. The result was the creation in Ireland of a school of politicians which has been at once her dishonor and her bane. This was the race of Catholic place- hunters. It will be found that in exact proportion to their success and number were the degradation and the deepening misery of their country; that for years the struggle for Irish prosperity and self-government was impeded mainly through them ; and that hope for the final overthrow of the whole vast structure of wrong in Ireland showed some chance of realization for the first time when they were expelled forever from politi- cal life. A profligate landlord, or an aspiring but brief- less barrister, was elected for an Irish constituency as a follower of the popular leader of the day and as the mouthpiece of his principles. He soon gave it to be understood by the distributors of State patronage that he was open to a bargain. The time came when in the party divisions his vote was of consequence, and the bargain was then struck. The wretched following which in the course of his long struggle O'Connell had gathered about him gave that apparent uncleanness to his proceedings which excited the just indignation of young and ardent and high-minded men and caused the demand for an independent Irish party, with no mercy to place-hunters. Richard 17 284 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Lalor Sheil, one of the most eloquent colleagues of O'Connell in the old struggle, had kept out of all popular movements — some said because the despotic will of the great tribune made life intol- erable to any but slaves — and had in time sunk to the level of a Whig office-holder. In 1846 he stood for Duncrarvan, and the Young- Irelanders demanded that he should be opposed by a man who was not in favor with the Government. O'Connell stood by his old associate, and Shiel was elected. In 1848 the famine had not passed away. The succeeding year was the very worst in the cen- tury, except 1847. But by this time Lord John Russell entirely changed his tune. He met every demand for reform with an uncompromising neg- ative, or with the absolute denial that any relief was needed. " While," said Lord John Russell, " I admit that, with respect to the franchise and other subjects, the people of Ireland may have just grounds of complaint, I, nevertheless, totally deny that their grievances are any sufficient reason why they should not make very great progress in wealth and prosperity, if, using the intelligence which they possess in a remarkable degree, they would fix their minds on the advantages which they might enjoy rather than upon the evils which they suppose themselves to suffer under." Then he made allusion to a Bill which had THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 285 been brought in by Sir William Somerville for dealing with the Land question. Its proposals were indeed modest. It gave compensation to tenants for permanent improvements; but those improvements had to be made with the consent of the landlords, and it was not proposed that the Bill should be retrospective. But, modest as these proposals were, it did not gain the full approval of the Prime Minister, and they did not secure the safety of the Bill. To any such proposal as fixity of tenure the Liberal Prime Minister could offer his strongest hostility. "But, after all," said Lord John Russell, "that which we should look to for improving the rela-^ tions between landlord and tenant is a better mutual understanding between those who occupy those relative positions. Voluntary agreements between landlords and tenants, carried out for the benefit of both, are, after all, a better means of improving the land of Ireland than any legislative measure which can be passed." The "better mutual understanding" on which the Prime Minister relied for an improvement in the relations of landlord and tenant at this mo- ment was hounding the landlords to carry on wholesale clearances which, in the opinion of Earl Grey, were "a disgrace to a civilized coun- try;" which had been denounced over and over again by Lord John Russell himself; and which, in the opinion of most men, remain as one of the 286 GLADSTONE— PARNELL blackest records in all history of man's inhumanity to man. In that year, following the exhortation, of the Prime Minister to voluntary agreements "for the benefit of both," the landlords had evicted no less than half a .million of tenants. The frightful state of things in 1847 naturally produced a considerable amount of disturbance. Many of the tenants were indecent enough to object to being robbed of their own improve- ments and went the length of revolting against their wives and children being massacred whole- sale. In short, the rent was in danger, and in favor of that sacred institution all the resources of British law and British force were promptly despatched. The Legislature had shown no hurry whatever to meet in '46 or '47, when the question at issue was whether hundreds of thou- sands of the Irish tenantry should perish of hunger or of the plague. Now Parliament could not be summoned too soon, and a Coercion Bill could not be carried with too much promptitude. It will not be necessary to recall the quotations which have just been made from the speech of Lord John Russell in opposing the Coercion Bill of 1846. Suffice it to say that while in 1846 he had objected to the Coercion Bill, " above all " because it was not accompanied with measures " of relief, of remedy, and conciliation," and that he had gone so far as to pledge himself to the principle that some such proposals ought to ac- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 287 company any measure which tended to " increased rigor of the law," Lord John Russell was now himself proposing a measure for greatly "in- creased rigor of the law," not only without ac- companying it with any measure of "relief, of remedy, of conciliation" on his own part, but vehemently opposing any such measure when brought in by any other person. Lord Grey has been quoted for his opinion on the clear- ance system, and here was the clearance system going on worse than ever, and Lord Grey re- maining a member of the Ministry. The police were urged to unusual activity, and large bodies of the military even were pressed into the service of the landlords, seized the pro- duce of the fields, carried them to Dublin for sale — acted in every respect as the collectors of the rent of the landlord, and thus shared the honor of starving the tenants. In 1848 a number of Irishmen, as has been seen, driven to madness by the dreadful suffering they everywhere saw around, and by the neglect or incapacity of Parliament, had sought the des- perate remedy of open revolt. The men who, for wrongs much less grievous, rose in the same year in Hungary or France or Italy, were the idols of the British people, and were aided and encour- aged by British statesmen. But British action towards Ireland was to pass a Treason Felony Act, and to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. 288 GLADSTONE— PA RNELL. Parliament came together. Lord John Russell brought forward his bill. Sir Robert Peel at once "gave his cordial support to the proposed meas- ure." Mr. Disraeli " declared his intention of giving the measure of government his unvarying and unequivocal support." Mr. Hume was " obliged, though reluctantly, to give his consent to the measure of the government." Lord John Russell said that "as the House had expressed so unequivocally its feeling in favor of the bill, it would doubtless permit its further stages to be proceeded with instanter. He moved the second reading." Of course the House permitted the further stages to be proceeded with instanter, and the bill, having passed through committee, "Lord Russell moved the third reading," which was agreed to, "and the bill was forthwith taken up to the House of Lords." "On the next day but one, Monday, July 26," goes on the "Annual Reg- ister," " the bill was proposed by the Marquis of Lansdowne, who concluded his speech in its favor by moving 'that the public safety requires that the bill should be passed with all possible de- spatch.' ' Of course the motion was accepted by their Lordships " that the bill should be passed with all possible despatch ; " and " the bill passed nem. dis. through all its stages." This was the action of liberty-loving Englishmen in 1848. CHAPTER VIII. RESURRECTION. THE Fenian movement was largely the crea- tion of Irish-America. Thither had fled at various periods men who, having taken part in revolts against the intolerable tyranny of Eng- land in Ireland, were unable to remain in their own country. The Irish in America were besides impelled to resentment against the unhappy posi- tion of their country by the sight of the prosperity of a free Republic. Thus in many ways the new world in spite of its official neutrality deeply influ- ences the history of the old. James Stephens and John O'Mahony were the two main spirits in organizing this attempt by armed force to destroy British dominion in Ireland. They were able to gather into their ranks many earnest and brave men in some parts of Ireland ; they got a strong hold on the military ; and in lact they made a movement the proportions of which were a formidable threat against the English power. But the movement had many weaknesses — above all it suffered from the want of war material. It made several attempts at a rising ; but the men 289 290 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. were without arms and were easily overcome. Successive batches of leaders were tried before packed juries ; and there was the old story in Irish life of perjury, bribed informers, partisan judges; and then after conviction followed sentences of unjustifiable cruelty. Indt ed, in most cases the cruelty began before the sentences were passed. The Imperial Parliament, which could never find time or will to stand between Ireland and de- struction by eviction and emigration, turned all its force to the passing of coercion laws. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended without cere- mony. On one occasion the Houses of Parlia- ment sat through all Saturday and even into the Sabbath in order to more speedily pass such a law. Then men were seized all over the coun- try, were cast into prison and were kept there sometimes as long as a year without being brought to trial. While thus confined they were treated exactly as if they had been convicted — in some cases worse ! The result was that several of them went insane, and afterwards more than one ended his own life. When the Fenian prisoners were convicted they were sent among the ordinary prisoners: thieves, burglars, mur- derers — the scum and refuse of English society. The Fenian movement as an armed revolt against the forces of England failed ; but as a trumpet-call to Ireland to rouse herself from her lethargy of death it succeeded. Two events came THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 291 finally in connection with Fenianism that exer- cised a strong influence on the future of Ireland. The one was the blowing down of the prison in London in which a prominent Fenian prisoner was confined ; and the other was the rescue of Captain Kelly, the successor to Mr. Stephens in the leadership of the movement, and a companion named Deasy from a prison van in Manchester. In the blowing down of Clerkenwell there was unhappily a large loss of innocent life ; in the attack on the prison van at Manchester a ser- geant of police was accidentally killed. Three men were executed for the Manchester rescue — Allan, Larkin, and O'Brien. Their trial took place under circumstances of popular panic and amid a tempest of popular hatred in England. The evidence against them was weak ; it was proved afterwards to be grossly false in some particulars ; while on the other hand there was abundant testimony that the shooting of Sergeant Brett was accidental and unintentional. Several attempts were made to have the sentence on the three Irishmen commuted, but all failed; and they were executed. The event created terrible ex- citement all through the Irish world, wherever it might be. O'Mara Condon, one of the men tried at the same time and condemned to death, but afterwards sentenced to penal servitude, used the phrase " God Save Ireland " from the dock. Mr. T. D. Sullivan wrote a poem to this refrain in the 292 GLADSTONE— PA RN ELL. Nation newspaper ; it spread like wild-fire, and to- day it may be described as the national anthem of Ireland. It was fortunate for Ireland that at this moment the Liberal party was led by Mr. Gladstone. The features, moral, physical and mental, of this re- markable man are already familiar to every American. He was the man above all others suited for the great occasion which had now arisen. There has scarcely ever been an English- man who exercised so great a control over the hearts and minds of the English people. He has always appealed to their higher and better emo- tions; and thus he has been able to raise a moral tempest in which they were caught up and carried away. The marvellous combination of different and apparently contradictory gifts is one of the striking things in his nature. There is no man more intimately acquainted with the technique of a Parliamentary and official life. He has been several times Chancellor of the Exchequer. In that position it has been his business to become master of the details and inner life of many of the trades of the country. He has been able to meet all comers in the debates on the smallest items of the annual budget. But there is another side to this great character. There is no man who understands better- the great heart-throbs of humanity, and that can bet- ter employ the chords to which they thrill. He SERVER. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 295 is capable of presenting- a great public question to the people in the broad visible lines with which the masses must be approached. He is thus as successful on the platform as on the rioor of the House of Commons. In 1867 he took up the question of the Irish Church. The Irish Church did not then seem to be the most serious of Irish grievances. But the Irish Catholics had to pay for the support of the church of the Protestant minority. The dissenters of England themselves suffer under an Established and Endowed Church ; and accordingly Mr. Glad- stone was able to command their enthusiastic support in his crusade. In the course of Mr. Gladstone's great cam- paign against the Irish Church he had gone over Irish grievances, and had spoken of Irish wrongs in tones of sympathy that were as novel as they were welcome to the Irish people. It was in the course of these speeches, too, that he first gave in germ the ideas which have since borne fruit as to Home Rule. He said he thought Ireland ought to be dealt with more in accordance with Irish ideas. One of the first movements that were started now was one in favor of the release of the political prisoners. The admission by Mr. Gladstone that Ireland was suffering from griev- ous and intolerable wrongs made it cruel, and also illogical, to keep the men in jail who had been driven to the desperate expedient of rebellion in 996 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. order to remedy those wrongs. The Irish people, too, could but admire the courage of the men whose love of Ireland had driven them to face the risk of the gallows and penal servitude. The movement for their release swept over the country like wildfire. Mighty gatherings were held in all the towns, and resolutions were every- where passed calling for an amnesty. It was this movement that brought back into Irish life a man who was destined to play an important part in events now about to come — Isaac Butt. He was chosen as the advocate of the Fenian prisoners, and he defended them all with indubitable energy and brilliant ability, and with all the forensic re- sources of a great advocate. Of course he failed to win the game against the desperate odds of that day. Afterwards he joined in the movement for the release of the prisoners — in fact was al- most its only prominent supporter for a while ; and so was forced into a position that won for him the affections of his country. The farmers were next to be aroused, and once more a movement was started in favor of the principles of tenant rights. Sir John Grey, the editor of Freeman's Journal, was one of the lead- ing public men of his day, and was a man of transcendent ability and tireless energy. He had been one of the main instruments in pro- curing the destruction of the Irish Church, against which he had waged incessant war for more than THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 297 a quarter of a century. He now joined Butt in the agitation for tenant right. The demands of the tenants were for what are known as the three F's— that is to say, " fixity of tenure " or protec- tion against eviction ; "free sale" — that is to say. the right to freely dispose of their lands to who- soever they please; and "fair rent" — that is, a power to bring the question of their rents before a judicial tribunal. Abundant evidence has been given in preceding chapters of the existence of the necessity for all these reforms. It has been seen how rack-renting by the landlords for cen- turies has brought a mass of the Irish people to a condition barely removed from starvation ; and it has also been seen how eviction raged like a pestilence throughout the country. Free sale was rendered necessary by the curious custom mainly obtaining in the north of Ireland, under which the tenants were actually forbidden to sell their good- will in the land to the highest bidder. The land- lords there were forbidden by the custom of the province to turn a tenant out if he paid his rent; but, at the same time, they were free to make the tenant's remaining on his holding impossible by frequent and outrageous raising of rents. And they also exercised the right to prevent the ten- ant getting more than a certain fixed sum for the good-will. This was the origin of the demand for free sale. These reforms the tenantry of the country demanded with unanimous voice, and 298 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the hope of obtaining them roused almost a frenzy of excitement throughout the country. Between the pronouncements of Grey and those of Butt on this question there was a certain difference. Grey was a member of the Impe- rial Parliament, and was hopeful that the same success would attend the Land agitation that had already rewarded him in his fight against the Irish Church. He therefore taught the farmers to ex- pect that Mr. Gladstone would be able to pass the House of Commons a Bill giving the tenantry of Ireland "the three F's ; " while Mr. Butt, on the other hand, more accurately appreciated the situ- ation. He had declared over and over again that, in his- opinion, it was foolish and futile to look to the Imperial Parliament for such a radical settle- ment of the question ; and he taught the farmers to rely on their own organization and their own efforts ; to go on with their movement, irrespective of the Parliament. The character of the Land Bill of 1870 added another proof of the incapacity of the Imperial Parliament to deal with Irish affairs. Mr. Glad- stone had the will to carry a measure of as large a force as the Irish people themselves could desire. He was supported apparently by a party of resistless power, for he had a majority of upwards of a hundred. Nevertheless he had to content himself with bringing in a lame and halt- ing measure — the defects of which were palpable. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 299 This was mainly because the public opinion oi England on the Land question was utterly un- sound. In England the land system is very dis- tinct in many ofits features from the land system in Ireland. In Ireland labor and ownership of soil are indissolubly united, and certain peculiar tenant-rights are conceded. The agricultural parts of England consist of large estates split up into extensive farms, cultivated by a race of agricultural laborers that, as a rule, do not own a rood of land. Ireland, on the other hand, con- sists of a vast number of small holdings owned (subject to the landlord's claims) and cultivated by the same person. Up to this period England regarded her own land system as perfect. The depreciation of prices produced by American competition, and other circumstances, have changed this view considerably within the last few years, and a movement has been started for the purpose of linking the ownership and cultiva- tion of the soil in England much on the plan that obtains in Ireland. But in 1870 England was ex- ulting in the possession of the best of land systems, and such proposals as those that were made on the part of the Irish tenantry were regarded as wild and wicked communism. Then the landlord power was able, as it is able still, to impose its will upon the legislation of the Imperial Parlia- ment. In the House of Commons that power is still a potent influence on the Liberal side as well 300 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. as on the Tory; for the Liberal party has among its foremost and most influential leaders men with acres as extensive and with ideas of landlord privileges as high as those on the Conservative benches opposite. The House of Lords, besides^ is a House entirely consisting of landlords. It is, in fact, an assembly mainly employed in the preservation of landlord rights — or landlord wrongs. On an English question it is possible occasionally to overwhelm the landlord interest in the two Houses in a vast springtide of popular feeling. But English opinion can rarely, if ever, be aroused to the same state of excitement and enthusiasm about Irish questions. Besides on the land question at this period English opinion was in one direction, Irish opinion in another. A result of these various circumstances was that the Land Bill of 1870 was a miserable shift rather than a settlement of the land difficulty in Ireland. Still it gave the sanction of law for the first time to the principle of a joint interest of the tenant with the landlord in the soil. Hitherto that doctrine though cherished by the people had been opposed by the landlords as revolutionary and insensate. But this right was acknowledged by the new enactment in a very half-hearted way. The ten- ant could claim compensation for disturbance ; that is to say, if he were turned out of his hold- ing, he could demand a certain amount of money THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 301 from the landlord. The first defect of this was that compensation did not begin until after eviction; that is, until the tenant had been placed in a position in which it was impossible to suffi- ciently compensate him. When the Irish tenant is deprived of his farm he is deprived of the sole means of livelihood that the country affords to him. To evict a tenant from his holding then is to deprive him of all further means of making a livelihood within Irish shores. The only real com- pensation, therefore, that could be given to a ten- ant for eviction would be such a sum as would enable him to live for the remainder of his days. Under the Land Bill of 1870 the scale of com- pensation was placed at an infinitely lower figure than this. In all holdings that did not exceed in value ;£io a year, according to the Poor Law valuation, the tenant might claim as a maximum seven years' rent — and in holdings between ^10 and ^"30 yearly valuation five years' rent. It need scarcely be said that the maximum was never reached by the tenant. The courts before which the cases were tried, consisting mainly of the friends of the landlord, sometimes of the landlords themselves, took care to give the ten- ant as low a sum as possible. But there was a second fatal defect the mean- ing of which became clearer by-and-by. Com- pensation for disturbance could not be given in cases where the tenant was evicted for non-pay- 18 302 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. ment of rent. The Land Act of 1870 did not allow any inquiry as to the amount of the rent. The rent mi^ht have been such a rack-rent as no human being could possibly pay — might be a rent that chronically kept the tenant in a condition just above starvation — the normal condition of rack-rented tenants. The result of it was that if a tenant was behindhand with his rent for a day or for a penny he might be evicted. There was no power to prevent the landlord from evicting, and no power to prevent him from rack-renting. By-and-by there came to Ireland one of those bad harvests by which that country has been visited so often. Failure of one crop removed the thin partition that separated the tenant from starva- tion, and broke him down in his efforts to meet impossible rents, for rental was an exac- tion which could barely be paid at the best of times. For such a state of things the Land Act of 1870 did not provide. The non-pay- ment of his rent by the tenant left him absolutely at the disposal of the landlord. And one season of distress again left the population of Ireland a race of tenants-at-will whom a few landlords could starve, evict and exile. The Land Act of 1870 had broken down, and in no place more con- spicuously than in the north of Ireland. The landlords, shorn of a portion of their privileges, resolved to make larger use of the relics of their power. They could not evict without compensa- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGG T E. .'tf)3 tion, but they could raise the rents, and accord- ingly the raising of rents went on immediately alter the passing of the Act at a rate and to an extent never before paralleled. The raising of rents of course meant the increase of evictions, and the increase of evictions meant the increase of emigration. This miserable awakening- from the dream of hope of 1869 produced a profound impression on the minds of the Irish farmers. In a native Par- liament, responsible to native opinion, did they once more see there was the only chance of ob- taining a real settlement of their grievances. Another and a very different section of the population had been tending in the very same direction through a very different cause. The destruction of the Irish Church Establishment had produced a feeling of great exasperation among many Irish Protestants, and they began to look with favor on any means which would relieve them from the control of an assembly which, as they thought, had forfeited their confi- dence. The idea of Home Rule is supposed by some to be a modern thing, and the events of 1870 are pointed to as having given it birth. But the idea of g-etting; rid of the Act of Union has existed in the Irish mind from the very hour- that the Act of Union was passed. The Irish people never consented to the act, never ac- knowledged the act, never for one year surren- 304 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. dered the hope that it would one time or other be withdrawn. There is hardly an Irishman to-day whose early recollections are not of the dream ol getting rid of this act. The desire for the restor- ation of the Irish Parliament has been constant, persistent, intense — the only difference is that sometimes its manifestations have been silent, and at other times loud. On the 19th of May, 1870, a meeting took place at the Bilton Hotel, Dublin. The meeting was summoned by the following circular- [Private and confidential^ Bilton Hotel, May iyt/i t 1870. Dear Sir : You are requested to attend a pre- liminary meeting of some of the leading citizens at the Bilton Hotel, on Thursday evening next, at 8 o'clock, for the purpose of devising the best plan (to be laid before Her Majesty) for promoting the future interests and welfare of Ireland. N. B. — The meeting will be strictly private. The signatures to this circular are the best guide as to the source whence this new movement came. They are those of James Vokes Mackey, J. P., Graham Lemon, W. H. Kerr, W. Ledger Erson, J. P., Honorary Secretaries. These gentlemen were all Protestants. It will thus be seen that the new movement for the restoration of the Irish Parliament, which is very frequently denounced as an anti-Protestant cru- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 3Q5 sade, was brought into the world under Protestant auspices. Mr. Butt was the central figure of this gathering. He pointed out with the "force and terseness which he had at his command the various evils which an alien legislature had inflicted upon Ireland, described the daily increas- ing hopelessness and misery of the country, and finally called upon the assembly to establish a movement for the restoration of Irish prosperity. A Home Rule Association was founded, and thus the new movement was launched on its way. The Association resolved at making an attempt at obtaining seats in Parliament. Mr. Gladstone's success and speeches had the effect of blinding a good many people to the essential unfitness of the Imperial Parliament to deal with Irish affairs, and accordingly some classes of the population, and notably the clergy, in some districts were in- clined to resent any interference with the Glad- stone Liberal candidates as both ungrateful and unwise. A fundamental essential of an Irish party, if it is to be effective in the House of Commons, is that it should be independent alike of both English parties, that it should vote for the Whig or vote for the Tory in exact accordance with the demands of Irish interests, and that it should use its power standing between the Whig and the Tory for the purpose of raising and dethroning Ministries according to the demands of .the Irish ;J06 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. cause. But the new Home Rule party consisted of men who would never consent to such a doc- trine or such a policy over and over again. Butt tried to get them to adopt this policy, and over and over again he failed. The Home Rule party voted together on the Irish question, it is true, but obviously that made no difference to the English parties. On all the great divisions between the English parties, the Tories in the Home Rule party voted Tory and the Whigs voted Whig. Another essential of a good Irish party is that it should not work for and should not accept office. As has been already pointed out, it is im- possible to suppose that Ireland could get her rights if her cause were pleaded by men who were asking favors from English Ministers. But before long a number of the Irish Home Rule party were openly for sale. Many of them were Whigs, and accordingly could not get much from the Tory government. But some of them were quite willing to take office even from political opponents. But it was perfectly clear that if such a party were allowed to go on, and if the Liberals came into power, a large majority of them would foro-et all about Home Rule and would join the Liberal party as servile and obedient followers. The steps have already been described by which the Irish people were saved from this dread and terrible fate. Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biggar THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 307 had fortunately become members of the new body. They were resolved that Ireland's hopes should not once more be destroyed by Tory or Whig slaves. They pressed forward their policy in season and out of season. They roused the country, they purified the party, they once more gave Ireland a chance and a hope. CHAPTER IX. OLD FIGHT AGAIN. WE brought up the story of the Irish move- ment in an earlier part of the volume to the year 1S79. That year again brought a crisis in the everlasting Land question ; and we found it necessary to go back in order to explain to the American reader how it was that the Land ques- tion in Ireland was different from what it was in America and other countries. We trust that the American reader will now see how the circum- stances of Ireland have made it necessary that the land law should be different in that country from what it is elsewhere. , In 1879 Ireland was once more face to face with a crisis. The failure of the potato crop threat- ened to bring about a renewal of the dreadful scenes which had been enacted in 1846 and 1847 and the following years; and Parnell had thus been compelled to take apparently extreme steps for the purpose of rousing the country to a sense of its dangers. The country had responded to his call; and when in 1880 the Tories at last gave it an opportunity of pronouncing its voice, 308 THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 309 it at once showed that Parnell represented its views ; that his policy was its policy ; and that the men it wanted to send into Parliament were men who would follow his methods and adopt his plans. But the country and Parnell — as so often had happened before— were not in a position to give full effect to their wishes. Parnell had to fight the election with limited resources; there was the same difficulty about candidates as in 1874; and Parnell, besides, had not been able to get home until the elections had already been three weeks in progress. The result of it all was that while the country was perfectly sound and of one mind and one heart, the representatives chosen were of very heterogeneous material. Some of the old Whigs who had degraded and demoralized the party were again in the National ranks, and thus there were two sections at the very start ; honest and independent men, who had gone into politics purely with a view to serve the cause of Ireland without fear or favor or affec- tion ; and the dishonest and the half-hearted and the office-seeking, mainly concerned with what they could make out of Irish politics for their own miserable selves. The two sections were not long in coming into collision. The leader of the Irish party is se- lected every year. Indeed he is not called leader officially at all. His real title is chairman of the party ; and the chairman is chosen like all the 310 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. other officials of the party at the beginning of every Parliamentary session. Mr. Shaw had been chosen in succession to Mr. Butt ; and when the party met in Dublin it had to decide the ques- tion whether or not Mr. Shaw would be re-elected to the position. Mr. Shaw since this time has fallen upon evil days. Let him then be spoken of kindly and considerately. The defects of Mr. Shaw were those of the head rather than those of the heart. He was sincerely anxious for the welfare of Ireland and for the triumph of the Home Rule cause. A stout, easy-going man, with an amiable temper and a not very active mind, he was of opinion that a little soothing talk and amiableness of action would bring round every- body to the reasonable way of thinking ; and that thus the bitter Orange Tory would join in the chorus of approval to the legislation which de- creased his rents and annihilated his power. Mr. Shaw, to put it briefly, believed in the gospel of mush. Such a man was plainly unsuited for the battle on which Ireland was about to enter. The moment was coming when Ireland was either to fall back into landlordism, rack-rent, eviction, starvation, or to go forth to a future of independ- ence, prosperity and tranquil labor. On the side of the landlord was the British Empire. Fleets, armies, judges, juries, jails — all these agencies of government were at the disposal of the landlord caste. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 311 Nevertheless at this vital juncture the easy- going Mr. Shaw was very near being appointed leader. The different men who had been elected were at the time personally unknown to each other. When they entered the Council Chamber of the city of Dublin, where this great gather- ing was taking place, they had had no oppor- tunity whatever of meeting in consultation and of exchanging ideas and preparing a united line of action. Some of them, indeed, who were most favorable to the claims of Mr. Parnell were sup- posed to be hostile. Nor had Mr. Parnell himself taken any trouble to put forward his claims. It is the singular fortune of this extraordinary man to have ob- tained all his power and position without effort on his part, and apparently without gaining any particular pleasure from his success. He had been down in the country on the night before the meeting, and did not reach Dublin until morning. Up to that time, Mr. Parnell had not seen any of even his own friends. But some of them had met on their own hook ; had talked over the situation ; and had in a general way adopted a line of action. This was to put forward, and if possible to carry, Mr. Parnell as leader. The gentlemen who formed this nucleus for the meet- ing of the following day were : Messrs. John Barry, Comins McCoan, Richard Lalor, James O'Kelly, Mr. Biggar and T. P. O'Connor. Mr. 312 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Healy was not then a member of Parliament ; but he was Mr. Parneli's Secretary, and he was present at the meeting. Some of these gentle- men met Mr. Parnell the next morning in the street, as he was on his way to the city hall. He did not receive the proposal that he should be elected very cordially. His own idea was, and re mainrd till an advanced period of the meeting, that Mr. Justin McCarthy should be elected; as being a man extreme enough in opinion for the Parnellites, and moderate enough in counsel for the followers of Mr. Shaw. A debate of some length took 'place, with the final result that twenty-three voted for Mr. Par- nell, and eighteen for Mr. Shaw. The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. Edmund Dwyer Grey, presided over the meeting at its start. When the election was over there was an interval. After this Mr. Parnell quietly took the chair. Thus simply Mr. Parnell was installed in the great position of Leader of the Irish people. The English papers did not take much notice of the election at the moment ; but it was felt that the Imperial Parliament would be met in a spirit of uncompromising demand that might lead to gre_tt events and to stormy times. Be« fore the meeting the Irish members had con- eluded to discuss the land question ; and at once it became apparent that there were differences of opinion that might lead to an ultimate split be- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 315 tvveen the two sections. Mr. Shaw could not get beyond the old demand for the " Three F's ; " and insisted that this should be the battle-cry of the new party. But some of the followers and friends of Mr. Parnell insisted that the time had past for dealing with the Irish question on these lines, and that a bold move should be at once made towards the proprietorship of the soil by the peasantry of Ireland, as by the peasantry of France and Belgium. When the party came to London, another, though not at first sight a very serious, difference of opinion arose. As the result of the general election, Mr. Gladstone had come back with a splendid majority. The fight had taken place on the foreign policy of England — and especially on its policy in the East and in Asia. Ireland was not mentioned often, though Lord Beaconsfield, with characteristic unscrupulousness, had at- tempted to get a majority on an anti-Irish cry. The Liberals were uncommitted so far as Ireland was concerned, but there was a general under- standing that a Ministry which contained such a man as Mr. Gladstone would be inclined to view the demands of Ireland with favor. However, the Parnellites knew that a Liberal Ministry has dangers as well as advantages. The tribe of Irish office-seekers was already on the watch, and it was quite possible that before very long it would be offering its mercenary service to the 316 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Ministers. In that way the party would be de- moralized ; and Ireland once more would be hopeless because betrayed. These and other considerations underlay the question which now came to be discussed between the different sections of the Irish party ; that question was where the Irish members should take their seats. It should be explained to the American reader that in the House of Commons the rule is for the party in power to take its place on the right of the Speaker's chair. When the Liberals are in power they are on the right of the Speaker. When the Tories come in they pass over to the opposite side, and sit on the left of the Speaker's chair. The right is the Ministerial, the left the Opposition side of the House. The benches on each side are divided about half down by a passage ; this passage is known in Parliamentary phraseology as the gang- way. Hitherto the Irish members had sat on the benches below the gangway on the opposition side of the House. There could be no objection to this course as long as the Liberals were out of power; then the Irish were naturally a part of the general opposition to the Tory Ministers. But the Liberals were now in office ; they were sympathetic ; and the question rose whether the Irish members should, by remaining on the op- position side of the House, make open declara- tion of opposition to them as to the Tories. The THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 317 Parnellites eave "Yes" as the answer to this question ; the section led by Mr. Shaw answered "No." An American reader at first sight will perhaps be inclined to smile at the importance attached to this apparently trivial point; but there were im- portant issues underneath the question of the seats. The Government was friendly to Ireland, and no Minister had kindlier intentions than Mr. Gladstone. But the Ministry and Mr. Gladstone were the creatures of the political forces around them; and in 1880, as in every year since the Union, the wishes of Ireland were on one side and the political forces of England pretty solid on the other. Ireland wanted a radical, almost a revolutionary change in the Land laws; she wanted equally a radical if not a revolutionary change in the relations of the two countries; and to these changes the majority of Mr. Glad- stone's supporters were just as inimical as the bitterest Tory. If Ireland, then, were to pursue Radical ends she must come into collision with Mr. Gladstone and the Liberal Ministry, painful as that might be. If, on the other hand, the in- terests of English parties and not those of Ire- land were to be considered supreme, the Irish would be justified in raking their places among the Liberals. The Parnellites thought — and events proved the justice of their views — that it was impossible to serve the God of Irish 318 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. rights and the Mammon of English parties. Mr. Parnell and his friends resolved to remain in opposition; Mr. Shaw and his followers sat among- the Liberals like good Ministerialists. One of the consequences foretold by Mr. Par- nell of this action soon came about. Before long Mr. Shaw found place after place become vacant beside him ; his friends had sold them- selves for place and pay. Another and more important of the prophecies of Parnell was also realized before long. His con- tention was that between the demands of an Irish Nationalist party and the will of an English Lib- eral Ministry there would come irreconcileable differences that must lead to hostile collision. The very opening day of the session proved this. It will be remembered that the Land question had reached a very acute stage in Ire- land. The farmers once more were demanding the protection of their lives and property from the destruction brought upon them by plunder- ing landlords, and the country had just narrowly escaped from the jaws of famine. At the very moment, indeed, when Parliament met there were still 800,000 men and women in the receipt of re- lief from the various funds raised by charitable organizations throughout the world. But, never- theless, all this tragedy had not come to the knowledge of the English authorities ; and the Imperial Parliament were as ignorant of it all as THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 319 if it had never existed. The knowledge in Entr- land on the question was confined to a vague im- pression that there was some distress in Ireland, but then that odious and tiresome country was always more or less in distress ; and there was a strong impression that Mr. Parnell had made very violent and wholly unjustifiable speeches. Of course all this simply meant that the farmers were once again putting forward claims that no British Ministry could possibly consent to ; that wicked agitators were stirring up the people to impossible demands ; that murder was walking abroad through the country; and that if anything were wanted in Ireland it was a new Coercion Bill by which the Irish people could be brought to a condition of good sense and good temper. Meantime it may be as well to pause here for a moment and hear from the Irish people them- selves what it was that they demanded. In April of 1880 there had taken place a convention in Dublin of the Land League, and there the follow- ing platform of Land reform had been laid down : To carry out the permanent reform of land ten- ure we propose the creation of a Department or Commission of Land Administration for Ireland. This Department would be invested with ample powers to deal with all questions relating to land in Ireland. (1) Where the landlord and tenant of any holding had agreed for the sale to the tenant of the said holding, the Department would 19 320 GLADSTONE— PARNELL; execute the necessary conveyance to the tenant and advance him the whole or part of the pur- chase-money ; and upon such advance being made by the Department such holding would be deemed to be charged with an annuity of £§ for every ^100 of such advance, and so in proportion for any less sum, such annuity to be limited in favor of the Department, and to be declared to be re- payable in the term of thirty-five years. (2) When a tenant tendered to the landlord for the purchase of his holding a sum equal to twenty years of the Poor Law valuation thereof the Department would execute the conveyance of the said holding to the tenant, and would be empowered to advance to the tenant the whole or any part of the purchase-money, the repay- ment of which would be secured as set forth in the case of voluntary sales. (3) The Department would be empowered to acquire the ownership' of any estate upon tender- ing to the owner thereof a sum equal to twenty years of the Poor Law valuation of such estate, and to let said estate to the tenants at a rent equal to 3*^ per cent, of the purchase-money thereof. (4) The Department or the Court having juris- diction in this matter would be empowered to de- termine the rights and priorities of the several persons entitled to, or having charges upon, or otherwise interested in any holding conveyed as THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 32;$ above mentioned, and would distribute the pur- chase-money in accordance with such rights and priorities ; and when any moneys arising from a sale were not immediately distributed the Depart- ment would have a right to invest the said moneys for the benefit of the parties entitled thereto. Pro- vision would be made whereby the Treasury could from time to time advance to the Department such sums of money as would be required for the pur- chases above mentioned. The doctrines laid down in this programme were afterwards in the main adopted by the Im- perial Parliament, but not until there had been a vast amount of fierce struggling and bitter suf- ferincr. o This platform formulated demands for the per- manent settlement of the land problem. Mean- time there was a point which demanded attention and immediate legislation. What was to be done with the people whom the disastrous failure of the crops made incapable of paying the rents ? It was now that the defects of the Land Act of 1870 came out more clearly than ever before. A vast proportion of the Irish tenants were at the mercy of the landlords, and the landlords were merciless. Evictions were going on all over the country. The mass of poverty and hopeless misery was being daily increased, and if the landlords were allowed to go on at the present rate, there was fair chance of a national disaster. To all these 324 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. things the reply of the Government was absolutely nothing. The Queen's speech contained para- graphs upon all possible subjects, and with regard to almost every nation in the Queen's dominions, but of Ireland not one word. It was discovered that upon the Irish Land question the Queen's speech was a perfect reflex of the state of mind among the Queen's ministers. On the question of Ireland the ministerial mind was a blank. Mr. Gladstone is too frank a man not to reveal to the public at some time or other the workings of his mind. Speaking four years afterwards to his constituents in Midlothian, he used the following - remarkable words : " I must say one word more upon, I might say, a still more important subject — the subject of Ire- land. It did not enter into my address to you, for what reason I know not ; but the Government that was then in power, rather, I think, kept back from Parliament, certainly were not forward to lay before Parliament, what was going on in Ire- land until the day of the dissolution came and the address of Lord Beaconsfield was published in undoubtedly very imposing terms. ... I frankly admit that I had much upon my hands connected with the doings of that Government in almost every quarter of the world, and I did not know — no one knew — the severity of the crisis that was already swelling upon the horizon, and that shortly after rushed upon us like a flood." THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 325 This certainly is one of the most astonishing confessions that were ever made by a Minister, and it throws as much light as any other speech of Mr. Gladstone upon the vexed question as to whether the union of the Legislatures is good for England or for Ireland. Of all the Ministers that ever reigned in England, there has never been one of more voracious reading or more restless activity or who more nearly approached to om- niscience than Mr. Gladstone. He could speak of a passage in Homer, a poem of Dante, a con- ceit of Voltaire ; of a forgotten passage in the history of Greece or in the discoveries of Sir Robert Peel ; he can discourse upon the deepest secrets of theology and the highest problems of statesmanship or the smallest points of detail, such as railway fares and freight rates, with equal ease and with equal command. Yet here was a great national tragedy taking place in Ireland, with all the attendant horrors of a mighty national convulsion, and Mr. Gladstone, the Prime Minis- ter of England, within three hours' reach of Ire- land by steam, was absolutely ignorant of every- thing going on there. That one fact alone was one of the most potent arguments that could be used in favor of removing Irish affairs from the mercy of English incapacity. The Irish members immediately after they heard the Queen's speech found themselves face to face with a question of dispute about the seats 326 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. in the House of Commons. Were they to be patient with the Ministry, to consult its ease and its interests and to postpone the pressing de- mands of Ireland until such time as ministers might consider opportune and convenient? It was held that such a course would be a betrayal of the interests and the hopes of Ireland. In the face of a tragedy so terrible, of sufferings so keen, as were racking Ireland it was decided that delay was death, and that it was their duty as Irish representatives to press forward the claims of Ireland without the least regard for anything save Ireland's supreme agony and mighty need. Ac- cordingly they at once proposed an amendment to the Queen's speech insisting that the Land question of Ireland required immediate dealing with. Their demands were regarded either as wicked or ridiculous. Here was a Ministry just come into office scarcely warm in its place and with difficulties to encounter and errors to amend in all parts of the world! But the reply of the Irish members was that if there were an Irish Parliament the voice of Ireland would demand and would receive immediate attention ; and that it was not the fault of Ireland that an overworked Ministry and a Parliament with all the world to survey had the sole control of Irish interests and Irish fortunes. . . . Mr. Shaw joined the Government in its policy ; and so the division between the two sections of the Irish party THE GREA1 IRISH STRUGGLE. 327 widened to an impassable chasm, and from this time forward they rarely if ever kept together. The amendment to the Queen's speech was of course lost, but the Irish party were not yet done with the question. They immediately brought in a bill the object of which was to suspend evictions for a certain period until Ireland was able to re- cover from the stunning blow of the ruined harvest. The bill by some miracle was allowed to escape blocking and came before the House of Commons at two o'clock one morning. Mr. Gladstone saw now that the question could no longer be avoided, asked for a postponement of the Irish Bill, and in a few days afterwards announced that the Government themselves were prepared to deal with the question which this bill raised. And thus within a few days after the opening of Parliament the Parnell party had gained an important victory; and instead of Ireland being without attention or without relief it was placed in the forefront of the Ministerial programme. This was the way in which the measure known as the Disturbance Bill was brought into being*. This bill gave the power to County Court Judges to suspend evictions in cases where, owing to the distress, the tenant was unable to pay the exist- ing rent. The bill led to fierce discussions — the landlord party on both sides of the House oppos- ing it vehemently. In the end it passed through 328 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the House of Commons ; but when it got to the House of Lords it was rejected by an overwhelm- ing majority. It had not gone through the House of Commons, however, without extorting from Mr. Gladstone some very remarkable words with regard to the state of Ireland. Thus he brought out clearly the relentless cruelty of the landlords. " If," he said on this subject, " we look to the total numbers we find that in 1878 there were 1,749 evictions; in 1879 2,607; and, as was shown by my right honorable and learned friend, 1,690 in the five and a half months of this year — showing a further increase upon the enormous increase of last year, and showing in fact unless it be checked that 1 5,000 individuals will be ejected from their homes without hope, without remedy in the course of the present year." " By the fail- ure of the crops during the year 1879 the act of God had replaced the Irish occupier in the condition in which he stood before the Land Act. Because what had he to contemplate? He had to contemplate eviction for his non-payment of rent ; and, as a consequence of eviction, starva- tion ; and it is no exaggeration to say, in a coun- try where the agricultural pursuit is the only pur- suit, and where the means of the payment of rent are entirely destroyed for a time by the visitation of Providence, that the poor occupier may under these circumstances regard a sentence of eviction as coming, for him, very near a sentence oi death." SOLICITING AID FOR THE STARVING. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 329 Very remarkable consequences followed from the rejection of the Disturbance Bill by the House of Lords. There were 1 5,000 people about to be evicted from their homes — about to have decreed against them by the landlords sentences of death. The tenant was left, therefore, to use Mr. Glad- stone's words again, "without hope, without remedy." The Government on their side ought never to have brought in the bill, or else, having brought it in, ought to have staked their existence as a government upon it. For a while it seemed that the man mainly responsible for the government of Ireland would adopt this course. Mr. Forster declared that if the landlords continued to evict starving tenants he should feel it his duty to come to Parliament for some protection for the tenants, and, if that were not afforded, to resign his office. But Mr. Forster was a man bold in word and weak in action. In a few days afterwards he was assailed by the Tories, and he withdrew his words and laboriously explained them away. This was the state of affairs when the memorable recess of 1880 opened. One thing the government had done was to appoint a commission to inquire into the question, and especially into the operation of the Land Act of 1870. Mr. Parnell had now one ot the most perplexing problems that he has ever faced in his whole public career. The Irish leader knew that if he were to attempt to take the place 330 GLADSTONE— PA RN ELL. of the law he ran the risk of brineino- both the people and himself into collision with the au- thorities, and a collision might defeat the whole movement and throw it back once more into the slough of hopeless despond. At the same time the people must have protection. It is a wonder- ful testimony to his skill, his exhaustless resource, his unfailing nerve, his infallible judgment, that he was able to conduct his camoaion and at the same time to preserve the tenants against the evils by which they were threatened and to keep them all the while out of the meshes of the Brit- ish law. He preached again and again the gos- pel that what the tenants were to look to was not the British Parliament. He pointed out how that body had over and over again cheated Irish hopes, and how in its present constitution it was incapa- ble even with such a Minister as Mr. Gladstone of carrying out really acceptable reforms. The result was that the Land League became a mag- nificent organization with a membership almost conterminous with the farming population of the country. In this way the Irish people were brought to such a position that the landlords and not the tenants became the suppliants, and the tenants were able to approach Parliament, not with whines upon their lips, but with defiant de- mands. The uprisal of slaves against ancient despotism is always accompanied by a certain amount of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 331 crime, usually of a brutal character. The revolu- tion of 1880 had not escaped the general fate, but on the whole it was singularly free from grave offence. There was never in Irish history a pe- riod in which there was so much distress, so much excitement, and so little crime side by side. But the landlords had managed to get hold of the always hostile London press. Every offence, no matter how small, was reported at full length, and the English people were led to believe that Ire- land at the moment was a pandemonium. Mr. Forster went backwards and forwards be- tween England and Ireland during this period. He was very greedy of applause and newspaper eulogy, and was deeply influenced by the attacks that were universally made upon his administra- tion in Ireland. In the Cabinet itself there was division of opinion. The Radicals were opposed to coercion, and the Whigs were rather favorable to it. During one of the struggles a very char- acteristic incident took place, which will show how the whole question of Ireland and its fate is dealt with in imperial councils. There was a struggle on the first day of a Cabinet meeting that lasted two or three days. Mr. Forster was very mild with regard to the state of Ireland, and repre- sented that the accounts in the newspapers were grossly exaggerated, and that the country was far from being in as bad a state as people on the English side of the channel were led to believe. 332 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. The next day he represented Ireland as a pande- monium, and hoarsely called for coercion. The struggle ended in a drawn battle. In the mean- time Ministers were left in a painful state of sus- pense, and the majority of them held their peace. The newspapers all the time kept howling louder and louder. Their lies and exaggerations were not corrected by official and authoritative denials. Judgment against Ireland was, in fact, allowed to go by default, the result of which was that the demand for coercion became almost unanimous. Mr. Forster allowed himself to be carried away. He was able to bring forward in favor of his de- mand an argument and a fact that seemed irre- sistible to men unfamiliar with the real state of affairs. Coercion had been refused to him in the September of 1880. The outrages in that month were only 167. In October also there was a struggle against him. The outrages then were only 286. But in November he was able to point to the fact that they had risen to 561, while in December they reached 867. The tide of crime apparently kept rising every hour. The first step was taken in a new policy by bringing an action against Mr. Parnell and sev- eral of his colleagues for conspiracy. The only conspiracy in which Mr. Parnell had been engaged was that of saving the tenants, whom Mr. Glad- stone had described as without hope and without remedy, as lying under sentences of eviction THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 3.'>5 almost equivalent to sentences of starvation, and of endeavoring to raise to the dignity of freedom, prosperity and manhood a class whose awful suf- ferings for centuries have been described in the o preceding pages. It is scarcely necessary to say that no properly chosen tribunal of Irishmen would pass any verdict upon Mr. Parnell except that of having been, at a most dangerous crisis, the best friend of his country; and the trial, after winding its slow length along for many weeks, ended in disagreement of the jury. In January, 1881, Parliament was called to- gether, nearly a month earlier than was usual, in order to give the Government time to pass measures of coercion. It was well known that the Irish party would meet these proposals with obstinate resistance and would prolong the strug- gle to the very uttermost limits the rules of the House would allow. The struggle began on the very first night of the session. The Irish mem- bers resolved to encrasfe m the debate on the Queen's speech as long as they possibly could. Four amendments were proposed in succession, and each amendment was discussed at extraordi- nary length. The Parnell party numbered but thirty-five members, and of these but a small pro- portion were practised speakers. It thus came to pass that, at most, a dozen men had to keep the Imperial Parliament at bay for night after night, and for week after week. At last the debate on 336 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the Queen's speech was allowed to be closed, and Mr. Forster had an opportunity of proposing his Coercion Bill. The first step in the House of Commons is to obtain leave to introduce a meas- ure and have it printed. This stage, on most oc- casions, is not the subject of prolonged debate or of division. But the Parnellites were resolved that not a single point should be surrendered without resistance, and they therefore raised a debate of great length upon the introductory stage of the bill. Meanwhile a very extraordinary occurrence had taken place. Mr. Forster had carried his point by arguments drawn from the vast increase in the number of crimes in the months of October, November and December. These startling totals had broken down the wav- ering purpose of the Cabinet, and had them solid for coercion. But it soon appeared that when Mr. Forster presented his totals he at the same time gave no information as to how they were made up. His colleagues and the public gen- erally assumed that when Mr. Forster spoke of 561 crimes in November and 867 in December, he was speaking of serious crimes — murder, high- way robbery, shooting with intent to kill, mutila- tion of cattle and other offences of the same kind. Mr. Forster had, in introducing the Coercion Bill, given a number of the serious offences — and some of the offences were very brutal indeed — and left the impression upon the mind of every- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 337 body that these were typical instances. When, however, the Blue Book came to be presented, in which the crimes were given in detail, it was dis- covered that a number of these terrible crimes were nothing more serious than threatening let- ters sent by foolish or mischievous persons. An examination of the outrages provoked shouts of laughter. Thus the very first outrage that stood on the Blue Book for the month of October was as follows : A portion of the front wall of an old unoccupied thatched cabin was maliciously thrown down, in consequence of which the roof iell in. Another outrage was the breaking of a wooden gate with stones. Another, the breaking of sev- eral panes of glass in an unoccupied house. The sixth outrage reported from County Derry ran, "Three perches of a wall maliciously thrown down." The hundredth in the West Riding of the County Galway was, "A barrel of coal-tar maliciously spilled." It was further discovered, on looking into the return of outrages, that very often one crime, by a process of multiplication, was manufactured into four, five, six and seven. It was very easy to reach a total of 561 or 867. if offences like these were dignified with the title of outrages and were made to perform the same operation as the stage army of a scantily manned theatre. These things were brought before the House of Commons by Irish members and by English. 338 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Mr. Gladstone looked surprised, bewildered, and had to confess that the facts were a revelation to him. It was perfectly clear that Mr. Forster had obtained coercion by garbled reports and doc- tored statistics. But it was too late to go back. By this time, too, the resistance of the Irish mem- bers had provoked a good deal of passion in the House of Commons, and still more outside. The Irish members felt bound to defend the liberties of their country, thus unjustly assailed, step by step, and inch by inch, and English opinion could not understand their action. The result was that the few Radicals who had been inclined to stand by the Irish members in the first instance were compelled to desert them under the pressure of public opinion, and the Irish party were left to fight the battle alone. A number of violent scenes took place. The struggle reached a climax on Monday, January 31st. The question still discussed was leave to introduce the bill. The Irish members demanded an adjournment at the usual hour on Monday night. It was refused, and both sides prepared for an all-night sitting. The struggle went on all through the night, then all through Tuesday, with many wild and pas- sionate scenes. Finally, at nine o'clock on Wed- nesday morning, it was brought to a close. The Speaker, by an exercise of authority never before practised in Parliament, declared that the debate had gone on long enough, and closed it on his w r, n -r S| m c r. w X ■- g 1 c o" w -1 r M w s < //y////'//rtfflM mWmm JWJmk mm, wM WmJmsk INI Bplfe Wm-r 1« ; ^^^^^^mt ////JyJ/> JHELtlllr'^'Atf.'^. &§ll' wflsBMmw I Y '' Wm : »H III! 1 ' 1 Hi (■ml jv 4glBs%p%%&? j^Sarzk B ''/vjM; ''V 1 .- \^S^^^^^^^k BllP "^g*[6j§glgp«alK^ WW^ THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 339 own will. The Irish members vainly protested, and when they found the Speaker determined to go on, they left the House in a body, shoutino- " Privilege ! Privilege ! " For a while they de- bated whether they should return to the assembly or not, but they finally decided that it was their duty to fight on. A few hours afterwards there came another startling episode in the great strug- gle. Just before the House met on Thursday a rumor was whispered around that Mr. Davitt had been sent back to penal servitude. The Irish members were shocked and angered by this wretched piece of political vengeance on a politi- cal opponent. Mr. Parnell raised the question in the House of Commons. He was answered curtly, almost insolently. Then he interrupted the Prime Minister, was called to order, refused to obey the ruling of the chair, and was suspended by the Speaker and ordered to leave the House. The same thing- happened in the case of Mr. Dil- lon and of many other Irish members, with the final result that the following were suspended: Messrs. Parnell, Finigan, Barry, Biggar, Byrne, Corbet, Daly, Dawson, Gill, Gray, Healy, Lalor, Leamy, Leahy, Justin McCarthy, McCoan, Marum, O'Donoqhue, the O'Gorman Mahon, W. H. O'Sullivan, O'Connor Power, Redmond, Sex- ton, Smithwick, A. M. Sullivan, and T. D. Sul- livan. In their absence on the previous Wednesday 20 ;}40 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. leave had been granted for the introduction of the Coercion Bill. The measure was still op- posed and the Prime Minister brought in rules which gave the Speaker the power to close the discussion not only on a certain day but at a cer- tain hour. Despite of all this, it was not until nine weeks from the opening of the session that Mr. Forster had passed through the third reading of the two Coercion Bills — the one suspending the Habeas Corpus, the other authorizing the dis- armament of the Irish people. It was in the session thus inauspiciously opened that the Land Bill of 1 88 1 was introduced. The measure was one which would have been accepted with frenzied joy in 1852, and which in 1870 would probably have been accepted as a full and final settlement of the question. It granted "the three F's," and thus rescued the Irish tenant at last from rack-renting and from capricious and arbitrary eviction. But the time had passed when the Irish would be satisfied with such a moderate settlement. The doctrine of obtaining the owner- ship of the soil, through the aid of the state, had taken a firm hold of their minds, and a bill which would have been more than they would have" ex- pected if they had trusted to Mr. Gladstone and the Imperial Parliament alone was less than they demanded now that they had an organization of their own and an independent Irish party. However, apart from the deficiency of the Land THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 341 Bill of 1 88 1 as a final settlement of the Land question, it was most defective with regard to a very important point in the immediate future. The landlords having exacted impossible rents had always the tenants in their debt, and instead of acting after the generous and sensible manner of landlords in other countries, they had kept their debts upon their books in order to always retain the tenant in a state of abject depend- ence. Some landlords had actually kept out- standing against the tenants debts dating from 1846 and 1847. The tenant was in most cases half a year in arrear, and the rent that he thus owed left the tenant subject to eviction at any hour that the landlord pleased. It may be said that the Landsdowne estate had a bad eminence in this respect as in many others. It is perfectly clear that there was no use whatever in giving the tenants fixity of tenure if these detestable arrears still remained. The landlords had noth- ing to do but to bring an action for ejectment, and every tenant who owed a farthing throughout the country could be mercilessly evicted. It turned out that there were nearly 100,000 ten- ants in the country in this position, and thus the Land Bill to them was as the Dead Sea fruits turned to ashes. These facts were brought again and again before the attention of the House of Commons, but Mr. Forster refused to properly consider them, and the result was that the Land 342 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Bill passed in spite of the protest of the Irish party. Another and a graver objection was, that the Land Courts to which the question of fixing the rent would be referred were courts held nearly altogether by the nominees of landlords or their friends. Lord Selborne, then Lord Chancellor, declared that the Land Bill would restore and not diminish the value of the landlords' property. Lord Carlingford also announced that the pro- visions of the bill would cause the landlords no money loss whatever. It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that the fact dwelt upon by the Irish leaders was that the rent of Ireland was far and away beyond the capacity of the Irish tenants to pay; that this rental kept them in a state of hopeless poverty, and that, unless therefore there were a revolutionary reduction in the rent-rolls, the tenants had no chance whatever of reaching a condition of prosperity, not even an ordinarily decent living. These various facts presented to Mr. Parnell and his colleagues a very important problem. Would they or would they not dissolve the Land League? would they or would they not advise tenants to go into the Land Courts? They held two conventions in succession ; at those con- ventions there was a large party that denounced the Land Act, and declared that the only safety for the tenant was to keep out of it altogether. This party had in their minds the idea that the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 343 time had come for a final and decisive conflict with landlordism, and that if any time were spent in skirmishes or truces the golden opportunity would pass. This party had in their minds the idea that the proper thing to do was to raise the " No Rent " cry ; and in that way to bring the landlords to their knees, and so to compel a transfer of the ownership of the soil on reason- able terms to its tillers and occupiers. Mr. Parnell, however, had very serious doubts of the success that would attend the No Rent movement — doubts that were justified by subsequent experiences. He adopted a more cautious policy, and sug- gested that the tenants should employ a double method. In the first place they should test the Land Courts by sending a number of test cases before them, and if the courts gave just decisions that they should then be encouraged to go on. At the same time the organization was to be main- tained in its full strength ; and to any person who knew the circumstances of Ireland this policy would at once be understood. The Commissioners of Land Courts, with the exception of the three heads of the departments, were officials appointed for certain limited periods. Their proceedings had to be approved, and could be, and frequently were, brought before the Houses of Parliament for discussion and criticism. Accordingly the acts of the sub-commissioners were subject to final review by a tribunal which was almost entirely on 344 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the side of the landlords. As a matter of fact, the landlords took full advantage of the power of reviewing the action of the Land Commissioners which the Land Act gave. Every commissioner that did anything like justice or any approach to justice to the tenant was made the subject of question after question to the ministers, and when the time came for renewing the terms of office all commissioners were dismissed to a man who had showed sympathy with the tenant. Mr. Parnell therefore properly judged that unless there were an immense pressure on the other side the Land Courts were sure to do injustice as be- tween landlord and tenant. Mr. Parnell, however, was not allowed to pursue his policy. The Govern- ment, afraid that the Land Act would break down, resolved upon a bold stroke. On the morning of Thursday, October 13th, 1881, Mr. Parnell was arrested under the Coercion Act and was placed in prison. Mr. John Dillon, Mr. O'Kelly and Mr. Sexton were apprehended immediately afterward, and Mr. William. O'Brien, the editor of United Ireland, soon followed them. The League was suppressed, a " No Rent " manifesto was issued in reply, and so there began a fierce struggle between coercion on the part of the Government and resistance on the side of the people. CHAPTER X. IN THE DEPTHS. THERE now began a fierce and merciless war between the Irish people and the Brit- ish authorities. Coercion was given full swing, and went on its way from excess to excess till there was scarcely a method of despotism not resorted to. One of Forster's first acts was to employ a number of retired or dismissed military men to be intrusted with the duty of putting down all free expression of opinion. Mr. Clifford Lloyd was the very worst specimen of this gang — a man of violent temper, of ferocity, and of an utter want of scruple. The character of Mr. Lloyd may be estimated from the fact that in spite of his powerful patronage he had afterwards to be withdrawn from Egypt; his manners were too offensive even for the mild Egyptian to endure. This ruffian proceeded to make the most reckless use of the powers surrendered to him. He ar- rested a village almost to the last man ; he insulted women in the grossest manner. If they stood in the street they were accused of obstructing the pathway, or on some other frivolous charge were 345 346 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. haled before a magistrate and subjected to indig- nities which in civilized countries are reserved for the abandoned. Gaining audacity as he went along, Mr. Lloyd had brought before him some of the best women of the country who had em- ployed themselves in bringing succor or in inspir- ing courage in the hapless tenants who were now abandoned to the mercy of their landlords. As far back as Edward III. an act was passed the object of which was to put down the vagrancy which then flourished. The act was loose in its terms so as to be able to catch hold of all tramps and prostitutes whom the authorities wished to incarcerate. It was under this obsolete act that some of the most refined and heroic women of Ireland were sent to solitary confinement for periods often of six months. Children twelve years of age and crying after the manner of chil- dren were placed in the dock on the charge of endangering the peace of the queen. There is in Ireland a popular song known as " Harvey Duff." It is a satire of a rather harmless charac- ter directed against the police. The singing of " Harvey Duff" was raised in these days into high treason, and boys and girls who ventured to hum it as they passed the sacred form of a policeman were first brutally ill-treated — in one case a girl twelve years of age was stabbed — and then brought before the. magistrates. In the meantime every newspaper that said a THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 347 word against these acts was promptly suppressed, and every man who uttered a protest was sent to prison. Man after man was seized who had no hold on public affection. The gaols were crowded, and finally the numbers of persons im- prisoned without prospect of trial reached the enormous total of a thousand and upwards. Evictions at the same time proceeded apace. If the Irish people were a foreign enemy at the gates, they could not have been assailed with a more lavish expenditure of money and force. Foot soldiers, cavalry, artillery, commissariat vans, blue jackets, vessels of war, to say nothing of 1 3,000 armed policemen — all these were placed at the disposal of the landlords and assisted in driving out starving tenants to the ditch. But this odious system did not even bear the fruits for which it was intended. Crime, instead of de- creasing, doubled throughout the country and became daily of a fiercer and more terrible char- acter. The Irish people, in fact, were at bay, and resorted to those savage methods of reprisal which among all peoples are the answers of impotent despair to the brutal omnipotence of a despotism. In 1880, before coercion came into operation, there were eight cases of murder in Ireland and twenty-five of firing at the person. In 1881, dur- ing the half of which coercion was in existence, there were seventeen murders and sixty-six cases of firing at the person. In the first six months 348 GLADSTONE— PA RNELL. of 1882, when the regime of coercion was at its worst, there were fifteen murders and forty cases of firing at the person. The trials showed clearly that all serious offences were actually twice as many since the introduction of coercion as they were before. Public opinion in England can stand Russian methods of government for only a certain length of time, and the accounts of these various epi- sodes in government at last began to produce a strong reaction. Indeed, the question was taken up by the Tory party, and a member of that party, Sir John Hay, brought forward a resolution denouncing imprisonment without trial. Mr. W. H. Smith, an ex-Cabinet Minister, put upon the table of the House a resolution setting forth a peasant proprietary as the only solution of the Irish Land question. Here, indeed, was Nemesis with a vengeance ! The contention of the Land League and Mr. Parnell throughout was that a peasant proprietary was the only solution of the Land problem. It was mainly for preaching that doctrine that Mr. Parnell and a thousand other men had been placed in gaol, and here, now, was one of the leaders of the landlord party coming forward to declare that Mr. Parnell and his colleagues were right. Ministers took alarm. None of them were in real sympathy with Mr. Forster's regime; they were doubtful of its wisdom, and could not help being convinced THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 349 of its want of good result. The consequence was, that Mr. Parnell was released, and that the Government undertook practically to do every- thing that he had demanded before his imprison- ment. It had been declared, as has been seen, by his party, that the Land Act was worthless to the vast proportion of the tenants, owing to the heavy arrears they owed to the landlords. Mr. Gladstone undertook to bring in an Arrears Bill, for the purpose of wiping out their debts and thus bringing them within the compass of his land legislation. Mr. Parnell and his colleagues had complained and clearly shown that the clause of the Land Act with regard to the improvements made by tenants did not sufficiently protect the tenants. Mr. Gladstone undertook to amend the Land Act of 1881 in this regard. Mr. Parnell and the Land League had declared that a peasant proprietary was the only practical and final settlement of the Irish Land question. Mr. Gladstone undertook to establish the principle of a peasant proprietary. Finally, Mr. Parnell pro- tested against coercion as a method of govern- ment. Mr. Gladstone undertook to drop coercion, and began by dismissing Lord Cowper and Mr. Forster. In fact, every single one of Mr. Par- nell's demands was listened to and accepted. He and the British Empire had stood in deadly and merciless conflict, and unarmed and from his gaol he dictated the terms of capitulation. 350 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. When Mr. Parnell appeared in the House of Commons everybody came forward to greet him. Treacherous friends and open enemies rushed up to shake his hand, and the House of Commons bowed before him. Everybody felt that almost the last stage in the Irish conflict had been reached. A leader who had proved his power over the people to such an extent, and had achieved so complete a victory over such tre- mendous odds, might fairly demand that the government of the country should be put into his hands ; and, in fact, everybody felt that the release of Mr. Parnell meant the speedy advent of Home Rule. But the evil fortune that has so often blighted the Irish cause on the threshold of victory in- tervened, and in one day the hopes of Ireland were blasted, and the cause of Irish liberty was thrown back for years. Lord Frederick Caven- dish had gone over to Ireland as the new Chief Secretary, and as the bearer of the new message of peace to the Irish people. He was a man of amiable temper, and of high purpose, and well fitted in every way to be the medium of recon- ciliation. On the very day of his arrival in Dub- lin, he and Mr. Bourke, the Under Secretary, were assassinated in the Phoenix Park. This was on May 6th. It turned out afterwards he was unknown to those who killed him, and that his death was due to the accidental circumstance of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. ^51 his being alone with Mr. Bourke. The tragedy created terrible excitement and an^er in Ene- land. A cry for vengeance was raised, and the Ministry had to -bow before the storm, and, hav- ing dropped coercion, were obliged once more to introduce it. Mr. Parnell was assailed with spe- cial bitterness ; and Mr. Forster was once more elevated to the position and eminence which he had forfeited. In a remarkable passage of his evidence by James Carey, a man who played a prominent part in the conspiracy, and afterwards betrayed his companions, here is an extract from his evidence in cross-examination by Mr. Walsh : Q. When you became a member of the Order of Invincibles, was it for the object of serving your country that you joined? A. Well, yes. Q. And at that time when you joined with the object of serving your country, in what state was Ireland ? A. In a very bad state. O. A famine, I think, was just passing over her? A. Yes. O. The Coercion Bill was in force, and the popular leaders were in prison ? A. Yes. Q. And was it because you despaired of any constitutional means of serving Ireland that you joined the Society of Invincibles ? A. I believe so. However, England was not in a humor to listen, and the Crimes Act was passed in the House of 352 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Commons after a vain resistance by the Irish members. This act enroled juries to be packed and other methods to be adopted by which in despotic countries prisoners are cajoled or ter- rorized into eivino- evidence true or false. A number of men were put upon their trial before juries consisting entirely of landlords exasperated by the loss of power and by the crimes committed. A number of men were in this way convicted and were hanged. A sickening doubt afterwards arose as to whether these men were innocent or guilty, and this was especially the case with re- gard to a man named Myles Joyce. His case was debated over and over asjain in the House of Commons, and it is still a question of doubt as to whether he was condemned justly. A man named Bryan Kilmartin was sent to penal servitude on a charge of having shot at a man with intent to murder. The judge declared emphatically that the man was guilty beyond all doubt. Attempt after attempt to have his case investigated failed; but finally the matter was brought before the House of Commons. It was proved that a man who had gone to America immediately after the crime, and who had on his death-bed confessed to the offence, was the real culprit, and Bryan Kil- martin, proved innocent, had to be released. In Parliament all this time the Irish party op- posed as strenuously as they could the ministry of Mr. Gladstone. They thought that the pro- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. ;};-,;; ceedings in Ireland were entirely unjustifiable. ror a long time they voted steadily on all critical occasions against the Ministry, with the result that they more than once endangered its exist- ence. The influence which the Irish party was able to exercise over these divisions is worth con- sidering under present circumstances, when the enemies of Ireland seem to be once more in a majority. The Liberal party at the start num- bered 351, and then, besides, they had the con- stant support of 23 Home Rulers who had de- serted the Irish party. The Tories, on the other hand, had only 238, and the Home Rulers num- bered about 2,7- The Government thus were 374 against 275 — a majority of 99. Yet on a division on the Cloture resolution the Government major- ity was reduced to 39. On one of the votes this majority was reduced to 28; on another it was but 14, and finally, on June 8, 1885, the majority en- tirely disappeared, and the Government was left in a minority and had to resign. Before this time, however, the Government had passed two meas- ures of the utmost importance to Ireland. They had reduced the franchise, and in this way had raised the electorate from a quarter of a million to three-quarters of a million. They at the same time swept away by the Redistribution Bill a num- ber of the small and rotten boroughs. The re- sult of it was that the mass of the Irish people had for the first time an opportunity of making 354 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. their views known, and of returning a really united party to Parliament. The advent of the Conservative Government produced some excellent changes. Shrewd ob- servers say that a weak Conservative adminis- tration is, of all others, the most radical. De- pendent for existence on the mercy of the Liberal Opposition, it brings forward liberal measures, and these measures, instead of being opposed and ob- structed by the Liberal Opposition, are supported and accelerated. Then a Conservative ministry has always the House of Lords at its disposal. Whatever bill a Conservative minister advocates, the House of Lords accepts. On the other hand, a Liberal ministry, desirous of passing any reform, has to have at its back a tide of almost revolu- tionary passion in order to overcome the obsti- nate resistance of the Tory Opposition. And so it happened in 1885 with the Tory Government. The Tory party is the party of landlords and of coercion, yet the moment they came into office they dropped all mention of coercion. They even promised an inquiry into some of the cases of alleged miscarriage of justice. They passed a Laborers' Act, which enabled the laborers of Ireland to obtain better house accommodation. And, above all, they passed a large bill for the purpose of transforming the rent-paying occupier into a peasant-proprietor. The eeneral election came in the November of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 355 1885, and it was the desire of the Irish party to bring into power a weak Conservative government dependent for its existence upon the Irish party. They contended that such a government would be willing to give Ireland Home Rule, and that if only it could make up its mind to do this it could pass the measure without any of the friction or passion which would accompany similar proposals on the part of the Liberals. They received abundant proofs that the Tories were disposed to grant Home Rule. Lord Carnarvon, then Tory Lord-Lieutenant for Ireland, sought and obtained an interview with Mr. Parnell, and the Tory minister and the Irish leader were practically agreed that Home Rule was just and necessary. Lord Randolph Churchill gave abundant indica- tions that his views were the same, and expressed in private his firm conviction of both the justice and the certainty of Home Rule. These private expressions of views were confirmed by the omis- sion in all the public speeches of the Tories of any hostility to the claims of Ireland, with occasion- ally a vague hint that these claims should not be summarily dismissed. The result of all this was that at the polls there was an alliance between the Tories and the Irish voters in England. This alliance secured the Tories a large number of seats, but not sufficient to give them a chance of carrying on the government. They were in a large minority, but they had in their own ranks 21 356 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. twenty or twenty-five Orangemen of the nar- rowest type, who would have deserted them the first moment they indicated an intention to deal justly with the claims of Ireland. There was an internal struggle in the Cabinet, with the result expressed by Lord Randolph Churchill with cynic frankness : " I have done my best for you and have failed; and now, of course, I shall do my best against you." Lord Carnarvon, a conscientious man, resigned office. The Tory party resolved to abandon the hopeless task of keeping a govern- ment together, and on January 26th announced that they would bring in a bill for land purchase, and a bill for suppressing the National League. They knew, when making this announcement, that they would compel a hostile vote that night against them on an amendment brought forward by Mr. Jesse Collings in favor of what is known as the policy of three acres and a cow. Their anticipations were realized ; they were defeated, and Mr. Gladstone was called upon to form a ministry. In the debate on the amendment of Mr. Jesse Collings little had been said about Ireland, but it was very well known that Ireland was the subject which was really under discussion. An extraordinary impetus had been given to the hopes of Irish patriots by certain events. During the re- cess and the election a paragraph appeared in several newspapers to the effect that Mr. Glad- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 357 stone had come ta the conclusion that the con- cession of the Irish Parliament should be agreed to, and that he was already engaged in working- out the details of a Home Rule scheme. The report was denied with some appearance of au- thority immediately afterwards, but the im- pression remained on the public mind that Mr. Gladstone was ready to deal with the question of Home Rule. Upon some people this had a most bewildering effect, but to nobody who had closely watched Mr. Gladstone's career was this announcement so startling after all. As far back as 1868 he had declared that Ireland ought to be governed more by Irish ideas ; and Home Rule is really but the logical development of this statement. Over and over again, too, on sub- sequent occasions, he had declared that he was prepared for an extension of self-government to, Ireland. On this point he has been assailed with a good deal of coarse and unjustifiable vituper- ation. But Lord Hartington, who, though he has attacked Mr. Gladstone's policy, has always acted towards him with scrupulous fairness, has acknowledged that Mr. Gladstone's mind has evidently been going towards Home Rule for many years, and that his present policy could be fairly inferred from previous utterances. The words, indeed, of a manifesto which he issued to the electors immediately before the general election contain an exact description of the prin- 358 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. ciples of the Home Rule Bill which he sub- sequently introduced. During the election he had called upon electors to give him such a large majority as would enable him to be independent of the Parnell party. But really there is no contradiction between the two attitudes. Mr. Gladstone was anxious that Ire- land should get Home Rule ; but at the same time he did not want Ireland to get such a meas- ure of Home Rule as would be dangerous to the interests or the unity of the Empire. The question was to be dealt with in a spirit of fairness to Ireland, certainly ; but as an En- glishman Mr. Gladstone cannot be blamed for insisting that it should be dealt with in a spirit of fairness to England also, and he thought a strong Liberal government was better calculated to •treat the subject with equal fairness to England and to Ireland than a weak Tory government. Mr. Gladstone may have had in his mind the thought that when he proposed Home Rule it would oroduce a considerable amount of dissent L in the Liberal party, and would certainly be op- posed by a considerable number of the members of that body. The larger the party the more obvi- ously he could afford to shed them, and yet be able to carry his bill. It is objected by English opponents that he proposed Home Rule too soon. It is objected by Irish Nationalists that he proposed it too late. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 359 But a minister is not a missionary nor a propa- gandist ; it is his duty to take up questions as they arise and to deal with them when they are ripe for settlement; and it was not until 1885 that the Home Rule question was in any degree ready for settlement. The Irish people were always, in their hearts, in favor of Home Rule ; but Ministers can only judge of a people's desires by the representatives they choose. It is quite true he cannot, to use a phrase once popular in America, "go behind the returns." But the re- turns in Ireland had certainly not given anything like a trustworthy account of the feelings of the Irish people. There can be little doubt that for a long time Mr. Gladstone thought that Home Rule was a passing caprice — that a persistence in such good measures as he was willing to give would destroy the desire to be governed by a Parliament in Dublin instead of by a Parliament in Westminster. It is but quite recently indeed that any English statesman has grasped the central fact of Irish politics — that the desire for self-government is in- destructible and must therefore finally prevail. It is true that in 1874 Mr. Butt came in with his 60 Home Rulers ; but these Home Rulers were most of them what Mr. Gladstone would call good Liberals, regarding Home Rule as an extreme de- mand, by the leverage of which more moderate concessions could be obtained. 360 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. In 1880 a considerable section of that party sat upon the same benches as Mr. Gladstone's own followers, and were as docile to the com- mands of the Whip as any Liberal. Gladstone at the same time might point to the fact that the Parnellites were but a small section of the Irish representation ; that at the beginning of the Par- liament of 1880 there were but little above one- third of the full total of 103 Irish members, and that at no time did they exceed more than forty- five, and this was considerably below one-half of the full number of Irish representatives. When, however, they claimed altogether eighty-five out of 103, there could be no doubt that when they demanded to be regarded as the mouthpiece of Irish views, they made the claim good, and thus justified Mr. Gladstone in regarding the de- mand as coming from a united nation. However, the more violent opponents he had made were not prepared to listen to any defence of his con- duct. There came upon him a terrific cyclone of political hatred. All the London journals, with one exception, daily poured upon him a stream of poisonous abuse. He was denounced as a Judas who had sold his country to the dynamiter for a temporary occupation of the Premiership. He found in his own party some of his most bitter assailants. Lord Harrington had broken loose from him, and had previously, when the reports of his readiness to concede Home Rule were cir- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. :\Q\ dilated, declared that he would have no part whatever in granting such a boon. Mr. Bright had stood alone for some years, having differed with the Prime Minister on the Egyptian war, and was hostile to Mr. Gladstone's new departure. Mr. Chamberlain was still more hostile. At one time he had been regarded as one of Ireland's most vehement supporters, and as ready to go farther than Mr. Gladstone himself on the path of concession. During the long struggle on co- ercion within the Cabinet in the days of Mr. Forster, Mr. Chamberlain was always spoken of as one of those who had resisted those pro- posals to the very last. It came as a startling revelation to the world that Lord Spencer, after his trying personal experiences in Ireland, had joined Mr. Gladstone in the opinion that Home Rule was the only settlement of the Irish difficulty. Mr. John Morley had been known as an out- spoken friend of Ireland for many years, and during the election campaign had used language which clearly proved his favorable attitude to- wards the principles of Home Rule. Mr. Goschen, another prominent Liberal, on the other hand, proved to be a rampant enemy to the Irish cause. It was amid these difficulties with open foes and dissenting friends that Mr. Gladstone assumed office once more, in January, 1886, and started on the greatest, the most glorious enterprise of his life. CHAPTER XL THE GREAT HOME RULE DEBATE. BEFORE entering on a description of the scenes which took place in the House on the Home Rule Bill in 1886, it will be well to give a rapid sketch of the principal persons en- gaged in the mighty struggle, and first of all let us endeavor to give a portrait of Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone is marked, physically as well as mentally, for a great leader. He is about five feet nine inches high, but looks taller. His build is muscular, and but a very short time ago he was able to take a hand at felling a tree with young men. There was a time when he was one of the most skilful of horsemen. He is still a great pedestrian, and there scarcely passes a day that he is not to be seen walking. He walks with his head thrown back, and a step firm and rapid. His countenance is singularly beautiful. He has large, dark eyes, that flash brilliantly even in his age. Deep set and with heavy eyelids, they sometimes give the impression of the eyes of a hooded eagle. He has a large, exquisitely-chis- elled nose. The mouth also is finely modelled. 362 THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 363 The head is unusually large. It was in early youth covered with thick, black hair. The brow is lofty and broad, and very expressive. The complexion is white almost as wax, and gives the face a look of wonderful delicacy. The face is the most expressive in the House of Commons. It reflects every emotion as clearly and rapidly as a summer lake its summer sky. When Mr. Gladstone is angry his brow is clouded and his eyes shine. When he is amused his face beams. When he is contemplative his lips curl and his head is tossed. His air is joyous if things go well, and mournful when things £o ill- thouo-b when the final trial comes and he stands con- vinced that he must meet absolute and resistless defeat, he looks out with dignified tranquillity. All the passions of the human soul shine forth by his look and gesture. His voice is powerful, and at the same time can be soft, can rise in menace or sink in entreaty. Allusions have been made to the vast and heterogeneous stores of learning which are in this single man's brain. He has extraordinary subtlety of mind, so that he is able to present a case in a thousand different lights. And it is this faculty that has sometimes given him the unpleasant and undeserved repu- tation of sophistry and of duplicity. He speaks as a rule with considerable vehemence and ges- ticulates freely. To speak of him as the first orator of the House of Commons is to give a 364 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. very inadequate statement of his position. Over and over again in the course of his career he has turned a battle, when he was seemingly just beaten, into a victory ; and nobody is ever able to say how things will go until Mr. Gladstone has first spoken. Lord Beaconsfield up to the time of his death presented to the people a contrast and a counter attraction. The late Tory leader was a poor charlatan at bottom, but he was a bril- liant and a strong-willed man that had passed through a romantic and picturesque career. With the death of Lord Beaconsfield passed away the last man who could venture to be brought into rivalry with Mr. Gladstone, and so he stands alone as the last survival of a race of giants. His effect thus upon people outside of Parliament is almost as great as upon those who are inside its walls. There seems to be some- thing so lofty and pure in his purpose that men follow him with something of fanaticism. The restlessness of his energy produces equally earnest work for his followers, and his own exhaust- less funds of enthusiasm and sunny optimism make other men passionate strugglers for the right. The hand of Gladstone has changed the map of Europe, and first really gave birth to the Christian nationalities in the East which are now emerging into freedom and light after ages of dark thraldom under the Mussulman. In addition to these things he is credited with immense parli- amentary skill. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 355 He began his advocacy of Home Rule with an extraordinary prestige. The difficulties were felt to be gigantic, dangerous pitfalls to be everywhere around ; but men had faith in the star of Glad- stone, and he had faith in it himself also. His nerve never fails. Physically he is one of the very bravest of men, and he has never been known to show, under any circumstances, the least sign of physical fear. Whatever might take place in the coming contest, one thing was certain : Mr. Gladstone having once put his hand to the plow would not turn back until he had guided it to its ultimate destination. Mr. John Morley was the most remarkable man of the Ministry, next to Mr. Gladstone, and was. regarded as a most important champion of Home Rule. Mr. Morley affords one of the first instances in recent years of great political triumphs won by a literary man. He was in Parliament a little over three years when he was selected for a Cabinet office, a rapidity of promo- tion almost unparalleled. He had, however, already given strong proofs of his fitness for high political office. For years he had occupied a foremost place among English writers on po- litical and philosophical questions. The son of a hard worked professional man, he started out with few advantages, was poor, and has remained poor. He was educated at Oxford, and afterwards spent some time on the continent. His first ap- 366 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. pointment of importance was as editor of the Morning Star — a journal of a robust radicalism that taught justice to Ireland at a time when these doctrines were not fashionable ; and he was successor in this position to Mr. Justin McCarthy. After 1867 Mr. Morley was appointed editor of the Fortnightly Review, a periodical which is known all over the world for its extremely high value as a collection of writings from the eminent men on all the profound problems of the present day. Mr. Morley produced book after book, dealing with the prominent figures of the French Revolution, a period that he had profoundly studied. Of those best known are the biog- raphies of Voltaire and Rousseau. There are scarcely any two biographies in the English language more delightful to read. The style is clear, but full of fervor and of glow. The biog- raphy of Rousseau, especially, is more like a brilliant romance than a description of a man who really lived and moved upon the earth. Anybody can, even in his busiest or darkest hours, sit down and devour page after page of the splendid narrative. The Fortnightly Review contained occasional essays on economical and other subjects from Mr. Morley's pen. He was one of Mr. John Stuart Mill's earliest disciples, and did much to propagate Mill's philosophy. In 1880 the Pall Mall Gazette changed both pro- prietors and policy. From the mouth-piece of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 367 Jingo Toryism it became an organ of staunch radicalism, and Mr. Morley was its first editor in this new character. As long as he held the po- sition the Pall Mall Gazette was the best journal in London. Mr. Morley had been among the first among Englishmen to pierce the heart of the Irish mystery. Years and years ago he had made up his mind that the only possible solution lay in the direction of some acceptance of the de- mand for self-government. He had not expressed this opinion obtrusively, for he is a man of cautious temperament ; but he had sown the seed judiciously, and led his readers gradually to the conclusion that Home Rule was just and inevitable. Then he entered the House of Com- mons for Newcastle-on-Tyne — a constituency con- sisting mostly of toilers in great iron-works or in mines. His radicalism exactly suited such a constituency. He was not long in Parliament before he took up a prominent position. He was opposed to the Egyptian expedition, and to the whole Egyptian policy of the late government. He is a man of transparent honesty of purpose, and of a political courage ready to face any emergency, and to attack even his own friends in order to see right triumphant. The definiteness of his opinions on the Irish question naturally suggested him as the best man to carry out the policy which Mr. Glad- stone had now set his mind upon. It was no 368 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. surprise, therefore, to the world that when the Ministry was made up he was chosen for the important post of Chief Secretary. In Parliament Mr. Morley has not yet reached the full height of his abilities. He has all the qualities that make a great debater. His language flows from him smoothly and with perfect clearness. Nobody can ever have the least doubt as to what he means. His diction, too, while it scorns all mere- tricious ornament and seeks out simple and familiar phraseology, shows all the elevation of a great master of style and a fine scholar. The defects of Mr. Morley are those which arise from want of training and experience. He entered Parliament at a comparatively late period of his life. This gives to his style a certain want of that suppleness required in an assembly where men have to learn all the arts of ready fence. Some- times he suffers from over-careful elaboration of his speeches, and this is considered a grave defect in the House of Commons. That assembly is not particularly patient of scholars or of philosophers, and loathes professors ; and in any assembly men are most effective when they speak with the greatest spontaneity. Parliament is like journalism ; it wants, above all other things, actuality — the incident, the opin- ion of the hour. The future of Mr. Morley in English politics can be a great future if only he himself will so elect. His honesty is implicitly THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 369 believed in ; no one denies the brilliancy of his in- tellect or the soundness of his judgment. In man- ner he is modest, never capable of being provoked into the insolence of success or the dictatorship of position. The one great obstacle, perhaps, to Mr. Morley's reaching the highest of all positions is himself. He is, like many other literary men, characterized by grave and wholly unjust self-dis- trust, and there is a dash of pessimism in his tem- perament, as there is a good deal of pessimism in his creed. He has none of the keen appetite for power, the proud enjoyment of small triumphs, the joy of a masterful temperament in moving men as pawns on the board. Mr. Morley is about the middle height, and very spare. His face is long, with clearly marked fea- tures, lined here and there, but on the whole re- markably young-looking. His eyes are of a gray- ish-blue, and are calm and thoughtful. Mr. Mor- ley has not a trace of asceticism in his character, but his looks are those of a man who cares little for the table, but a good deal for spiritual possi- bilities. The mention of Mr. Morley's name suggests that of Mr. Chamberlain. By many events of the last years these two men have been placed in contrast, and, to a certain extent, in rivalry. One of the many motives assigned for the strange vagaries of Mr. Chamberlain is his jealousy of Mr. Morley as a future rival. The feelings be- 370 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. tween the two men are more bitter perhaps than those between any other two men of the same party. Mr. Morley and Mr. Chamberlain were for years close personal friends. Mr. Chamber- lain was the person who gained most by the alli- ance. In 1874 he was still in Birmingham ob- scurity — a man successful in business, it was true ; an alderman, afterwards the mayor of the town. But provincial reputations travel slowly to Lon- don, and when they reach there are despised. In 1874 Chamberlain stood for Sheffield as an avowed Home Ruler, and professed sentiments much in advance of general opinion at the time upon the question of Ireland. He was not suc- cessful. He wrote an article in the Fortnightly Review, which was a wild attack upon the mani- festo with which Mr. Gladstone had gone to the constituencies. Mr. Chamberlain probably thought the best way to elevate himself was to attack those more prominent than he. The article sug- gested the subject of a leader to the Daily News, in which Mr. Chamberlain was treated by no means tenderly, and in which his opinions were ridiculed as the outpourings of a pretentious upstart. But Mr. Morley stood by his friend. In time Mr. Chamberlain was elected to Parlia- ment, and started by proposing a ridiculous scheme of licensing. Then he brought himself into prominence by attacks upon the Tory Govern- ment of the day, and by something like an open THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 371 quarrel with the Marquis of Hartington, then the leader of the Liberal party. This was the period when Mr. Parnell was making his crusade against flogging in the army and navy. Mr. Chamberlain at the time was one of Mr. Parnell's warmest ad- mirers, and he was one of the few Englishmen who regarded the policy of obstruction as justified by the circumstances of Ireland. In the agita- tion against " the cat " he saw a good elec- tioneering cry, and he went in for it zealously and vehemently. Meantime he put himself at the head of a great election machine — a con- trivance hitherto 'unknown in English politics. Up to this time candidates had been allowed to come before constituencies without consulting anybody — or, at any rate, after consultation with a few leading men. The system had its faults, but it also had its virtues, for it safeguarded the ab- solute freedom of the electors and of candidates. Mr. Chamberlain and his friends determined to establish a system of associations throughout the country which had the choice of candidates after the manner of an American convention. These associations were then federated together, and their head-quarters were placed at Birmingham. Mr. Chamberlain was the main spring and the controlling force, and in this way he raised him- self to the position of a great political power. Contrary to the expectations of everybody he was raised to the presidency of the Board of 22 372 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Trade when Mr. Gladstone came to make his Ministry. He did nothing in office to justify his elevation, for he is almost entirely devoid of con- servative statesmanship. He brought in a Bank- ruptcy Bill and passed it, but this was his solitary achievement. Up to the breach with Mr. Gladstone a few months ago he steadily advanced in popular fa- vor. He has all the instincts and all the abilities of the demagogue. He appeals to the greed, to the needs, to the passions of the masses. His gospel to them is a gospel of loaves and fishes. During the struggle between the House of Lords and the House of Commons on the question of the franchise, he openly incited to violence, with the result that a meeting where Sir Stafford Northcote and Lord Randolph Churchill were to attend was broken up by gangs of roughs. To agricultural laborers he has offered the bribe known as " three acres and a cow," and to the artisans of the towns he has spoken in vague language of their right to a larger amount of money without taking any trouble to point out the means by which their condition was to be bettered. He has assailed the landlords as men "who toil not, neither do they spin ; " but he has been very merciful towards capitalists, having himself acquired a fortune of nearly ten millions by manufacture. Apart from his well-known methods of gaining popular applause, he has a THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 373 fine platform style. His manner is hard, and his language is not particularly elevated, and has a crispness that is very like pertness. But his speeches are clear, and sometimes exciting and full of the suppressed passion. In the House of Commons, too, he is a ready and a powerful de- bater. The very defects of his mind and of his character often lend force to his utterances. He is narrow, and shallow, and bitter ; and then he is able to entertain his audience with those merci- less personal hits, those shallow appeals which are nearly always more successful with a popular assembly than statesmanlike observations. Then the fierceness of his temper gives you an idea of a man whom it is dangerous to cross, and this produces a strong impression upon an audience which respects power above everything else. His temper also gives force to his utterances, because his selfishness makes him feel his own view of a case so deeply as to enable him to give it that vehement utterance by which men are moved. It would be hard to say, even in this apparently dark hour of his fortunes, that he has not a great future before him ; but the greatness of his posi- tion will be the danger of his country. He is a combination of the worst qualities that were ever possessed by a Minister. He has a violent tem- per, a masterful will, a shallow judgment, a changeful purpose. Believing himself always right, and yet constantly changing his opinions, 374 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. he forces men to adopt his particular views or openly quarrels with them. His appearance in- dicates to a large extent his character. He is a man of a very powerful frame, and is able to take liberties with it that show immense physical vigor. He eats and drinks generously, though not too much. He smokes all day long, and never takes any exercise. After a heavy dinner he is able to go down to the House of Commons and sit in the sweltering atmosphere for hours without any visible harm. He has a long, thin face, with a large nose slightly turned up. This gives a perky air to the countenance, and the perkiness is largely increased by that single eye- glass which has made the stony British stare an object of dislike to all mankind. Mr. Goschen plays an important part in the events that follow and deserves separate notice. He is German, and we believe Hebrew by de- scent. He certainly has an extremely Hebrew cast of countenance — Hebrew of the low and mean and not of the lofty and handsome type. The first impression of his face is certainly very sinister, and suggests a pettifogging provincial attorney rather than a statesman. His features are some- what vulpine. The eyes are small and appear smaller from the nearsightedness that keeps them nearly always half closed. The hair is gray, the side whiskers are gray, and the complexion is a curious gray also — not pallid, not yellow, and THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 375 not ruddy, but simply a dull white-lead gray. He usually sits in a crouching position with the side of his face turned to the House, the whole air of the man suggesting pettiness and meanness. The Marquis of Hartington is a typical Eng- lishman, more like the Briton of the drama and of the farce than almost any other living man. His whole air is one of phlegm. He sits for hours in the House without ever changing a look. He rarely smiles, he never laughs, and has not often during thirty years of Parliamentary life been betrayed into losing his temper. His mien is haughty and reserved. He is slovenly in dress, awkward in air, slouching in gait. He enters the House of Commons with the curious knock- kneed walk that distinguishes horsey Englishmen and with his hands sunk to the lowest depths of his pockets. His face is handsome and rather distinguished looking — though a friendly critic describes his profile as singularly like that of a horse. His under-lip is heavy and protuberant, and the face is rather too long. He wears a moustache and beard, and has a full head of hair, in which, though he is upwards of fifty, and though he is said to have lived in the full sense of the word, there is scarcely a gray thread visible. Lord Hartington was a very considerable period in Parliament before anybody thought there was much in him beyond what is called "horse-sense," self-control and a certain dignity. 376 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. When in 1875 Mr. Gladstone retired from the leadership of the Liberal party there was a wail of despair among his followers when the suc- cession was handed over to Lord Hartington, and everybody was of opinion that the only thincr to be said in his favor was that he was the son of a duke. For some time after his accession to his new position, Lord Hartington realized the worst anticipations, and the contrast between his lumbering and ungainly style and the bright and epigrammatic agility of Mr. Disraeli opposite was painful and humiliating to the Liberal party. His delivery is certainly most trying. He speaks in a curious falsetto voice, and beginning his sen- tences at a top note he gradually descends to a deep basso, until in the end it is nothing but in- audible gutturals. This rise and fall goes on with a damnable iteration that makes life a wear- iness. There is a story told that somebody came up to Lord Hartington once and asked him whether it was true that he had yawned in the middle of his own speech. "Well, I suppose I did," answered Lord Hartington. "Wasn't it damned dull?" As time went on, however, he im- proved immensely, and when the days of his leadership were over he certainly had made a fine record. When people manage to get over the trying part of his delivery, it is discovered that he expresses himself very clearly and some- times with great force. For a good, hard-hitting THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 377 speech he is the equal of almost any man in the House of Commons. According to some critics he is a lazy man, who does not care about anything, and regards politics, like most things in life, as a hideous and disgusting bore. Ac- cording to others, this apparent indifference is but a mask for a really keen and eager interest, for a strong feeling upon most debatable questions, and for an ambition slowly burning but still per- sistent. On the Irish question, unfortunately, he was not without personal prepossessions. He is said to have been very strongly attached to his brother, Lord Frederick Cavendish, the in- nocent and hapless victim of the Phoenix Park assassination. Beside this, he is deeply interested in Ireland owing to the possession of property there. The manner in which this property came into the hands of his family is one of the many disgraceful chapters in the history of Ireland. Sir George Otto Trevelyan is a man generally popular among Liberals for courtesy and agree- ableness of manner, and grace, elegance and ami- ability of speech. By Irishmen he is not so well liked, as he is supposed to hide a good deal of personal venom underneath his agreeable ex- terior. He is the nephew of Lord Macaulay, and the heir of a eood deal of his talents. He has the gifts and the deficiencies of a literary man. His speeches are clear and agreeable, but at the same time smell too much of the lamp. He 378 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. writes beautifully, and some of his works are among the gems of English literature. He is not a man of much force. His nerves broke down under the strain of the Chief Secretaryship of Ireland ; his face grew haggard and his beard whitened in a few months. This sad experience seems to have soured his nature, and he has ever since been among the most vindictive enemies of Irish rights. The Marquis of Salisbury is undoubtedly en- titled by commanding talents to the position of Prime Minister. He is, next to Mr. Gladstone, the most interesting figure in the political life of England. In intellectual endowments, in culture, in loftiness of speech and of aim, he stands far be- yond most if not all other competitors for public favor. And yet it may be doubted if in any but a country governed by speakers he would be se- lected for the position of First Minister. He has the besetting vice of parliamentarians : he is the slave, not the master, of words ; and words do not always carry to his mind definite images of facts, and forces, and things. In this respect the Mar- quis of Salisbury is more like Mr. Gladstone than any of Mr. Gladstone's own associates. But the Marquis of Salisbury has a craze for antithesis, and a genius for epigram ; while the man has yet to be born who remembers one epigram out of Mr. Gladstone's oratory. In dealing with foreign nations Mr. Gladstone may say and has said some THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 379 terribly imprudent and injurious things about powers who have had the choice afterwards of doing England and Mr. Gladstone a good turn or an ill turn; but Mr. Gladstone's amplitude of language and excess of qualifications have pre- vented his denunciations from being readily and portably remembered. The Marquis of Salis- bury, on the other hand, has the unhappy knack of putting his attacks into a compact form that makes them more difficult to forget than to re- member. The difference in the effect of the im- prudent utterances of the two men is the difference between getting a sousing from a tub and being stabbed by a poisoned stiletto. When the career of the Marquis of Salisbury comes to be considered, it will be found that many of his mistakes as a politician are due to his train- ing as a journalist. The training of the journalist is in many respects the best ; in some, it is the worst for the man who takes afterwards an active part in politics. The writer at his desk is essen- tially removed from contact with his fellow-men ; and thus it is that the timid man becomes brave with his pen, the gentle sanguinary, the wavering decided. The journalist, accustomed to write in the privacy of his own closet, gets a habit of thought independent of the feelings of other people ; and it is the power of considering, and regarding, and working through the feelings, and sensibilities, and passions of other men that make 380 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. up a great part of the equipment of the practical politician. It is still more unfortunate for the Marquis of Salisbury that the journal on which he received his early training- should have been the Saturday Review. A man could not be one of the leading writers for such a journal for many years without taking away some distinct traces of its style. Another ©rave obstacle to the success of the Marquis as a leader of the new and omnipotent democracy is that, in all probability, he has not yet attorned in his heart to the democracy. He belonged for years to the clique of brilliant men who made war on the multitude; the hauteur of the scholar and of the writer rather than of the aristocrat was at the bottom of his political faith. His hostility to the Household Suffrage is well remembered. In the course of debates he made comparisons between the term of residence re- quired for artisans and the term of imprisonment compulsorily gone through by a person convicted of crime. His refusal for years to be reconciled to Mr. Disraeli was due, it may well be supposed, not to personal dislike alone, but because the Conservative leader had lowered the political life of England by admitting the greater part of its citizens to a share in their own o-overnment. Lord Randolph Churchill has made advances more rapidly than almost any politician of his time. There was probably not one member of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 381 the Parliament of Lord Beaconsfield who had the least conception that the member for Woodstock would ever have amounted to anything like an important figure in the House of Commons. In that Parliament of nearly six years he spoke three or four times, and the speeches were not promis- ing- f a future. On one occasion he made a speech in defence of a hopelessly rotten corpora- tion ; on another he attacked Mr. Sclater-Booth with a freedom that shocked sober men ; and his third notable performance at this period was a speech made in Dublin, which, in the echoes that reached London, seemed to extenuate the ob- struction of Mr. Parnell and Mr. Biofgar at t h e moment when their heads were demanded by the universal voice of England. His political appear- ances, in short, were regarded as part of an eccen- tric and reckless nature, that found everything else in life more interesting than its serious affairs. At this period this was perhaps a not wholly un- just estimate. His ignorance certainly at the time was appalling. The fall of the Beaconsfield Ministry was his rise. Those who can look back at the aspect of the two parties can alone form a fair estimate of the work Lord Randolph Churchill and his asso- ciates have done for the Conservative party. No- body — who, new to Parliamentary life, had his powers of observation fresh and keen — can forget the mournful contrast between the appearance 382 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. and the demeanor of the victors and the van- quished after the great electoral struggle of 1880. The Liberals overflowed on their benches; all the names that had been familiar for years as the leaders of the forlorn hopes of Radicalism had found places in the new Parliament. The great leader of the party stood one day at the bar, his mobile face wreathed in smiles, and with the flush of achieved victory, and greater victories to come; and the whole party rioted in the sense of its omnipotence. On the other side there were benches painfully attenuated, and the universal look was one of despair. The leaders of the party were in worse case than the rank and file. The overwhelming defeat at the polls had come upon them with surprise ; to bewilderment succeeded disgust; and it was impossible to get them to turn their faces from the wall and take up their broken weapons. One man suddenly took a fancy to rural pursuits ; the exigencies of his private affairs engrossed the mind of another ; they nearly all kept studiously away from the new Parliament, and shunned the gaze of their triumph- ant enemies. It was in this dark hour that Lord Randolph Churchill and his associates in the Fourth party took up the work of arresting the triumphant chariot of their adversaries. It looked hopeless. The disposition of even their own side was, for a while at least, to let things take their course ; and as the country had determined THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 383 that it was best for it to enter on the path that leads to Hades, to let the country have its way. The entrance of Mr. Bradlaugh to Parliament would, in all probability, have been allowed to pass unchallenged had it not been for the vigilance of Lord Randolph ; through his efforts it was that the member for Northampton was refused ad- mission ; that the subject was gradually trans- formed from the contest between the convictions of a single member to a great ministerial ques- tion. Then the bills of the Ministry were op- posed clause by clause, even line by line ; and it soon came to be seen, that by the dexterous use of the forms of the House— by constant attend- ance, by steady, hard work, three or four men could act as a drag on a party with a hundred majority. I am not expressing approval of the tactics of the Fourth party. In carrying on this work Lord Randolph ran great risks. He was exposed to the charge of obstruction ; was howled at by the ministerial rank and file; denounced by ministerial orators ; laughed at and menaced, and even included in the same category with the fol- lowers of Mr. Parnell. But he took no notice of these attacks, went on his way steadily ; with the result that there came to be confidence where there had been despair ; activity where there had been apathy; brisk and constant attendance on benches that had yawned in horrid emptiness. Nobody took him seriously at this period, not even his own side. 384 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. It may be doubted if he had at this time even in the ranks of the Liberal party enemies more scornful than in his own party. The whole forces of the front opposition bench were arrayed against him. The squires thought him grossly insub- ordinate, and it looked as if he were going to be cast out of the ranks. He has changed all this. His rise in popular favor and in par- liamentary influence has been seen growing before the universal eye, until now he is perhaps the most popular man of his party out of doors, and in its parliamentary arrangements he can dictate his own terms. Justin McCarthy was born in Cork in 1830. When he was a boy the capital of Munster could really lay claim to deserve the traditional reputa- tion of the province for learning. Mr. McCarthy's father was one of the best classical scholars of the day. There was at that time a schoolmaster named Goulding — the name is familiar to many a Corkman still — who was a really fine scholar. Justin McCarthy was one of Goulding's pupils, and when he left school he had the power not com- mon even amono- hard students of beinor- aD l e to read Greek fluently and to write as well as trans- late Latin with complete ease. Journalism ap- peared to him the readiest form of making a live- lihood, and, like so many other literary men, he becran at one of the low runo-s of the ladder. He had taught himself shorthand, and his first em- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. $g5 ployment was that of a reporter on the Cork Ex- amine!'. It may be an interesting fact to note that his hand still retains its cunning, and that he may often be observed taking- down on the margin of the Parliamentary Order Paper the exact words of some important Ministerial statement for quota- tion in his leading article. The first important piece of work, it may also here be mentioned, which Mr. McCarthy was sent to do was to report the trials of Smith O'Brien and his colleagues at Clonmel. There are two other important remin- iscences of Mr. McCarthy's reporting days. He was present at the meeting in Cork at which the late Judge Keogh swore that oath which played so tragic a part in Irish history ; and he was also present, we are informed, at the famous dinner at which the present Lord Fitzgerald, then a rising young lawyer, in the ardor of his patriotism r bearded a lord-lieutenant and scandalized an audience of Cork's choicest Whigs. It was in 1847 tnat Mr. McCarthy started his professional life. All that was young, enthusiastic, and earnest in Cork shared the political aspirations of that stormy time. There had been in existence for many years a debating society known as the "Scientific and Literary Society," and one of the many forms in which the new spirit roused by Young Ireland showed itself was the starting of the Cork Historical Society, as a rival to the older and tamer association. Among the members of 386 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. this body were many young men who afterwards rose to importance. Sir John Pope Hennessy, now Governor of the Mauritius, and Justin Mc- Carthy himself were among its first recruits. The Historical Society became a recruiting ground for Young Ireland ; nearly all its members joined the party of combat, and they founded one of the many clubs that were started to prepare for the coming struggle. Justin McCarthy, in his maturity of philosophic calm, can look back to a time when he dreamed of rifles and bayonet charges and death in the midst of fierce fight for the cause of Ireland. To those who know him there is no difference in the man of to-day and the man of '48. He has still the same unflinching courage as then. In this respect, indeed, McCarthy is a singular mixture of apparent incompatibilities. There is no man who enjoys the hour more keenly. He has the capacity of M. Renan for finding the life around him amusing ; enjoys society and solitude, work and play, a choice dinner or an all-night sitting. He has eminently "a two o'clock in the morning courage" — a readiness to face the worst without notice. With his fifty-five years he is still a man of sanguine temperament; but in '48 he was only eighteen. He naturally, therefore, belonged to the section which had Mitchel for its apostle, and open and immediate insurrection for its gospel. Mitchel was arrested, and the cause failed. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 387 With this revolutionary episode ended for the time McCarthy's political history, and from this period, for many years, his story is that of the literary man. It was in the year 1851 that Mr. McCarthy first tried his fortunes in London. The attempt ended in failure, and he had to return to the reporter's place in Cork. There was at that time a Royal Commission for inquiring into the fairs and markets of Ireland, and the secretary having broken down, Justin McCarthy was taken on as the official shorthand writer. His aptitude was such that some member of the Commission urged him to again go to London, and armed him with letters of introduction. This was in 1852. McCarthy again tried his chance, but without success. Before he could continue this fruitless labor he heard of the Northern Times, the first provincial daily of England, which was about to be started in Liverpool, applied for a situation, and was accepted. He was still only a reporter, and even he him- self did not yet very well know whether he was fitted for better things. The presumption always is that the journalist who begins as a reporter should be allowed so to continue. But with persistent energy McCarthy worked on, gave literary lectures, and in the end was allowed the privilege of contributing to the editorial columns. He remained in Liverpool till i860. McCarthy was contended for by several Liverpool journals, 388 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. but he declined all offers, fixed in the resolve to make or mar his fortune in London. The young journalist had at this time a coun- sellor who for many years was the chief arbiter of his destiny in all the crises of his life. Miss Charlotte Allman, a member of the well-known Munster family, had come to reside with her brother in Liverpool. The two young people resolved to marry, in spite of the strong opposi- tion of relatives and in the face of frownino- for- tunes, and in 1855 they were married. The folly of these young people was more truly wise than the sagacity of their elders, for their marriage was to both the best and the most beneficent event in their lives. To those who knew Mrs. McCarthy there is no need to dilate on the resistless charm of her truly beautiful nature. She never wrote a line ; she did not even pretend to any literary power ; but she had the keen intelligence of sympathy ; she had faith in her husband, and she had indomitable courage. It was she that induced Mr. McCarthy to refuse all the Liverpool offers, and that turned his face steadily to the larger hopes of London ; and the joint capital of the young couple when they landed in London was ^10. McCarthy's first London engagement was as a Parliamentary reporter on the Morning Star. He found time to do other work in the intervals of this hard occupation, and tried his hand at an THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 389 essay for one of the magazines. He had taught himself French, German, and Italian ; was famil- iar with the three literatures ; and his first attempt at essay-writing had Schiller for its subject. He next tried the Westminster Review, and two articles of his in that periodical attracted the attention of John Stuart Mill. The philosopher was introduced to the young writer, showed a friendly interest in his welfare, and helped to advance his fortunes. In the autumn of i860 he was appointed foreign editor of the Morning Star, and in 1865 he became editor-in-chief. Those who remember the journal and the times when it lived will know what splendid service it did to the cause of Ireland, and its tone of energetic advo- cacy of Irish national claims was largely due to the inspiration of the ardent man who was then at its head. It was while he was in this position that Mr. McCarthy became intimately acquainted with Mr. John Bright. In these days the ex-minister was fond of spending some hours in the office of the Star, in which his sister had some shares ; and many an hour did the editor and the politician spend together. It is one of the unpleasant consequences of the fierce strug- gles of the last few years that those two old friends have ceased even to speak to one another. But in 1868, when Mr. Bright sold out his share in the Morning Star, Mr. McCarthy resigned his position on the staff of that journal. 390 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. He then entered on a new and highly inter- esting experience. He went to America, where an embarrassing choice of offers awaited him. He had, while still editor of the Star, published his first novel, "Paul Massey," in 1866 — a story which Mr. McCarthy has since suppressed. This had been followed, in 1867, by the "Waterdale Neighbors " — a charming story. One of Mr. McCarthy's first engagements was to write a series of stories for the " Galaxy," a literary maga- zine in America. America has changed greatly since the Irish lecturer went on his first tour, for at that period the Pacific Railway had but just been completed, and the Indians used still to haunt the railway stations in numbers sufficiently large to be sometimes dangerous. Mr. McCarthy was an extremely successful lecturer, and by means of his pen and his tongue found the United States a profitable field of labor. He paid a brief visit to London in the middle of 1870, returned again in the autumn of that year, and finally in the autumn of 1871 came back to England. Meantime his name had been kept steadily before the English reading public. Immediately after his return Mr. McCarthy accepted an engagement on the Daily News as Parliamentary leader wril-er. For years he was looked up to by most of his editorial colleagues as the man who took the most rapid and the most accurate view of a Parliamentary situation. The work of a THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 391 Parliamentary leader writer is by no means easy. He has to keep abominable hours ; he has to watch for hours before he can put a pen to paper, and up to a recent period he had to get through his task under circumstances of savage inconven- ience. But Mr. McCarthy has a singularly robust physique, and every night between four and five his spectacled and tranquilly philosophic face might be seen in Palace Yard with a regularity that premiers never attained. His literary for- tunes, meantime, steadily advanced ; and in " Dear Lady Disdain" he wrote a novel which every- body talked about, and upon which there was a real run. He soon after devoted himself to a very different kind of work, under the title, "The History of Our Own Times," the first two volumes of which were published in 1878. The book took the town by storm. It was, indeed, a model of what contemporary history should be. Equal justice was dealt out to all parties ; the portraits of men were clear-cut and sympathetic, and the style was evenly melodious without one single attempt at rhetoric. The book sold with enormous rapidity, and edition followed edition in rapid succession. Great as was its success on this side of the water, it was still greater in America. But the author gained little from this enormous American sale, for as yet there is no copyright between England and America. His old publishers, the Messrs. Harper Brothers, with 392 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. that fair dealing which characterizes all their trans- actions, did send him voluntarily an occasional instalment, but they told him that if there had been an international copyright they could have well afforded to have given him ,£10,000 for his rights. Mr. McCarthy is one of the men who does not owe Mr. Parnell anything — as the Irish leader would himself be the first to acknowledge — but he soon saw that in Mr. Parnell there was the real chief of that honest Parliamentary party for which he' had been vainly looking. To Mr. Parnell then he unreservedly gave his support. He was thrown into a prominent position at an epoch of fierce and tempestuous passions ; but nobody was readier to see, when the time came, the necessity for strong action. Occasionally he differed, from the counsels of younger and less- trained men, and there are few of these colleagues of his who can look back upon those occasions when they ventured to differ from their wise counsellor without misgivings. But, whatever might be his views, Mr. McCarthy always stood by the rule, that in the face of the enemy the Irish party should be a unit. He has been ready on every emergency to take his share of the unspeakable drudgery to which Irish members have been subjected, and it imposed a greater sacrifice on him than on any other mem- bre of the party to face the odium which a part in these unpopular labors involved. If the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 393 delivery of Mr. McCarthy were equal to his in- tellectual powers, he would be amongst the fore- most speakers of the House. He is ready ; he has clearness of head and calmness of temper ; and his ideas clothe themselves in language of appropriateness with an unerring regularity. He has in more than one debate delivered the best speech in point of matter and of form. Mr. McCarthy is far superior to any of his party, and probably to any man in the House, as an after- dinner speaker. He bubbles over with wit of the most delicate and playful kind. Just as his long struggle was crowned with suc- cess, and as he became from the obscure reporter the popular novelist, the successful historian, and the member of Parliament, the woman without whom he would have remained, in all probability, poor and obscure to the end, was seized with a lingering illness and died. It would be unbe- coming to even attempt a description of what this loss meant to Mr. McCarthy. He has one daughter and one son. They share the political opinions of their father, and of their mother, who was a strong Nationalist. It is acquaintance only with Justin McCarthy that can make intelligible the strong hold he has over the affections of his intimates. It is not often that there are found united in the same man modesty and literary genius, a toleration of others with a power of absolute self-abnegation, a sane 394 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. enjoyment of every hour, with the courage of calmly facing, for the sake of the right, For- tune's worst blow. Moderate in advice when the fortunes of his country are at stake, he is always boldest when acts involve only personal risk to himself. It is this mixture of tenderness, shyness, and romanticism with a thoroughly fearless spirit, that make him so beloved. His son, Justin Huntley McCarthy, has won a high reputation for his years, both as a historian and as a member of Parliament, although his efficiency as a worker has been impaired by feeble health. Thomas Sexton was born in Waterford in 1848. He had not yet reached his thirteenth birthday when he entered a competition for a clerkship in the secretary's office of the Waterford and Lim- erick Company. The post was unimportant ; the salary small ; but that did not prevent thirty youths entering the lists. Of these Sexton was the youngest, and obtained the place. Meantime Sexton's ideas had been straying towards work more suitable to his tastes than that of the railway office. And when he was twenty-one he at last determined to make a bid for better fortunes. It speaks well, not merely for Sexton, that even at that early period in his career the departure from his native city should have been regarded as an event of some impor- tance. A public dinner was held in honor of the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 395 departing young citizen. Sexton had become the centre of a group of able young men, of whom two, at least, have since achieved a position of importance — Edmund Leamy, and Richard Dow- ling, the well-known novelist. Sexton went to Dublin with all good wishes, and with the strongest encouragement from friends who had faith in his future. His start in the Irish capital was good, for he immediately obtained a per- manent' post as a leader-writer in the Nation of- fice, from A. M. Sullivan, at that time the editor. He contributed regularly his leading articles every week to the National Journal, and when Mr. D. B. Sullivan went to the Irish Bar he took up the editorship of the Weekly News. He was, for a while, also the editor of Young Ireland. ' Busy with his pen, Sexton took practically no part in politics, and had done little to justify those promises of oratorical eminence which had been given in the debating societies. However, when the Home Rule League was formed, he had given public proof of the faith that was in him by joining its ranks. In 1879 he was requested by the council of the Land League to attend a county meeting at Dromore West, County Sligo. The people of the county were quick to discern the abil- ities of the unknown young man, and he made, from his very first appearance among them, a profound impression. Indeed, even after he was elected, Sexton was known by Sligo long before 396 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. he was recognized by Ireland generally. Nobody could help remarking that his voice was pecu- liarly melodious ; but few had any conception of the great things that were in this thin, delicate, rather retiring man. He was simply a writer — a clever fellow enough in his way — able to write a pretty article or a nice little story, but, beyond that, nothing. It might be desirable, perhaps, that he should be run because good candidates were so hard to get ; and because his long training in the Nation of- fice was some security that he had the right opinions. Sexton has, however, established a po- sition in the councils of his party and in the esteem of the whole Irish race. One of the first to discern the commanding abilities of Sexton was Mr. Healy, who urgently and constantly pressed the claims of his friend. When at last Sexton was sent to Sligo his difficulties were not at an end. These petty obstacles, however, did not come from the masses of the people, many of whom had already begun to appreciate the real worth of the man with whom they had to deal ; and the unknown young writer was elected at the head of the poll, above both the Whig and the Tory magnates who had previously sat for the county. Sexton was at last in the arena where his abilities had the opportunity of asserting them- selves. But even in this position, recognition THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 397 came to him slowly. During his first session of Parliament he remained comparatively unnoticed. He was phenomenally constant in attendance ; at almost any hour of the day or night he was to be found in that seat which he had marked for his own, and he was in the habit of putting what was considered a very large number of questions. But nobody yet had any idea that there was any- thing in him above very earnest and very re- spectable mediocrity, nor during the recess which followed did he advance his position to any ap- preciable degree. It was on an evening when Mr. Forster's Coercion Bill was under discussion that Sexton broke upon the House for the first time as a great orator. Mr. Forster did not pro- duce the blue book, in which there were the sta- tistics of increased crime, until weeks after he had committed the Government to coercion, and days after he had introduced his bill into the House. It was in the dissection of the extraordinary details at last produced that Sexton showed his powers. The House was, when he rose, but ill-prepared, indeed, for such a speech, especially from an Irish member; for of the subject it was already sick. The circumstances of the moment tended to increase the prevalent depression, for it was a dull, dark, dismal evening. The House was, therefore, listless, sombre and but thinly filled when Sexton rose. He spoke for two hours, amid chilling silence, interrupted but occasionally 398 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. by the thin cheers of the small group^of Irishmen around him ; and yet when he sat down the whole House instinctively felt that a great orator had appeared among them. Sexton is a keen observer, and his reading of men's motives is helped by a slight dash of cyni- cism. In ordinary affairs blase and physically lethargic, his political industry is marvellous. He enters the House of Commons when the Speaker takes the chair, and never leaves it until the door- keeper's cry is heard. He sits in his place dur- ing - all those lone: hours, grudg-inc* the time he spends at a hasty dinner, or the few minutes he gives to the smoking of the dearly-loved cigar. He rarely approaches the discussion of any ques- tion without full knowledge of all the facts, carefully arranged and abundantly illustrated by letters or other documents. He has great mastery of detail. With every measure that in the least degree concerns Ireland he is acquainted down to the last clause, and thus it is that he enters on all debates with a singularly complete equipment. Finally, his mind is extraordinarily alert. His opponent has scarcely sat down when he is on his feet with counter-arguments to meet even the plausible case that has been made against him. This gift, aided by sang-froid, makes him a most formidable opponent, and even the Speaker has had more than once to succumb before the ready answer and the cool temper of Sexton. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 399 Arthur O'Connor was born in London on October i, 1844. His father was a Kerry man, for many years one of the most eminent physi- cians of London. Arthur was educated at Ushaw ; and in the year 1863 began a clerkship in the War Office. There was but one vacancy, and there were thirty competitors ; O'Connor got the place, obtaining a higher average of marks than any Civil Service competitor for many years. For the space of sixteen years the young Irish- man led the monotonous life of the Civil Servant. He was a model clerk in being always accurate, attentive, hardworking. But outside his office Arthur O'Connor was the most unclerklike of men. He had political opinions of the most unpopular, unprofitable character. Then he not only professed Irish National principles, but he was elected a member of the executive of the Home R.ule Confederation. Finally, he began to be seen in the lobby in the House of Commons in earnest and frequent colloquy with Mr. Parnell. O'Connor was by no means anxious to remain in his dingy rooms in Pall Mall. Under a scheme of reorganization, an offer was made to him, as to other clerks, to retire if he chose. He did so choose, and shook the dust of the War Office from off his feet. In 1879 he was elected member of the Chelsea Board of Guardians, and the main purpose which he had in getting this place was that he might 400 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. look after Catholic interests. For six months not one of the Catholic inmates of the workhouse had been allowed to go out to mass, either on a Sunday or on a holiday ; nor was a Catholic priest permitted to enter the place ; no Catholic prayer-books were given to be read, and the Catholic children were sent to Protestant schools; and, finally, the institution was not stained by having a single " Romanist " among its officials. On the very first day on which O'Connor took his seat, the most eligible of all the applicants for the humble position of "scrubber" was rejected on the sole ground that he was a Catholic. The board consisted of twenty members. O'Connor was the single Catholic in the whole number. O'Connor was not aggressive in manner, nor violent in language ; he made no speeches either strong or long, nor did he intrigue, or smile, or coax. He first mastered the whole complicated system of the poor-law code. After a while O'Connor had become such an expert in the law of the workhouse that his fellow-guardians found he could take care of himself, and some of them began to seek his aid as an ally whenever there was any proposal which required strong backing. But he had been elected a member of the Gen- eral Purposes Committee — the most important of all the committees. It had the contracts to give and to examine, dealt with accounts and other matters in the economy of the workhouse. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 401 O'Connor devoted days and weeks to the study of all these accounts, with the result that he knew every item intimately. It became impossible for a penny to pass muster for which full and satis- factory explanation was not given — jobbery trembled beneath the pitiless eyes of this cold and calm inquisitor, and rogues fled abashed. All this could not be accomplished without terribly hard work, and every Wednesday O'Connor was in his place on the Committee or at the Board ; and though this work often extended continuously from ten o'clock in the morning till eight at night with the exception of half-an-hour for lunch, in his place he remained all the time. For even a minute's absence might enable the jobber to rush through his scheme ; and not a farthing would O'Connor allow to pass, if criticism were de- manded. O'Connor's part in Parliament has been such as one might have anticipated from his previous career. He devoted himself to the work which was dryest and most uninviting ; had acquired in a short time a knowledge so intimate of the rules of the House as to be a terror to the Speaker. All was done with an air of unbroken severity, but of unruffled temper and of inflexible courtesy, O'Connor was the calm, patient, lofty spirit of economy that chided, but pitied, and that spoke in the accents of sorrow rather than of anger. But he would go on criticising, however painful 1.02 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the duty. One item disposed of, another was taken up ; that disposed of, there was yet another item; and so on through the countless figures of the huge volumes that contain the Estimates. But it was not always criticism or always com- plaint. At. some moments it was an explanation which O'Connor prayed for with his inimitable air of sad deference. A small speech was re- quired, of course, to preface the inquiry. The Minister having answered, a second speech was necessary in order to have a further word on just a trifling little difficulty that still remained. And thus it went on hour after hour — O'Connor calm, deferential, inquisitive, miraculously omniscient — the Minister restless, apologetic, with the result that, when the night was over, the Treasury had got about one out of every fifteen votes it had hoped to carry. Work of this kind, which is con- stantly done by such men as O'Connor and Biggar — and in former days by gallant Lysaght Finigan — is not and can never be reported, is rarely even heard of; but it is in patiently, con- tinuously going through the hideous drudgery of unrecognized toil like this that such men show their self-devotion. With the doubtful exception of Mr. Parnell, Arthur O'Connor has the best House of Commons style of any man in the party. Clear, deliberate, passionless in language, gesture, delivery, he is the very best model of an official speaker. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 405 Not one man in a hundred would ever guess when he heard him addressing the House of Commons that O'Connor had a drop of Irish blood in his veins. The whole air is rigid, serious, icy. He drops his words with calculated slowness, and the subjects he selects for treat- ment are dry and formal and statistical — the sub- jects, in short, which are supposed to attract the plodding mind of the typical Englishman. The physique of O'Connor suggests the idea of a calmness and unemotional self-control which an Irishman is rarely supposed ta possess; he is tall, thin, with a sombre air, and a cold, dark-blue eye. But all these outward presentments^ are but a mask ; in the whole Irish party there is not one whose heart beats with emotion so profound, with a hatred so fierce. Analysis has divided enthu- siasm into two kinds — the enthusiasm that is warm and the enthusiasm that is cold. The en- thusiasm of Arthur O'Connor is of the cold, that is of the perilous, type. Sufficient has been here written of Arthur O'Connor to make intelligible the high respect, and even affection, in which he is held by his friends and colleagues. The sternness of- his faith does not prevent him from being one of the kindliest of companions, one of the most tolerant and even-tempered of councillors. Timothy Daniel Sullivan — the future ballad- writer of the Irish National cause — was born at 24 406 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Bantry in 1827. The father of the Sullivans was in but moderate circumstances, but education and refinement descend socially deeper in Ireland than in England ; and the parent of T. D. Sulli- van was a man of considerable culture. The mother was likewise a woman of large gifts, and was for many years a teacher. She seems to have had, besides, a very attractive personality. The home of the Sullivans was thoroughly National, and amid the stirring times of 1848, and the hideous disasters of the two preceding years, there were all the circumstances to make the faith of the family robust. The father was carried away, like the majority of the earnest Irishmen of that time, by the gospel which the Young Ireland leaders were preaching, and, as a reward, was dismissed from his employment. T. D. Sullivan, like his brothers, though brought up in a small and remote town, had a good education. The chief and the best school- master of the town was Mr. Healy, the grand- father of the present distinguished patriot of that name. Under his charge T. D. Sullivan was placed, and it was probably from Mr. Healy that Mr. Sullivan learned the most of what he knows. The ties between the two families were afterwards drawn still closer, when T. D. Sul- livan married Miss Kate Healy, the daughter of his teacher. His younger brother, A. M. Sul- livan, after trying his hand as an artist, ulti- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 407 mately became connected with the Dublin Nation. T. D. Sullivan meantime had also allowed his mind to run into dreams of a literary- future. In fact he had filled a whole volume with his compositions ; but, with the secrecy which youth loves, he had not confided his transgression to any one. But two or three of the pieces had even appeared in print, and it was not till he came to Dublin and began to write in the Nation that the poetical genius of T. D. Sullivan sought recognition. Into the columns of that journal he began at once to pour the verses which he had hitherto so religiously kept secret, and from the first his songs attracted attention. Many of his poems became popular immediately on their appearance, and spread over that vast world of the Irish race which now extends through so many of the nations of the earth. A well-known story with regard to the " Sona from the Backwoods " will illustrate the influence of T. D. Sullivan's muse. Most Irish- men know that splendid little poem, with its bold opening, and its splendid refrain : Deep in Canadian woods we've met, From one bright island flown ; Great is the land we tread, but yet Our hearts are with our own. And ere we leave this'shanty small, While fades the autumn day, We'll toast old Ireland ! Dear old Ireland ! Ireland, boys, hurrah ! 408 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. This song, published in the Nation in 1857, was carried to America by Captain D. J. Down- ing. It rapidly became popular, both among the Fenians and among the Irish soldiers in the American army. Every man of the Irish Brigade knew it, and it was often sung at the bivouac fire after a hard day's fighting. On the night of the bloody battle of Fredericksburg the Federal army lay watchful on their arms, with spirits damped by the loss of so many gallant comrades. To cheer his brother officers Captain Downing sang his favorite song. The chorus of the first stanza was taken up by his dashing regiment, next by the brigade, then by the entire line of the army for miles along the river ; and, when the captain ceased, the same chant came like an echo from the Confederate lines. The song " God save Ireland " became popular with even greater rapidity. It was issued at an hour when all Ireland was stirred to intense depths of anger and of sorrow, and this profound and immense feelino- longed for a voice. When " God save Ireland " was produced the people at once took it up, and so instantaneously that the author himself heard it chorused in a railway carriage on the very day after its publication. It has been his invariable rule in composing these songs to make them " ballads " in the true sense of the word — songs, that is to say, that expressed popular sentiment in the language of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 409 everyday life, that had good catching rhymes, and that could be easily sung. An immense fillip was undoubtedly given to the demand for abatements of rent by the song, " Griffith's Valuation ; " and still more successful was the ballad of " Murty Hynes," which was one of the most felicitous compositions that ever came from his pen. T. D. Sullivan was elected, as is known, along with Mr. H. J. Gill, for County Westmeath, at the general election of 1880; and in spite of the ab- sorbing nature of his journalistic duties he has been one of the. most active and one of the most attentive members of the party. He has been still more prominent on the platform ; and it is at large Irish popular gatherings that his speech is most effective. He is Irish of the Irish and ex- presses the deep and simple gospel of the peo- ple in language that goes home ; and then his keen sense of humor enables him to supply that element of amusement which is always looked forward to with eagerness by the crowd. More advanced in years than many of his colleagues, he has, nevertheless, been as young as the youngest among them in his energy and in his hopefulness. Mr. Sullivan has shrunk from no work which the exigencies of the situation de- manded, and has been ready to take his share of the talking — whether the House considered his intervention seasonable or unseasonable ; whether 410 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. he spoke to benches that were full or empty, silent or uproarious. Erring, perhaps, as a rule, on the side of over-earnestness, he often lights up his Parliamentary, like his conversational, efforts with bright flashes of wit. " Punctuality," he said once to a colleague who turned up at a meeting with characteristic lateness, " punctuality, in the opinion of the Irish party, is the thief of time." Some of his lighter poems are greater favorites with many people than his more serious efforts, because of this same vein of irrepressible humor. James O'Kelly was born in Dublin, in the year 1845. Among his companions were a num- ber of young men who, in the dark hours, worked and hoped for the elevation of the country ; and he learned in a school in London the scorn that belongs to the child of a conquered race. O'Kelly entered upon political work at an unusually pre- cocious age, and certainly had not reached his legal majority when political aims had become the lode-star of his dreams. These political projects were interrupted in 1863. He had from boyhood longed for the life of a soldier. There was no army in Ireland, he would not serve under the British flag, and he entered the army of France. He had scarcely been enrolled in the Foreign Legion in Paris when he was called upon to enter active service. The Arabs in the province of Oran were in re- bellion, and here O'Kelly had an opportunity of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 41 J learning all the dangers of Algerine warfare. When Maximilian was made Emperor of Mexico French forces were sent by the Emperor Na- poleon to win for his nominee his new dominion, and O'Kelly's regiment was one of those which were detailed for this service. He took part in the siege of Oajaca, and after the fall of that town and the capture of General Porfirio Diaz — since President of Mexico — he advanced north- ward, and was present at the various battles which placed Northern Mexico in the power of the French troops. Then the tide turned in favor of the Mexicans ; and at Mier the troops of Maximilian were disastrously beaten. O'Kelly was made a prisoner in June, 1866. But an at- tempt to escape, unless successful, meant death. His guards proved careless, and in the darkness of the night he eluded their vigilance. For days he had to wander about in hourly peril. At one time he took to the river, hoping to cross to the territories of the United States. The induce- ment to attempt this mode of escape was his dis- covery of a rude boat made from a hollowed-out tree ; and in this primitive craft he floated with the stream for a day, and finally made his way into Texas. O'Kelly had seen too much of real warfare to have any faith in unarmed crowds, and he was one of those who opposed any attempt at insur- rection. These counsels did not prevail, and in 412 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. 1865 there came some sporadic risings with their sad sequel of wholesale arrests, imprisonments, and long terms of penal servitude. By-and-by the movement began to be more serious, and in 1867 there seemed some hope. O'Kelly then took his share of the danger and the responsibility, and was one of the chief men of the movement. For years he had to pass through the never-ceasing strain, the strange under-ground life, of the revo- lutionary. O'Kelly passed through it all with that calm courage and that cool-headedness which everybody recognizes, and, through determination, vigilance and prudence, succeeded in coming out unscathed. During the Franco-Prussian war he rejoined the French army, but when Paris sur- rendered he again left the service, and once more went to New York. Up to this time he had not seriously contemplated adopting journal- ism as a profession, and his efforts had been con- fined to occasional correspondence in the National weeklies. He applied for a situation on the New York Herald, and his application — like that of most beginners — was received coolly enough ; but at last he got his opportunity. Mr. O'Kelly was gradually advanced, until he became one of the editors of the Herald. In 1873 there arose an opportunity which O'Kelly gladly embraced. The rebellion in Cuba was going on, and it was. a movement in which the people of the United States took a keen interest. But what was the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 4J;} nature and what the methods of the rebels? These were points upon which no trustworthy information could be obtained. The Spaniards had the ear of the world, and the story they told was that there was no such thing as a rebellion at all. What now remained was simply a few scores of scattered marauders, itinerant robbers and murderers. Cuban refugees in the United States circulated reports that the Spanish troops were guilty of horrible cruelties ; that they gave no quarter to men and foully abused women, and the rebellion, instead of being repressed, was represented as fiercer and more determined than ever. The rebels, few or many, were hidden be- hind the impenetrable forests of the country as completely as if they had ceased to exist. To reach these rebels, survey their forces — in short, attest their existence — was the duty which O'Kelly volunteered to undertake. O'Kelly knew when he set out that his task was difficult enough, but it was not until he ar- rived in Cuba that he realized to the full the meaning of his enterprise. He asked a safe- conduct from the captain-general ; but that func- tionary plainly told him that, if he persisted in try- ing to get to the rebels, he would do so at his own risk. Throughout all Cuba there was a perfect reign of terror. Tribunals hastily tried even those suspected of treason, and within a few hours after his arrest the " suspect " was a riddled corpse. 414 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Any person who, therefore, was under the frown of the authorities was avoided as if he had the plague. O'Kelly was invited to dinner in the heartiest manner by a descendant of an Irishman, but when this gentleman heard of O'Kelly's mis- sion, he begged him not to pay the visit, and promptly went to the authorities to explain the unlucky invitation. O'Kelly was among a people a vast number of whom would have considered it a patriotic duty to dispose of his person by some quiet but effective method. " It was not pos- sible," writes O'Kelly in 'The Mambi Land' — the interesting volume in which he afterwards re- counted his adventures — "it was not possible to turn back without dishonor, and though it cost even life itself, I would have to visit the Cuban camp." O'Kelly finally accomplished his purpose in full, but only at extreme risks. He afterwards returned boldly to the Spanish lines, and was im- prisoned, barely escaping with his life. He at last was sent to Spain, and then, through the united efforts of General Sickles, Senor Castelar and Isaac Butt, was set at liberty. His next expedition after the visit to Cuba was to Brazil. He returned with the emperor from that country to the United States, and accom- panied him throughout his North American tour. Before the general election of 1880 O'Kelly returned to Europe, without the least intention of entering Parliament. At that time, though THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 41 5 known to everybody acquainted with the inner life of Irish politics, to the general public he was unknown, except as the adventurous special cor- respondent. And it was some surprise when he succeeded in beating down so formidable an op- ponent as The O'Conor Don. Regarded by the majority of his countrymen as outside politics, and remote from its struggles, its aspirations, and its shaping, O'Kelly had been a force in fashioning the history of his country for many years. In Parliament, too, O'Kelly has, while little known to the public, been one of the most potent forces in shaping the fortunes and decisions of his party. He has brought to its councils great firmness of will, world-wide experience, common sense and a devotion to the interests of his country which is absolute. Though he has given proof abundant of courage, O'Kelly's advice has always been on the side of well-calculated rather than rash courses; he has, in fact, the true soldier's instinct in favor of the adaptation of ways and means to ends, of mathematical severity in estimating the strength of the forces for, and of the forces against, his own side. His whole temperament is revolutionary; he chafes under the restraints of Parliamentary life, and hates the weary contests of words ; and, on the other hand, he insists on every step being measured, every move calculated. Again, his large experience of life and the ruggedness of his sense give to his thoughts the mould of almost 416 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. cynic realism, and yet he is an idealist, for through- out his whole life he has held to the idea of his country's resurrection with a faith which no danger could terrify, no disaster depress, no labor fatigue. Mr. John Dillon, as often happens, is the very opposite in appearance and manner from what readers of his speeches, especially the hostile readers, would expect. Tall, thin, frail, his physique is that of a man who has periodically to seek flight from death in change of scene and of air. His face is lono- and narrow : the features singularly delicate and refined. Coal-black hair and large, dark, tranquil eyes, make up a face that immediately arrests attention, and that can never be forgotten. A tranquil voice and a gentle manner would combat the idea that this was one of the protagonists in one of the fiercest struggles of modern times. The speeches of Mr. Dillon are violent in their conclusions only. The propo- sitions which have so often shocked unsympa- thetic hearers are reached by him through calcu- lations of apparent frigidity, and are delivered in an unimpassioned monotone. Mr. John Dillon is the son of the well-known John Blake Dillon, one of the bravest and purest spirits in the Young Ireland movement. His father was one of those who opposed the rising to the last moment as imprudent and hopeless; but was among the first to risk liberty and life THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. H7 when it was finally resolved upon. John was born in Blackrock, County Dublin, in the year 185 1. He was mainly instructed in the institu- tions connected with the Catholic University. He was intended for the medical profession, and passed through the courses of lectures, and took the degree of Licentiate in the College of Sur- geons. It was not until after the arrival of John Mitchel in Ireland, after his many years of exile, that Dillon first appeared in the political arena. He then took an active part in the electoral con* test, and helped to get Mitchel returned. The rise of Mr. Parnell and the active policy brought Mr. Dillon more prominently to the front. At once he became an ea^er advocate of Mr. Parnell and his policy. Edmund Leamy was born in Waterford, on Christmas Day, 1848. Waterford is one of the. towns which, amid the terrible eclipse over the rest of Ireland, shone out with something of a national spirit. An influence that made him a combatant in the national ranks was the early companionship of Thomas Sexton. When the election of 1874 came, he was an apprentice in a solicitor's office. In 1880 Leamy was put for- ward by one section of the constituency, and was returned. There is no man in the party whose real abilities and services bear so little resem- blance to his public reputation. A touch of the Paddy-go-aisy spirit, a curious love for self- 41 8 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. effacement, have hidden him from public view ; but to his colleagues he is known as having one of the keenest and most original intellects, and one of the most stirring tongues of the Irish party. On the first day of the meeting of the Irish party the chair was occupied by the Lord Mayor of Dublin — the distinguished patriot, E. Dwyer Gray, M. P. Mr. Gray is the son of the late Sir John Gray. He was born in the year 1846. Brought up from his earliest youth in the opin- ions of his father, he attained at an early age a correct judgment of political affairs. The mind of the son is even clearer than that of his father, and refuses steadily to accept any doctrine or course until it has been fully thought out. Gray succeeded his father in the management of the Freeman s Jonr7ial, the chief newspaper of Ire- land. Becoming a member of the Dublin Cor- poration, of which his father had been the guid- ing star for many years, he soon attained to the position of its leading figure. At this period he was Lord Mayor, and had under his control vast sums which had been subscribed for the relief of distress. Gray had been returned to the House of Commons shortly after the death of his father, and though not a frequent, was already, as he is still, one of its most influential debaters. There is no man in the Irish party, and few outside it, who can state a case with such pellucid clearness. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. ft 9 Pre-eminent among the noble band of patriots who have, for years, been battling for Ireland's rights, and ventilating her fearful wrongs ; noted for his abilities as a scholar, an orator, and a journalist, stands the Hon. Thomas Power O'Connor, M. P. This brilliant journalist and gifted author was born in the year 1848, in the historic old market- town of Athlone, which is situated in the counties of Westmeath and Roscommon, and stands almost in the geographical centre of Ireland. His early studies were at the College of the Immaculate Conception, at Athlone, where, among his many competitors, he was conspicuous for his aptness to learn and ability to teach others that informa- tion which he himself had just acquired at the hands of his reverend instructors. He subse- quently entered the University of Ireland, from which he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and in due course that of Master of Arts also. After his graduation, and having acquired a taste for literary pursuits, he connected himself with one of the most prominent journals of Dublin, and for three years subsequently he remained in that city, and contributed during that period a vast amount of historic and other valuable matter to the literature of the day. Desirous of a wider field in which to display his many talents, he removed to London and accepted a leading posi- .{20 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. tion on the staff of one of its most widely known newspapers, the Daily Telegraph. He served afterwards on various other journals, gaining everywhere a well-earned reputation for his versatility, and the force and clearness of his writings. Among the many attractive and useful works of which he was author the first volume which he published was a "Life of Beaconsfield," in 1880. It attracted considerable attention in Great Britain and Ireland, and later on he recast the work, publishing it in an enlarged form under the title of " Lord Beaconsfield. A Biography." It was an able and strongly written book, and attracted universal attention, not less through the clearness of its style and the accuracy of its statements and quotations, than through the terribly caustic and scathing criticisms which he visited upon the public acts of the great Tory leader. It is not to be wondered at that its contents excited the wrath of Beaconsfield's admirers in England and elsewhere. It was in 1880 that our gifted author began his parliamentary career. In that year he success- fully contested the county of Galway, and before its close he had earned his spurs as an intrepid and fearless debater in the many oratorical contests in which he and other noted Irish, Scotch, and English speakers of acknowledged ability, partici- pated. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 421 The promise that he then gave of future useful- ness for Ireland and Ireland's cause has been carried out to the letter. Let us follow his subsequent career. He has, since 1880, been twice chosen to the House of Commons from the "Scotland District" of the great commercial city of Liverpool, and on each occasion by a large and nattering majority. In 1 88 1 he visited the United States, and made a highly successful lecturing tour, the proceeds of which, amounting to a very large sum of money, he unselfishly devoted to the Irish patriotic cause. In 1883 his high executive ability caused his unanimous elevation to the presidency of the Irish National League of Great Britain, in which tryino- position his cool, dispassionate judgment carried the League through many dangerous and difficult situations ; dangerous and difficult so far as its immediate prosperity and the success which at- tended its influence, at home and abroad, were concerned. Always a busy man, he found, or rather made, time enough for himself to edit "The Cabinet of Irish Literature," and to write a large number of tales, essays, and review articles. His later articles included "The Parnell Move- ment," which was published in 1885, an d the present work, of which he and Mr. Robert M. McWade, a well-known journalist of Philadelphia, are joint authors. 25 422 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Among the leaders in the Old Country, of the great movement for Irish Nationality, he takes, as we have said, a high rank by reason of his great intelligence, untiring industry, and hearty devotion to the cause. During his Parliamentary career his journal- istic labors have not been relaxed, notwithstanding the magnitude and complexion of his other public duties. His voice has never given forth an un- certain sound. He possesses that essential char- acteristic of a great orator — he knows when to speak, and when to be silent. When he strikes, his blows go straight home to the mark, and they never lack in force. Among the younger members of his party in Parliament, his unceasing vigilance and strong de- cision of character have obtained for him a po- sition of tacitly recognized premiership. Though his majorities for the English constituency which he has so long represented in the British Imperial Parliament have largely come from the English masses, he is known on this, as on the other side of the ocean, as being, first, last, and always an Irishman of the most intense type. The men who love Ireland best, and stand highest in the love and affection of her people, have invariably been able to count, without any mental or other reservation, upon the earnest patriotism and the whole-souled fidelity of Thomas Power O'Connor. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 423 Timothy Michael Healy was born in Bantry, County Cork, in the year 1855. He had peculiar opportunities indeed for becoming familiar with the awful horrors of the famine, for his father, at seventeen years of age, had been appointed Clerk of the Union at Bantry. He has told his son that for the three famine years he never once saw a single smile. It is no wonder that Healy, whose nature is vehement and excitable, should have grown up with a burning hatred of English rule. Young Healy went to school with the Christian Brothers, at Fermoy ; but fortune did not permit him to waste any unnecessary time in what are called the seats of learning; for at thirteen he had to set out on making a livelihood. Though he has thus had fewer opportunities than almost any other member of the House of Commons of obtaining education— except such as his father, an educated man, may have imparted to him as a child — he is really one of the very best informed men in the place. He is intimately acquainted with not only English but also with French and with German literature, and could give his critics lessons in what constitutes literary merit. Another of the accomplishments which Mr. Healy taught himself was Pitman's shorthand ; and shorthand in his case was the sword with which he had in life's beginning to open the oyster of the world. At sixteen years of age he 424 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. went to England anc j obtained a situation as a <-> shorthand clerk in the office of the superin- tendent of the North Eastern Railway, at New- castle. English contemporary chronicles are not only full of his name, but absolutely teem with par- ticulars of his life, especially in its earliest years. Society journals have, on various occasions, espe- cially busied themselves with him, and, according to these veracious organs, Mr. Healy began life in a rag-and-bone shop, and, after much labor, graduated into a ticket-nipper. In various other journals there have been equally lively accounts. Mr. Healy has been described as ignorant and impudent, as foolish and as crafty, as rolling in ill-gotten wealth and as buried in abysmal pov- erty. There is no man of any Parliamentary party, in fact, of which so many portraits have been painted, and who has had to bear so many of these slings and arrows which the outrageous pens of hostile journalism can fling. This man, before whom ministers grow pale, is the delight and the darling of children, whose tastes and pleasures he can minister to with the unteachable instinct of genius. In 1878 he re- moved to London, partly for commercial and partly for journalistic reasons. After migrat- ing to London he was asked to contribute a weekly letter to the Nation on Parliamentary proceedings, which had just begun to get lively. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 425 From this time forward his face accordingly became familiar in the lobby of the House of Commons. He at once threw all his force on the side of the " active " section of the old Home Rule party, and Mr. Parnell has several times re- marked that it was to Mr. Healy's advocacy of his policy that the active party owed much of its success in those early days. In the opinion of many, his pen is even more effective than his tongue ; mordant, happy illustration, trenchant argument — all these things are still happily at the service of Irish national journalism. Per- haps the most remarkable of all Mr. Healy's qual- ities is his restless industry. From the moment he crosses the floor of the lobby till the House rises, he is literally never a moment at rest — excepting the half hour or so he spends at dinner in the restaurant within the House. He has almost as many correspondents as a minister, and he tries to answer nearly every letter on the day of its receipt. Then he takes an interest in, and knows all about, everything that is going on, great or small, English, or Irish, or Scotch. The extent of his knowledge of Parliamentary measures is astonishing ; Healy holds himself at the service of everybody. And he is never absent from the House when anything of importance is going for- ward. He is, like the Premier, distinguished from other members by the fact that even in the division lobbies he is to be seen utilizing the precious 426 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. moments by writing. The characteristics of his oratory are rather peculiar. Often when he stands up first he is tame, disjointed, and in- effective, but he is one of the men who gather strength and fire as they go along ; and before he has resumed his seat he has said some things that have set all the House laughing, and some that have put all the House into a rage. Finally, Healy has the defects of his qualities. The ardor of his temperament and the fierceness of his convictions often tempt him to exaggeration of language and of conduct. Those who play the complicated game of politics for such mighty stakes as a nation's fate and the destinies of millions ought to keep cool heads and steady hands. A quick temper and a sharp tongue cause many pangs to his friends, but keener tortures to Healy himself. William O'Brien was brought up from his earliest years in those principles of which he has become so prominent and so vigorous an ad- vocate. O'Brien's father was one of the most resolute spirits of the Young Ireland party; but afterwards, like so many of the men who survived that time, was by no means friendly to bloodshed or physical force. In time he had to remon- strate with some of his own offspring for their Fenianism, but his mouth was closed whenever his remonstrances became vehement by an allusion to the days of his own youth. William O'Brien THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 427 was born on October 2, 1852, in Mallow, with which town his family on the mother's side has been connected from time immemorial. He received his education at Cloyne Diocesan College. William from his earliest years had the same principles as he professes to-day. Apart from the example of his father, he had in his brother a strong apostle of national rights. This brother was indeed of a type to captivate the imagination of such a nature as that of his younger brother. Among the revolutionaries of his district he was the chief figure, and there was no raid for arms too desperate, or no expedition too risky for his spirit. He was arrested, of course, when the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended, and underwent the misery and tortures which were inflicted on untried prisoners under the best of possible constitutions and freest of pos- sible governments. With this episode in the life of the elder brother the brightness of the life of William O'Brien for many a long day ceased. His family history is strangely and terribly sad. The first noteworthy thing which William O'Brien ever wrote was a sketch of the trial of Captain Mackay. This attracted the attention of the proprietor of the Cork Daily Herald and he was offered an engagement upon that paper. There he remained until towards 1876, when he became a member of the staff of the Freeman s Journal. He did the ordinary work of the re- 428 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. porter for several years, with occasional dashes into more congenial occupation. Whenever his work had any connection with the condition or prospects of his country he devoted himself to it with a special fervor. When the Coercion Act was passed in 1880, he thought the moment had come for him to offer his services to maintain the fight in face of threats of danger. His health, however, was at the time so weak that his friends feared that the imprisonment which was almost certain to follow employment by the League would prove fatal to his constitution, and he was dis- suaded from joining the ranks of the movement. In June, 1881, when the conflict between Mr. Forster and the Land League was at its fiercest, the idea occurred of establishing a newspaper as an organ of the League and Parnellite party, and he was invited by Mr. Parnell to found United Ireland 2.w A to become its editor. Great as was his reputation as a writer of nervous English, he had hitherto been unknown as the author of political articles, and few were prepared for the grasp and force of the editorials he contributed to the new journal. O'Brien is the very embodiment of the militant journalist. Though he has keen literary instincts and a fine soul, his work is important to him mainly because of its political result. Fragile in frame and weak in health, he is yet above all things a combatant, ready and almost eager to meet danger. A long, THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 429 thin face, deep-set and piercing eyes, flashing out from behind spectacles, sharp features, and quick, feverish walk — the whole appearance of the man speaks of a restless and enthusiastic character. United Ireland was suppressed by Mr. Forster, but, with the overthrow of Mr. Forster, the paper was again revived. It soon became evident that United Ireland was about to enter upon a struggle fiercer than even that with Mr. Forster. It seemed as if the country would lie paralyzed under the regime of packed juries and partisan judges. In the stillness which came over the country under such a regime, the voice of United Ireland rang out clear and loud and defiant as ever. The partisanship of the judges was ruthlessly attacked, the shameful packing of juries was exposed, and attention was called to the protestations of innocence that came from so many dying lips. In this period it was held that no such criticism was permissible, and Lord Spencer resolved to crush the fearless and bril- liant journalist. Then began that long and lonely duel between Mr. O'Brien and Earl Spencer which lasted with scarce an interruption for three fierce years. The contest was opened by an action against Mr. O'Brien for "seditious libel." The meaning: of seditious libel is any attack upon the Admin- istration not agreeable to the officials then in power. An action of this character is, of course, 430 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. no longer possible in England. In the midst of this trial a vacancy arose in the representation of Mallow. It had been arranged before, that whenever the General Election came, Mr. O'Brien, as a Mallow man, should appeal to the town to join the rest of the country in the de- mand for Irish rights. The opportunity had come sooner than anybody had anticipated. The prosecution of O'Brien by the Government lent a singular character to the struggle, and a further element of significance was added by the Government sending down Mr. Naish, their new Attorney-General, as his opponent. Mallow had been a favorite ground for the race of cor- rupt place-hunters in the period when a place in Parliament was the only avenue to legal pro- motion. The contest for Mallow, under circumstances like these, attracted an immense amount of atten- tion, and all Ireland looked to the result with eager- ness. But the reputation of Mallow had been so bad for so many years that the utmost expec- tation was that Mr. O'Brien would be returned by a small majority. The change that had come over all Ireland was shown when it was found that O'Brien had been returned by a majority of 72. John E. Redmond is one of the orators of the Irish party. He speaks with clearness, cour- tesy and at the same time with deadly vigor. He is the man of all others to put into a difficult THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 431 situation — cool, self-controlled, a perfect master of fence. There is no Scylla or Charybdis through which he cannot steer the barque of his words. He has done enormous service to the cause by speeches in Australia and America, and there is no man who produces more effect in the House of Commons in favor of his own side. Timothy Harrington is the organizer par excelletice among the Irish members. He is a man of extraordinary energy of character, men- tal and physical. No amount of work is capable of fatiguing him. He has lived through a half- dozen imprisonments, occasionally with the plank- bed and prison-board, and has come out looking more robust, more energetic and as kindly as ever. He is a curious mixture of the apostle and the soldier — overflowing with the milk of human kindness and at the same time with an in- satiate desire to " boss," to organize and win — a curious combination of St. Vincent de Paul and General Grant. He is at this moment the prac- tical Governor of Ireland. As Secretary of the National League he has that immense oro-ani- zation entirely under his control. He rules with a kindly but yet with a firm hand, bullies and cajoles, argues and vituperates, makes long speeches and dictates long letters and all the time beams upon the world and looks for new regions to conquer and to lick into shape. People occa- sionally quarrel with him, but everybody admires 432 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. him and his intimates love him. He has one of the best and kindliest and most sincere of na- tures. He was a newspaper editor until the Land .League agitation brought him into public life. He threw himself into the struggle with his whole soul, and was soon one of the most potent mem- bers of the organization. At this point we resume our sketch of the Par- liamentary campaign of 1886. The 8th of April was fixed as the day for Mr. Gladstone to unfold his new Irish policy. Never in the whole course of his great career had he an audience more splen- did. Every seat in every gallery was crowded. The competition for places in the House itself had led to scenes unprecedented in the history of that assembly. The Irish members were of course more anxious than any others to secure a good position. The English members were not quite so early as the Irish, but they were not far behind ; and lone before noon there was not a seat left for any newcomer. Mr. Gladstone's speech began by showing the state of social order in Ireland. Then he asked the question whether Coercion had succeeded in keeping down crime. He pointed out that exceptional legis- lation which introduces exceptional provisions into the law ought itself to be in its own nature essentially and absolutely exceptional, and it has become not exceptional but habitual. Then he proceeded to give a reason why Coercion THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 433 had failed. Having proved that Coercion was no longer applicable to the case of Ireland he went on to ask whether there was no alternative. He went on to say that he did not think the people of England and Scotland would again resort to such ferocious Coercion as he had described, until it had exhausted every other alternative. He then showed that England and Scotland have each a much nearer approach to autonomy under Parliament than Ireland has. He next discussed the possibility of reconciling local self-government with imperial unity, and after that treated, in a masterly way, the nature of the present union of the kingdoms under one Parliament. He discussed in a summary way several of the solutions which had been proposed for the difficulties which the case involved, show- ing their insufficiency. He then announced his own plan of giving Ireland a local administra- tion and a local Parliament for home affairs, and at the same time gave reasons for rejecting the idea of giving Irish representatives seats in the Houses of the British Parliament, the Irish mem- bers to have a vote on imperial affairs. He gave it as his opinion that the fiscal unity of the empire should be maintained, except as regards moneys raised by local taxation for local purposes. He then showed that Ireland needed administrative as well as legislative independence. He an- nounced the plan of reserving certain subjects with 434 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. which the Irish legislature should have no power to deal, such as the succession, regencies, pre- rogatives, and other matters pertaining to the Crown ; the army and navy ; foreign and colonial relations ; certain already established and char- tered rio-hts ; the establishment or endowment of any particular religion ; the laws of coinage, trade and navigation — these subjects being re- served for imperial legislation. He then pro- posed a plan on which the Irish legislature might be organized ; suggested the powers and prerogatives of the Viceroy and of his Privy Council ; and announced a plan by which the financial relations of Ireland to the rest of the Empire might be established. He next criti- cised as wasteful the present expenditure of public money in Ireland, and discussed the Irish ex- chequer and the future of Irish credit. In dis- cussing the financial part of his scheme for Home Rule Mr. Gladstone made some very suggestive remarks : " I will state only one other striking fact with regard to the Irish expenditure. The House would like to know what an amount has been going on — and which at this moment is going on — of what I must call not only a waste of public money, but a demoralizing waste of public money, demoralizing in its influence upon both countries. The civil charges per capita at this moment are in Great Britain Ss. 2d. and in Ireland 16s. They THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 435 have increased in Ireland in the last fifteen years by sixty-three per cent., and my belief is that if the present legislative and administrative systems be maintained you must make up your minds to a continued, never-ending - , and never-to-be-limited augmentation. The amount of the Irish contri- bution upon the basis I have described would be as follows : One-fifteenth of the annual debt charge of ,£22,000,000 would be ,£1,466,000, one- fifteenth of the army and navy charge, after ex- cluding what we call war votes, and also excluding the charges for volunteers and yeomanry, would be ,£1,666,000, and the amount of the civil charges, which are properly considered imperial, would entail upon Ireland ,£110,000, or a total charge properly imperial of ,£3,242,000. I am now ready to present what I may call an Irish budget, a debtor and creditor account for the Irish exchequer. The customs produce in Ire- land a gross sum of ,£1,880,000, the excise ,£4,300,000, the stamps ,£600,000, the income- tax ,£550,000 and the non-tax revenue, including the post office, ,£1,020,000. And, perhaps, here again I ought to mention as an instance of the demoralizing waste which now attends Irish ad- ministration, that which will perhaps surprise the House to know — namely, that while in England and Scotland we levy from the post office and telegraph system a large surplus income ; in Ireland the post office and the telegraphs just. 43fl GLADSTONE— PARNELL. pay their expenses, or leave a surplus so smail as not to be worth mentioning*-. " The total receipts of the Irish' Exchequer are thus shown to amount to ,£8,350,000, and against that I have to place an imperial' contribution which I may call permanent, because it will last for a great number of years, of £"3,242,000. I put down £"1,000,000 for the constabulary, because that would be a first charge, although I hope that it will soon come under very effective reduction. I put down £"2,510,000 for the other civil charges in Ireland, and there, again, I have not the smallest doubt that that charge will likewise be very effectually reduced by an Irish Government. Finally, the collection of revenue is £"834,000, making a total charge thus far of £"7,586,000. Then we have thought it essential to include in this arrangement, not only for our own sakes, but for the sake of Ireland also, a payment on account of the Sinking Fund against the Irish portion of the National Debt. The Sinking Fund is now paid for the whole National Debt. We have now to allot a certain portion of that debt to Ireland. We think it necessary to maintain that Sinking Fund, and especially for the interest of Ireland. When Ireland gets the management of her own affairs, I venture to prophesy that she will want for useful purposes, to borrow money. But the difficulty of that operation will be enormously higher or lower according to the condition of her GLADSTONE PRESENTING THE HOME RULE BILL, 1886. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 437 public credit. Her public credit is not yet born. It has yet to lie like an infant in the cradle, and it may require a good deal of nursing, but no nurs- ing would be effectual unless it were plain and palpable to the eye of the whole world that Ire- land had provision in actual working order for discharging her old obligations so as to make it safe for her to contract new obligations more nearly allied to her own immediate wants. I therefore put down three-quarters of a million for Sinking Fund. That makes the total charge £7,946,000, against a total income of ,£8,350,000, or a surplus of £404,000. But I can state to the House that that £404,000 is a part only of the Fund, which, under the present state of things, it would be the duty of the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer of the three countries to present to you for the discharge of our collective expenditure." The speech wound up with the following pero- ration : " I ask you to show to Europe and to America that we too can face political problems which America twenty years ago faced, and which many countries in Europe have been called upon to face and have not feared to deal with. I ask that in our own case we should practise with firm and fearless hand what we have so often preached — the doctrine which we have so often inculcated upon others — namely, that the concession of local self-government is not the way to sap or impair, but the way to strengthen and consolidate, unity. 26 438 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. I ask that we should learn to rely less upon merely written stipulations, and more upon those better stipulations which are written on the heart and mind of man. I ask that we should apply to Ire- land that happy experience which we have gained in England anc | J n Scotland, where the course of eenerations has now taught us, not as a dream or a theory but as practice and as life, that the best and surest foundation we can find to build upon is the foundation afforded by the affections, the convictions, and the will of the nation ; and it is thus, by the decree of the Almighty, that we may be enabled to secure at once the social peace, the fame, the power, and the permanence of the Empire." The speech was eminently judicious in its tone. The eagerness of the House to hear its interest- ing details was so great that even faction was silent, and Mr. Gladstone was allowed to proceed calmly to the end. Immediately afterwards, on Friday, the 16th of April, Mr. Gladstone brought in the Land Purchase Bill. It will suffice for the present to say that the main object of that bill was to issue fifty millions worth of stock for the purpose of enabling the Irish tenants to become proprietors of the Irish soil. The Land Purchase Bill played no other part in Parliament of itself, never having been brought beyond the stage of its introduction, but it had an indirect influence of a fatal character. The Land Purchase Bill, in THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 439 fact, more than anything else killed Home Rule. The Home Rule Bill was immediately attacked from different points, by Lord Hartington, by Mr. Chamberlain, by Mr. Goschen, by Sir George Trevelyan. The attacks were not, however, very damaging. Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan met the bill by counter-proposals which were obviously ridiculous. Lord Hartington and Mr. Goschen were more adroit and confined them- selves to strictly destructive criticism. The for- tunes of the bill rose and fell every day. A large number of the Liberal party were found to be without any settled convictions on the ques- tion. It became evident as time went on that Mr. Gladstone would have to make desperate efforts to carry his bill, and he certainly did make desperate efforts. Grave objection had been taken to the exclusion of Irish members for Westmin- ster. He promised to meet the objection and allow their return to Westminster on certain con- ditions. Finally it had been suggested that the bills had come upon the public mind too rap- idly. He agreed accordingly to drop the Home Rule Bill and to reintroduce it in an autumn sit- ting. The Tories and the Whigs accordingly made a final attack on Mr. Gladstone the following day. Mr. Gladstone defended himself with warmth, and practically repeated the same things he had said in the Foreign Office speech. But the waverers among his followers professed to find a difference 440 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. between the two speeches. Mr. Chamberlain called a meeting of his followers on the following- Monday, and a resolution was passed pledging the members present to vote against the second reading, and the fate of the bill was sealed. The division took place on June 7th amid scenes of intense excitement. Mr. Gladstone wound up the debate in a speech which was universally re- garded as one of the finest he had ever delivered. He went over the whole ground, clearly recapit- ulated and destroyed all objections, and wound up with an appeal perhaps the most noble of any throughout all his magnificent series of addresses on this question. But eloquence and reason were lost upon the dull heads and the malignant hearts that had determined to humiliate the lofty genius whose magnanimity rebuked their petty mean- ness. When the division was taken there were for the bill 311, against 341. Then ensued a scene of wild excitement. The Tories cheered themselves hoarse ; the Irish remained for a time silent, and when the Tory cheers died away they rose to their feet and cheered back in defiance. There were tumultuous scenes meantime out- side the House, and some free fighting, but at last the noise died away and the mad scene had come to a close. A few days afterwards the ministers announced that they had resolved to dissolve Par- liament, and the battle was now transferred from the House of Commons to the constituencies. ■=:fj|::::^-«;^.y •" * (/ _ / , ^ J £ + ri yj »i CC & r^j Si , .- •;:^ e? ^ I CHAPTER XII. THE APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY. WHEN the appeal to the country began the signs were favorable to the Govern- ment. Throughout the whole of the country the Liberal associations founded by Mr. Chamber- lain had met, and with scarcely an exception had pronounced against the men who refused to do justice to Ireland. Even Mr. Chamberlain him- self had not been spared, and at a crowded meeting a resolution had been carried against him with very little dissent. The working classes gave testimony in favor of # the Irish cause. No Irishman, indeed, who has gone through this crisis has failed to be deeply impressed with the attitude of the English, Scotch and Welsh de- mocracy. Whatever misgivings or divisions there were among other sections of society, there was scarcely any among the masses of the people. They were not only favorable to the policy of Mr. Gladstone, but they were enthusiastic in its favor. Opponents of the measure could scarcely get a hearing. Mr. Richard Chamberlain, who had followed his brother in attacking the policy 445 446 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. of the Government, was unable after a time to hold any meetings whatever. But all this time the enemies of Mr. Gladstone were at work. Lord Harrington went from one part of the country to the other, everywhere de- nouncing the policy of the Prime Minister. His speeches were, however, marked by dignity, self- control and perfect freedom from mean or ma- levolent insinuation. Mr. Goschen worked even harder, and spoke in every part of the country. He also, though he spoke strongly, spoke with becoming decorum, except when dealing with the unfortunate Irish members. But Mr. Chamber- lain threw off the mask completely, and attacked the Prime Minister in language of most vindictive bitterness. He brought all sorts of charges against him, but the climax was reached in Cardiff, where he suggested that Mr. Gladstone had consulted American revolutionaries before formulating his policy. Of course the charge was utterly untrue ; but it produced a startling and tremendous effect. From all parts of the great hall came shouts of "Traitor! Traitor!" Nor did Mr. Chamberlain fight the battle with honesty on any point, but consummate duplicity was freely employed. Mr. Bright finally joined in the combination against the Prime Minister. He also dealt at great length with the question of Land Purchase, but he was almost as uncandid on this point as THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 447 Mr. Chamberlain. In the Land Act of 1870 there were clauses which are known as the Bright clauses. These clauses deal entirely with the question of Land Purchase. They are the first enactments on the British Statute Book in favor of allowing the tenants to become the owners of their holdings with the assistance ot the State, and in fact the idea of land purchase first became a part of practical politics through Mr. Bright him- self. He is the father of the whole policy. Previous to 1880 he made several speeches in Ireland and elsewhere, in which he laid down that the real settlement of the land difficulty of Ire- land was a vast and wholesale scheme of land purchase. He now attacked Mr. Gladstone for carrying out a policy which he himself had been the strongest to advocate. He also took up stronger ground than almost any other opponent of Mr. Gladstone's policy To any Parliament of any kind whatever in Dublin he declared himself entirely opposed, There were various other causes which con- tributed to defeat Mr. Gladstone. Many people throughout the country were deeply concerned for the safety of the Irish Protestants, ignorant of the central fact of Irish history that National move- ments have, with the single exception of O'Con- nell's, always had Protestants as their leaders, and that the present leader of the Irish party is a Prot- estant, and that in electoral matters many of the 448 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. fiercest struggles have been on the side of a Protestant Nationalist aq-ainst a Catholic Whig - . The " No-Popery " cry has not died out in Eng- land, but represents a force that is not spent. -But the thing above all others which proved effective against the Government was the Land Purchase scheme. Under the bill of Mr. Glad- stone there would not have been the possibility of the loss of a farthing to the British exchequer ; but Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Bright, and a great many others repeated it so often that it was finally believed that the meaning of the bill was that the British taxpayer would have to spend ,£150,000,- 000 in paying the Irish landlord. It was a singu- lar Nemesis on the landlords of Ireland that their tyranny and cruelty had become so well known that hatred of them had grown into a passion with the British as with the Irish democracy, and for the working-classes of the country to be called upon to have to pay higher taxes in order that these scoundrels might get a heavy price for their stolen goods was a project against which the workinq-man's stomach revolted ; and in votinq- against the Gladstonian candidate, or refusing to vote for him, vast numbers of men were impelled by the idea that they were striking a blow against the hated tyrants of the Irish soil. Finally the Tories and the Liberal Unionists had made a treaty which was carried out with astonishing fidelity in every place in which it was THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 449 made. Every Liberal who voted against the bill was promised by the Tories freedom from all Tory opposition. The result of it was that in a vast number of constituencies, nearly one hundred altogether, the Liberal who opposed Mr. Glad- stone had the solid Tory vote, and it will be clear that it required but a small percentage of his own following among the Liberals to be able to win a seat on a contest of such a character. In this way a number of Liberals were returned to Par- liament by Tory votes, and of course, with this vote, were able in most instances "to defy attacks made upon their seats by the honest liberalism of the constituencies. Nevertheless, this union of bitter opponents proved ineffective in some remarkable cases, and several of the most prom- inent enemies of Ireland were defeated. Mr. Goschen was beaten by an immense majority in Edinburgh ; Sir George Trevelyan was routed in the Border Burghs after holding the seat for eighteen years ; Mr. Albert Grey, with all the influence of Lord Grey, a large landed proprietor, and of the Tories and Whigs, was beaten for the Tyneside Division, and Lord Hartington had to rely almost wholly on Tory votes in his own con- stituency of Hossendale. In Ireland, meantime, the Parnellites had been winning their way steadily after the usual fashion. It had been declared over and over again both in the debates in Parliament and during the election 450 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. campaign that the Parnellite members represented but a minority of the Irish population, and that their return had been brought about by the intim- idation of the loyal portion of the inhabitants. Nevertheless, in the majority of seats the loyalists in the election of 1886 did not even venture upon a contest, the reason of course being that there was no chance whatever of winning seats, and they were afraid of showing their nakedness to the enemy. There was one important victory and there were two important defeats. Mr. Sex- ton renewed his attack on West Belfast and was returned by a startlingly large majority. On the other hand, Mr. Healy was beaten for South Derry, and Mr. William O'Brien for South Ty- rone. Thus the result of these two defeats was to reverse the verdict of Ulster at the previous election to the extent of giving the Orangemen the majority of one which was hitherto held by the Nationalists. This majority, however, is not yet secure. Mr. Justin McCarthy fought again for Derry City ; the majority against him was declared to be three, but a petition has since been presented making charges of personation and unfair rejection of votes, and as all the officials were unscrupulous Orangemen it is more than probable that the petition will prove successful. And thus again the Nationalists would be masters of Ulster. Another registration will probably mve them two or three more seats, and the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 451 Orange faction will be reduced to its proper di- mensions. When the elections were over it was found that the following had been returned : Con- servatives, 317; Liberal Unionists, 75; Home Rule Liberals, 191 ; Parnellites, 85; Speaker, 1. This does not account for the Orkney and Shet- land Islands, the result of the elections for which were not known until long after the others were disposed of. For those islands, however, a Glad- stonian was returned. It will be well to say a word or two about the number of votes that were given. The figures were as follows : For the Conservatives, 1,106,651 votes; Liberal Unionists, 417,456; Gladstonian Liberals, 1,347,983; Parnellites, 99,669. Total, 2 »97 I 759- Conservatives and Liberal Unionists combined, 1,524,107. Gladstonian Liberals and Parnellites, 1,447,652. It will thus be seen that out of a total of nearly three millions of votes in the three countries there was a majority for Unionists of 76,455. If we turn to Wales we find that the vote was : Gladstonian Liberals, 60,- 083 ; Conservatives, 28,897 > Liberal Unionists, 10,005. Thus in the principality of Wales there was a Ministerial majority of 11,578 of the entire population. In Scotland the total poll was: Gladstonian Liberals, 191,443; Liberal Unionists, 113,222 ; Conservatives, 50,800. And thus there was a majority for Home Rule in the Scotch electorate of 27,421. In England alone was there 452 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. a majority against Home Rule. The numbers were in England: Conservatives, 938,487; Liberal Unionists, 264,643 ; total Unionist vote, 1,203,130. Gladstonian Liberals, 1,096,45 7 ; Parnellites, 2,91 1. Total Ministerial vote, 1,099,368; Unionist ma- jority, 103,762. At all events, in England, Wales and Scotland alone 1,347,983 people have voted for Home Rule. A year before the Home Rulers in England were perhaps not more than a few thousand. At this election the Home Rulers were nearly a million and a half. And this is no reason (to -say the least) for discouragement. If we look upon the composition of the new House we find equally good reason for satisfaction. The Liberal Unionists are a hopeless party reduced in numbers, incapable of forming an administra- tion, and perhaps incapable of holding together, and Conservatives can only maintain an adminis- tration by the countenance and support of a cer- tain section of the Liberal Unionists, and there- tore by the continuance of the split between the different sections of the Liberal party. A prominent and startling series of events has taken place of late in Belfast and its vicin- ity. There has occurred in that important city a succession of terribly bloody riots between the Protestant and the Catholic portions of the pop- ulace. The overwhelming majority of the re- ports confirm the truth of the statement that the Protestants in almost if not quite every case have THE GREAT IRISH STfcUGGt.fi. 453 been the aggressive party, and it appears that they have surpassed their adversaries in cruelty and bitter zeal. The friends of Ireland have not forgotten the recent speech of Lord Randolph Churchill, in which he appeared to advise his loyalist hearers to take just exactly the course that these misguided bigots have taken. The opinion very generally held by well-in- formed Home Rulers, that Ireland has more reason to expect favors from the Conservative leaders than from a party so divided as is the so- called Liberal party of to-day, finds considerable support from the present aspect of public affairs in Great Britain. Already the air is full of rumors of grand and generous movements to be executed under Conservative auspices. One Conservative project is said to look to the speedy concession of Home Rule to England, to Scot- land and to Wales, as well as to Ireland the united kingdom to be by this process transformed into a Federal Union of autonomous states. This project is at present a crude one; and the an- swer to the question as to whether Ireland would be willing to become a member of such a federa- tion must depend largely upon the details of the scheme. These details, however, are as yet un- known to the general public, and it is enough to say that even those who may favor this plan have not as yet given to it any definite shape. AMERICA'S PART. THE POWER BEHIND THE THRONE." By ROBERT M. McWADE, Esq. WITH INTRODUCTION BY PROFESSOR ROBERT E. THOMPSON, D.D., LL.D., OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA. (455) AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. I ACCEPTED the invitation of my friend Mr. Robert M. McWade to write something by way of preface to his able and authentic account of the Irish National League in America, not as hoping to add anything to its interest, but be- cause there were some things which ought to be said to American readers of this book, and which I may be in a better position to say than he is. As an economist, an Irish Protestant, and not a member of the League, although I have worked with it with voice and pen in behalf of Ireland, I can speak as a somewhat disinterested observer of its labors and its achievements. And for the same reason I can speak freely of some American prejudices which stand in the way of the re- cognition of Ireland's rights. The educational work of the Irish National League in America has been more effective in moulding public opinion than probably its own representatives are aware. By reason of the absorption of Americans in questions of home rather than foreign politics, and the general 27 (457) 458 AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. diffusion of English books and newspapers in this country, there has been and there still is a great amount of both ignorance and prejudice on this subject in America. But both are dissipating rapidly, and for that thanks to the League mainly. The dignity, the sincerity, the mingled sobriety and enthusiasm of the annual conventions, and the ample self-sacrifices made by the League at large in behalf of Ireland, have produced a deep and growing impression for good. It is an English delusion that Ireland has no American friends except among the politicians who want Irish votes. My own associations are very slight with that class of Americans, and very intimate with those whose opinions are formed on better grounds ; and I can testify that it is becoming rarer with every year to find an American who wishes the continuance of British rule in Ireland, or who does not believe in " Ireland for the Irish." There still are a few who object to this ques- tion being brought into prominence in America. They say it should be fought out at home, and that Irishmen who become American citizens should leave their old-world questions behind them, as do the Germans or the Norwegians who come to America. But the American people generally recognize a great difference in the case of the Irish. They know that this people have been driven by millions from their native land by the misrule of an alien government, and are in effect exiles as well as ' immigrants. And they AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. 459 know that the Irish people in America have to spend millions every year out of their wages and earnines to save their kindred at home from eviction, and that every few years they have to add largely to those millions to save their country- men from the famines produced by alien rule. With some patriotic Americans there is a shrinking from owning the riorht of Ireland to con- trol her own affairs, because of a fancied anal- ogy between Home Rule and Secession, on which Ireland's enemies — Prof. Goldwin Smith and others — have insisted very skillfully. There is no real analogy between the two things. The Amer- ican States which attempted to secede in 1861 had given their full and free consent to the Union of 1789, in the face of the warning that if they entered it they could not withdraw without the consent of three-fourths of the States. Ireland — as Mr. Leckey and Mr. Gladstone both remind us — never gave her consent to the Union of 1801. "The whole unbought intellect of Ireland re- sisted it," Mr. Leckey says. Before i860 — as Mr. Alexander Stephens reminded the people of Georgia in discussing the proposal to secede — the South exercised a controlling influence on the policy of the country, and- had not a single substantial grievance to plead. Ireland since 1 801 has been a hopeless and powerless minority, governed according to English ideas and in- terests rather than her own, and in defiance of pledges contained in die Treaty of Union itself. 460 AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. The secession movement was a spurt of excited passion, which experience has shown not to have destroyed the patriotic attachments of the South- ern people. Ireland's hostility to English rule has been age-long, unrelenting, ineradicable. It is true that the one hundred and five mem- bers secured Ireland in the Imperial Parliament have made a kind of representation of the coun- try. But what avails this number against four times as many English and Scotch members who know and care nothing about the needs and prejudices, the political and social ideas of the Irish people, and who are alien to them in blood, religion and historical traditions ? Take but one instance of the workings of the arrangement. The Irish people, like Catholic peoples generally, think the relief of the poor is a matter for indi- vidual charity and church oversight. Yet England forced her poor-law upon Ireland, levying a rate for the public relief of the destitute, and build- ing workhouses, on whose inmates alone this relief is bestowed. And she enacted it for Ire- land with a severity unknown even in- Great Britain. She forbade out-door relief even in times of the most general distress, requiring every recipient to become an inmate of the workhouse. As hardly anything could be more disgraceful in the eyes of the Celtic peasant, there have been many cases in which the people lay down and died of hunger sooner than enter " the house." And this is why the Irish in every year of famine AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. 4(j1 turn to appeal to the charities of the world at large, rather than ask help of the government of their country. With some Americans the objection derived from religious differences has weight. They have so little regard for their Protestantism that they are willing to saddle it with a great national injustice, rather than see Ireland controlled by a Roman Catholic majority. Let me ask their at- tention to two points : The first is, that Ireland is the one country of Europe which has no re- ligious establishment, and that it is ooinor to have none. The national party avow their readiness to accept Home Rule on a footing which forbids government favors to any church or sect. The second is, that the only religious question left to fight over is the education question, and that on that the majority of the Protestants — and espe- cially the Orange party among the Protestants — are in complete agreement with the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. They both wish the abolition of the national schools, in which religious instruction is both vague and scanty. They both wish to substitute for it denominational schools, to be aided by the government in pro- portion to the work each school is doing. It is only the Presbyterians and some Roman Catholics who will offer any resistance to their proposal ; and their combined forces will not suffice to make the resistance either prolonged or vigorous. But, even were it otherwise, there would be no 462 AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. danger in leaving the Irish people to settle the religious problem among themselves. To sup- pose that the temper of the Roman Catholic majority is intolerant is to ignore the plainest facts, and to transfer the ideas of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries into the nineteenth. Has the Protestant minority of Belgium suffered from the overthrow of the alien Protestant gov- ernment, whose existence made that creed offen- sive before 1830 to the great majority of the Belgian people ? As a matter of fact, the Prot- estants of Belgium have not a single substantial grievance. The Roman Catholics of Belgium, instead of sinking all other questions and uniting for their extermination, have divided upon other questions, and each party seeks the Protestant vote. And so it would be in Ireland. On every question, notably on that of education, the Roman Catholics would be found to differ among them- selves, and the old line of cleavage between Orange and Green would disappear in the new line between Liberal and Conservative. Mr. Parnell probably would be found leading the Liberal " centre," with Mr. Davitt on the Radical "left ; " and a Conservative party, Roman Catholic even more than Protestant, would form the "right" in a National Irish Parliament. Nor is it any compliment to the Protestants of Ireland to suppose that they are not equal to the task of taking care of themselves, and of making their alliance courted. The element which gave AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. 4tf;3 to Great Britain such men as Burke, Canning-, Castlereagh, Croker, Wellington, Paltnerston and Cairnes may be presumed to have some polk* ical capacity. It has inherited political experience and wealth in excess of its numerical ratio. It has had the best opportunities for general and higher education. It has given Ireland leaders — from Swift and Grattan to Davis and Parnell — whose names are a national possession. It has contributed its full share of the martyrs for the cause of Irish liberty. And when the soreness attending the readjustments of our generation are over, when the agrarian and the political problems are settled, the people of Ireland will say — as Mr. Parnell has said already of the Protestant minor- ity — "We want them all; we do not mean to do without a man of them." A few Americans still cherish the delusion that the character of the Irish people is naturally law- less and disorderly, and that this constitutes one of the difficulties of maintaining good government there. On the contrary there is no country in the world in which crimes against life, person, chastity and property are so rare. This is ad- mitted even by those English statists, who are unfriendly to the national aspirations of the Irish people. It has been shown by a comparison of Ireland with our New England States — the most orderly part of our national Union — by the Rev. Charles F. Thwing. The contrary impression has been created by collecting carefully every r - 464 AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. port of crime and outrage committed in Ireland, and sending it by telegraph to England and to the United States. These despatches are compiled in the office of The Irish Times, a Dublin paper, which has nothing Irish about it except its title. Mr. John Murdock, of Inverness, a hearty friend of the Irish people, attended the sessions of the Peace Society in this city when he was visiting America. He found it about to adopt resolutions deploring " the prevalence of outrage and blood- shed in Ireland," and calling upon the Irish party and Mr. Parnell to put a stop to this. Mr. Mur- dock asked the Society to look at the official statis- tics of Irish crime as compared with those of Penn- sylvania, and showed it that Ireland had about a score of murders to commit before New Year's day — it was then November — if she was to catch up to the Pennsylvania average. The society withdrew its resolutions and adopted instead of them an address calling the attention of Queen Victoria to the recent stabbing and shooting of women by soldiers and police on the streets of Irish towns. There are very few Americans so ill-informed as to repeat the stock argument that "Ireland is wretched because it is over-populated, and no English government can find a remedy for that." Ireland, like India, produces far more food than her people can consume. Like India, she suffers from the periodical famines which fall upon coun- tries which are producing nothing but food, and AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. 465 which have nothing to fall back on when the har- vest fails. By the export of food Ireland pays not only the rents of her army of absentee-landlords, but buys nearly every article of manufacture that is used by either rich or poor in the island. Accord- ing- to the testimony collected from experts by Sir Eardley Wilmot's Committee of the House of Commons in 1885. almost every hat and cap, boot and shoe, chair and table, knife and fork, shovel and spade used in Ireland comes to her from other countries. The people are clad for the most part in the products of the cotton and shoddy-mills of Northern England, although plenty of good wool is produced in Ireland and the country has abundant supplies of both coal and water-power. No iron is smelted in Ireland, although her great peat-beds could be used for that purpose, and Antrim produces iron ore which is exported to America. And what manufactures still remain are decaying visibly. Ulster is losing her manufacture of linen, and is exporting linen yarn to be worked into fabrics by the German weavers, whose government has given them the technical training that enables them to outdo their Irish competitors. Every census shows a decrease in the number of the Irish people who are living by anything else than farming. It has been among the especial services the Irish National League of America has rendered to Ireland, that from the first it has insisted that the restoration of Irish manufactures — de- 466 AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. stroyed by the infamous Union of 1801 — is a question of equal importance with the readjust- ment of land-ownership. To this Mr. Parnell re- sponded in his Cork speech in the spring of 1886, in which he recognized that even a peasant pro- prietary would not make Ireland prosperous in the absence of other occupations than farming. Indeed it is the want of such occupations which has vested the Irish landlords with that excess of power over their tenants, which so many of them have abused shamefully. It is the want of such occupations which in the past made farming in Ireland a losing business to freeholders as well as tenants, and which ruined that great army of land- lords, who were swept away by the Encumbered Estates Court in 1 847-1 857. And the fact that whatever an English Parliament may do to amend the land system, it will do nothing to meet this want, is one of the many circumstances that make Home Rule for Ireland indispensable. In the plan of Home Rule proposed by Mr. Gladstone and accepted in substance by Mr. Par- nell, the new Irish Parliament would be debarred from dealing with this problem in the usual way, — that to which Americans are accustomed. That Parliament could lay no duty on imports or exports, nor could it collect any but direct taxes. But there are many roads to the same goal ; and Dr. Sullivan, the able and patriotic President of Queen's College, Cork, seems to have anticipated AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. 4^7 this difficulty in his testimony before Sir Eardley Wilmot's Committee by pointing out others for the revival of the manufactures of the country. It is notable that he does not suggest afresh trial of the plan of voluntary agreement to use the products of Irish manufacture only. That has been tried repeatedly in the last fifty years, and it always has proved a failure. Voluntary agree- ments do not furnish the degree of security on which a capitalist will risk his money. And their purpose is very easily defeated by the fraud which labels English goods with Irish trade-marks. This is a case in which the judgment of the peo- ple as to their own interest can be enforced only through their collective action, using their govern- ment as an organ. And as the alien government of England will not serve as the organ of the popular will in this matter, the establishment of a national government for Ireland must be the first step towards the establishment of Irish prosperity. What effect the restoration of Irish prosperity will have on the relations of the nation to the British Empire is a question which must be left to the future. Ireland's dependence has been se- cured by her poverty and her internal dissensions, more than by the power of her oppressor. And Ireland united and prosperous will be able to choose for herself. Those who think her discon- tent has had its root in her misery merely, will expect to see her settle down into a comfortable 468 AMERICAN INTRODUCTION. and untroublesome member of the United King- dom. Those who believe that its deepest root is Irish nationality — the collective will to be one people in distinction from all other people — must look for a different result. Time will test these two estimates and this saves us the trouble of prophesying. Of one thing I am sure, that in the not distant future the choice between the two destinies will lie absolutely in the hands of the Irish people. Not only the civil and criminal law of the island will have that "Irish source," which Mr. Gladstone says it must have if the people are to give it a hearty acquiescence ; but the consti- tutional law which defines the relations of the country to England and the rest of the world will have an " Irish source " also, and will be of such a character as the Irish people may elect to give it. It is remarkable that so keen a logician as Mr. Gladstone should not have seen this in- ference from his own premise as to the proper source of law. If he should be spared long enough to complete his education in the matter of justice to Ireland, he may be convinced that something very different from his Home Rule Bill is what his own reasoning would suggest for that misgoverned and unhappy country. ROBERT ELLIS THOMPSON. University of Pennsylvania, January, 1887. ROBERT M. McWADE CHAPTER XIII. THE MOVEMENT IN AMERICA. TOWARDS the close of the year 1879, when Ireland was in the midst of the dark events which clustered so thickly around that memorable period in her history, the Irish leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, determined to appeal on behalf of his suffering country, not merely to the Irish at home, but to the Irish abroad, especially to those exiles and their descendants who had set- tled in America. He placed himself in communi- cation with leading- Irish-American citizens, and after a lengthy correspondence finally determined, in 1880, to visit this country. The establishment of the Irish National League of the United States was one of the chief and most important results of that visit. Immediately after his arrival, ac- companied by John Dillon, he delivered addresses in many of the large cities of the Union, and, wherever they went, his cool argumentative and dispassionate discourses gained hosts of influ- ential American friends, who contributed freely and liberally to the Irish cause. Notable among the first contributions he received at this time, 471 472 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. and which he forwarded at once to Treasurer Egan in Ireland, was a gift of $1,000 from Mr. George W. Childs, of Philadelphia, who, with his friend, Mr. A. J. Drexel, the head of the widely known banking firm of Drexel & Co., has since then made generous donations to the Irish National League and Irish Parliamentary Funds. Before leaving New York for his home in Ire- land Mr. Parnell held a conference with several prominent men from various parts of the Union. The result of their deliberations was a conference, lasting two days, which was held in Trenor Hall, New York, on May 18th and 19th, 1880, at which the Hon. Patrick A. Collins, of Boston, presided. Appropriate resolutions were there drawn up and agreed to, a provisional constitution adopted and the following elected as national officers : J. J. McCafferty, President; Rev. Lawrence Walsh, Treasurer ; Michael Davitt, Secretary. Almost immediately after the meeting the presi- dent resigned, and the patriot, Michael Davitt, went home to Ireland to face threatened impris- onment. The conduct of the entire executive business of the Land League was thus thrown upon Father Walsh. Feeling the necessity for prompt and energetic work, that patriot priest used every exertion to further the success of the movement. Branches were formed in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, and other great cities and centres of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 473 population, and contributions to the League funds were transmitted to Ireland through the Irish World, Boston Pilot, and other journals, as well as through the regular treasurer. Father Walsh found, after laboring incessantly and unwearyingly for several months, that more concerted action and a more effective organization were absolutely necessary. Hence, he issued a call to the delegates of the various branches to meet in convention at Buffalo, N. Y., on the 12th and 13th of January, 1881. This was really the first Land League Con- vention held in the United States of America. Though in point of numbers its roll-call of dele- gates was not very large, yet it is safe to say that there never before assembled in this country a more intelligent, patriotic or representative body of men to take counsel together on the welfare of Ireland. A series of resolutions expressive of the objects of, as well as the necessity for. the- ex- istence of the Land League was adopted, the bonds of unity and fraternity among the friends of Ireland throughout this country were cemented and strengthened, a Central Council was chosen, and the following national officers were elected : Hon. Patrick A. Collins, Boston, Mass., Presi- dent; Rev. Lawrence Walsh, Waterbury, Conn., Treasurer; Thomas Flatley, Esq., Boston, Mass., Secretary. Those three officers at once instituted a com- 28 474 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. plete system of organized activity and effective energy, and raised the Land League in America into a powerful organization, containing nearly one thousand branches and contributing - in one year about three hundred thousand dollars to Treasurer Eg-an, then in Ireland. In the light of subsequent events, the following address, issued on February 7, 1881, by President Collins to the members of the League and the American public, possesses considerable interest, aside from its historical value, as being the first declaration made by the first National President of the League : " Irish National Land League of the United States. Central Office, 198 Washington Street, Boston, Mass., February 7, 1881. " To the Members of the League and the American Public : It is but a few months since the people of Ireland ended a struggle for existence on the soil of their fathers. They fought Death itself, in the gaunt form of famine, and by the great charity of mankind were enabled to conquer it. To the wail of Irish distress America responded with noble generosity. " But had not the Land League i n Ireland ex- isted, with its forecast and warning of the famine, its timely appeal, wise Organization, and machinery for distribution, in the judgment of the best in- formed, death by starvation would have been the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 477 fate of vast numbers of the people. The scenes of 1846-7-8 were averted by prescience and organization. " The Land League in Ireland continues its ex- istence for the purpose of removing the cause of famine — landlord robbery of the people ; for the purpose of compelling- such changes in the law as will make every Irish peasant the owner of the soil he cultivates. "In their movements to attain this grand re- sult — a result attained by the people of almost every other country in Europe — the Irish have the sympathy of every free people on the planet. " But they need more. The Ireland we speak of has been richly dowered by nature, but cruelly robbed by man. By fire, sword, law and famine the island has been swept and scourged for seven centuries in an effort for the conquest of the land and the extermination of the people. Manu- factures have been depressed, commerce has been swept from the ocean ; agriculture is the chief industry of the people. "The area of Ireland is 20,327,764 acres; 4,643,986 acres are in bog, waste and water. From the 15,683,778 acres of arable land and some 5,000,000 people living on it, the landlords claim the right to wring $90,000,000 a year in rents — half of which to spend abroad — and the. Government $60,000,000 more in local and impe- rial taxes ! 478 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. " In so-called ' good years ' Ireland staggers under this enormous burden ; in ' bad years ' she starves or begs. " Says the London Times: ' Property is there ruled with savage and tyrannical sway. Land- lords exercise their rights with a hand of iron, and disregard their duties with a forehead of brass.' "Feudal law, with a mountain of abuses piled upon it, is mercilessly administered by a landlord class whose titles rest upon confiscation, and who are sustained in their excesses and exactions by the whole power of the Government. " Nearly 80 per cent, of the cultivators are ten- ants at the landlords' will. But 3 per cent, are owners in fee. " Rent is based, not upon the humane, economic principle that the soil is first to repay the tiller for his toil and outlay, but upon a calculation of what can be squeezed out of the ragged, wretched tenant, and out of his friends abroad. " Not less than $3,000,000 annually, during the past thirty years, have been forwarded to the peasantry of Ireland by their friends and kindred in other lands ! Not less than two-thirds of this goes from the United States. Hence this becomes an American economic question. "With such a merciless system in vogue, what wonder is it that the people are described as ' the worst housed, the worst fed and the worst clad of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 479 any in the world ? ' Two hundred and twenty- five thousand families live in cabins of one room each. In ' good years ' they exist. In ' bad years ' they starve, unless succored by foreign charity. " Nine-tenths of the landlord titles to the soil of Ireland rest upon confiscation. Morally, against the rights of the true owners, no statute of limitations runs. Legally, what the Crown or Parliament gave it can take away. " If the Irish people had the power to rid them- selves at once of Crown and landlords, they would use it, and the moral sense of mankind would justify and applaud it. " But in the Land League programme there is no suggestion of resort to armed force. Irish discontent and agitation are to run their course within the limits of the British law and Constitu- tion. " To lift the people of the island up from mis- ery, to educate them into a full realization of their condition, rights and power, to organize them in solid mass against the authors of their wrongs, to force by lawful means such changes in the land laws as will make the people the owners of the soil they till — this is the mission of the Land League in Ireland. " The effort has already borne fruit. Rents have been reduced, evictions have diminished, the people have ' stuck to their holdings.' The ques- tion is on the fair road to settlement. 480 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. " England yields only to force. During the past year the force of the Irish people has been wisely, ingeniously, admirably exerted. Hence, the concession in the Queen's speech of Home Rule and the rights of the tenant in the land. The logical extension of these principles lifts Ireland up to a plane of prosperity. " In dealing with Irish grievance, however, England deals a blow before she applies the rem- edy. Coercion precedes concession. " Ireland is about to be subjected to a tension unwonted even for her. It will require the exer- cise of all the leaders' skill and the marvellous patience of the people to avert an explosion. "That they will succeed, their conduct during the past year is an earnest and a guaranty. " In this crisis, and in their supreme effort to rid themselves of the incubus of landlordism, the people of Ireland need the aid of their friends in other lands. "Against them are the prejudices of ages, the power of a dominant and arrogant class, the very wealth wrung from their toil and misery — the Crown, the aristocracy, a subsidized press. On their side are justice, numbers, patriotism and the light of the nineteenth century. " The Land League in the United States is an organization auxiliary to that in Ireland. It has no part in shaping the policy of the Irish body. Its functions are to make the case of Ireland fully THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 481 understood in America, so that the public opinion of this republic shall be intelligently and forcibly expressed on the side of justice and liberty in Ireland; and to aid, by our sympathy and means, the splendid march of the Irish people on to jus- tice, prosperity and self-government. " In this work we ask the co-operation of all just men of whatever color, race, creed or condi- tion. Combine everywhere in branches of the League. Report to us, so that in the mass we shall be united. Let us have before St. Patrick's Day such an organization in existence as the Irish race has never seen — an organization that can create Ireland's opportunity, and be ready to take advantage of England's difficulty. " P. A. Collins, President." Hon. Patrick A. Collins, the writer of that admirable document, in addition to being the first president of the national organization, has the proud honor of being the first president of the first branch of the Land League that was formed in America. At its organization in Faneuil Hall, Boston, in the presence of the Hon. John Dillon, M. P., whose fervid eloquence aroused the crowded meeting to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, was sown the seed which fructified a few months later in the establishment of many others, and aided largely in the formation of the Central Council. 482 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Mr. Collins was born near Fermoy, in the County Cork, Ireland, on March 12, 1844. Four years later we find him in this country in Chelsea, Mass., where he attended the public schools until he was twelve years of age. For three years sub- sequently he worked on a farm, in the coal mines, and in a grindstone mill in Ohio. In his sixteenth year he came to Boston, where he learned the upholstering trade, at which he worked for seven years in the successive positions of apprentice, journeyman and foreman, holding the last position when he was only nineteen years old. For four years he read law in a Boston office, and with the money he had saved was able to finish his studies at the Harvard Law School. He was admitted to the bar in April, 1871, and has practised in Boston since that date. Loving his native land, with whose history and traditions his mind was stored, with the passionate fervor of the Irish-American he threw himself at an early age into the Irish movement in this coun- try and devoted his best energies to organize and build up a society or association of clubs that would aid in Ireland's emancipation. He became an active member of the Fenian Brotherhood, and was on its rolls from 1862 until 1870. He served as Secretary of the Philadelphia Convention and as Chairman of a subsequent one, and for upwards of nine months in 1865 was recognized every- where as one of the most able and energetic THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 433 organizers in that powerful confederation of clubs or circles. The trusted friend and confidant of the lamented Fenian chieftain, John O'Mahony, lie gained and has always retained the esteem and confidence of the Irish Nationalists in this country as well as " at home." From his earliest years he took a deep interest in the affairs of his adopted country, and connect- ing himself with the Democratic party, he became one of its most ardent supporters. In 1868 and 1869 he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives and of the Massachu- setts State Senate in 1870 and 1871. He was delegate- at-large to the Democratic National Conventions of 1876 and 1880, and declined that honor in 1884. His remarkable executive abili- ties were admirably displayed in 1873 and 1874 during his Chairmanship of the Boston Demo- cratic City Committee, and in 1884, 1885, and 1886, whilst he was Chairman of the Democratic State Committee of Massachusetts. After serv- ing two terms in Congress as a representative of the Fourth Massachusetts district, he retired early in 1886, publicly declining further political honors. In the same year he was re-elected to Congress. Of all the able officers of the national organi- zation few are better known than Thomas Flat- ley, Esq., the genial secretary, whose untiring industry and earnest patriotic labors enabled Pres- ident Collins to perfect his plans of forming the 484 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. various branches of the Land League into one grand cohesive organization. A tinge of romance colors his early life " in the old land." About thirty-five years ago he was born in Claremorris, a pretty little town in the west of Ireland. Grad- uating from a private classical school, he matricu- lated in the Queen's College, Gal way. While here he heard echoes of the agitation that pre- ceded the intended insurrection and left his alma mater to take part in " the rising." Being very popular in his native place he soon raised a battalion of gallant young patriots, re- ceived a commission, and mapped out an active plan of campaign in that section, of the country. Tom's troops were well drilled, but badly provided with such " fighting materials " as arms and ac- coutrements ; so he promptly devised a plan to supply the deficiency. About twenty or thirty of " the boys " were to " get up a sham fight " in the square of the town, and while the entire police force would be engaged in trying to quell the dis- turbance and making arrests the remainder of the battalion were to capture the police arsenal. As soon as this was accomplished, with Tom at their head, they were in turn to attack the police, and after taking them prisoners to offer them the alternative of being court-martialled or donning the green cockade and swearing allegiance to the Irish Republic. Fortunately for Ireland, on the eve of the ap- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 485 pointed day, March 5, 1867, the order for "the rising" was countermanded. A slight skirmish, however, took place near Dublin. The other outbreak, a military speck on the horizon, was in Kerry, where brave Captain O'Connor, on learn- ing the true state of affairs, disbanded his men in the mountains. The English commander sent flying columns through the provinces with instruc- tions to take the " centres " and suspects pris- oners. Most of them, warned of the fate that was intended for them, fled from Ireland to this coun- try, and our friend, ex-Secretary Flatley, was one of their number. Immediately after his arrival he engaged in mercantile pursuits, but feeling that he needed a more thorough equipment for the battle of life, he entered Georgetown College in 1868. In course of time he received his decree f Bachelor of Arts and a diploma after passing a most suc- cessful examination in the law department. He subsequently became a member of the college faculty, and though something of a martinet in discipline, he never lost the suave temper, riant humor, and irrepressible buoyancy that marked his earlier days. Shortly after his admission to the bar he associated in practice with his brother, P. J. Flatley, Esq. In politics he is a pronounced Democrat. Almost twelve months ago he was appointed Deputy Collector of the Port of Boston, a position which he still holds, 486 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. The work of stirring up the people to do their whole duty by the home leaders of the move- ment, received a fresh impetus in October, 1881, when the cable flashed the news across the Atlantic Ocean of the determination of William Ewart Gladstone's government to put down the Irish National League by force. The first step in that direction was sufficient of itself to set aflame the hearts of Irishmen all over the civil- ized world. Mr. Parnell, the President of the League, was arrested on the 13th of that month, and within two days afterwards Thomas Sexton, John Dillon, J. J. O'Kelly, William O'Brien, and others were imprisoned as " suspects." The Executive of the League now felt the necessity to take some strong steps to thwart the Irish land- lords, and to show the British Government by absolute proofs that the Irish people would not tamely submit to this unjustifiable incarceration of their representatives. As a last resource the Irish Executive called on the tenants to " pay no rent." They did so in the following document, which, as will be seen by its date, was issued on the 1 8th of October, 1881. Many enemies of the Home Rule movement, in America and else- where, in their attempts to justify the arrest of Mr. Parnell, assert that " he was imprisoned because he issued the No-Rent Manifesto." The exact converse is the truth. The manifesto was issued because the leaders of the national organi- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 487 zation were deprived of their liberty. • As a his- toric interest is attached to the document, and, as its alleged contents have been the cause of, at times, bitter contention, I append it, verbatim, as it was issued from the patriots' prison : " To the Irish People. " Fellow Countrymen : The hour has come to test whether the great organization, built up during years of patient labor and sacrifice, and consecrated by the allegiance of the whole Irish race the world over, is to disappear at the sum- mons of a brutal tyranny. The crisis with which we are face to face is not of our making. It has been deliberately forced upon the country, while the Land Act is, as yet, untested, in order to strike down the only power which might have extorted any solid benefits for the tenant-farmers of Ireland from that Act, and to leave them once more help- lessly at the mercy of a law invented to save landlordism and administered by landlord minions. "The Executive of the Irish National Land League, acting in the spirit of the resolutions of the National Convention— the most freely elected body ever assembled in Ireland — was advancing steadily in the work of testing how far the admin- istration of the Land Act might be trusted to eradicate from the rents of the Irish tenant- farmers the entire value of their own improve- ments, and to reduce these rents to such a figure 488 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. as should forever place our country beyond the peril of periodical famine. At the same time they took measures to secure, in the event of the Land Act proving to be a mere paltry mitigation of the horrors of landlordism in order to fasten it the more securely on" the necks of the people, that the tenant-farmers should not be delivered blind- folded into the hands of hostile law courts, but should be able to fall back upon the magnificent organization which was crushing landlordism out of existence when Mr. Gladstone stepped in to its rescue. In either event the Irish tenant-far- mers would have been in a position to exact the uttermost farthing of their just demand. " It was this attitude of perfect self-command — impregnable while there remained a shadow of respect for law, and supported with unparalleled enthusiasm by the whole Irish race — that moved the rage of the disappointed English Minister. Upon the monstrous pretext that the National Land League was forcing upon the Irish tenant- farmers an organization which made them all- powerful, and was keeping them, by intimidation, from embracing an Act which offered them noth- ing except helplessness and uncertainty, the English Government has cast to the winds every shred of law and justice, and has plunged into an open reign of terror, in order to destroy by the foulest means an organization which was confess- edly too strong for it within the limits of its own English constitution. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. },s«) " Blow after blow has been struck at the Land League, in the mere wantonness of brute force. In the face of provocation which has turned men's blood to flame, the Executive of the Land League adhered calmly and steadily to the course traced out for them by the National Convention. Test cases of a varied and searching character were, with great labor, put in train for adjudication in the Land Courts. Even the arrest of our Presi- dent, Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell, and the excited state of popular feeling which it evoked, did not induce the executive to swerve in the slightest from that course; for Mr. Parnell's arrest might have been accounted for by motives of personal malice, and his removal did not altogether derange the machinery for the preparation of the test cases which he has been at much pains to per- fect. But the events which have since occurred — the seizure, or attempted seizure, of almost all the members of the executive and of the chief officials of the League, upon wild and preposterous pre- tences, and the violent suppression of free speech — put it beyond any possibility of doubt that the English Government — unable to declare the Land League an illegal association, defeated in the attempt to break its unity, and afraid to abide the result of test cases, watched over by a powerful popular organization — has deliberately resolved to destroy the whole machinery of the Central League, with a view to rendering an experi- 490 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. mental trial of the Act impossible, and forcing it upon the Irish tenant-farmers on the Government's own terms. "The brutal and arbitrary dispersion of the Central Executive has so far succeeded that we are obliged to announce to our countrymen that we no longer possess the machinery for ade- quately presenting the test cases in court accord- ing to the policy prescribed by the National Con- vention. , Mr. Gladstone has, by a series of furious and wanton acts of despotism, driven the Irish farmers to choose between their own organ- ization and the mercy of his lawyers — between the power which has reduced landlordism to almost its last gasp and the power which strives with all the ferocity of despotism to restore the detestable ascendency from which the Land League has delivered the Irish people. "One constitutional weapon alone now remains in the hands of the Irish National League. It is the strongest, the swiftest, the most irresistible of all. We hesitated to advise our fellow-country- men to employ it until the savage lawlessness of the English Government provoked a crisis in which we must either consent to see the Irish tenant-farmers disarmed of their organization and laid once more prostrate at the feet of the land- lords, and every murmur of Irish public opinion suppressed with an armed hand, or appeal to our countrymen to at once resort to the only means THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 491 now left in their hands of bringing- this false and brutal Government to its senses. " Fellow-countrymen, the hour to try your souls and redeem your pledges has arrived. The Executive of the National Land League, forced to abandon the policy of testing the Land Act, feels bound to advise the tenant-farmers of Ire- land from this forth to pay no rent under any cir- cumstances to their landlords until the Govern- ment relinquishes the existing system of terrorism and restores the constitutional rights of the peo- ple. Do not be daunted by the removal of your leaders. Your fathers abolished tithes by the same method without any leaders at all, and with scarcely a shadow of the magnificent organization that covers every portion of Ireland to-day. " Do not suffer yourselves to be intimidated by threats of military violence. It is as lawful to refuse to pay rents as it is to receive them. Against the passive resistance of an entire popu- lation, military power has no weapons. Do not be wheedled into compromise of any sort by the dread of eviction. If you only act together in the spirit to which in the last two years you have countless times solemnly pledged your vows, they can no more evict a whole nation than they can imprison them. The funds of the National Land League will be poured out unstintedly for the support of all who may endure eviction in the course of the struggle. Our exiled brothers in 492 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. America may be relied upon to contribute, if necessary, as many millions of money as they have contributed thousands, to starve out landlordism and bring- English tyranny to its knees. You have only to show that you are not unworthy of their boundless sacrifices in your cause. No power on earth except faint-heartedness on our own part can defeat you. Landlordism is already staggering under the blows which you have dealt it, amidst the applause of the world. "One more crowning struggle for your land, your homes, your lives — a struggle in which you have all the memories of your race, all the hopes of your children, all the sacrifices of your impris- oned brothers, all your cravings for rent-enfran- chised land, for happy homes and national freedom, to inspire you — one more heroic effort to destroy landlordism at the very source and fountain of its existence — and the system which was, and is, the curse of your race and of your existence, will have disappeared for ever. The world is watch- ing to -see whether all your splendid hopes and noble courage will crumble away at the first threat of a cowardly tyranny. You have to choose between throwing yourself upon the mercy of England and taking your stand by the organiza- tion which has once before proved too strong for English despotism ; you have to choose between all-powerful unity and impotent disorganization ; between the land for the landlords and the land THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 493 for the people ! We cannot doubt your choice. Every tenant-farmer of Ireland is to-day the standard-bearer of the i\a.Q- unfurled at Irishtown, and can bear it to a glorious victory. " Stand together in the face of the brutal and cowardly enemies of your race ; pay no rents under any pretext ; stand passively, firmly, fear- lessly by while the armies of England may be en- gaged in their hopeless struggle against a spirit which their weapons cannot touch ; act for your- selves if you are deprived of the counsels of those who have shown you how to act ; no power of legalized violence can extort one penny from your purses against your will ; if you are evicted, you will not suffer ; the landlord who evicts you will be a ruined pauper, and the Government which supports him with its bayonets will learn in a single winter how powerless is armed force against the will of a united, determined and ^elf- reliant nation. " Signed : Charles S. Parnell, President, Kil- mainham Jail; A. J. Kettle, Honorary Secretary, Kilmainham Jail; Michael Davitt, Honorary Secretary, Portland . Prison; Thomas Brennan, Honorary Secretary, Kilmainham Jail; John Dil- lon, Head Organizer, Kilmainham Jail ; Patrick Egan, Treasurer, Paris. "18M October, 1881." The manly and determined spirit with which 494 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the Irish nation took hold of their leaders' advice and followed it up in almost every section of " the old land," aroused the enthusiasm of their fellow- countrymen in America. Meetings were held in almost every city and town in the United States, and preparations were made to raise whatever funds might be thought necessary to aid " the men in the gap." Every one recognized the fact that a crisis had now arisen in Irish affairs which demanded liberal, square-toed action on their part, if the tenant-farmers were to be supported in the stand they had taken. The attempt of the Glad- stone Government to wipe out the Irish National Land League must be resented, at the same time, in language the import of which must be unmistakable. Patrick Ford, P. A. Collins and John Boyle O'Reilly, on behalf of the American Irish, and T. P. O'Connor, T. M. Healy and Rev. Eugene Sheehy, representatives from Ireland, united in a public appeal to the branches of the Irish National League, and to all organizations in America friendly to the Irish cause to send delegates to an Irish National Convention to be held in McCor- mack's Hall, in the city of Chicago, Illinois, on the 30th of November and the 1st and 2d of Decem- ber, 1 88 1. The appeal urged the branches and societies to " select as delegates the wisest and ablest in your respective communities, so that the convention may be thoroughly representative." THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 495 President Collins and the other national officers at the same time issued an official call for the con- vention. Among other things it said : "This is a summons to the entire race and all its friends in America ; and in that spirit it js hoped and expected it will be answered. Ireland is darkened with troops, her people are disarmed, her chosen leaders are in prison, her voice is stifled. " These worse than Asian methods of repression have been tried before and have failed. They will fail now also, but it depends upon us to make the failure so complete that the methods will never again be applied. " In all her ages of trial Ireland has never shown among her people so much courage and fortitude, linked with patience and wisdom, as now. " It is because her people never before were so thoroughly instructed as to their rights, or so well trained in methods for their enforce- ment. It is because we have promised them that when the hour of tension arrived they could rely upon us and upon all their scattered kindred. " The time has now come to keep that promise, and to show to mankind how a people can fight a battle without guns and win a victory without bloodshed. "The gravity of the situation in Ireland de- mands instant, intelligent and sober action here. 496 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. " Let the convention at Chicago be the greatest and most representative body ever held to discuss the Irish question or aid the Irish cause. Let it show to the world that all our people here demand for the people of Ireland justice and self- eovernment, and will sustain them in efforts to that end." The convention was called to order by the Hon. John C. Finnerty, of Chicago, journalist and Congressman, in a lengthy and fiery address. Hon. Win. j. Hynes, of Chicago, was its Tempo- rary Chairman. A Committee on Credentials was appointed, consisting of one delegate from every State and Territory in the United States and Canada. The Committee on Permanent Or- ganization was as follows : New York, Judge Rooney ; Illinois, Hon. Richard Prendergast; Michigan, Rev. Dr. O'Reilly; Ohio, Hon. W. J. Gleason ; Pennsylvania, Mr. Patrick Dunlevy; Iowa, Hon. M. V. Gannon ; Massachusetts, Hon. Edward Lynch. The convention numbered 845 delegates. They admitted no proxy representatives, and by a de- cided vote declined to recognize as delegates three Socialists from an organization called " Spread the Light Club," by this decision placing themselves squarely on record at the outset as law-abiding citizens. To emphasize that position, Hon. Francis Agnew, of Illinois, the Chairman of the Committee on Credentials, declared that "the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 497 applicants had not been recognized as delegates because it was the opinion of the committee that the club they claimed to represent was of a po- litical nature, and besides there had been strong op- position from all quarters to their admission as Socialists." A cursory glance at the list of the permanent officers of the convention will give the reader some idea of the representative character of its members. Among them were clergymen, jour- nalists, lawyers, physicians, bankers and repre- sentatives of the commercial and industrial inter- ests of the country, many of them differing in their religious views, but all of them animated with the single desire and purpose of aiding Mr. Parnell in his plans of constitutional agitation. Here they are : President — Rev. George C. Betts, of St. Louis, Missouri. Vice-Presidents — Hon. Wm. J. Hynes, Illinois; Rev. Maurice Dorney, Illinois ; Dr. William Car- roll, Pennsylvania ; John Boyle O'Reilly and Hon. Patrick A. Collins, Massachusetts ; Patrick Ford, New York ; Patrick Smith, Ohio ; James Gibson, New Jersey; James J. Kelly, Minnesota; P. H. McManus, Indiana ; James Reynolds, Connecti- cut; Miss Davitt, Pennsylvania ; Rev. Lawrence Walsh, Connecticut; Rev. P. Cronin, New York; Rev. W. J. Dalton, Missouri; J. J. Linahan and Hon. M. V. Gannon, Iowa; Mrs. Parnell, New 498 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Jersey; J. B. Mannix, Ohio; Rev. Dr. O'Hara, New York ; Dr. John Guerin and Bernard Cal- laghan, Illinois; Miss E. A. Ford, John Devoy and John C. Maguire, New York ; Hon. Thomas A. Moran and Hon. Alexander Sullivan, Illinois ; Col. Michael Boland, Kentucky; Rev. D. O'Con- nell, New York ; Rev. M. C. McEnroe, Pa. ; Henry F. Sheridan, Illinois ; J. D. O'Connell, District of Columbia ; Col. John Atkinson and John R. Cof- fey, Chicago; John S. Burke, Wisconsin; Dennis O'Connor, Chicago ; Dr. William Wallace, Hon. John G. Rogers and Thomas Casey, New York ; James Mooney, Buffalo, New York ; George D. Plant, Illinois ; Mr. Sanderson, New Jersey ; Marcus Kavanaugh, Iowa ; Rev. J. McDermott, Maryland ; Thomas J. Sheridan, E. S. Murphy and T. J. Dennehy, New York ; John V. Crozier, Pennsylvania ; M. W. Ryan, William Condon and Andrew J. O'Connor, Illinois ; Mr. Brown and Joseph Judge, Missouri ; Wm. Stapleton and Rev. John A. Fanning, Illinois; John O'Donnell, Penn- sylvania; M. J. Costello and J. N. Mullahey, Col- orado ; Mr. Kavanaugh and Hon. J. G. Donnelly, Wisconsin ; David Sullivan, Illinois ; W. Kenne- dy, Wisconsin; N. F. Dunlevy, Pennsylvania; F. Gavin and P. Sheahan, Indiana ; P. J. McGuire, Canada. Marshal — Frank Agnew, Chicago, Illinois. Secretaries — J. D. Ronayne, Massachusetts ; Hon. T. V. Powderly, Pennsylvania ; Thomas THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 499 Flatley, Massachusetts ; Martin I. j. Griffin and C. Horgan, Pennsylvania ; D. J. Haltigan, New York ; George Sweeney, Ohio ; Timothy Crean, Illinois ; Jeremiah Galvin, Canada. Despatches were received from prominent Americans all over the country wishing the con- vention " God-speed in its good work," and ac- companied by liberal donations ranging from $50 up to $1,000. Notable among the despatches was the following from the lamented Wendell Phillips : " Boston, Mass., November 2>otk. " Congratulate all our friends on the blunders of Ireland's enemies and on the serene patience and stubborn courage of her friends. "Wendell Phillips." It is unnecessary to say that the name of that illustrious man was cheered again and again. To perpetuate his memory and show to the world their loving appreciation of his noble- efforts on behalf of Ireland's independence, the Irish race in nearly every large city in the Union has named some of its strongest branches after him. Wher- ever they assemble, in convention, at a public " celebration," in mass-meeting, at their clubs, or at their banquets, they will always hold in grate- ful remembrance the whole-souled support and the tender sympathy so unstintedly given them 500 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. and their country by this great and gifted Ameri- can. Sit tibi terra levis* Following steadily in the line of conduct so ably marked out by the preceding National Con- vention, the Chicago assemblage adopted a series of incisive, clear-cut resolutions, which told in no uncertain words or phrases exactly the sort of platform on which that body stood. They read as follows : "Resolved, That as, in the words of the Ameri- can Declaration of Independence, ' the consent of the governed is the only power from which a government justly derives its authority,' and as, in the words of one of Her British Majesty's present Cabinet Ministers — Mr. Joseph Chamber- lain — ' after ioo years of English rule in Ireland, English rule there can only be maintained by fifty thousand bayonets,' this convention declares English rule in Ireland to be without either leeal or moral sanction, and demands the establishment in Ireland of a national government based upon the will of* the Irish people. "Resolved, That as the English Government has avowed the resolve to subjugate the Irish nation by wholesale eviction, by the arrest of every friend of the popular cause, the suspension of every popular right, and the terrorism of military force ; and as the Irish people have shown an equal determination to meet these, and by pas- * Light lie the earth upon thy grave. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 501 sive resistance defeat this attack on their liberties, this convention, representing the Irish-American race, pledge the people of Irish birth and Irish descent in this country to stand by the people at home in this momentous struggle, to the full extent of their power and resources. "Resolved, That this convention thoroughly endorses the policy of the Irish leaders at home in the present crisis ; that we have entire confi- dence in their patriotism and statesmanship ; and that we tender to them, and the Irish people at large, the expression of our sympathy and the assurance that in every struggle against British rule they will be fully sustained by their kindred in America. "Resolved, That we heartily endorse the ' No- Rent ' Manifesto of the home executive of the Irish National Land League, at once as the best avail- able weapon to strike their landlord jailers,'and as a swift and smiting instrument to abolish utterly the bad and hateful system, and as the fitting l answer of the Irish people to the attempt of the Coercion Ministry to force the acceptance of defective legislation at the point of the bayonet. "Resolved, That with the view of giving prac- tical effect to the foregoing address and resolu- tions, the convention recommends that a special levy of $250,000 from the organizations here represented and all other organizations friendly to the Irish cause, and from the friends of such 502 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. organizations, be forwarded as an instalment be- fore the first day of February, 1882, to the Central Treasurer of the Irish National Land League." It was General Patrick Collins who proposed, and Hon. Patrick Ford who seconded the resolu- tion pledging by the first of February, 1882, that contribution of a quarter of a million of dollars — equal to fifty thousand pounds. Let it be remem- bered that this was on the last day of the conven- tion, December 1, 1881, and the reader will be able to form an intelligent idea of the sterling stuff of which its members were composed. That they really " meant business " their words and subsequent actions frankly told. This promise, it may be added, was kept, except in one particu- lar. It was about the 2d or 3d of April of 1882 when the full amount was subscribed. The money, however, arrived on the other side of the ocean in ample time to aid the home executive in their battle for the right ; so that the intentions and pledges of these patriotic delegates were, of a verity, substantially carried out. And. at this point, I feel it to be my duty to note that this characteristic of faithfully carrying out to the letter every syllable of its pledges has been a distinctively marked feature of. every convention of the Irish race in America since the keynote of the movement was first sounded in Ireland and the United States by Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 503 Just as the hearty chorus of full-throated "ayes" ratifying and endorsing the pledge rang out through the convention hall, a reverend delegate, turning hastily to General Collins, said : "Why did you say $250,000? You ought to have put in $500,000! " "Oh, Father," replied the General, "I didn't want to go beyond the mark. Our people will, I'm sure, subscribe every penny of that quarter of a million." "Subscribe it? Of course they will ; ay, and as much more when they know that it's going into the right hands and to be applied to a proper purpose. I'll tell my people, of the branch of which I am president, that I have pledged my credit to you for $1,000. I pledge it now. They will see that my word is kept." They did see that his word was kept. Their contribution was among the earliest, although their branch was, comparatively speaking, a small one. I cite the foregoing conversation and its result as an instance of the manner in which the different branches went to work with a will and raised their quota. Among the most earnest and energetic laborers in the cause, the ladies of Irish birth or Irish descent have always been found in the fore-front. The Ladies' Land League of Montreal, Canada, in their telegraphed greeting to the convention said: 504 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. " Make no terms with the land thieves. . . . The ' No-Rent ' Manifesto receives our unqualified support, and we are prepared to stand by it. The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland. No half-way measures. Convey to the people of Ireland the assurance that, remaining loyal to their leaders, they will receive our hearty and earnest support. . . . God save Ireland. " Anne McDonnell, President. " Ellen Hayes, Secretary!' The Ladies' Land League of Buffalo, N. V sent their greeting and best wishes, and unquali- fied endorsements of the " No-Rent " declaration were received from Land League branches and other Irish organizations at Little Rock, Arkansas ; Pittsburgh, Pa. ; Portland, Oregon ; Hot Springs, Arkansas ; Arnold, Pa. ; Winoski, Vt. ; Ishpem- ing, Mich. ; Mobile, Ala. ; Eureka, Nev. : Colusa, Cal. ; Williamsport, Pa. ; Halifax, N. S. ; Ottawa, Ont. ; Philadelphia, Pa. ; Helena, M. T. ; Los Angeles, Cal. ; Johnstown, Pa. ; Lebanon, Ky. ; Lynn, Mass. ; Concord, N. H. ; San Francisco, Cal. ; Elmira, N. Y. ; Chattanooga, Tennessee, and very many other places in all quarters of the country. The convention adopted and officially pub- lished an eloquent address to the American people and all friends of liberty, which was presented by the Rev. Thomas J. Conaty, of Massachusetts, and THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 505 a carefully selected committee. It arraigned the then Gladstonian policy, endorsed Charles Stewart Parnell and the " No-Rent" policy, and concluded with the following spirited declaration : " In whatever efforts the Irish people may now, or in the future, make to rid themselves of alien domination, and to regain the highest privilege that a people can enjoy— that of selt-government —we pledge ourselves to be their faithful allies, subject to their calls upon us for aid, so far as our power and resources may permit, but dictating to them no policy, and demanding from them no conditions. « We believe and declare that Ireland cannot be happy, prosperous or contented under the rule of an alien Parliament, and, furthermore, we have no sympathy with any government in any country that has not its strongest foundations in the love of the people governed. It is patent to the whole world, outside of Great Britain, that the British Government in Ireland is the child of injustice and the creature of coercion. "We applaud, with most heartfelt pride, the indomitable spirit of the Irish people at home who have never acquiesced in the fraudulent destruc- tion of their autonomy, and we hope with them to see Ireland restored to her rightful position among self-governed nations." The Irish envoys or delegates, Hons. T. P. O'Connor and T.M. Healy, although they man- 506 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. ifested a lively and active interest in its delibera- tions, did not address the convention. At the conclusion of its sessions a reception was tendered to them and their co-laborer, Rev. Eugene Sheehy, at which Judge Moran presided. From their speeches that evening were subsequently culled by those loyal-hearted priests, Revs. James A. Bre- hony and Thomas Barry, Philadelphia, and other Irish orators and leaders, pithy selections that made some of the texts of their eloquent discourses on Irish affairs for several years afterwards. At the present day their force and applicability to the existing condition of affairs are still equally appa- rent. Take a few instances : O'Connor-: — " Coercion is growing more useless and less powerful in the hands of its employers." O'Connor — "The heart and soul are the reali- ties of man, and these have not been crushed." . Sheehy — " We wish to destroy landlordism only as the stepping-stone to a greater and higher end." Sheehy — " Nothing good — nothing great has been purchased without sacrifice. No birth — above all that of Freedom — has been without pain." Healy — "Our policy is not to be bought or sold." Healy — " The Irish policy is not shaped by American dollars or British gold." the great irish struggle. 507 the league's second national gathering. The Second Annual Convention of the Irish National Land League of America was held four months later, on April 12, 1882, in Washington, D. C. Here General Collins, the President, and Secretary Flatley, resigned their respective offices, both of them declining a unanimously proffered re-election. Two hundred branches of the League, represented by two hundred and fifty- two delegates, composed the convention. As usual, the utmost harmony characterized their proceedings. The resolutions, etc., adopted by them were fully in line with those presented at the Chicag-o oratherino-. The delegates, recoenizine the eminent fitness of James Mooney, of Buffalo, N. Y., for the position of President of their national organization, selected him for that posi- tion unanimously, and, as he was at that time in Buffalo attending to his professional pursuits and for that reason unable to be present at the con- vention, Rev. Father Patrick Cronin was instructed to notify him by telegraph of the action of the convention and request a favorable response. Mr. Mooney telegraphed acceptance as follows : "Buffalo, April 13, 18S2. "I accept the trust and pledge my best efforts to further the good work inaugurated by Michael Davitt. It must not be relinquished till the soil of Ireland shall be as free as that of America, so "James Mooney." 508 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. John J. Hynes, the ardent, high-souled Nation- alist, of Buffalo, was elected National Secretary, and Rev. Lawrence Walsh was re-elected National Treasurer. Of President Mooney it has been truthfully said that " no friend of Ireland, in America, has done more to make her cause respected." Popular with his fellow-townsmen of all races and creeds, it was no wonder that the delegates from Buffalo in speaking of him declared their honest convic- tion that his election would add new life to the Irish movement, and that the good will enter- tained towards him in that city "would not be a circumstance to the popularity that would attend him wherever he went through this great country, attracting to the Irish cause through his courtesy, talents and versatility, all who would hear his elo- quent tongue pleading for the oppressed and down-trodden natives of Ireland." James Mooney was born in Ardeteo-al, Oueen's County, Ireland, on June 29, 1838. His parents were of the prosperous farming class, and his family were always of patriotic impulse, one of his ancestors being executed as "a rebel" in 1798. When James was five years old his parents decided to seek a new home in America, and set- tled in Dundas, near Hamilton, Ontario. Here he was educated at a private school, and here he received his first lessons in the sad history of his native country. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 5X1 Dundas was "something of an Irish settlement," and from constantly arriving immigrants the young lad heard many a tale of cruel eviction, and his tender heart was wrung with sorrow and pity as he listened to the tearful recitals of the sufferings and hardships of the exiles. It will thus be seen that amid such surroundings he could not fail to imbibe a love of his mother-land and a hearty detestation of the infamous system of misgovern- ment under which she was suffering. He com- pleted his education in the public schools of Buf- falo, and, with the laudable purpose of assisting his parents to raise and educate the younger members of the family, he engaged as an account- ant with a lumber firm at Tonawanda. For a short time he held a position in the office of the Receiver of Taxes of Buffalo, after which he read law in the office of the Hon. Chas. D. Norton. When he was twenty years of age he engaged in business as a real estate and insurance broker, in which he has since continued, winning his way to affluence by industry and integrity. He is a large real estate owner, a man of high social po- sition, and has always been honorably prominent in the public affairs of his native city. He is one of its leading Roman Catholics, and has three times successively been honored with the position of President of the Young Men's Catholic Asso- ciation. While always contributing to every movement that had in view the emancipation of 512 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. his race or the elevation of its children, Mr. Mooney never joined any Irish organization until Charles Stewart Parnell and John Dillon visited Buffalo in 1880. Desirous that these distin- guished Irishmen should receive an ovation worthy of them and honorable to Buffalo, he entered zealously into the work of preparing for their visit. To his influence and exertions was mainly due the splendid success of the meeting which they addressed, and at which nearly seven thousand dollars were subscribed. Shortly before this meeting was held Mr. Mooney joined the Buffalo branch of the Land League. Always an enthusiast, he has worked constantly and ear- nestly to keep that prosperous city in the van in everything that helps the Irish cause. John J. Hynes was one of the most efficient National Secretaries of the Land League. He was born in Buffalo, N. Y., of Irish Catholic par- ents, who arrived in this country in 1847. He attended the public schools until he was fourteen years old, when he entered Bryant and Stratton's Commercial College, where he remained for one year. He was only fifteen years of age when he began work as clerk and accountant, continuing as such until he began his law studies in 1877. For seven years he held the important position of Chief of the Engrossing Department in the Erie County Clerk's Office. He resigned that situation after his admission to the bar by the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 513 Supreme Court of the State of New York and began the practice of law. During 1879 and 1880 Mr. Hynes represented his ward (the largest in the city) in the Board of Supervisors, being elected by a constituency for the most part opposed to him politically, but cordially recogniz- ing his fitness for the office. He has had much experience in what are usually known as " society affairs," possessing notable organizing abilities, and having an immense capacity for serious and intelligent work. He brings to the discharge of the duties entrusted to him tact and promptness. He was one of the organizers of the " McMahon Corps," a crack Irish-American military organi- zation attached to the National Guard of New York, serving with it eight years, the last two as its commander. He is a charter-member of the Catholic Mutual Beneficial Association, which now numbers 15,000 members in the United States and Canada, and is a member of its Supreme Council. Mr. Hynes has always been an earnest, inde- fatigable and sincere exponent of the cause of Irish freedom and was one of the little band who first organized the Land League in his native city, fulfilling faithfully the duties of Correspond- ing Secretary, first in Branch No. 1, later in Branch No. 2 (St. Bridget's). He represented the latter branch in every Irish national conven- tion held in this country since the organization 514 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. of the Land League. He was married in 1878, to Miss Anna M. McCarthy, an estimable young lady of his native city, who at that time was principal in one of the departments of the Buffalo public schools. When James Mooney was elected President of the Land League its constitution at that time pro- vided for a Central Council, consisting of the three national officers — the President, Secretary, and Treasurer — who had full charge and man- agement of the National Land League of Amer- ica, and through whom all moneys raised in this country for the Land League in Ire- land were transmitted to Patrick Egan, the Irish National Treasurer. At the meetino- of the Central Council, in Buffalo, April 18, 1882, it was ascertained from the roll of the previous council that over nine hundred branches were affiliated with the national organization. Owing- to the condition of affiairs at that time and the very small number of branches represented at the late convention, the new Council believed that many branches had ceased to exist or had severed their connection with the national body. It was deter- mined to find out as soon as practicable how many branches were in actual existence. Ac- cordingly Secretary Hynes mailed a circular let- ter of inquiry to every branch secretary whose address was on the national rolls. After the ex- penditure of much valuable time and considerable THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 515 labor it was ascertained that only about five hun- dred branches in America were, at that date, affil- iated to the national organization. About this date Mr. Parnell and his associates were released from Kilmainham Jail, and the news was received in this country with joy and hope for better times for the people at home. On the part of the National League, President Mooney promptly cabled, on May 3, 1882, his congratu- lations to " Mr. Parnell and the Irish people on the destruction of coercion." The release of the Irish patriots gave the new officers here an inspiring impulse in beginning their work of increasing and strengthening the American auxiliary organization. Everything seemed bright for Ireland. Success was appar- ently at last about to crown the efforts of her struggling sons. Encouraging reports were com- ing in daily and hourly from all sections of the country of branches re-organizing, of new ones being established, and of old ones recruiting their ranks rapidly. Suddenly came flashing across the Atlantic the dreadful announcement of the Phoenix Park murders, filling many with dismay and disheartening others from whom substantial aid and sympathy were confidently anticipated. President Mooney, writing of the situation at that time, says: "The news cast such a shadow upon everything connected with the Irish national cause, that it was only by immense effort that the friends 516 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. of Ireland were rallied and the League was kept from total dismemberment. For a time we were in almost daily receipt of letters from branches that had disbanded or were about to do so. One of the greatest trials of this perplexing time was differences of opinion and advice among friends whose counsel was entitled to respectful attention. Some were clamorous that the Central Council should denounce the crime. Some even advo- cated the offering- of a reward from the League funds for the apprehension of the murderers ! Others advised that we had enough to do to de- nounce the crimes of landlordism and the cruel- ties done in the name and under the guise of English law." The Central Council held many sessions, but were unanimous in the decision that, deplorable as the crime was, the Land League of Ireland or America had no hand or part in it, and, therefore, it would be unwise and unbecoming to denounce it officially, or otherwise take cognizance of it as being a matter in which they were in any way concerned. To this resolve they adhered firmly, turning all their efforts to strengthen and increase the American organization, and to bear it safely over the waves of misfortune that seemed about to overwhelm it. The League passed through the crisis safely and began to flourish as it had never done before ; but this was the darkest and most precarious hour of all its life. Through all THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. ."317 this excitement the national officers were able to do their duty, and to keep within the lines in which the Land League had been working since its organization. With the design of encouraging the lukewarm, strengthening the weak-kneed, and bringing to the aid of the Home Executive the moral, physical, and financial support of which they were in sore need, the Central Council issued the following official circular to every branch in the United States and Canada : "Irish National Land League of America. Central Office, Arcade Building, Main Street, Buffalo, N. Y., May 27, 1882. "At no time since the beginning of our good work has the Land League found itself in socriti- caland trying a position as now. Just when success seemed about to crown its patient and unselfish labors, the dark deed of the assassin was planned to rob Ireland of the benefits of justice and peace that seemed at last to promise. The infamous plot is successful, and Ireland is to be subjected to a new code of misrule, so oppressive that what has gone before seems almost just and gen- erous by comparison. A whole people are to be punished for a crime in which they have neither interest nor sympathy ; which everything points out to be the work of that class who will now reap its reward in these new acts of oppression. 518 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. That England has withdrawn the hand held out in meagre and tardy justice does not discourage nor disappoint us, for she has never taught us to look to her for honor or good faith. We have but one duty in this trying hour, and it is to meet her renewal of oppression by redoubling our ef- forts and increasing our generosity towards those who look to us from across the sea for aid and comfort. We shall not fail them in their renewed struggle; and in view of the fact that 25,000 evicted tenants are now said to be dependent on the Land League, and that the number is increas- ing, some special effort seems to be necessary. We therefore recommend to every branch in the United States to make an extraordinary effort to meet the emergency, that by the 1st of October, 1882, at the very latest, we may have ready for transmission to the General Treasurer, a special fund, which should not be less than $250,000. This would be the most eloquent, the most fitting answer we could give to the new tyrannies now being prepared for our unhappy fatherland. "As enemies are busy at work, trying to cast discredit upon our noble leaders, we should also give the strongest and most unanimous expres- sion to our undiminished faith and confidence in Parnell, Davitt, Dillon and Egan. We well know their sacrifices and their labors. We should pledge them anew our support and sympathy, express our firm belief in their good judgment. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 519 and in their knowledge of what is best in this critical hour. " Let us all labor to increase our numbers. We have an organization that we may well be proud of, that every Irishman in America can and should join. Let every Land Leaguer bring in his friends, let new branches be formed through the aid and influence of those already established. Above all, let there be union of labor, of zeal and of sentiment. A good example has been set by large and influential branches in New York City, and in Monroe County, N. Y., which, heretofore, transmitted their moneys direct to Paris, but who now, to further union and to avoid confusion, have commenced to transmit through the appointed Treasurer for the United States, Rev. Lawrence Walsh, of Waterbury, Conn. We trust all other branches will soon follow their wise example. " If we stand united, if every member will show his loyalty by making individual efforts to in- crease our numbers, and to replenish our treasury in view of the greatly increased tax upon it, our organization will be invincible, and its beneficent work will keep pace with the tyranny of our he- reditary enemy. The people of unhappy Ireland must resist now as never before the power that strives to crush them. The struggle may be long and bitter, for there must be no compromise ; no half-measure of justice will suffice. In this hour the spirit grows strong, that nothing but a resto- 520 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. ration of our lost nationhood can satisfy Irishmen in the old land. United with those who do not for- get their wrongs, though living here in freedom and peace, they must boldly and manfully claim the right — not sue for it — to live as freemen — not as serfs — on the soil where God has planted our race. " James Mooney, President. " Lawrence Walsh, Treasurer. "John J. Hynes, Secretary. "Central Council, Irish National Land League of America." On the 6th of July, 1882, the Central Council visited the City of New York by invitation of Michael Davitt — who had returned to America — to meet him and the Chicago Committee of Seven "for the purpose of consulting together and discussing the advisability of a union of all the organizations in America who were working for the interests of Ireland." The conference was held at the Astor House and the following gentlemen participated in it: James Mooney, President I. N. L. L. of Amer- ica, Rev. Lawrence Walsh, Treasurer I. N. L. L. of America, John J. Hynes, Secretary I. N. L. L. of America, Hon. P. A. Collins, Col. Michael Bo- land, Patrick Ford, James Reynolds, Dr. W. D. Wallace, and Michael Davitt and William Red- mond, of Ireland. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. -",21 Mr Davitt submitted a plan of a proposed Gaelic Union, which, after an informal discussion, was referred to the national officers in Ireland. Four days after the conference Secretary Hynes issued his first quarterly report showing that since the Washington Convention $i6,457-5Q had been received by Father Walsh, of which $701750 had been transmitted to Treasurer Egan in Paris. During that three months only six new branches had been organized, yet Secre- tary Hynes was of the opinion that this "exhibit was not very discouraging, considering the trying ordeal through which the Land League had just passed." About the latter end of this month, by the death at Bordentown, N. ]., of Miss Fanny Parnell, the Irish cause lost one of its most fearless, able, and outspoken advocates. Young, beautiful, and ac- complished, she united all the charm and tender- ness of a true woman with the stern determi- nation and decision of character that are the marked attributes of her illustrious brother- worthy children of a noble race. Her memory will live for generations embalmed in the hearts of the Irish people whom she loved so well. Amono- the last of her thrilling appeals to the patriotism of her countrymen was the following- bold and striking poem addressed to the Irish tenant farmers : 122 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Hold the Hiwvest. Now are you men, or are you kine, ye tillers of the soil ? Would you be free, or evermore, the rich man's cattle, toil? The shadow on the dial hangs that points the fatal hour — Now hold your own ! or, branded slaves, forever cringe and cower. The serpent's curse upon you lies — ye writhe within the dust ; Ye fill your mouths with beggar's swdl, ye grovel for a crust; Your lords have set their blood-stained heels upon your shameful heads, Yet they are kind — they leave you still their ditches for your beds ! Oh, by the God who made us all — the seignior and the serf — Rise up! and swear this day to hold your own green Irish turf! Rise up ! and plant your feet as men where now you crawl as slaves, And make your harvest fields your camps, or make of them your graves ! The birds ol prey are hovering round, the vultures wheel and swoop — They come, the coroneted ghouls! with drum-beat and with troop — They come to fatten on your fle-h, your children's and your wives' ; Ye die but once — hold fast your lands and, if ye can, your lives. Let go the trembling emigrant — not such as he ye need ; Let go the lucre-loving wretch that flies his land for greed; Let not one coward stay to clog your manhood's waking power; Let not one sordid churl pollute the Nation's natal hour. Yes, let them go ! — the caitiff rout, that shirk the struggle now — The light that crowns your victory shall scorch each recreant brow, And in the annals of your race, black parallels in shame, Shall stand by traitor's and by spy's the base deserter's name. Three hundred years your crops have sprung, by murdered corpses fed — Your butchered sires, your famished sire^. for ghastly compost spread ; Their bones have fertilized your fields, their blood has fall'n like rain; They died that ye might ent and live — God ! have they died in vain ? The yellow corn starts blithely up; beneath it lies a grave — Your father died in " Forty-eight " — his life for yours he gave; — He died that you, his son, might learn there is no helper nigh Except for him who, save in fight, has sworn he will not die. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 523 The hour is struck, Fate holds the dice; we stand with bated breath ; Now who shall have our harvest fair ? — 'tis Life that plays with Death ; Now who shall have our motherland? — 'tis Right that plays with Might ; The peasant's arms were weak indeed in such unequal fight ! But God is on the peasant's side — the God that loves the poor : His angels stand with flaming swords on every mount and moor; They guard the poor man's flocks and herds, they guard his ripening grain — The robber sinks beneath their curse beside his ill-got gain. O pallid serfs ! whose groans and prayers have wearied Heav'n full long, Look up! there is a Law above, beyond all legal wrong; Rise up ! the answer to your prayers shall come, tornado-borne, And ye shall hold your homesteads dear, and ye shall reap the corn ! But your own hands upraised to guard shall draw the answer down, And bold and stern the deeds must be that oath and prayer shall crown ; God only fights for those who fight — now hush the useless moan, And set your faces as a flint and swear to Hold Your Own. The sorrow that was felt in every branch and at every fireside at her untimely death found ex- pression at every meeting of any Irish organiza- tion that was held at or near that time in Ireland and America. Here letters poured in thick and fast upon the Central Council from branches and municipal councils, and hundreds of prominent workers in the Land League, urging the council to take charge of the arrangements for the inter- ment of the remains of Erin's gifted daughter. After consulting with Mrs. Parnell the council decided that "it would be eminently proper for the national organization to assume the charge and expense of removing the remains of the la- mented Fanny Parnell from Bordentown, N. J., to 524 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the family vault in Boston, Mass." This was accordingly done. President Mooney and Secre- tary Hynes represented the national organization in the cortege, Father Walsh being absent owing to the death of his brother. GLOOMY DAYS FOR THE LEAGUE. In almost all great movements, like this one of the Land League, there comes a time when for a brief space a dangerous sort of lethargy or list- lessness pervades not only the rank and file who form- its main strength, but also its chiefs or lead- ers to whom the 6i hovkoi look for inspiration and encouragement. It is dangerous from the fact that, unless prompt and energetic measures are set about to counteract its effects, an apathy fol- lows that paralyzes and destroys the vitality of the subject of its attack. Disturbing rumors, some of them groundless, others with a slight founda- tion of truth to support them, conspire to aid in the apparently impending ruin. So it was in October, 1882, with this grand organization that promised so well at its outset and that contrib- uted so freely and liberally at all times and on all occasions when " the men in the gap " called on it for pecuniary or other assistance. Notwith- standing the patient and arduous labors of the national officers, many of the largest and most influential branches disbanded — mostly, however, those located in the Western States. Some of the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 525 staunchest and most enthusiastic "workers" at the Chicago Convention in 1881 became luke- warm, and those who were looked upon as their adherents, followers or supporters — call them what you may — failed, firstly, in attendance at the meetings of their respective branches; secondly, allowed their "dues" or contributions to fall in arrears ; and thirdly and lastly, manifested an evi- dently utter indifference to the prosperity of the League that was as disheartening to the Central Council as it certainly must have been to the Home Executive. Public attention was directed to the situation, and statements were made by a number of leading journals to the effect that "the Land League was dead." Undismayed by these reports and rumors, the council bravely continued their work of organiz- ing new branches, " giving heart " to the branches that had remained true to the League, and dis- tributing circulars and also weekly copies of United Ireland, a newspaper that was one of the best recruiting agents they could have used at this crisis. By persistent work they were finally successful in stemming the tide which had set in and was imperilling the life of the organization. The following address tells its own story of the necessity that existed for the council to speak out plainly to the American people and to those "at home," in explanation of the gloomy aspect of affairs : 31 526 gladstone— pa rnell. " Irish National Land League of America. Central Office, Buffalo, October 9, 1882. "A public statement has been made that ' the Land League is no longer in existence,' which calls for our emphatic protest. The Land League does exist, and is doing just as good work for Ire- land as at any time since it was organized. We should deserve the contempt of every one whose sympathy we have won ; should deserve the ex- tinction of every hope that has been enkindled, if we were now to grow discouraged, or to withdraw when the work is but fairly begun. Our plan, in all that has been done on this side of the Atlantic, has been to follow those whom we recognize as guides — the leaders in Ireland — who, being on the scene of action, know what is best to be done. We have repeatedly pledged ourselves to uphold their hands, to acquiesce in their plans — not to dictate their policy; to furnish cheerfully and generously the aid without which they would be powerless to carry out their designs. " It would gratify our enemies if we were now to abandon the struggle, to wantonly throw away the fruit of so much sacrifice and labor. This no true friend of Ireland will for a moment think of. No ! With Parnell at its head the Land League still lives — still promises hope and help for Ire- land. Rally to its support, Irishmen, everywhere, who have ever believed in its purposes or gener- ously helped on its struggle. Let no one mislead THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 527 those who love Ireland into despondency or faint- heartedness. Only those who sow disunion and distrust can retard the final triumph. Hopeful and united, success is assured. "James Mooney, President. "Rev. Lawrence Walsh, Treasurer. "John J. Hynes, Secretary. " Central Council, Irish National Land League of America." The publication of that address gave, for the moment, some ground for the statements of malicious falsifiers that the leaders and members of secret societies of one sort or another were uniting in a general conspiracy to sow dissension in the ranks of the Leaguers and thus disrupt the organization when its substantial support was most needed to aid Mr. Parnell and his compa- triots in their gallant battles in the British House of Parliament and elsewhere for Ireland's auton- omy. I am in a position to know that there was not a particle of truth in any of those reports. The secret society men were, within my own knowledge, frank and outspoken in their more than friendly interest both in the welfare of the Land League and of its objects. "We have," said they, "one common end in view, although we are trying to reach it by differ- ent means. We believe in physical force. You believe in constitutional agitation. The indica- 528 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. tions are that possibly, in a few years, success will crown your efforts. In Parnell you have a great leader, the ablest since Daniel O'Connell's time. His lieutenants are all men of acknowledged ability, purity and patriotism. The civilized world looks on and applauds them in their good work. Go on. Do your part. If we do not join hands with you, we will not interfere with you!' This spirit was shown on all sides, and there ought to be, there can be no hesitation in assert- ing that these secret-society men thus proved themselves to be true friends of Ireland. True in this, also, that they thus freely gave up what to them was a principle — physical force. If some among them were desperate men who preferred violent measures to more pacific ones for the purpose of nationalizing their native land, the suf- ferings which, by eviction and the prison-cell, they and their relatives and friends had endured had made them so. Their wrongs and those of their country had fired their hearts, and they had made up their minds to retaliate. To them " physical force " seemed the only proper means to use. They had felt its effects themselves, and, as they grimly remarked, " they were only too willing to try a little of its effects on their nation's oppress- ors." With them vengeance was a fixed purpose, and "physical force" the means of accomplishing that purpose. They wanted, however, above all things, to see Ireland resume her place among THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 529 the nations of the earth. When they saw a pros- pect of that glorious event through the Land League, they sheathed the sword, and gave the Leaguers their hearty support and countenance in very many notable instances. On the 24th of October, 1882, Secretary Hynes issued his second quarterly report, acknowledging contributions amounting to $13,812.71. With the balance from the previous quarter and this amount Father Walsh transmitted $20,000 to Patrick Egan in Paris, who took especial care that all funds intrusted to him for the Irish cause were most judiciously used. The Dublin Convention, which met on October 17, 1882, gave renewed hope to the friends of the Land League in America. The organization of the National League at that conference led to many inquiries as to whether the same change should take place in the United States and Can- ada. The office of the Central Council was flooded with letters from branch officers and others relating to this matter. Father Walsh was summoned to Buffalo, N. Y., and after a long consultation with his colleagues, it was decided to issue the following proclamation: "Irish National Land League of America. Central Office, Buffalo, N. Y., November 14, 1882. "In answer to inquiries received from many of 530 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the Land League Branches as to whether we would call a special convention to rearrange the plan of our organization, and adopt the changes made by the recent National Conference held in Dublin, we would state that, in our opinion, such a call is unnecessary, as the time for our annual meeting is not far off, and as the changes made in Ireland, and rendered necessary by the strin- gent laws in operation there, do not materially affect the plan or spirit of our league here — save to give it a new impetus and a more definite pur- pose — the programme marked out, especially the imperative demand for self-governmentfor Ireland, meriting the sanction and approval of all sympa- thizers. Feeling that our organization is in entire accord with the new plans of the Irish leaders, it seems useless to incur the expense of an extra convention, or to put members to the incon- venience of travelling long distances to attend one; whatever changes are necessary can be easily deferred until the time of our annual meeting. "We have communicated with Mr. Parnell, as to whether there is any necessity of changing our organization, and if so, what it would be desirable to alter. There has not been time to receive his suggestions as yet, but if he makes any of impor- tance, they will be submitted to the branches at an early date. "The leaders in Ireland have expressed their THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 531 firm reliance upon our continued support, and their hope that we will still generously uphold them, as we have done in the past. We must not, therefore, relax our efforts, nor let our interest flag; by keeping up the zealous and enthusiastic spirit that has made the Land League so great an organization, it will be an easy matter at all times to fall into line with our brethren in Ireland, in whatever efforts they are making to bring pros- perity and justice to that oppressed and misgov- erned land. "James Mooney, President. "Rev. Lawrence Walsh, Treasurer. "John J. Hynes, Secretary. " Central Council, Irish National Land League of America." The winter of 1882-83 was a sad and miser- able one for unhappy Ireland. Famine ravaged the west and extreme north of the island, and the pitiful petitions of the wretched inhabitants for relief were unheeded by the British Govern- ment. The cry of distress reached America, and the Central Council determined to make one more appeal to their fellow-countrymen on this side of the Atlantic Ocean for the famine sufferers. Accordingly the following address was issued to the Irishmen of America: 532 gladstone— paknell. " Irish National Land League of America. Central Office, 19 Arcade Building, Buffalo, N. Y., February, 12, 1883. "To the Irish National Land League of America — to all Irish- Americans : It was the -intention of the Central Council of the Land League of Amer- ica to call a convention of that body during the present month ; but at the request of Mr. Parnell, the time for holding the convention has been postponed until the latter part of April. At that time Mr. Parnell, as well as Mr. Sexton, the brilliant orator of the Irish Parliamentary Party, and probably Mr. Egan, the late faithful Treasurer of the Land League, will be with us. We desire to welcome these distinguished patriots with all the honors they so justly merit ; and it is our earnest hope, therefore, that the convention, at which they are to be present, may in point of numbers, of intelligence, of enthusiasm, be a truly creditable assembly of those who are best and most worthily representative of our race in America. " The call for the convention will now be issued about the 17th of March next. We ask the co-operation of all Irishmen in our efforts to make the occasion an ovation worthy of our honored guests. To such as are not already members of the League we extend a cordial invitation to join the branches now established, or, where none exist, to form new ones, and communicate with THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 533 the National Secretary, John J. Hynes, No. 19 Arcade Building, Buffalo, N. Y., as soon as fifty members have been secured, when they will be entitled to send a delegate to our coming conven- tion. We exhort every branch already formed to labor zealously to increase its membership, so as to be entitled to send more than one represent- ative. Let us demonstrate to our brave leader and his confreres that our sympathy in their noble struesrle has not Q-rown cold. " We have likewise a plan to offer to all whom this circular may reach — a plan for the relief of the suffering Irish of the famine-stricken west — that, it seems to us, must meet the approval of all. Day after day the wail of their misery reaches us, the old, sad story is retold, history repeats itself in unhappy Ireland. Deadly famine ravages the west and north, the tyrant government turns piti- lessly from the petition for relief, to spend its diabolical energy in demoralizing the east and south, hatching conspiracies, bribing informers, rewarding perjurers, immolating the innocent. It has been said that ' the hat would never again be passed for Ireland,' and we do not wish to break the promise, nor do we deem that in addressing ourselves to the men and women of our own race alone, we are doing anything contrary to its spirit. " Our plan is that between this date and that of St. Patrick's Day, every Irish man and woman in America, and every descendant of such, shall 534 ' ' ' [ -A DSTONE— PARNELL. contribute the sum of one dollar to a special fund for relief purposes only. To make this a truly popular subscription no one shall be allowed to contribute more than one dollar, and none less. Lists will be opened immediately at the different Land League Branches, and moneys received by the treasurers ; the name of each contributor shall be published in the Irish-American papers. These moneys shall be entirely separate from the Land League Fund, and shall be transmitted by the Rev. Lawrence Walsh, of Waterbury, Conn., the General Treasurer of the Irish National Land League of America, to the famine-stricken districts of Ireland, for relief purposes only. Contributors can, if so minded, forward their money direct to Father Walsh. We ask each branch to hold a final meeting on St. Patrick's Day, to close the subscription to this fund. Each person paying one dollar can, if he or she desire it, be enrolled as a member of the Land League, said contri- bution being received in lieu of initiation fee. " By this plan a very large sum can easily be obtained, such a sum as will be an inestimable blessing to the famine sufferers, and surely no one will feel the giving of so small a contribution. We cannot, in this happier land, be unmindful of our starving brethren in Ireland, but as we give we can resolve to do all in our power to render this constant alms-giving unnecessary, by lending our aid to those at home who fight the good fight o o o THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 535 against accursed landlordism, and its train of evils. If we cannot soften their hard hearts, we can agi- tate and organize against those alien rulers, whose unrighteous laws bring on this misery, and who answer the prayer of the starving subject by- pointing the way to poverty-stricken exile, or the degrading workhouse. " James Mooney, President. "Rev. Lawrence Walsh, Treasurer. " John J. Hynes, Secretary. " Central Council, Irish National Land League of America." The response to this appeal was generous, Father Walsh being able to remit $23,652.06 to the famine districts. This amount, it must be remembered, was exclusive of what was sent through the Boston Pilot, Irish World, and other channels. On January 2, 1883, Secretary Hynes' third quarterly report showed that Father Walsh had received and transmitted to Paris League funds amounting to the sum of $8,743.88. In the beginning of March, 1883, President Mooney and Secretary Hynes held a conference with Hon. Alexander Sullivan and Col. Michael Boland, of the Committee of Seven appointed by the Chicago Irish National Convention of 1881, and Patrick Egan, ex-Treasurer of the Irish Na- tional Land League, who had arrived in this 536 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. country a few days previously, relative to the pro- priety of calling a convention of representatives from all Irish societies in the United States and Canada for the purpose of forming one organiza- tion, similar to the new National League ol Ire- land, and auxiliary to it. The result of that conference was the issuing of two " calls " — the first one by the Central Council, and the second by Mr. Egan, of the League of Ireland, Mr. Mooney, of the Irish- American Land League, and Col. Boland, of the Chicago Committee : " Irish National Land League of America. Central Office, 19 Arcade Building, Buffalo, N. Y., March 24, 1883. "In accordance with our annual custom, and complying with the provisions of our constitu- tion, we hereby issue a call to the several branches composing the Irish National Land League of America, for a General Convention of that body, to be held in Horticultural Hall, in the city of Philadelphia. The convention will open on Wed- nesday, April 25, at 11 a. m. "Referring to our constitution it will be seen that it provides that : ' The convention shall con- sist of delegates from the several branches of the organization in good standing at the time of the report next preceding the call for such convention. Each branch numbering fifty or more members in THE GREAT IRtSH STRUGGLE. -f>7 good standing at the time of such report shall be entitled to one deleo-ate ; and each branch having three hundred or more members at the time of such report shall be entitled to an additional member for each two hundred members. Each delegate shall be provided with credentials, signed by the president and secretary of the branch which he represents, on blanks to be furnished from the Central Office.' " It is now decided that the distinguished Irish leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, with one or more of his colleagues, and Patrick Egan, the ex-Treas- urer of the Land League, will honor us by their presence. To give them such a welcome and reception as they deserve will alone suffice to call out the fullest strength of the Land League organization, and insure its best efforts. " Important business will come before this con- vention, on which the future usefulness of the League will depend, and its closer union with the broader and more definite aims of the new Na- tional League in Ireland. " If anything more were needed — the manifold woes and miseries of the times in Ireland, the famine visitation, the cruel mockery of law, the heartless emigration schemes, the persistent effort to break the spirit of the unhappy people, to thwart, by means which outrage civilization and humanity alike, everything that promises any hope for their uplifting — furnish such incentives 538 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. for a grand rally of the friends of Ireland, that it is needless for us to urge all members of the Land League to be active and earnest, to be ready with their ablest representatives to make the coming convention the most memorable and imposing in the history of the organization. " James Mooney. " Rev. Lawrence Walsh. "John J. Hynes. " Central Council, Land League of America." THE SECOND " CALL." "Buffalo, N. Y., March 24, 1883. "The undersigned, representing the National League of Ireland, the Irish National Land League of the United States and Canada, and the Com- mittee of Seven appointed by the Irish National Convention held at Chicago, hereby call an Irish- American National Convention, to be held in Horticultural Hall, in the city of Philadelphia, at n o'clock a. m., on April 26, 1883, f° r tne follow- ing and other purposes: "First. To express our sympathy with the suf- fering people of our race, who, reduced to pov- erty by iniquitous laws and bad harvests, are of- fered by the government which claims their al- legiance only the alternative of the degradation of the workhouses which Thomas Carlyle called 'human swineries,' or exile to foreign lands. "Second. To voice the horror which freemen of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 539 every race feel on beholding a peaceable, indus- trious and virtuous nation despoiled by force of all vestiees of constitutional liberty ; the lives of her citizens ruthlessly sacrificed on the paid and perjured testimony of self-confessed villains ; her jury-box packed by political and religious bigotry ; the ermine of her judicial bench thinly concealing Castle conspiracy and partisanship ; the functions of government within her confines administered by her enemies ; and all her national and political rights obliterated by a ferocious coercion act, whose tyrannous provisions shock civilization, engender and reward crime, and justify every legitimate effort of an exasperated people in resisting its enforcement. ''Third. In the city where Irishmen helped lay the foundations of American liberty, in perpetua- tion of which the blood of their sons has been freely poured, to declare, on behalf of the exiled millions of our race, that we will never cease our efforts to recover for our motherland the God- given and inalienable right of national independ- ence ; and, that these efforts may be guided, under the blessings of Heaven, by the best coun- sels of all our people, and be made powerful by their combined strength, to blend into one organi- zation all the Irish societies of the United States and Canada, the new organization to be affiliated with the Irish National League of Ireland, of which Charles Stewart Parnell is the President. 540 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. " The basis of representation will be one dele- gate for each society having a bona fide, member- ship of fifty, and not more than one hundred per- sons ; and two delegates for each society whose membership exceeds one hundred. All Irish- American temperance, mutual benefit, charitable, literary, military, musical and patriotic organiza- tions are eligible to representation. " Patrick Egax, " Of National League of Ireland. "James Mooney, "President Irish-American Land League. " Michael Boland, " Chairman Committee of Seven." Here comes in a point in the history of the Irish movement in this country that has, through a want of accurate knowledge on the part of some, been the cause of many discussions — all of them, I am glad to be able to say, of a friendly character. I refer to the merging of the Land into the National League, and for the purpose of settling forever all doubts on that topic I quote President Mooney's memoranda : "As the Land League in Ireland," he writes, " was now changed to the Irish National League, and as a great many Irish associations in this country washed to join in organizing an Irish Na- tional League of America to be affiliated to the League in Ireland, the Central Council were THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 541 urged on all sides to make the call for a conven- tion broad enough to take in all who wished to come, but as officers of the Irish Land League of America they felt it a bounden duty to resign their trust into the same hands by which it had been confided to them, and to allow the Land League to decide by ballot whether to merge in the Irish National League of America or to retain an independent existence. So the Land League Convention was called, as was customary, and held its sessions, voting to become a part of the new and larger organization. " It had been hoped and expected that Mr. Parnell would be present at this convention, but, at the last moment, to the great disappointment of everybody, he was unable to attend, owing to pressing Parliamentary duties. Rumor was rife of discord and dissension that was to mark the convention, and it was falsely said that Mr. Par- nell feared to come lest something might be said or done to weaken his position at home. "When the Central Council reached Philadel- phia they found quite an excitement prevailing, and could only with difficulty allay the fears o( some timid ones or the forebodings of others that ' all was to be strife and discord.' " ENJ) OF THE LAND LEAGUE OF AMERICA. The last Convention of the Irish National Land League of America met on the morning of April 32 542 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. 25, 1883, in Horticultural Hall, Philadelphia, Pa., and was the largest that this organization ever held. There were present 468 delegates, repre- senting 562 branches. An unprejudiced literary man, whose official duties called him to the convention, wrote thus of its personnel : " The composition of the conven- tion was rather striking to the casual observer. Its appearance indicated a popular make-up ; but the average of intelligence and respectability was high, owing in a great measure to a large clerical and professional representation among the dele- gates, comprising a large number of Roman Catholic priests and gentlemen well known as journalists or literary men in various parts of the country." The bench, the bar and the medi- cal profession had their representatives, who stood shoulder to shoulder with cattle-kings and extensive farmers from the far West and the hard-working element of the Irish-American peo- ple from every quarter of this great nation. The intermingling of the " Orange and Green " colors in tasteful decorations in the interior of the hall was the silent, yet significant warning of the Leaguers to all outsiders that nevermore did they intend to allow religious differences to enter into any of their deliberations or to mar the success of the sublime cause in which Irishmen of all creeds were unitedly straining every energy to foster and advance. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 543 President Mooney opened die proceedings with a well-digested address, delivering it with a clearness and emphasis that gave it full force with his hearers, and roused the warmest enthu- siasm : The permanent officers of the convention were President Mooney, Secretary Hynes, and William F. Sheehan, of Buffalo, N. Y., and J. D. O'Con- nell, of Washington, Assistant Secretaries. A Committee on Credentials was appointed, consist- ing of Judge Rooney, of New York ; Rev. Luke V. McCabe, Philadelphia, Pa. ; John J. Power, Con- necticut; Timothy H. O'Donovan, Georgia; M. T. Maloney, Illinois; P. J. Sullivan, Indiana; M. V. Gannon, Iowa; John Fitzpatrick, Kentucky; Dr. W. H. Cole, Maryland; M. J. Dawson, Michigan ; C. M. Carney, Minnesota ; Chas. O'Brien, Mississippi; Thomas Flatley, Massachu- setts ; John A. Gallagher, Maine ; W. H. Gorman, New Hampshire; Hon. John Fitzgerald, Ne- braska ; Hon. W. J. Gleason, Ohio ; B. J. Patton, Rhode Island ; W. Mullen, Vermont ; Hon. M. F. Kennedy, South Carolina ; Thomas Moffit, Ten- nessee ; Patrick McGovern, Virginia ; Dr. Lytton Flynn, Wisconsin ; Hon. Thomas Fitch, Arizona. After that body had reported through its big- hearted chairman, Judge Rooney, the following remarkably representative committee was ap- pointed to consider and formulate a plan for re- organization as the National Irish League : Ari- 544 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. zona, James Redpath ; Connecticut, James Rey- nolds ; Georgia, Col. James F. Armstrong ; Illi- nois, Rev. Maurice J. Dorney ; Indiana, James H. Allen ; Iowa, M. V. Gannon ; Kentucky, Matthew O'Doherty ; Louisiana, Timothy Maroney ; Mary- land, Col. E. T. Joyce ; Michigan, Rev. Dr. Charles O'Reilly; Massachusetts, Rev. Father T. Conaty; Maine, John A. Gallagher ; New Hampshire, William H. Gorman ; Minnesota, C. M. McCart- ney ; Missouri, Dr. Thomas O'Reilly ; New Jersey, John H. Sanderson ; New York, D. C. Feeley ; Nebraska, Hon. John Fitzgerald ; Ohio, Major John Burns; Pennsylvania, Rev. Thomas Barry; Vermont, William Mullen ; Rhode Island, Col. F. L. O'Reilly ; South Carolina, Hon. Michael F. Kennedy ; Virginia, Patrick McGovven ; Wiscon- sin, Joseph G. Donnelly ; District of Columbia, Arthur Rooney. The annual reports of Secretary Hynes and of the Treasurer, Father Walsh, as they were read before the convention and unanimously adopted after having been scrutinized by an auditing committee, consisting of Rev. Dr. O'Reilly, Michigan, Dr. Casey, of New York, and Thomas H. Doherty, of Massachusetts, are valuable as historic documents, showing, as they do, the payments made by the treasurer for cer- tain expenses that were some time previously dis- puted by a few mischief-makers, the actual number of branches in existence in each State, and the S£l > *:--. a .■>• THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 547 amount of money credited to each State and Ter- ritory during the last year of the life of the Land League. Secretary Hynes read his statement in loud, clear tones, giving short explanations of the details where they seemed to be necessary. He said that if the list of the branches and their officers was not absolutely correct or complete, it was not the fault of the central officers, but was because of the failure of the various secretaries to keep them posted as to the details of the work of the branches. In his record the secretary stated that he had received official reports from 608 branches, 105 had disbanded during the year and 83 new ones had been formed. The previous roll con- tained nearly 900 branches, of which number 298 had failed to make any report to the central office. "There are now on the roll 559 branches of the existence of which the secretary has official knowledge. These are divided up as follows : Colorado, 1 ; California, 1 ; Connecticut, 49 ; Georgia, 2; Illinois, 11; Indiana, 5; Iowa, 23; Kansas, 1 ; Kentucky, 8 ; Louisiana 2 ; Maryland, 7; Mississippi, 1; Missouri, 13; Michigan, 13; Minnesota, 8; Massachusetts, 140; Maine, 30; New York, 130; New Jersey, 19; New Hamp- shire, 10; Nevada, 1; Nebraska, 2; Ohio, 14; Pennsylvania, 44; Rhode Island, 13; South Car- olina, 1; Texas, 1; Virginia, 2; Vermont, 3; Wisconsin, 5 ; Tennessee, 1 ; District of Colum- 548 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. bia, 3 ; Prince Edward's Island, 9 ; New Bruns- wick, 1 ; Nova Scotia, 1 : Total, 559. Of the 298 of which the secretary had no official knowledge, 69 were accredited to Massachusetts, 30 to New York, 29 to Pennsylvania, 25 to Connecticut, and 10 to New Jersey." The secretary's financial statement showed that the receipts from the Land League Branches had been $61,976.27, of which $45,251.70 was for Land League purposes, and $16,724.57 for the relief fund. The amounts from the States, etc., were as follows: Connecticut, $6,306.10; California, $140; Colorado, $200; Georgia, $836; Illinois, $263.75 ; Indiana, $107.02 ; Iowa, $1,354.27 ; Kan- sas, $12.60;. Kentucky, $1,520.50; Louisiana, $66; Massachusetts, $15,721.52 ; Maine, $351.98; Maryland, $1,047 ; Michigan, $383.50; Missouri, „ $261.30; Mississippi, $12.30; Minnesota, $126; New York, $19,892.71 ; New Jersey, $1,916.73; New Hampshire, $321.99; Nebraska, $43; Ne- vada, $200; Ohio, $1,253.35; Pennsylvania, $6,384.25; Rhode Island, $1,499.40; South Car- olina, $376; Texas, $70; Vermont, $62.55; Vir- ginia, $140; Tennessee, $29.35; Wisconsin, $234.80; District of Columbia, $234.50; Prince Edward's Island, $235 ; New Brunswick, $326.90, and Canada, $45.90. In addition to this sum $4,182.12 was received from lectures, donations, etc., and $6,004.49 from the " dollar subscription," which, with the balance THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 549 of $6,876.02 from 1882, made a grand total of $79,038.90. Of this sum Patrick Egan received $27,102; C. S. Parnell, $12,903.10, and Alfred Webb, $3,000. There was sent to the famine dis- tricts $23,652.06. Miss Parnell's funeral required an expenditure of $1,335.09, which was paid to J. J. Nolan, and $4,291,24 was expended for the running expenses of the Land League, and $1,875 went to pay the expenses of the lecturers, Messrs. Michael Davitt, A. M. Sullivan and Wil- liam Redmond. The total disbursements were $74,123.40, leaving a balance of $4,915.50. In reply to a question for information as to the expenditure for lectures, Secretary Hynes stated that the gentlemen had given their services with- out charge, and that it was no more than right that their expenses should be paid. Father Walsh gave substantially the same report as given above, with the addition of the information that he had remitted to Ireland $62,754.06, of which $39,102 was for the Land League, and $23,652.06 for the Relief Fund. Of the latter sum, $17,475.97 came from the Land League Branches, and the balance from the " dollar subscription." A detailed statement showing to whom in Ireland such payment for the Relief Fund was sent, was also submitted. The readino- of the following teleoram at this point in the deliberations was received with applause: 550 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. "James Mooney, President Land League Con- vention: Greeting from Halifax. Let your de- liberations be for the good of Ireland, and we will endorse you." After an address from Thomas Brennan, of Ireland, in which he urged the delegates to " let self-effacement rule and personal predilections be sacrificed to-night, as they will be to-morrow, on the altaf of Irish unity," Father Conaty made a verbal report from the Committee on Organiza- tion. He said it had decided not to recommend any plan to the convention, but, as a Committee on Resolutions, recommended the adoption of the following- : "Resolved, That we heartily endorse the princi- ples and objects adopted and declared by the National Conference held in the Ancient Concert Rooms in Dublin, on the 17th day of October, 1882, and pledge our earnest support to the Irish National League there established. "That, in response to the call for an Irish-Amer- ican National Convention, to be held in this hall to-morrow, and, in view of the prospect that the deliberations of that convention will result in the union of all patriotic Irish bodies on the continent which favor the present Irish policy, in a new organization supporting the National League of Ireland, the delegates to this convention attend in a body the sessions of said Irish-American THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 551 National Convention, and assist in promoting the union." A lengthy debate ensued, and while the mover of a resolution providing for the appointment of a Committee of Seven to act upon the dissolution of the Land League of America and the amalga- mation with the Irish National League was placing his motion on paper, Patrick Egan was introduced. The appearance of the Land League's treasurer was the signal for the most enthusiastic demon- stration that had been seen since the organization of the convention in the early morning. The majority of the delegates jumped to their feet, threw their hats in the air and continued the cheering and applause for several minutes. After expressing his gratification at meeting so many members of the American Land League and being able to thank them in person for the help they had given the people "at home" in their fight against the landlord garrison, he said the land movement had been carried on on purely constitutional grounds; nothing had been used but moral forces, and no weapon except the organized power of public opinion. The English journals had repeatedly charged that the Land League was responsible for crime in Ireland, and a good many well-dis- posed Americans had accepted this statement as true. In refutation of this, he quoted some figures. In 1879 homicides in Ireland numbered 4; in 1848, a period of distress also, there were 171. In 1 880 552 • GLADSTONE— PARNELL. there were 5; in 1849, 203. Referring to the Land League funds, Mr. Egan said: "Since the formation of the League there have passed through my hands, for the relief of distress, $245,- 000. I have received from all sources, for Land League purposes, $985,000, making in all $1,230,- 000. Of that sum nearly a million dollars came from the Irish in America. Thatof course includes the amount received for distress, the amount received from Father Walsh, from the Irish World and other sources. Whatever benefits the Land League had produced for the country, and, as Mr. Brennan had said, it had brought about a reduc- tion of twenty million dollars per year in rent, it had also given some security to the farmers, and consequently immunity from landlord tyranny. With regard to the expenditure of that amount of money I am proud to say that no man, woman or child, who ever subscribed one penny to the fund, has ever raised any question. Some avowed enemies of our race and some disappointed black- mailers have attempted to make themselves heard, but without avail. After the Chicago Convention I addressed a letter to a member of the Commit- tee of Seven appointed by that convention, sug- gesting that if you, here in America, would appoint an auditing committee of two or three, in whom you here and we at home would have implicit confidence, then I and my co-trustees of the fund would give to that committee most entire. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 553 satisfaction with respect to the outlay of every penny of that fund. The committee decided that they would not act on that proposal. Before I left Paris, however, I insisted, for my own protec- tion, that an auditing committee should be appoint- ed, consisting of Rev. Father Sheehy, Mr. John Dillon and Mr. Matthew Harris, that committee auditing every item in my account, and to nobody outside of that committee did I feel bound to give any satisfaction. I refer now to the newspapers which are so anxious to get at our affairs, and who are our enemies in England." A hot debate on the motion to appoint a Com- mittee of Seven was ended by Rev. Father Thomas Barry having the roll called to decide the matter. The result was the appointment of the following: Andrew Brown, of Missouri; General Patrick A. Collins, of Boston ; Rev. Patrick Cronin, of New York ; Hon. M. V. Gannon, of Iowa; Rev. Dr. Chas. O'Reilly, of Detroit; Rev. Maurice J. Dorney, of Chicago ; and Col. John F. Armstrong, of Georgia. This virtually was the end of the Land League in America, and the con- vention adjourned at 25 minutes past 1 o'clock on the morning of April 26, after having been in continuous session, with the exception of two very brief recesses, from 1 1 o'clock on the pre- vious morning. Here, it seems to me, is the proper place in which to speak of the life and services of the 554 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. faithful treasurer of the Land League, Rev. Law- rence Walsh, whose death occurred on Thursday, January 3, 1884. A zealous, efficient and worthy priest of God, the cause of Irish emancipation and of temperance lost in him a prudent, disinterested and earnest champion. Priest and patriot, all who knew him revered and loved him. Rev. S. Byrne, O. S. D., one of his closest friends, writing his panegyric, says: "The 3d of January, 1884, will be lon£- remembered in the grateful and sorrowful hearts of the Irish race on both sides of the Atlantic. One of their truest, bravest, most persistent and successful leaders and friends was called from among them on that day. Father Lawrence Walsh is now known very generally as the late treasurer of the 'Land League of the United States ; ' but his intimate friends and his hosts of honest admirers knew him besides as one of the most religious, intelligent and gifted priests in these States or in the world. " Endowed by nature with a splendid physical frame and a bright intellect, he early in life con- ceived the happy thought of consecrating to his Maker's service the o-ifts with which he was so liberally provided. In this sentiment he entered the Seminary of the Sulpicians, in Maryland, and was ordained a priest of his native diocese of Hartford in 1866. The first interview between him and the writer of this brief notice was in the spring of 1868, and the writer is glad to say that THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 555 a friendship was then formed which death alone could break. Father Walsh was then young in the priesthood, and a young man, too, counting his years. But his serious and exact views of all questions to which he turned his attention, his deliberate method of weighing his reasons for convictions, his enthusiasm in clinging to what he believed to be right, were even then prominent traits of his character. He soon became pastor of St. Peter's Church, Hartford, and, after a few years, of the important and spirited congregation of Waterbury, in the same State of Connecticut. Early in 1880, a deep wail of sorrow and want was wafted across the Atlantic wave to our gen- erous shores from the native island of Father Walsh's ancestors. It failed not to awaken in his brave heart an immediate and sympathetic response. Few men on this continent were better acquainted with the history of Ireland than Father Walsh. He knew by heart the long record of her bitter grievances, the history of her greatest men, and especially of St. Lawrence O'Toole, the sainted bishop who boldly raised the standard of armed resistance against the robbers of his nation's honor and the murderers of her life. The good and holy priest of New England was deeply moved at the idea that even in this nine- teenth century, an age, they say, of civilization and mercy to the poor, the peasantry of Ireland should be aeain the victims of artificial famine, which 556 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. their rulers could readily have prevented or remedied. He threw himself, therefore, with his whole soul into the movement inaugurated by Ireland's honored son, Charles Stewart Parnell, thinking it to be the best thing for Ireland, under all the circumstances of the case, that had been started in this second half of the nineteenth cen- tury. How the dear, good and noble priest labored and toiled to unite in this noble and grand movement the purest and best spirits of his race on this side of the Atlantic, is a very important part of its history. Father Walsh's unselfish and gallant part in it will stand out through all time as a bright beacon-light to guide the footsteps of all honest lovers of Ireland and haters of her task- masters, whether lay or clerical. But he lies in the grave in his native city of Providence — a city founded on the principles of resistance to bigotry and wrong in 1635 — and the children of Erin at home and abroad will build his monument, and breathe over his grave a deep and fervent prayer for the eternal rest of his blessed soul ; and, in thinking of his life-work, they will become braver, more united, and better men. May the rest of the saints be his portion forever." BIRTH AND GROWTH OF THE IRISH NATIONAL LEAGUE OF AMERICA. In the spring of 1883 a new era in the history of the Irish cause in America was inaugurated at THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. f>57 Philadelphia, Pa. The Land League had been suppressed in Ireland. The national spirit, more alive in consequence of the tyranny of the Coer- cion Act, had organized the National League as the successor of its. formidable and hard-working, but now extinguished predecessor. The fore- going pages of this work have shown how the Irish-Americans, resolved to stand by Charles Stewart Parnell in the new move which he and his able compatriots in Ireland had determined upon, had taken the decisive steps of dissolving the Irish Land League of America, and appointing a committee empowered to merge it into a new and more vigorous organization, bearing the same title and with the same aims and objects as the newly created body "at home." The body of men and women who formed this new confedera- tion met in Horticultural Hall, Philadelphia, on the morning of April 26, 1883, and so representa- tive were they, that the newspapers of the country by common consent styled the assemblage THE IRISH RACE IN CONVENTION. More than twelve hundred delegates were present, representing thirty-two States and Terri- tories and Canada. Australia was also repre- sented in the person of two delegates, Revs. William Slattery and John Gallagher. It was undoubtedly the largest body ever assembled on this continent for any political purpose, and its 558 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. personnel was equally as high as that of the smaller body which met on the previous day in the same hall. The deliberations of the conven- tion concentrated the attention of the country at large upon it from the opening of its first session to the end of the last one. The leading news- papers of England, Ireland, Scotland and France had a corps of intelligent correspondents, noting its transactions for the information of their read- ers, and cabling the discussions and actions of the delegates. Every journal of any prominence in the United States, and many in Canada, had lengthy and detailed reports telegraphed of the proceed- ings of every session. Some of them anticipated "a ruction "among the delegates, under the impres- sion that O'Donovan Rossa or some of his friends would " raise trouble," and their manaoqnor editors in several instances telegraped to their reporters or correspondents instructing them to " write up the shindy at length." At no time was there any " trouble," or even any likelihood of it, and the American press, without exception, passed the highest encomiums upon the convention after its adjournment. The keynote of the convention and of the new era was struck by the Hon. Alexander Sullivan, of Illinois, in a short but singularly comprehensive speech, calling the gathering to order. Slender of frame, a spare and youthful-looking man with a quiet, strong face that would attract attention to THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 559 itself in any assemblage of distinguished men, the leader of his race in America, sensitive as a woman, brave as the most gallant and soldierly of his race, his appearance was received with a storm of applause. " The duty of formally open- ing this convention," said he, " has been assigned to me by the distinguished gentlemen whose names are appended to the call. When we behold the personal magnitude of this assem- blage ; when we consider the geographical area from which it has been spontaneously drawn ; when we contemplate the intensity of the passion which animates it for the sole object we have in view, and the diversity of honest opinion concern- ing the methods by which that object ma)' be ac- complished, it is meet that we should, on the very threshold of our debates, invoke Him in whose hands are the destinies of the nations, that our proceedings may be characterized by wisdom, toleration and prudence ; that they may result in that actual unity which alone will insure sub- stantial progress in securing justice for our motherland. " We hold the anomalous position of being the only fairly and freely chosen Parliament which may assemble to consider the welfare of a wretchedly oppressed, plundered and misgov- erned people ; and we are restrained at the same time from stepping outside the functions of auxil- iaries to the patriots who are heroically struggling 33 560 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. at home, and in an alien and hostile legislature, in the vain hope of awakening the long-suspended conscience of a powerful and brutal foe. How great are the possibilities, how great the respon- sibilities of this convention ! We have met, neither on the one hand to dictate to our breth- ren in Ireland in anything, nor on the other hand to apologize to their and our common enemy for anything. We have met to organize and con- centrate all the forces of our race, that their united strength shall be made potential in our national struggle. We have met to solidify all the ele- ments of our national sympathy, that hereafter there shall be an authorized body to speak, not for a party, not for a man, but for united, exiled Ireland. We have met to tell our brethren in Ire- land that it is theirs to choose the road which leads to liberty, and ours to march with them upon it. The racial blood that flows in our veins shall feel the same pulse-beat as theirs ; and that beat shall be as firm and as steady as the tap of the drum on the morning of battle. " That we may have upon our deliberations the approval of Almighty God, and of all just men who love liberty, we must show in this, the Par- liament of our race, assembled in the City of Brotherly Love, that every party is less than the cause, that every individual is esteemed below our country, and that every Irishman is a brother." On the motion of Rev. Dr. George C. Betts, a THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 561 Protestant Episcopalian rector from St. Louis, Mo., Rev. M. J. Dorney, a Roman Catholic pastor of Chicago, 111., was elected temporary chairman. Committees on credentials, resolutions and per- manent organization were appointed, a delegate from each State and Territory serving on each committee. While these committees were de- liberatino- in different ante-rooms addresses were made by Rev. Dr. Betts. Fathers Cronin, Gal- lagher and Slattery, and the following telegram was read from William McCready, of Louisville, Ky.: " Sons of Erin — Patriots : Ireland's hopes are centred in you ; sink all differences for her sake ; unfurl a stainless banner with 'Irish-American National League ' inscribed thereon, and Erin's deliverance will soon be won." The permanent officers of the convention were: President. Hon. M. A. Foran, Cleveland, Ohio. Secretary, John J. Hynes, Esq., Buffalo, N. Y. Assistant Secretaries : John J. Enright, Michi- gan ; Edward Fitzwilliams. Massachusetts ; Cor- nelius Horgan, Pennsylvania; J. D. O'Connell, Washington, D. C. Vice-Presidents : Patrick Egan, Ireland ; Rev. M. J. Masterson, Massachusetts ; M. D. Ryan, Colorado ; Edward Tobin, Montreal, Canada ; James Reynolds, Connecticut; John H. Parnell, 562 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Georgia ; John Carroll, Indiana ; Dr. William B. Wallace, New York ; C. J. Smyth, Nebraska ; Rev. J. M. Mackay, Ohio ; Hon. T. V. Powderly, Pennsylvania ; Joseph Mullen, Rhode Island ; W. J. O'Connor, South Carolina ; Hon. Thomas Fitch, Arizona ; Patrick McGovern, Virginia ; Hon. J. C. Corrigan, Wisconsin ; Captain E. O'Meagher Condon, District of Columbia ; C. J. Wheeler, Vermont ; William Condon, Delaware ; John McAteer, Kentucky; Timothy Crean, Illi- nois ; John Fitzpatrick, Louisiana ; James Doyle, Maryland; Hon. M. V. Gannon, Iowa; Rev. Charles O'Reilly, Michigan; C. M. McCarthy, Minnesota ; Dr. Thomas O'Reilly, Missouri ; John Hayes, New Hampshire ; John J. Berry, New Jersey ; Rev. Wm. Slattery, Timora, Australia ; Rev. John Gallagher, Australia ; Mrs. Delia T. S. Parnell, Ladies' League of America. Declaring- that " it is time we had a unification of Irish societies," Chairman Foran opened the real business of the convention with the asser- tion ; " We never shall be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland has a link of the British chain clanking on his limbs. He may be in rags, he shall not be in irons." At the conclu- sion of his address the following cablegram from Mr. Parnell was read: " To James Mooney, President of Irish Con- vention, PhiladclpJiia. London, April 26: My THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 563 presence at the opening of the most representa- tive convention of Irish-American opinion ever assembled being impossible, owing to the neces- sity of my remaining here to oppose the Criminal Code Bill, which re-enacts permanently the worst provisions of the Coercion Act, and which, if passed, will have the effect of placing the consti- tutional movement at the mercy of the British Government, I would ask you to lay my views before the convention, and would advise that a platform shall be so framed as to enable us to continue to accept help from America, and avoid affording any pretext to the British Government for entirely suppressing the national movement in Ireland. In this way only can unity of move- ment be preserved in both Ireland and America. I have perfect confidence that by prudence, moder- ation and firmness, the cause of Ireland will con- tinue to advance, and that, though persecution rests heavily upon us at present, before many years shall have passed we shall have achieved those great objects for which for so many years our race has struofaled. " Charles Stewart Parnell." Stirring addresses were made by Rev. Fathers Agnew, of Scotland (Father Agnew is now sta- tioned in Chicago, Illinois), and John Boylan, of Ireland. The latter's speech, full of fire and ring- ing eloquence, aroused his hearers to the highest 564 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. pitch of enthusiasm. He said he felt proud to be called upon by such an assemblage, representing the rank, intelligence and public spirit of his race in this land, and composed of men who had learned the language of freedom, knew the power of free speech, felt that there was a glorious future dawning for Ireland, and appreciated the fact that it is only by sincere unity and indomita- ble bravery that victories are won. The past emigration from Ireland had been productive of good. The exiled sons of Erin, whom the Lon- don Times once declared to have " gone with a vengeance," were present in the enjoyment of " life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Their numbers had swelled forth until they had become a mighty factor in this great republic. It was pleasing to reflect that the emigration that drained from Ireland the elements of wealth, power and greatness flowed in life-giving streams of energy and valor into another country, and that country the powerful and jealous rival of England. Every pang of the national heart of Ireland seemed to be but a pulsation that drove to the remotest arteries of the world the life-blood of Irish patriotism, and caused Irishmen to stretch to each other the right hand of fellowship, forming around the wide world a girdle of national love and patriotism that extended from the east to the west, and coupled the north and south poles with the wide circle of exiled but glorious affections. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 565 At present Catholic and Protestant were heart to heart and hand in hand moving together and assuring each other that on the present question of Ireland's resurrection they have one common ground to stand upon, one common ground to right for, and one common enemy to oppose. " I hope that this great republic, that has afforded such a magnificent asylum to my exiled countrymen, will be with us in this great question. America can say to us: 'I gave you employment, I opened my doors to your homeless, and gave land to your landless ; ' but the Irishman can reply : ' Yes ; but I have been the instrument of your hardest toil, the willing architect of your civil and military renown ; the fiery blood of my exiled countrymen swept like a torrent over your vast continent, pouring its fresh streams into the onward current of American nationality; and, whilst treacherous England, which now, by fawn- ing sycophancy and by wily arts, endeavors to secure your confidence, made that never-to-be- forgotten attempt to drive the assassin's dagger into your bleeding heart when you were stagger- ing under a terrible internecine war, Irish blood flowed freely into the fraternal current that sanc- tified the statue of liberty and anointed the down- trodden slave.' " It was during the afternoon of the second day's session that the convention adopted the pream- bles and resolutions that formed the subject of so 566 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. much favorable comment afterwards on the part of the American press and people. Rev. Dr. O'Reilly read them in a tone of voice that rang throughout the spacious hall, and gave to certain portions of them an emphasis that aided their effectiveness and helped to give heartiness, if any- thing could have been needed beyond the words he read, to the applause by which he was fre- quently interrupted. Here are the preambles and resolutions : " The Irish-American people, assembled in con- vention at Philadelphia, submit to the intelligence and right reason of their fellow-men that the duty of government is to preserve the lives of the gov- erned, to defend their liberty, to protect their property, to maintain peace and order, to allow each portion of the people an equitable and effi- cient voice in the legislature, and to promote the general welfare by wise, just and humane laws. We solemnly declare, and cite unquestioned his- tory and the universal knowledge of living men in testimony thereof — " First. That the English Government has ex- isted in Ireland not to preserve the lives of the gov- erned, but to destroy them. Entire communities it has wantonly massacred by the sword. To the asylums of terrified women it has deliberately applied the blazing torch. Into helpless towns it has discharged deadly bombs and shells. Through consecrated crypts, where age and infancy sought THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 557 shelter, it has sent its bloody butchers. The sacred persons of venerable priests it has stretched upon the rack or suspended from the gibbet. Puling babes have been impaled on the points of its bayonets because, in their own words, its emis- saries ' liked that sport.' Its gold has been folded in the hand of the assassin, and has rewarded the infamy of the perjured traitor. Its treacherous falsehood has lured patriots to unsuspected death. As if the sword, the cannon, the torch, the scaffold, the dagger and the explosive were not enough, it enjoys the unique infamy of being the only Gov- ernment known to ancient or modern times which has employed famine for the destruction of those from whom it claimed allegiance. Forcibly rob- bing the Irish people of the fruits of their own toil, produced by their own labor, it has buried not a hundred, not a thousand, but more than a million of the Irish race, unshrouded, uncofhned, in the grave of hunger. It has mercilessly com- pelled other millions, in compulsory poverty, to seek in alien lands the bread they were entitled to in their own. There is no form of cruelty- known to the lowest savage which it has not prac- tised on the Irish people in the name of the high- est civilization. There is no device of fiendish ingenuity it has not adopted to reduce their num- bers. Within two years it has massacred chil- dren, and woman's body has been the victim of its licensed ruffians. There is no species of de- 56S GLADSTONE— PARNELL. structive attack, however insidious or violent, an- cient or modern, rude or scientific, whether directed against life or matter, in any portion of the globe, for which its barbarities in Ireland have not furnished the example. There is no form of retaliation to which despair or madness may resort for which English cruelty in Ireland is not exclu- sively responsible. " Secondly. We declare the English Govern- ment in Ireland has not defended the liberty of the people, but has annihilated it. The statutes enacted since the invasion amount to a series of coercion laws, framed to deprive citizens of all vestiges of personal freedom and reduce them to outlawry, in order to confiscate their property and compel them to flee to foreign lands. Since the beginning of the present century, when the Irish Parliament was abolished, the laws for Ireland have been made in England ; and during that period habeas corpus and the right of trial by jury have been suspended more than fifty times, hordes of soldiers have been loosed upon a people forbidden to bear arms, and a state of war, with all its attendant horrors, with occasionally those of retaliation, has been maintained. To-day rep- resentatives of the people are in prison, guiltless of crime. Freedom of speech is abolished ; free- dom of the press is abolished. The right of peaceable public meeting is annulled. No man's house is secure, night or day, from armed ma- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 5f,9 rauders, who may insult and harass his family. Without a warrant the citizen may be thrown into prison ; without counsel he may be put on mock trial before a prejudiced judge and a packed jury. On the lying averments of purchased wretches his liberty may be sacrificed or his life taken in the name of law. " Thirdly. Instead of protecting the property of the people, the English Government in Ireland has been a conspiracy for its injury and ruin. Of 20,000,000 acres of food-producing land, 6,000,000 have been allowed to lie waste. The ownership of the remainder, generally acquired by force or fraud, has been retained in the hands of ravenous monopolists, who have annually drained the country of its money in the form of rents, no portion of which goes back to the Irish people. In addition to this, an iniquitous system of taxation imposes on the people a gigantic bur- den for the sustenance of a foreign army, for an oppressive constabulary, for salaries to super- numerary officials and placemen, for pensions to English favorites, for blood-money for informers, and for a vulgar court, whose extravagance is equalled only by the sham of its pretentions. The naturally created capital of the country is sent to England, on one pretext or another, and brings no exchange except articles of English manufacture, which the Irish people, under self- government, would produce for themselves or 570 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. purchase in America. Irish manufactures, de- liberately destroyed by England in the last cen- tury, are still dormant. Her immense water- power turns no wheels. Her canals are all but impassable. Her rivers are obstructed. Her useful clays and valuable minerals are untouched. In her beautiful harbors are few ships except those of her enemy. English law for the protection of property in Ireland has been a lance to make Ire- land bleed at every pore for the benefit of the heartless landlord and the English manufacturer. "Fourthly. The English Government in Ire- land has not maintained peace and order, but has, for seven hundred years, broken her peace and destroyed her order. " Fifthly. The English Government in Ireland does not allow that portion of the empire an equi- table and efficient voice in the legislature. In England one-twelfth of the population votes for members of Parliament ; in Ireland one-twenty- fifth of the population votes for members of Parliament. In England the registration laws are favorable to the voter ; in Ireland they are inimical to the voter. In England all classes of the population are fairly represented ; in Ireland the poor law is employed to secure to landlords and place-hunters a prepon- derance in the national delegation. In England the judiciary is independent of the executive and sympathizes with the people ; in Ireland the judi- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 57] ciary is the creature and a part of the executive, and appointed exclusively from the enemies of the people. In England the magistracy is chosen without regard to creed ; in Ireland ninety-seven per cent, of the magistrates, having jurisdiction over personal liberty, are selected from a creed rejected by seventy-eight per cent, of the people, and the detestable spirit of religious bigotry is thus legalized and perpetuated. In England the laws creating civil disabilities on account of re- ligion have long been dead. In Ireland laws made under Edward III., Queen Elizabeth, the Earl of Strafford, Charles II., Queen Anne, and their successors are still vital to torment a people for whose oppression no statute is found too hoary by venal and truculent judges. Every measure of legislation proposed by an English member re- ceives courteous consideration. Any measure, however just, necessary or humane, proposed by patriot Irish members is certain of contemptuous rejection by a combined majority of both the great English parties. Thus the educational sys- tem of Ireland is notoriously inadequate. Thus it is that evictions, unknown in England, and de- clared by Mr. Gladstone to be almost equivalent to death sentences, are of daily occurrence in Ire- land, and have nearly doubled in five years, in spite of the boasted benefits of the Gladstone land laws. Thus it is, that, although, according to government returns, the criminals are twenty- 572 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. seven in 10,000 of English population, and only sixteen in 10,000 of the Irish population, in spite of the exasperation to which they are subjected ; yet England enjoys constitutional liberty, and Ire- land is under worse than martial law. The in- trepid and persistent attempts of a patriot Irish deputation to obtain in the English Parliament just and humane laws for Ireland has always been, is, and, in our belief, must continue to be, a a failure. " Now, therefore, in view of these facts, be it "Resolved, by the Irish-American people, in convention assembled, that the English Govern- ment in Ireland, originating in usurpation, per- petuated by force, having failed to discharge any of the duties of government, never having ac- quired the consent of the governed, has no moral right whatever to exist in Ireland ; and that it is the duty of the Irish race throughout the world to sustain the Irish people in the employment of all legitimate means to substitute for it national self- government. "Resolved, That we pledge our unqualified and constant support, moral and material, to our coun- trymen in Ireland in their efforts to recover national self-government, and, in order the more effectually to promote this object, by the consolidation of all our resources and the creation of one responsible and authoritative body to speak for Ireland in America, that all the societies represented THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 573 in this convention and all that may hereafter comply with the conditions of admission, be organized into the Irish National League - of America, for the purpose of supporting the Irish National League of Ireland, of which Charles Stewart Parnell is President. "Resolved, That we heartily endorse the noble sentiment of Bishop Butler, of Limerick, 'that every stroke of Forster's savage lash was for Irishmen a new proof of Parnell's worth, and an additional title for him to the confidence and gratitude of his countrymen.' "Resolved, That we sympathize with the labor- ers of Ireland in their efforts to improve their condition ; and, as we have sustained the farmers in their assault upon the landlord garrison, we now urge upon the farmers justice and humane consideration for the laborers. In the words, for the employment of which an Irish member of Par- liament was imprisoned, we demand that the farmers allow the laborers ' a fair day's wages for a fair day's work.' "Resolved, That as the manufactures of Great Britain are the chief source of her material great- ness, already declining under the influence of American competition, we earnestly counsel our countrymen in Ireland to buy nothing in England which they can produce in Ireland or procure from America or France; and we pledge our- selves to promote Irish manufactures by encour- 574 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. aging their import into America, and to use our utmost endeavor, by plain statements of fact and discrimination in patronage, to persuade American tradesmen from keeping English goods on sale. "Resolved, That an English Ministry, ostenta- tiously 'liberal,' has earned the contempt and de- testation of fair-minded men throughout the world by imprisoning more than a thousand citizens of Ireland, without accusation or trial, a number of whom were noble-hearted women, emja^ed in works of mercy among the evicted victims of landlord rapacity and English law. "Resolved, That this convention thanks Rt. Rev. John Ireland, Bishop of St. Paul, Rt. Rev. John O'Connor, Bishop of Omaha, Rt. Rev. John Lan- caster Spalding, Bishop of Peoria, Most Rev. John Williams, Archbishop of Boston, Rt. Rev. S. V. Ryan, Bishop of Buffalo, Most Rev. Patrick A. Feehan, Archbishop of Chicago, Rt. Rev. Edward Fitzgerald, Bishop of Little Rock, and their co-la- borers, for their efficient efforts in providing homes for the Irish immigrants into the United States. The people of Ireland are, by the laws of God and nature, entitled to live by their labor, in their native land, whose fertile soil is abundantly able to nourish them ; but, since a brutal government compels large numbers to emigrate, it is the duty of their countrymen to warn them against the snares of poverty in large cities and assist them in the agricultural regions. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 575 "Resolved, That the policy of the English Gov- ernment, in first reducing the Irish peasantry to abject poverty and then sending them penniless to the United States, dependants on American charity, is unnatural, inhuman, and an outrage upon the American Government and people. We respectfully direct the attention of the United States Government to this iniquity, protest against its continuance, and instruct the officials who shall be chosen by this convention to present our pro- test to the President of the United States, and respectfully, but firmly, to urge upon the President that it is the duty of the Government of the United States to decline to support paupers whose pauperism began under and is the result of Eng- lish misgovernment, and to demand of England that she send no more of her paupers to these shores to become a burden upon the American people. "Resolved, That this convention welcomes the sturdy and undaunted patriot and the prudent custodian, Patrick Egan, who, to protect the Land League funds from the robber-hands of the En21 Iowa, I was impressed with his earnestness, the clearness with which he expressed his views, and his open, sunny countenance. Tall and erect in figure, with black hair and eyes, Mr. Gannon is a man of striking personal appearance. Like many leading Irish-Americans, he is what is usually termed a self-made man. He was born in Dub- lin, Ireland, on February 14, 1846. He lived for sixteen years in the County Westmeath, attend- ing the best schools that the neighborhood af- forded, and emigrated to America when he was twenty years old. He first settled in Rock Island, Illinois, where some of his friends had gone before him, and, being totally without means, earned a livelihood by teaching school. He taught there for one year, and then went to Iowa, where he pursued the same occupation. While he was en- gaged in teaching he spent his leisure time in studying law, and after a year spent in Iowa he returned to Rock Island, where he continued his legal studies with P. T. McElherne, now a well- known lawyer in Chicago. After finishing his legal education he was admitted to the bar, but did not at once enter into active practice, prefer- ring to spend another year in teaching. Mr. Gannon then removed to Davenport, of which city he was Alderman in 1S77 and 1878, and in the latter year opened a law office, taking into partnership the scholarly A. P. McGuirk. In the same year Mr. Gannon was tendered the Demo- 622 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. cratic nomination for Clerk of the Supreme Court, but declined it. He was in the same year nomi- nated by the Democrats of the Seventh Judicial District for District Attorney. This nomination he accepted, but was defeated at the polls. In 1882 he was tendered the nomination for the same office, accepted, and, although he lived in a Republican district, he was elected over his former competitor by a very flattering majority of 4,364 votes. He received the unanimous nomination of the Democratic party for Attorney-General in 1884, but was defeated with the rest of the Democratic State ticket. After the Buffalo Convention Mr. Gannon, in conjunction with Hon. M. H. King, of Des Moines, Iowa, organized the Iowa State League, and was elected its first President, a position which he held until the middle of 1886, when he resigned. He was also Chairman of the National Executive Committee from the close of the Philadelphia Convention until 1886. He is an orator of singular force and power, a ready talker on almost any topic, and in private conversation entertaining and agreeable, with all the wit that is inherent in an Irishman. Mr. Gan- non has been married twice, his second wife dying on November 9, 1884. He is the father of six children, five girls and one boy, the latter, four years of age, being named after Mr. Gannon's beau ideal of an Irish patriot, John Dillon. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 623 Another self-made man, whose words in the councils of the Irish race have always been lis- tened to with respect, and whose business enter- prise has been rewarded with an abundant pros- perity, is Patrick Martin, of Baltimore, Maryland. He was born in the County Mayo, Ireland, on March 16, 1846. His family removed to England in 1849, remaining there until 1855, when they removed to America, arriving in Baltimore in June of that year. When quite a lad he went to work in a factory, to assist his family in earning a livelihood. At the age of seventeen years he began life's battle in earnest, and for a time was employed in different public works. For some time also he acted as porter in a store, and through his earnest labor and strict attention to business he was advanced to the position of salesman. By economy and perseverance he succeeded in ac- cumulating a small amount of money, and in Jan- uary, 1873, he started in the wholesale liquor business in company with Bartholomew McAn- drews. In business Mr. Martin has been very success- ful, and has secured for himself a comfortable home and the old homestead at Elkridee Land- ing, where his aged mother still resides. Since boyhood he has taken a great interest in the af- fairs of the land of his birth, and he has for a number of years been closely identified with Irish organizations. He was an active worker in the 624 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Irish National League Convention in Boston, in 1884, and was there elected as the Maryland State Delegate of the League. He also attended the convention in Chicago in August, 1886, and was elected Third Vice-President of the National League. On September 1 1, 1886, after his return from the Chicago Convention, Mr. Martin was presented with a handsome gold watch and chain by a committee representing the Irish-American citizens of Baltimore. Among the most gifted of the many eminent clergymen in this country who have espoused the cause of Ireland is the Rev. George Charles Betts, of Louisville, Kentucky. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, July 18, 1840. His early life was spent in the County Donegal, where he received his preliminary education, which was completed in Dublin and in Belfast — the Northern Athens. He came to America in 1861, and studied for the ministry, being ordained in Nebraska in 1865. He remained in Omaha, as rector of a parish, until 1872, when he went to Kansas City, where he was also in charge of a large parish until 1876, when he was transferred to St. Louis. He re- mained in charge here until the early part of 1886, when he assumed charge of Grace Protes- tant Episcopal Church at Louisville, Kentucky, where he now is. Mr. Betts is the editor of The Church Militant, and is known as an ad- vanced churchman. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 625 He has been engaged, heart and soul, in the cause of Ireland since 1868, lecturing in her be- half in almost every large city and in hundreds of small ones in the United States. Wherever he went his words bore good fruit. He has organ- ized many clubs or societies in nearly every State and Territory of the Union, all of them having for their object the promotion of Irish independence. Some of these societies are " beneficial " — that is, they pay to members and their families sick and burial benefits — and one of them, at least, is very powerful both in its widespread influence, the number of its members, and the spirit of unity which pervades its ranks. Mr. Betts was Chairman of the first National Convention, and has been adel- egate and served on the most important commit- tees of every National Convention since that time. Unfaltering in his devotion to the cause of Irish liberty, he has at all times freely and frankly ex- pressed his belief in its ultimate success. Another gifted and patriotic clergyman, a famil- iar and welcome figure at the meetings of the branches and conventions of the National League, is the Rev. P. A. McKenna, of Marlboro', Mass. He was born in Boston, Mass., in the latter part of 1847. He received his preliminary education in the public schools of his native city. In 1862 he entered the Holy Cross College at Worcester Mass., from which institution he graduated with first honors, in 1867, with the degree of A. B., 626 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. and later secured the degree of A. M. In the same year he went to Paris and entered the Seminary of St. Sulpice, where he studied in the theological course until 1870, when he was ordained in Bossuet's age-crowned Cathedral, at Meaux. Since his ordination, both as curate and pastor, Father McKenna has been settled in the same district, Marlboro', in Massachusetts. He was, for a number of years, pastor of a church in the adjoining town of Hudson, and is now pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Concep- tion at Marlboro', to which he was promoted in March, 1886. Father McKenna was the only priest present from Massachusetts when the first convention of the old Land League was held in Trenor Hall, New York. He has been identi- fied with the cause of Irish liberty since that time, and intends to fight for it until the Promised Land of Ireland's territorial, social, political, and in- dustrial hopes is reached. The whole-souled Treasurer of the Parnell Testimonial Fund in the United States, Rev. Thomas J. Conaty, was born in Kilnaleck, County Cavan, Ireland, on August 1, 1847. ^ n 1 ^5 l n ^ s parents emigrated to America and settled in Taunton, Mass. After receiving a preliminary education in the schools of that town, he entered Montreal College in 1863, and four years after- wards " passed " to the Holy Cross College, Worcester, Mass., where he graduated in 1869. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 627 After a course of theology in the Montreal Sem- inary, he was ordained a priest in December, 1872, and assigned to St. John's Church, Worcester, where he spent seven years as the assistant of Rev. Thomas Griffin, Chancellor of the Diocese of Springfield. In January, 1880, a portion of the old parish was erected into an independent parish under the title of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and Father Conaty was assigned to the charge, which demanded a new church, residence and parish appointments. Father Conaty was among the first to enlist in the cause of the Land League, and at the Buffalo and Chicago conventions was Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions. He is prominent as an exponent of Irish rights, and an unflinching advocate of total abstinence, occupying to-day the position of Vice-President of the Total Abstinence Union of America. Father Conaty is a magnificent specimen of the Celtic race ; is over six feet in height, and as stal- wart mentally as he is physically. Roger Walsh, the successor of John J. Hynes as Secretary of the Irish National League of America, was born in Cleveland, Ohio, Aug. 18, 1859. He is the youngest son of Patrick Kieran Walsh, who died in July, 1886. His father's entire life was spent in the work of advancing his coun- try's cause, and elevating the position of her chil- dren in America. He was born in Dundalk, 37 628 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. County Lowth, Ireland. Leaving the " old land " with the Young Irelanders in '48, he no sooner reached this side of the Atlantic than he identified himself with the cause for the support of which he was compelled to emigrate. Although a young and helpless family depended upon his efforts for support, he found time to gather about him the exiled of his race that were scattered about in his locality and organize them for the preservation of the national spirit and the main- tenance of a dignified position before the Ameri- can people. In Cleveland, Ohio, where he finally settled, his name is known but to be loved, and his memory but to be revered. His nationalism was a part of his nature, and like it sincere, un- compromising and ever active. He repelled attacks on his country and her children, no matter whence the source, and with such vigor, backed by a wealth of historical research anil logic, that his opponents have invariably retired, discomfited by the telling thrusts he knew so well how to direct. His tongue and pen were ever ready. The oppressed never called upon him in vain for help. In every movement that looked to the betterment of his people he was found active. The League owes much to his intelligent efforts and ability as an organizer. Although he believed in sterner methods than those advocated from the League platform, he did not intrude his own views, holding to the policy of obtaining all that was THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. fiOp possible for Ireland with the aid of the League, and demanding more, if necessary, by more vig- orous measures. His public life was an exempli- fication of honest purpose sternly pursued. In his home life he was tender, lovine and true. His home was his Paradise ; his wife, Susan, was his ardent supporter in every undertaking. Her nationalism was not less strong than his own, and her influence was a wonderful aid to her husband in the dark hours when Ireland needed the help of men as good and true. It is not to be wondered at, that with such parents the son was a nationalist by instinct. He imbibed his spirit from earliest infancy. At about the age of seventeen years he began his apprenticeship as a printer in the office of the Cleveland, Ohio, Herald, now de- funct, and two years afterwards was promoted to a position on its city staff. Later on he con- nected himself with the Cleveland Leader, which he left to enter into commercial life. In 1883 he was called to the Secretaryship of the League, and fulfilled the duties of his position under Presidents Sullivan and E^an, resi^nin^ a t the National Executive Committee meeting, Aug. 14, 1885. He then established himself in the printing busi- ness, but the building in which he had invested his capital was destroved by fire within a month, and since that time he has devoted himself to journalism. He is now a member of the city 630 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. staff of the Record of Philadelphia, Pa. He has been ardently engaged in Irish matters since his seventeenth year, and, largely through his father, has a wide knowledge of men and events in the history of American movements for Ireland's wel- fare. In manner he is quiet and reserved, and has no predilection for oratory. His taste lies in the direction of literary work, and believing that every opportunity should be utilized for the cause he holds so dear, has used his influence in news- paper life whenever and wherever he found it was possible to advance the national principles of his people. An earnest and faithful auxiliary, when the Land League most needed help in the City of Brotherly Love, was Martin I. J. Griffin, of Philadelphia, Pa. He was born in that city on the 23d day of October, 1842, and from his earliest youth evinced great interest in the affairs of the Catholic Church, and in the movements of Irish societies generally. In 1859, at the age of seventeen years, he entered upon an active career of usefulness which has not been abated by the lapse of time. In 1867 he became the editor of the Guardian Angel, a position which he retained until 1871. In August, of that year, he was instrumental in introducing into Philadelphia the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union, and in the following Septem- ber organized the "Young Philopatrians" — the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. fril first Total Abstinence Society in Philadelphia under the present movement. At the same period, and during the subsequent year, 1872, he was also engaged as an associate editor of the Catholic Standard, and thus with his voice and pen was working diligently to further the multiplied interests of the church. In the month of March, 1873, he established the /. C. B. U. Journal, and has remained at the head of that paper up to the present time as its editor and proprietor. In April, 1879, he founded Branch No. 56, Catholic Knights of America, this being the first branch of the order established in this city. During the following year, on the 24th of November,* 1880, a meetine was called at the business office of the /. C. B. U. Journal, No 7 1 1 Sansom street, when a branch of the Irish Land League was formed. Mr. Griffin, with his usual zeal, manifested con- siderable interest in the organization of this the first branch of the Land League in Philadelphia, and when the first public meeting was called in Philopatrian Hall, on Sunday, December 4, 1880, he was honored by being chosen as the secretary and treasurer of the branch, Mr. Charles Fay being elected its president. He afterwards at- tended several of the conventions of the Land and National Leagues, and in the great conventions of the Land League, and of the Irish Race, held in Philadelphia, in April, 1883, he was made the Chairman of the Press Committee, a position which, 632 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. from his peculiar attainments and his thorough knowledge of the duties required, he was emi- nently qualified to fill. Undaunted with very many other projects on hand, some of them of a business and others of a religious and patriotic nature, the month of July, 1883, found Mr. Griffin engaged in compiling a " Catholic History of Philadelphia," selected portions of which have, from time to time, appeared in the columns of the / 0. B. U. Journal, much to the edification of the adherents of the church and to the public in general. He was also one of the organizers, on July 22, 1884, of the Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, and has since been elected its first vice-president. He is also jhe author of "The History of Old St. Joseph's," together with a " History of St. John's Church," and of an ably written treatise on " William Penn, the Friend of Catholics." Among his other literary productions are : " The Irish in Philadelphia," " Catholicity in Philadelphia," and other works. Mr. Griffin is a member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Historical Society of Buffalo, N. Y., and of the Linnsean Society of Lancaster, Pa. Human liberty, in O'Neill Ryan, of St. Louis, Missouri, has always found a stalwart advocate. He was born in St. Louis, on the 5th day of January, i860, and came from good old Irish stock. His father, who died in 1866, was from Tipperary, while through his mother, who still survives, he THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 633 traces his ancestry to Oliver O'Neill, a "rebel of '98." Although still a young man, Mr. Ryan has already shown those qualities which belong to a maturer manhood, and has achieved consid- able success in his profession as a lawyer. In his boyhood he attended the public schools of his na- tive city, but at the age of thirteen years was obliged, like many others who have since risen to eminence, to do battle in the world for a liveli- hood. About eight years ago he entered the law office of G. Campbell, Esq., a man who, in the prime of life, is ranked among the leaders of the bar in the West. In Mr. Campbell he found a sympathetic and kindly disposed friend, and as he was unable to take a collegiate course, he worked under his generous guidance, and studied hard to fit himself for the profession of his choice. In June, 1880, he passed a successful and creditable examination in the Circuit Court at St. Louis, and was admitted to practice at the bar. Mr. Ryan had the usual up-hill task of a young lawyer, but with a firm determination to succeed, he has overcome all obstacles, and is now in a position to look back with pleasure upon the conflicts and discouragements of other years. He is now as- sociated in business with his friend and preceptor, Mr. Campbell, and is engaged in practice in the State and Federal Courts. Mr. Ryan is thoroughly familiar with Irish his- tory and an enthusiast on all matters connected g;>4 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. with Ireland. In 1 88 1 he entered the Land League movement and has been actively con- nected with Irish national affairs ever since, hav- ing at various times been president of local Leagues, attended the national conventions and delivered numerous addresses. In 1884, at the Boston Convention, he was elected first Vice- President of the Irish National League of Amer- ica, and held that position during Mr. Egan's administration, and until the Chicago Convention of the summer of 1886. Another self-made Irish-American who has risen to high social position in his adopted country, and whom I have met at every con- vention, is William John Gleason, of Cleveland, Ohio. He was born in County Clare, Ireland, on June 2, 1846, and the following year his parents came to the United States and shortly afterwards settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where he has since continued to reside. He acquired his early edu- cation in the parochial and public schools, but at the age of twelve years was obliged to go forth and battle with the stern realities of life, to earn a subsistence for himself, and to aid his parents. He commenced his career as a newsboy, and two years later entered the office of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he learned the trade of printing, mastering all the branches of the art preservative, and working at the "case" for nearly eight years. Upon the breaking out of the Civil THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 635 War in 1861, although not yet fifteen years of age, he purchased a drum and entered the service of his adopted country as a drummer-boy, in Camp Taylor, at Cleveland, Ohio, where he continued until his parents, thinking him too young for a military life, took him out of the service. Two years subsequently, in July, 1863, he shouldered a rifle and became a member of the Twenty-ninth Regiment, Ohio National Guard, and remained with that organization until May 5, 1864, when he enlisted in Company E, of the 150th Regiment Infantry, Ohio Volunteers. He immediately accompanied his regiment to Washington and was detailed for duty in the forts surrounding the National Capital. At the close of the term of enlistment of the regiment, he received an honor- able discharge, when he re-entered the office of the Plain Dealer and worked at the " case " until Nov. 1, 1869, leaving the latter position to accept that of City Circulator, and taking entire charge of the city edition until the year 1882, officiating in the meantime, also, on the reportorial staff. While connected with the Plain Dealer, from which he graduated as its sub-proprietor, he was Secretary of the Typographical Union for three terms, and for a similar period was Secretary of the Trades Assembly. In the year 1882, he resigned his position in the newspaper office to enter the business of fire insurance. In matters pertaining to the Church and the 63G GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Irish cause, Mr. Gleason has always been in the foremost rank. In 1865, when nineteen years of age, he became a member of Tara Circle, Fenian Brotherhood, and was an active worker in that organization until its disbandment. He also joined the Irish Nationalists Society when the latter was organized, and with his pen, purse, and voice, from his earliest youth to the present time, has been unceasing in pushing the battle for Irish freedom. For seven consecutive terms he was President of the Irish Literary and Benevolent Association, an organization embracing within its ranks the best materials of Irish society in Cleve- land ; and for two years he was the Librarian of the same association. Frequently, after a day of hard work, Mr. Gleason would devote himself to reading the history of his native land, in order that he might carry out a resolve, made in youth, that he would do everything within his power to elevate his race at home and abroad, to bring freedom to his long-oppressed but ever defiant countrymen. This resolve he has since been carrying into effect whenever opportunity pre- sented. His steadfast loyalty to the cause of Ireland has been abundantly shown by his active work. In 1878, he called a meeting of the Irishmen of Cleveland to make arrangements for celebrat- ing the Robert Emmet Centennial. As chairman THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. (537 of the committee he made a stirring appeal to his fellow-countrymen, and the result was one of the grandest demonstrations ever held in the Academy of Music of Cleveland. Mr. Gleason gave a sketch of Emmet's life, closing his address by reading, with much feeling, the farewell speech of Ireland's martyr. When the Land League was formed in Ireland, Mr. Gleason shortly afterwards organized a branch in Cleveland and was elected its President. On the occasion of the visit of Charles Stewart Par- nell and John Dillon to America, in 1879, they were invited to visit Cleveland, which they did in January, 1880, when Mr. Gleason was again at the head of the committee of arrangements, and so perfectly were the details carried out that Mr. Parnell said : " It was the grandest and most sat- isfactory demonstration he had witnessed since his arrival in this country." A monster proces- sion was organized, ending with a gathering of over four thousand people in the evening, when, at the meeting then held, a large sum was realized for the national cause, as well as for the famine- stricken people of Ireland, while public opinion in Cleveland was strongly moulded in favor of the Irish cause. When Mr. Parnell was about leav- ing the United States, he wrote a list of names, and handed them to his sister, with the request to submit them to the leaders of the Land League as additions to the American branch of the League (J;]8 GLADSTONE- PARNELL. Executive. The list as published in the Boston Pilot at the time was as follows : John Boyle O'Reilly and Patrick A. Collins, Boston ; Thomas A. Kinsella, Brooklyn ; E. M. Stone, of the Chi- cago Evening Journal ; J.J. McCafferty, Lowell, Mass. ; P. M. McGlynn, Fall River, Mass. ; J. W. Mahone, Brookton, Mass. ; James J. Nolen, Lynn, Mass. ; William J. Gleason, Cleveland, O. ; Rev. T. Walsh, Waterbury, Conn. ; Captain Lawrence O'Brien and James Reynolds, New Haven, Conn. ; Hon. Robert Liddell, Mayor of Pittsburgh, Pa. ; J. H. Mellen, Daily Times, Worcester, Mass.; James Doran and Rev. H. P. Lalor, Danbury, Conn. Mr. Gleason was a delegate to the Irish Land League National Convention at Chicago, in 1882, and a member of its Committee on Permanent Organization. He was also a delegate to the Irish Race Convention in Philadelphia, in 1883, and was one of its secretaries, besides being chosen the executive member for Ohio. He was a delegate to the Irish National League Conven- tion at Boston, in 1884, and acted as its Chief Secretary, and was also Chairman of the Ohio Delegation at the National Land League Conven- tion in Chicago, in 1886. His State elected him its executive member, and subsequently President John Fitzgerald appointed him a member of the " Council of Seven," or, as it has been aptly termed, " The Irish-American Cabinet." He has THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 639 been President of Parnell Branch, No. 38, of the Irish National League, Cleveland, Ohio, since its organization, and very few, if any, branches have raised more money for the national cause than No. 38. In season and out of season he has held the banner of Irish nationality aloft in Cleve- land, and has vigorously aided in forming public opinion favorably towards Ireland's right to self- government, and in organizing men and collect- ing money for her help. The cause of Irish Nationality will never die out in Cleveland while William J. Gleason or any of his patriotic sons live. Since the days of Feni- anism to the present, he has been continually on duty working for the cause of Ireland. Scarcely a week has passed in all of the past twenty years that he has not written or made speeches to mould public opinion in favor of Ireland's right to self- government. He has been a faithful adherent to the leaders and principles of the Land League and the National League, and his numerous writings and speeches have always been loyal and patriotic to his native land. Several extracts from his public addresses have already been given, but this sketch of his active and busy life would not be complete without quoting from some of the other utterances which have come from him at various times. While making arrangements to celebrate the Robert Emmet Centennial, in 1878, he issued an appeal to the Irishmen of Cleveland, 640 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. in which he said : " Robert Emmet sealed his de- votion to Ireland by offering up his gallant and pure young life as a sacrifice on the altar of his country, for the principle of establishing a free and inde- pendent republic in his native land, in which all of his countrymen would enjoy liberty and stand upon an equality. As Emmet died for all Ire- land, so all Irishmen, irrespective of creed or clan, ought to unite in a fitting demonstration in honor of Ireland's illustrious patriot. Turn out wear- ing the tri-color — the emblem of Irish Nationality, or wearing our own immortal green." His writ- ings all through show the promptings of a patriotic heart and mind to secure, what was always upper- most in his thoughts, the independence and wel- fare of Ireland. The history of the Irish cause in America can never be fully told without reference to the activi- ties and practical interest that have been shown for the past two decades by James Reynolds (known as " Catalpa Jim"), of New Haven, Conn. A staunch and uncompromising believer in the right of universal freedom, he has always come to the front in any practical movement for the weal of his native land. Never faltering, even when the sacrifice of his worldly resources was demanded, the voice of his country has dom- inated all his being, and next to the love of his Maker comes the reverent devotion that he has for the land of his birth. James Reynolds is a THE GREAT TRISH STRUGGLE: 641 pure, unselfish patriot ; around his name breathes a lustre undimmed by a single thought of personal ambition, the faintest breath of self-interest or in- dividual aggrandizement. Other men have given greater intellectual gifts to the service of Ireland; others have told her wrongs with a sublimer magic of eloquence, and waked the sympathies of men in the sweep of their mighty oratory, and still others, perhaps, have braved a larger measure of personal danger ; but none has devoted his whole energies, his entire worldly fortune with a loftier patriotism, a more generous spirit of sacrifice than James Reynolds has for the little isle that gave him birth. James Reynolds comes naturally by his patriot- ism, for he springs from a noble and patriotic strain. His ancestry dates back over fourteen hundred years to the noble sept Mac Raghnaill, which the Irish historians tell us was a branch of the tribe called the Conmaie, whose founder was Conmacni, third son of Fergus Mac Roigh, by Meive, the celebrated Queen of Connaught, in the first century of the Christian era. The ancient territory of the Mac Rannells (of which the surname Reynolds was a corruption) was called Conmacni Moy Rein — otherwise Muinter Eois ; it lay in the County of Leitrim, and was co-extensive with the modern baronies of Leitrim and Garrycastle, all bordering upon Annally, in the north of the County of Longford. The 642 GLADSTONE— PA RNELL. Mac Rannells had castles at Rinn, Leitrim and Lough Scur. James Reynolds himself is a native of the County Cavan, where he was born on the 20th of October, 1831. He was but sixteen years of age when, during the memorable famine that peopled the cemeteries of Ireland, he bade adieu to his native heath and sailed away to the distant shores of America, bearing with him a freight of precious memories that were to bear fruit in after- years of patriotic endeavor. On his arrival in this country he at once apprenticed himself to learn the brass-founding trade, and in 1850 he settled in Connecticut which has ever since been his home. For twenty years and more he has been a resident of New Haven, where he has received repeated political honors at the hands of his fellow-citizens. He served three years as Alderman, during two of which he was President of the Board, and in that capacity was at various times acting Mayor of New Haven. For seven years he has been at the head of the town govern- ment, being elected town agent every year since 1879 with increasing majorities; the only Irish- man who has ever been elevated to this position in a city where Puritanic influences and prejudices have not yet wholly passed away. Nothing could indicate more forcibly the high regard in which he is held by his fellow-townsmen. In November of the present year he was the Democratic nominee for Sheriff of New Haven County, the first and THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 643 only Irishman ever honored thus, but owing to race prejudices and internal dissensions in the party he was defeated by a small margin. In addition to his official duties as town agent of New Haven, Mr. Reynolds conducts a lucrative and somewhat extensive business as a brass-founder. A born patriot, James Reynolds early espoused the cause of his country, and brought to its ser- vice all the energies of an active and impulsive nature. When in the years following the Ameri- can Rebellion Irish patriotism was directed in an active movement against England through her colonies in America, we find him foremost among those whose financial resources flowed freely into the common treasury. Not when his practical mind told him that not here lay the channel to Ireland's freedom did he close his purse-strings; not even when a prudent judgment convinced him that here lay a waste of Irish blood and hu- man treasures did he say nay to the appeal for funds. It was enough for him to know that even one blow was struck at England, one thrust was made in the great cause of Irish freedom. James Reynolds never believed that the liberation of Ireland was to be effected through the conquest of Canada. His strong native sense and saga- cious foresight taught him the folly of such a hope. Yet when the movement was inaugurated he entered into it heart and soul, with all the en- thusiasm of his noble nature, hopeful that even Michigan J74 25 49 g £ ^ ^ ^ issou,1 ( 325 16 25 00 Minnesota ^ -> 1370 Montana soo 00 Nebraska.... I$ g 00 New Hampshire • 35 > jg g 35 OQ New \ 01k - 2 io3 00 N-v Je-y ^ ^ ^ hl ° 382s 10830 1679 2 reg0 V':'- 320477 2020 05 36900 Pennsylvania o~r"* " a c 8r> Rhode Island 6o 3 °° 6 5 8 ° , South Carolina 5o 00 Tennessee 23600 ».. • 86 00 Virginia ,- IO , Wisconsin 349 9° "94 25 District of Columbia 1 9b 00 Canada 35 Nova Scotia Tota l W2 21 $10093 76 $4767 05 DISBURSEMENTS. Amount remitted to Alfred Webb, D^ 11 "-,^;;^,^ 4,397 5 ° Exoense— Postage, printing, stationery, and clerical assistance Usurer's office' from May I, 1883, to August I, 1884 871 4~ Rev. P. A. McKenna 175 70 Rev. P. A. McKenna g 2 OQ Rev. Chas. O'Reilly (574 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. J.G.Donnelly $ 75 50 P. A. Collins 1 T. F. Dohertyf 4° °° Rev. P. A. McKenna, trip to Westerly, R. 1 10 00 David Healy, expense from Albany to Columbus, O., to fill Redmond lect. engagement 37 60 Rev. P. A. McKenna 74 25 John G. Healy, expenses Connecticut Convention 73 68 Chicago Office — Secretary's salary, 14 months $1,750 °° Requisites for general expenses 1,010 65 -,760 65 Cameron, Amberg & Co 369 48 Buffalo Catholic Publication Co 422 58 Settlement John J. Hynes, L. L. Secretary 198 70 $29,734 21 RECAPITULATION. Total amount from Branches $24,372 21 Total amount from Donations, etc. . . . 10,093 7° $34465 97 I otal amount for Par. Fund $4,767 05 Remitted to Alfred Webb 24,397 50 Paid for salaries 2,450 00 General expenses 2,886 7 1 29,734 21 Expense Par. Fund, cables, etc 28 00 Balance on hand August 9, 1884, League and Par. Funds $4,731 /6 $4,739 05 SUPPLEMENTARY. August 12. — Received in Boston from executor of Father Walsh, late Treasurer of Land League, the following financial statement of balance : April 9, 1883, Philadelphia Convention, bal. on hand. $5,093 82 Rent of hall, Philadelphia Convention $465 00 Rent of executive head-quarters, Continental Hotel . . 50 00 Cablegram to Mr. Parnell 300 24 Remitted to Mr. Parnell 903 10 Stamps, printing, etc 25 00 Expenses clerical labor in treasurer's office 200 00 L943 34 Balance turned over to Rev. Chas. O'Reilly, D. D., Treasurer Irish National League, Aug. 22, 1884. . . 3>!5° 4& Received in Boston League dues of Branches report- ing on floor of convention 145 50 Received from treasurer's office, Detroit, after depart- ure of treasurer to convention 266 25 Reliable assets guaranteed 200 00 Received for Parliamentary Fund in Boston 1,1 1 1 00 $4,873 *3 THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 675 Secretary Walsh's report was similar in its fiaures and other important features to that of the reverend treasurer. Rev. Thomas J. Conaty, Treasurer of the Parnell Testimonial Fund, re- ported that he had received contributions amount- ing to $i 7,5i 7.38, which he had remitted to Alfred Webb the celebrated Quaker treasurer ol the League funds in Ireland.- Several amendments were made to the constitution, the most note- worthy being section 7, which provided that "an amount not to exceed $3,000 shall be annually appropriated out of the general funds 01 the League, to indemnify the president of the Na- tional League for his time and services in the interest of the cause." Branches, where a mu- nicipal council exists, were instructed to remit to the national treasurer through the treasurer of the municipal council ; and the basis of represen- tation in future national conventions was fixed at one delegate for every fifty members in good standing, " provided, however, that in country dis- tricts where the number of fifty members cannot easily be reached, any number from twenty-five to fifty shall be entitled to one delegate." Rev Dr. George C. Betts, editor of The Church Militant, and rector of Grace Protestant Epis- copal Church, St. Louis, Missouri, presented the report of the Committee on Resolutions, which was unanimously adopted. He said: « I do not intend to introduce the reading ot g76 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the resolutions by making the chairman's usual speech, further than to say that in the delibera- tions of the committee the utmost harmony pre- vailed, and that the judgment which is here expressed is decidedly the judgment of the whole. I will say for the benefit of one or two members of the committee not present at this morning's session, that a very few changes, mainly verbal, have been introduced into the first resolution upon the suggestion of our delegates from Ire- land. Therefore, if the language which they hear now is unfamiliar to their ears, they will know it has not been placed without authority in the body of the resolutions. " The representatives of the Irish National League Q f America, in convention assembled, affirming the principles adopted at the Philadel- phia Convention, congratulate the people of Ire- land and their able leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, on the heroic efforts and untiring zeal which have so signally marked the history of the past year, abounding in evidences of gratifying progress in placing the people of Ireland on a higher plane, and securing for them, and their natural rights, a more adequate consideration from the intelligence of mankind. " We renew the protest, which for seven centu- ries has been uttered with every heart-throb of our race, against the cruel and unjust usurpation of power by a government alien to our people in THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 677 all that distinguishes one nationality from another, and we pledge our moral and material support to every legitimate means for re-establishing the God-given rights of the people of Ireland to the possession and government of their native land. " To this end we are firmly purposed to direct all our efforts to the creation in Ireland of a com- plete national life, and the development of all the diversified industries which render a people self- sustaining and prosperous, not merely by the reduction of rents, nor a change from idle proprie- tors to working proprietors, but also by the revi- val of Irish manufactures to the exclusion of English goods and the promotion of an economic and civil life by the development of a sincere, noble and effectual cohesion of all her people for the common welfare. " Now, therefore, in view of these facts, be it "Resolved, First, That the Irish National League of America hereby expresses its unqualified ap- proval of the course pursued during the past year by Charles Stewart Parnell, and the Irish Parliamentary party under his leadership, and pledges itself to support them by every moral and material aid in the contest which they are waeinor aeainst Landlordism and on behalf of Irish national independence, and to this end we com- mend the Parliamentary Fund, recently opened by our executive for such purposes, to the gener- osity which characterizes our countrymen. 40 678 GLADSTONE— PA RNELL. " Second, That we congratulate the Irish Na- tional League of America on its success in stem- ming the tide of the forced emigration of the artificially impoverished, and in causing the United States Government to compel England to take back those whose poverty is the direct result of her misgovernment. " Third, That we record with satisfaction that the opposition of this League to land-grabbing in America by non-resident aliens has been, by the efforts of our Executive, adopted as the doctrine of the American people in their political platforms, and we recommend that the efforts of this League to end this evil do not cease until a complete remedy be enacted in the laws of the land. "Fourth, That we congratulate William O'Brien, of United Ireland, upon the victory obtained by him in his struggle against immorality, the abomi- nations of which are a consistent outcome of English misrule in Ireland, and we commend him for tearing the mask from Castle officialism in bringing its hideous practices under the execra- tion of mankind, notwithstanding governmental resistance. " Fifth, That we note with approval the revival of the study of the Irish language as one of the elements in the general progress of the race, and encourage the efforts of those en^a^ed in its cultivation. "Sixth, That we indorse and encourage the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 679 work of the promoters of Irish colonization in their efficient efforts to provide homes in the United States for Irish immigrants, who would otherwise be compelled to toil without hope of competence in the larger cities. "Seventh, That the gratitude of the Irish race is due in a particular manner to the Executive of the League, Alexander Sullivan, for his unselfish devotion to the cause of Ireland, and that in his course he has shown consummate skill and ex- alted patriotism. We also express our commen- dation of the conduct in office of Rev. Charles O'Reilly, D. D., Treasurer; Rev. Thomas J. Con- aty, Treasurer of the Parnell Fund, and the other officers of the organization. "Eighth, That the death of Rev. Lawrence Walsh crives us occasion to record our hio-h esteem for his marked fidelity during the years of his service as an official of the Land League, and causes us to lament in him the loss of a sterling patriot, whose voice never faltered in denouncing English misrule, and whose life was spent in advocating the cause of Irish national independ- ence." The convention, at the instance of Alexander Sullivan, decided to transmit ^1,000 to William O'Brien, M. P., to be applied on the legal expenses incurred by that gentleman, the motion including the words: "It is fitting that this our greeting to our brother should pass through the clean 680 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. hands of our reverend treasurer, Dr. Charles O'Reilly, to the equally worthy hands of the National Treasurer for Ireland, who has worshipped God at a different altar, but stands by his side for our mother-land — the intrepid Quaker, Alfred Webb." Despite his positive refusal to accept re-election, President Sullivan was unanimously chosen his own successor. He, however, adhered to his decision, although Sexton # and Redmond, in speeches of great earnestness, besought him, in common with the entire body of delegates, to remain at the post in which he had rendered Ire- land such inestimable service. Rev. Dr. O'Reilly also declined re-election as treasurer, but the con- vention emphatically refused to select another man for the position, so he had, perforce, to remain in office. The national officers elected were: President, Patrick Egan, Omaha, Nebraska. Vice-Presidents: O'Neill Ryan, St. Louis, Mis- souri; Thomas F. Doherty, Boston, Massachu- setts; Maurice F. Wilhere, Philadelphia, Pennsyl- vania. Treasurer, Rev. Charles O'Reilly, D. L).. Detroit, Michigan. Secretary, Roger Walsh, Chicago, Illinois. The various States, through their delegates, selected the following members of the National Executive Committee: P. Devany, Fort Smith, Arkansas; Judge M. Cooney, San Francisco, California; Peter W. Wren, Connect- icut; Col. M. Boland, Denver, Colorado; E. P. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 681 Kane, Wilmington, Delaware; John F. Armstrong, Augusta, Georgia; Daniel Corkery, Chicago, Illi- nois; F. M. Ryan, Indianapolis, Indiana; Hon. M. V. Gannon, Davenport, Iowa; John J. Barrett, Louisville, Kentucky; Timothy Maroney, New Orleans, Louisiana; Patrick Martin, Baltimore, Maryland ; William J. Dawson, Michigan ; Thomas J. Flatley, Boston, Massachusetts; J. R. Corrigan, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Dr. Thomas O'Reilly, St. Louis, Missouri; John Fitzgerald, Lincoln, Nebraska; Patrick A: Devine, Manches- ter, New Hampshire; M. B. Holmes, Jersey City, New Jersey; Dr. Joseph F. Fox, Troy, New York; Hon. J. W. Fitzgerald, Cincinnati, Ohio; P. H. Lynch, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Hugh J. Car- roll, Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Hon. F. L. McHugh, Charleston, South Carolina; R. A. Odium, Mem- phis, Tennessee; Dr. J. D. Hanrahan, Rutland, Vermont; Richard F. Curran, Richmond, Virginia; Hon. J. G. -Donnelly, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Thomas H. Walsh, Washington, District of Co- lumbia; William O'Mulcahy, Grafton, Dakota; Jeremiah Gallagher, Quebec, Canada. Before it adjourned, the convention, at the Instance of Mr. Peter A. Hogan, of Brookline, Massachusetts, adopted a resolution recording its " deepest regret at the death of that eloquent champion of every oppressed and suffering peo- ple, Wendell Phillips, whose voice was ever raised, in behalf of Ireland, and whose whole life 682 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. was one unceasing protest against tyranny in every land and every form." On the day following the adjournment of the convention the National Committee of the League met in Boston, Mass., and President Egan appointed as the Executive Council of Seven : Hon. M. V. Gannon, of Iowa; Col. Michael Boland, of Colorado; Timothy Maroney, of Lou- isiana; Thomas J. Flatley, of Massachusetts; M. B. Holmes, of New Jersey; Hon. J. G. Donnelly, of Wisconsin; and Hugh J. Carroll, of Rhode Is- land. The new president, Patrick Egan, handed in the following letter, bearing date August 15, 1884: " Gentlemen of the National Committee : When accepting the position of president of the Irish National League of America, I was not aware of the amendment to the constitution passed in the earlier part of the day, to the effect that 'an amount not exceeding $3,000 shall be annually appropriated out of the general funds of the League to indemnify the president of the National League for his time and services in the interests of the cause.' " I desire now to say that in the future as in the past, my services shall be given to the cause of Ireland gratuitously, and that on no condition will I accept any indemnity or remuneration from the League." The committee were determined to pay the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 633 salary ultimately, but President Egan was deter- mined in his refusal to accept no remuneration and returned into the treasury two checks for $3,000 each ; one for the annual appropriation to August, 1885, and one to August, 1886. On the evening after the convention there was an immense demonstration in the Institute Build- ing, Boston, Mass., at which some of the news- paper writers asserted there were 20,000 persons present. Addresses were made by Governor Rob- inson, of Massachusetts, Mayor Martin, of Boston. Gen. Benjamin F. Butler, of Boston, Hons. Thomas Sexton, M. P., and William Redmond, M. P., of Ireland, Mrs. D. T. S. Parnell, Alexander Sullivan, of Illinois, and United States Senator Jones, of Florida. The English press, both Liberal and Conserva- tive, had leading editorials on the convention, in which they directed the attention of the British statesmen, then in power, to the strength of the movement in America. The Standard said, among other things : "Englishmen cannot afford to be indifferent to the proceedings of the National League Convention just concluded at Boston and it is an ominous sign that Davitt's name was greeted with applause. Ireland would long since have been quiet were it not for the spasmodic pulsations of this character in the United States and the sinews of war which the vast Celtic crowds there are able to furnish." 684 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. DARK DAYS AGAIN DAWN FOR THE LEAGUE. On September i, 1884, President Egan and the other national officers issued an address to the officers and members of the League notifying them of the removal of the executive offices of the Leaeue to Lincoln, Nebraska, stating that the treasurer's office would still remain at Detroit, Michigan, and for the purpose of inspiring a love of Irish nationality and a more accurate knowledge of Irish history in the hearts and minds of the rising generation of the Irish-American race, advising the use of musical and literary exercises at all branch meetings, and the appointment of a special committee on Irish music and literature for every branch in this country. It said : " There should also be a committee on Parliamentary Fund appointed in everybranch. Where there are sev- eral branches in a town or city, a joint committee should be selected ; and where there is a munici- pal council, that body should organize and go to work immediately. A general Parliamentary election is now possible at any time and may reasonably be said to be among the certainties of the ensuing ten months. We received the bril- liant representatives of the Parliamentary Party, Messrs. Sexton and Redmond, with cheers. Shall not these cheers be followed by deeds? After telling: them and their colleagues to go on and.be assured of our support, shall we give that THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 685 support promptly and generously ? We rely upon your patriotism for the responses to these ques- tions." As the wise minds that heretofore directed the affairs of the League dreaded the introduction of American politics into the discussions of the branches, under the well-founded apprehension that it would be the cause of dissension amongst the members, and as about this time the American people were beginning to feel the first throes of political excitement over the approaching Presi- dential campaign, Mr. Egan felt the necessity of adding to the address a few words of monition. " In the local branches," said he, " as in the Na- tional Convention of the League, we drop our character as members of American political parties when we cross the threshold of the League hall. During the coming political can- vass, let no excitement or difference of opinion concerning political affairs either decrease our enthusiasm or influence our actions in the League. Happily we have lived to behold our people at home able to bury creed and provincial distinctions. Let us show that we are able to bury political distinctions in our League work, and to tolerate the widest differences of opinion in American politics among our members." It will be seen later on that his words of warn- ing were really necessary, and if his sagacious exhortations failed of their intended effect, the fault, certainly, did not lie at his door. 686 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. For some time subsequently the contributions to the Irish Parliamentary Fund languished. An urgent appeal came over the waste ol waters from Charles Stewart Parnell for " renewed exertion in support of the Parliamentary Fund." As a spur to the people it was thought advisable to have a delegation of the most eloquent of the Irish mem- bers brought to the United States to deliver ad- dresses on the situation. Mr. Parnell was ad- dressed oh the subject, and in reply came the following letter, giving the hopes and plans of the great Irish leader : " Offices of the Irish National League, 39 Upper Sackville Street. Dublin, January 27, 1885. " Patrick Egan, Esq., President Irish National League of America: " My dear Mr. Egan : Mr. Parnell desires me to write to you and place before you the difficulty he has in acting upon your suggestion to send over two members of the party during the Spring. He had been in hopes that two members of the party might be able to undertake the journey; but the immense labor that will be thrown upon our small number in the forthcoming session of Parliament in nVhtinsr the Redistribution of Seats Bill and the Renewed Crimes Act will render the absence of even one man of our party a serious loss. If we can show sufficient strength in the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 687 House during the approaching session, we will be able to amend the Redistribution of Seats Bill in such a manner that it will enable us to take pos- session of eighty-five seats in the new Parliament, while, at the same time, upon the energy and power we display in discussing the bill will depend the fate of the Crimes Act, which the government intends to renew. " Under these circumstances Mr. Parnell desires me to say that you and our friends in America will have to leave us our full Parliamentary strength during our approaching session, and you may rely fully upon his desire«and that of the party to send you a delegation as soon as at all possible. " Our organization is making splendid progress and doing great work. To the activity which our Irish branches displayed in working up the regis- tration of voters during the past two years we owe the fact that Ireland is to receive the benefit of the extended franchise, for we showed that with energy and perseverance we could secure under the limited franchise nearly every seat which the new franchise brings within our easy grasp. A very lar«;e proportion of our funds was expended on this part of the struggle, and even yet our expenses in attending Boundary Commissions and preparing schemes and evidence for them are very large. If, however, we had not to sus- tain a large number of evicted tenants who have come to us as a legacy from the Land League, our 688 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. organization at home would be able to meet its own working expenses. But this Evicted Ten- ants' Fund is a first charge upon us and forms the largest part of our expenditure. We have received from our Irish branches during the year £6,000, while we have had to vote over ,£7,600 in grants to these evicted tenants. " I have seen a statement in some of the Ameri- can papers, attributed to Mr. Parnell, that no funds were needed in Ireland until the general election. He tells me he never made such a statement. On the contrary, it is with a view to preparing for the general election that-we mainly want funds. We shall have to put forward about ninety candidates at the general election in Ireland, and we must have local machinery prepared to work every one of these elections, as all the constituencies will be split up into single-member constituencies, and every man will have to fight his own corner with the local aid he may receive. " Mr. Parnell has directed me to request that any Parliamentary fund at present in hand might be forwarded, as a large proportion of the present expenditure of the National League falls within the line of a Parliamentary Fund ; such as the preparation of bills for the Parliament, the rent and expenses of Parliamentary office, and the ex- penses of members delegated to attend meetings, as well as the preparation of pamphlets on the Crimes Act, and the supplying of other such in- formation to Parliament. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 689 " To remove these off our limited resources would leave us free to devote a larger propor- tion of our funds to organization. Under all these circumstances Mr. Parnell urgently requests that you will point out to our friends in America the necessity for renewed exertion in support of the Parliamentary Fund. Yours sincerely, " T. Harrington, Honorary Secretary." President Egan circulated that letter in every branch in the Union, and as a result, was able within almost six weeks afterwards to forward, through the hands of the Reverend Treasurer O'Reilly, the sum of ^2,000. On March 23, 1885, the Hon. T. Harrington wrote, acknowl- edging its receipt. " Coming at a time," he said, " when it will be the duty both of the Par- liamentary Party and of the Irish National League to engage in perhaps the most extensive work undertaken by any organization in Ireland for a long time past, this generous subscription will be to us not only a means of strengthening our hands in the struo-crle in which we are about to enoraofe in connection with registration and general election, but will also be an encouragement to the many members of our organization working in their own local centres to redouble their efforts and prove themselves worthy of the generous con- fidence reposed in them by our friends abroad. "A" large proportion of the funds contributed to f)90 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the National League organization was devoted, during the past two years, to strengthening the position of our party at the Registration Courts; and it is to the judicious use of those funds for this practical purpose, we, in a large measure, owe the extended franchise, of which we are now to reap the benefit. By putting forth the whole strength of our organization at the approaching registration of voters, we shall be able to make the position of the National Party supreme in three out of the four Provinces of Ireland, and shall not leave in the hands of our opponents one single constituency in those Provinces, except, of course, the University of Dublin, which is beyond our control. But it is in the fourth Province, namely, Ulster, that the struggle of the general election will chiefly lie. Our power, even if disputed in the other Provinces, cannot be injured ; but in the Province of Ulster the struggle between the National Party and the West British is sure to brino- forth the full strength of the different parties in this country. Of several of the seats created in Ulster by the new bill we are perfectly sure, and the result of the general election, if proper advantages be taken at the Registration Courts of the extended franchise, will show that in Ulster the National Party possesses the majority of seats. " In all, then, we hope to have representing Ire- land in the next Parliament at least eighty-five THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. Q$\ followers of Mr. Parnell ; while we do not intend to leave the Tories or Whigs undisputed posses- sion even of the remainder, but to contest almost every seat closely with them. " I am very glad to be able to assure you — and I have no doubt the intelligence will be gratifying to our friends abroad — that the national spirit was never stronger or more hopeful in Ireland than it is at the present time, and that our people have, to a very great extent, learned to rely upon themselves, and are contributing, even notwith- standing the great depression in agricultural prices, very generously towards the support of the National League organization here." Shortly after receiving that communication, and whilst he was still congratulating himself on " the good work well begun," President Egan was sud- denly confronted with a new difficulty, which re- quired all his tact, prudence and decision of char- acter to overcome. The political campaign had waxed hot, and some of the leaders of the Irish race, notably Alexander Sullivan and Col. Michael Boland, arrayed themselves on the side of "James G. Blaine and Protection for American Industries." They delivered political addresses in every section of the country, preferring to speak before Irish Democratic audiences rather than Republicans. Thousands of Irish voters almost everywhere followed their lead into the Republican camp and cast their ballots for the " Plumed Knight," who 692 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. still, I firmly believe, remains their idol, chiefly, how- ever, through the oratorical reasonings of Messrs. Sullivan and Boland. The action of these gen- tlemen created a vast amount of dissatisfaction, especially among that class of Democratic citizens who " vote the straight ticket all the time." There are very many thousands of Irishmen, who, mind- ful of the Know-Nothing excitement, could not be induced by any arguments to desert the Demo- cratic party. They have, too, a multitude of other reasons, which to them are all-sufficient, why they should not "turn their coats" and cast their lot with the Republican party. Many of them viewed with some distrust, and became exceedingly wrathy over the defection of Mr. Sullivan. They could not and would not believe that Mr. Blaine would inaugurate such an active foreign policy as Mr. Sullivan asserted his honest conviction would fol- low his election to the Presidency of the United States. Even if they did believe that such would have been the result, I am positive that it would not have changed their " political complexion." As the campaign progressed the dissension which President Egan feared at the outset of his administration made its appearance in nearly nine-tenths of the branches of the League. In some branches there was always found some man or men who were angry and dissatisfied. This anger and dissatisfaction increased to such a degree that in some places men were found who THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 693 impugned Mr. Sullivan's motives in such a mean way as to cast a doubt on his honor. With him, they included the entire national officers of the organization, and charges of "treachery " and " sell- ing out the organization " were freely made and bandied about at political and other meetings and elsewhere. The attendance at the meetings of the branches and municipal councils fell off at an alarming rate. Ro^er Walsh, the Secre- tary, aided Mr. Egan in his work, night and day, of attempting to counteract the effects of the sinister influences that were threatening the very life of the National League in America. Circu- lars and addresses, full of burning and patriotic words, and bristling with appeals for all to stand by the old land in her fight for freedom, were sent out broadcast to the presidents, secretaries and delegates of every branch in the United States. Every proper and legitimate attempt that the mind of man could devise was made, to stem the torrent of discord that was sweeping everything irresistibly before it, and to restore the harmony and unity so essential in a great movement of this kind. At last President Egan after mature thought decided to place the exact facts of the situation squarely before the whole country and thus appeal to the sense of justice and fair play attributes — in which his countrymen stand pre-eminent. A fair opportunity of doing so presented itself when he received the following 41 694 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. letter from one of the most honored members of the organization, Dr. J. D. Hanrahan, State Delegate of the Irish National League of Vermont : "Rutland, Vt., May 4, 1885. "My Dear Sir: Having received several com- munications both from yourself and Mr. Walsh I thought it was but right that you should receive some kind of an answer. "When I first made an effort to organize a branch of the League here, I was met with the assertion that the officers had sold out to the Rupublican party. I have not been able to re-move that impression yet, and at present I have little hope of being able to do so. " However, I can assure you that" my heart and soul are in the cause, and whatever personally I can do shall be done, and I yet hope by making a supreme effort that I may be able to make some kind of a showing previous to your National Convention. I am very truly, etc., "J. D. Hanrahan." As soon as he had read the foregoing com- munication President Egan sat down and penned the following response : " Executive Office of Irish National League of America, Lincoln, Neb., May 9, 1885. "My Dear Dr. Hanrahan: Your esteemed letter of the 4th inst. has reached me and I have HIE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 695 to thank you not only for your promise to forward the League movement in your State, but also for the manly candor with which you inform me of the slanders that are in circulation regarding the officers of the League. The fact that such a charge as that of having ' sold out ' to the Repub- lican party — or any other party — being made against the respected Treasurer of the League, the Reverend Dr. O'Reilly, of Detroit, against my predecessor, Mr. Alexander Sullivan, and, I may add, against myself, is proof of the utter unscrupulousness of a certain set of political bummers, and of the lamentable ignorance and prejudice of a certain other class of our country- men who believe them — if indeed any there be who do believe them. " The Reverend Dr. O'Reilly and Mr. Alexander Sullivan need no words of mine in their defence. Their antecedents, their pure and devoted patri- otism, their utter unselfishness of character — so different from that of the creatures who attempt to malign them — are so well known throughout the length and breadth of this land, that no man of ordinary intelligence, no Irishman worthy of the name, could be got to give ear to their slanderers. "For myself, I took no part in the Presidential campaign beyond casting my individual vote. I did write a letter, replying to attacks directed against me by the Democratic organ of this city, 696 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. attacks, too, which were entirely unwarranted, in- asmuch as I had up to the time of their appear- ance made no public announcement of my politi- cal views whatsoever. This letter I submitted, before sending it to the press, to one of the most prominent Democrats in this State, and he con- sidered that the circumstances justified its publi- cation. In the letter I stated in correction of the published misrepresentations, the reasons why I, as an individual, preferred Mr Blaine to Mr. Cleveland, but I also stated distinctly my posi- tion in the following unmistakable words : 'When, however, at Boston, I accepted the Presidency of the Irish National League, I considered that what- ever my private opinions might be, I was thence precluded from taking any active part in American politics. Accordingly I have abstained from tak- ing any part, nor shall I take any so long as I hold the office. This is my position.' "That position I strictly adhered to throughout the entire campaign. I never by word or writing attempted to influence a single vote, but on the contrary, when again and again I was asked for my advice, I invariably, declined to give it. "The fact, however, that I, an Irishman, dared to have an opinion of my own, and that that opinion was not the regulation pattern, dictated by certain conventional party bosses, was suffi- cient to bring down upon me the venomous ma- lignity of a class of Irish-American politicians and THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 697 of certain prints that call themselves Irish-Amer- ican, solely that they may trade in Irish votes. But for that spirit of resistance to tyranny and dictation which is ingrained in my very nature I would not to-day be an exile from home and friends. Without egotism, I think I may say that I have made sacrifices and incurred risks in my opposition to English tyranny and dictation in Ireland that few persons have faced — sacrifices and risks that those who oo around slandering the workers for Ireland are by nature incapable of un- derstanding — and whatever part I may take in pub- lic affairs on this side I shall,I trust, always be found an uncompromising enemy of tyranny and dicta- tion from whatever quarter they may be attempted. "For men who honestly differ from me on ques- tions of politics, whether Irish or American, men like my friends Mr. John Boyle O'Reilly, Hon. P. A. Collins, Hon. M. A. Foran, Hon. M. V. Gan- non, my townsman, Mr. John Fitzgerald, your good self and many o'thers I could name, I trust I shall always entertain the most profound respect; but for those who would by their unscrupulous intolerance drag the cause of Ireland in the mire and deliberately belie and defame the good name of their countrymen when they venture to exer- cise, honestly and independently, their legitimate rights as citizens of this free country, I have no other sentiment than that of contempt and loathing. I remain, my dear Dr. Hanrahan, "Yours, faithfully, Patrick Egan." f598 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. This declaration of his position, and of that of his colleagues, did more than anything - else at that time to enable President Egan to brino- back to their allegiance many of the Leaguers and rebuild the organization. When the rehabilitated League had begun to do its work, fresh appeals were issued urging, above all, the presidents of branches and the state delegates to push forward the movement with redoubled energy. The tide turned, but it took a long time before it resumed its wonted channels and before the National League in America could fill up the fearful gaps that had been made in its old-time crowded ranks. On June 19, 1885, President Egan issued an appeal for the Parliamentary Fund, from Lincoln, Nebraska, marked " urgent ; " it was addressed to the presidents of the branches. In it he said : " In view of the momentous events of the past few days we deem it a duty to address you for the purpose of pointing out the urgency that exists for at once calling your branch together and taking steps to push the collections for the Parliamentary Fund. Mr. Parnell, with his band of thirty-nine followers (and not even all these reliable) has suc- ceeded in defeating and driving from power the strongest government that ever ruled in England, banishing from Ireland in disgrace Earl Spencer and his brutal and loathsome minions, and caus ing such an awakening in public opinion at home and abroad on the subject of English misrule in THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 699 Ireland, that the attainment of self-government is now brought almost within our grasp. "The new ministry in England, representing a minority in the House of Commons, can only govern on sufferance during the balance of the session, and a general election in September or October is now assured. "With a moderate amount of the 'sinews of war' at his command, Mr. Parnell can secure at the general election the return of eighty reliable followers, and with that number and the balance of power in the hands of an honest Irish National party, the next two or three years will, we believe, bring forth results which few of us hoped to see accomplished in our time. "We are at present in communication with Mr. Parnell on the subject of fixing a time for our an- nual convention, and hope to be able to lay his views before you at an early date. Meantime, we urgently appeal to you to do all that lies in your power to push on the organization, and particu- larly to aid in raising for the Parliamentary Fund such a sum as will enable Mr. Parnell to take advantage of the all-important opportunity now so near at hand." Prompt and substantial responses from all quarters, some of them, indeed, from unexpected sources, reassured Mr. Eoran that all differences of opinion, political and otherwise, had been thrown to the winds, that the members of the 700 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. National League had again buckled to their work with an earnestness of purpose that showed their hearts were in it, and that until the end of his administration he would have plain sailing and no rou^h waters to encounter. Numerous inquiries from all sides as to the date of the next national convention, and an im- pending crisis in Irish affairs in the British Parlia- ment, impelled the national officers to issue a call for a meeting in Chicago of the national execu- tive committee, to be held on August 15, 1885. The session was a long one, and the reasons given for the holding of the convention. at an early date and of postponing it, at the request of Mr. Parnell, were dispassionately considered. It was finally decided to issue an address to the officers and members of the League, as well as to all who were interested in the welfare of Ireland. At this session of the National Executive Committee, Roger Walsh presented his resigna- tion as National Secretary. His resignation was accepted with sincere regret, and John P. Sutton, of Quebec, Canada, was selected for the vacancy. Mr. Walsh, however, continued to act as secretary for several months^ His successor, Mr. Sutton, has proved himself a most capable and energetic officer, and the golden opinions which he gained among the patriotic Irishmen of Canada as an organizer have been considerably enhanced by the unstinted praise which he has received from THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 7Q1 all with whom his official duties bring him in contact. On October 24, 1885, President Egan issued a call for the Third Annual Convention of the Irish National League of America, to be held in Central Music Hall, Chicago, Illinois, on Wednes- day and Thursday, 20th and 21st January 1886. This convention, he said, would be attended by Mr. Parnell and a strong delegation of his col- leagues. About six weeks afterwards he learned that Mr. Parnell could not possibly attend the convention, and in December, 1885, ne » m con_ junction with the other national officers, addressed a circular note to the members of branches, in which he said : " In compliance with the instruc- tions of the National Committee of the League, held in Chicago, in August last, the Executive, after full consultation with Mr. Parnell, fixed the 20th January, 1886, for the holding of the National Convention of the League, as the time most suitable to the convenience of Mr. Parnell and his colleagues. It is now ascertained that, owing to the momentous result of the general election just completed, which places the balance of power between the two English parties in the hands of the national representatives of Ireland, and which has brought, at one bound, the ques- tion of the restoration of our native Parliament directly 'within the range of practical politics,' it will not be possible for Mr, Parnell to absent him- 702 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. self from the post of duty at home for a suffi- ciently long time to enable him to attend the con- vention. Mr. Harrington, M. P., Secretary of the National League in Ireland, cabling on this subject, on behalf of Mr. Parnell, says, ' I am inclined to think it best to postpone the conven- tion until after the meeting of Parliament in Feb- ruary.' Taking into consideration this suggestion, the unfavorable time of the year for persons obliged to travel long distances, and the disap- pointment that would be occasioned to delegates by the absence from the convention of the man whom we are all so anxious to greet — the great and gifted leader of our race — we deem it our duty to postpone the convention to a time to be hereafter determined upon between the Executive and Mr. Parnell. "The Executive will call a meeting of the National Committee of the League (consisting of one delegate from each State and Territory and from Canada), to assemble in Chicago on 20th January next, and by that time we hope to have information from Ireland that will enable the committee to fix a time for the convention. At that time the Executive Committee found, after mature deliberation, that, owing to the con- dition of affairs in Ireland, it would be impossible to fix a suitable date for the meeting of the con- vention, and it was unanimously decided to leave the entire matter in the hands of the national offi- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 793 cers — President Egan, Secretary Sutton, and the treasurer, Rev. Dr. O'Reilly — and to clothe them formally with full power. In some public prints, in England, Scotland, and America, it was hinted that " Mr. Parnell had very good reasons for staying away from an American convention." These reasons, according to the writers, were in effect that he was afraid, if he came to this country, that some of his speeches and public addresses might imperil his safety when he should return home. Insinuations of this kind, while they did not hurt the great Irish leader, sorely wounded the pride of his country- men, both at home and abroad, and they were repelled with honest indignation. His courage had already stood severe tests, and they were not at all apprehensive of a want of prudence in his speech or deportment. When these slanders had been silenced, other ones took their place and occupied men's minds for some time before it was thought necessary to show their falsity. It was reported, on the alleged authority of men whose love for Ireland was as undoubted as their integrity was, unquestioned, that the " physical force " men in the secret socie- ties had become tired of " the peace policy," had kicked over the traces, and had given their leaders to understand that the National League leaders in Ireland had had a fair trial and a full opportunity to carry out their aims ; that they had failed in 704 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. their plans, and " sterner measures" must now be resorted to. These statements gathered strength and force as they were repeated in some of the public journals and at numerous meetings, until finally it was asserted that Alexander Sullivan and Patrick Egan had threatened Mr. Parnell that they would cause a revolt in the National League in America and the organizations which were said to be aiding and supporting it. This falsehood was wired over the Atlantic cable and published in very many of the most prominent English newspapers. Its publication, as might be expected, created consternation among the Irish Parliamentary Party and dismay among all classes of the people in Ireland. Inquiry suc- ceeded inquiry, by cable and by letter, from nearly every part of the civilized world. The lie, orowino- as it travelled, soon reached rather por- tentous proportions, and a comprehensive and em- phatic denial on the part of the American Execu- tive was imperatively demanded. To ignore it any longer would have been sheer folly. In order that the lie should be stamped out thor- oughly, and that its authors should not have even the slightest chance of thereafter revivifying it, it was determined that the denial should be compre- hensive and circumstantial. In April, 1 886, the fol- lowing document was mailed to the members ot the League, and a summary of its contents given to the newspapers by means of the Associated Press: the great irish struggle. 706 " (confidential.) " Executive Office, Irish National League of America, Lincoln, Neb., April 20, 1886. "To the Officers and Members of the League: We regret to say that now, on the very eve of the final struggle for our country's rights, when every true lover of Ireland should sink his per- sonal ambition, jealousy and vanity, a few unscru- pulous, designing men are trying by the most malignant falsehoods and insinuations to damage the League, provoke dissension in its ranks, and create misunderstanding and distrust between the League in America and the League in Ireland. As will be seen from the following cable, the plotters have utterly failed: "To Egan, Lincoln, Neb.: English papers pub- lished cables from America saying Egan and Sulli- van condemn Parnell's peaceful policy, and threaten a revolt. This is done to prejudice Gladstone's statement Thursday. Wire authority to contra- dict. " Harrington. "Secretary of League in Ireland and M. P. Dublin. "To Harrington : Statement that Sullivan or I condemned Parnell's peaceful policy is an unqual- ified falsehood, which could only have emanated from an enemy to the League and a traitor to Ireland. " Patrick Egan. 706 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. 11 London, April 8. "To Egan : Gladstone's scheme for Irish legis- lature, amended on Parnell's lines, is worthy the acceptance of Ireland. "Dillon, " Davitt, "Dr. Kenny. " Detroit, April 8. "To Charles S. Parnell, House of Commons, London : Friends of Ireland, of yourself, of Pres- ident Patrick Egan, and of ex-President Alex- ander Sullivan, are continuing to make war upon and to injure you in the usual way. In evidence thereof I send you draft to-day for ,£12,000 (sixty thousand dollars), for Parliamentary Fund. We hereby threaten you that we will continue to wage just such warfare until Ireland is governed by her own Parliament. " Charles O'Reilly, "Treasurer Irish National League of America. " London, April 1 6. "To Rev. Charles O'Reilly, Treasurer Irish Natio7ial League, Detroit: I thank you for your encouraging message advising despatch of mag- nificent subscription of £\ 2,000. We here attach no credence whatever to the statement recently cabled from America as to the existence of any ill-feeling on the part of the National League of America or its leaders towards our movement. We have the utmost confidence in the leaders of the American League. We value their exertion THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 707 and help most highly, and we trust that your or- ganization may maintain and extend its influence and high efficiency until the victory of the Irish cause is secured. " Parnell. " We will not refer further to these men, beyond saying that the members of the League should make no compromise with disruptionists under whatever name or guise they may attempt their work. A great responsibility rests upon us. We must be active, patient, vigilant. We must push on vigorously the great work we have in hand, on the strict lines laid down by the great representa- tive conventions of our race held at Philadelphia and Boston. In the interest of union and discipline all moneys collected by branches, or through the influence of members of the League, should be remitted through the National Treasurer, Rev. Charles O'Reilly, Detroit, Mich. There is but one National League in Ireland ; there should be but one amongst our people here, and any other policy can "have but one inevitable outcome — to create dissension and bring- discredit on the cause of Ireland. Yours, very respectfully, " Patrick Egan, President. " Charles O'Reilly, Treasurer. " John P. Sutton, Secretary." It is sufficient for me to say that the foregoing document did not fail of its intended effect. 708 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. PUBLIC UTTERANCES OF EMINENT AMERICANS. The speech on the Irish situation delivered by the late Hon. Thomas A. Hendricks, Vice-Presi- dent of the United States, at Indianapolis, Indiana, on September 8, 1885, fell like a thunderbolt from a clear sky on the British politicians, who had been confidently telling the English nation, through the London Times and other organs, that "men high in authority in America have no sym- pathy with this Irish movement." Coming as it did from the lips of almost the highest official in au- thority in the United States, it wiped that falsehood out of existence and taught those alleged states- men a lesson that many of them, wiser than their fellows, were prompt to profit by. To say that it produced a feeling of anger but poorly de- scribes the soreness that pervaded the ranks of the British Conservatives and that elicited from the rabid anti-Irish-at-any-cost organs so-called editorials, that teemed with venom and rancorous invective, not only against the gifted speaker him- self, but also against the American people. Some of them even spoke in a menacing tone and more than hinted that his language might prove a casus belli! His speech was delivered on a memorable occasion at Indianapolis, a monster mass-meeting held in that progressive city under the auspices of the Irish National League. Mayor McMaster, a staunch Republican, presided, and introduced THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 70b Vice-President Hendricks, who, in the course of his long address, said : " Every Irishman here to-night, every Irishman in America, is a protest against the governing of Ireland by England. How is it that you are here, having left almost the most beautiful island in the world ? Perhaps no part of this globe is more attractive than Ireland, and yet you left Ire- land. You're here because you could not get good government in Ireland. Forty-five years ago the population of the 'Green Isle' was nine mil- lions of people, a large population for a region of country only the size of Indiana. To-day, after the lapse of forty-five years, that population is only five millions, a loss in less than a half a century of four millions of people; almost an entire half of the entire population gone from Ireland. I know the famine of 1843 na( ^ rnuch to do with this, but bad government and cruelties by her landlords have done more than famine and pes- tilence to depopulate the beautiful isle. I would say it was a serious matter when a man or a woman chooses to leave the home that has been the home of ancestors for many centuries, and when, on account of bad government, unjust laws, and a cruel system of tenantry, there has been driven away almost half of the population. The question, 'What. is to be done?' comes up. It cannot re- main always this way. The landlord who draws the rent cannot always enjoy it in Paris or Lon- 42 710 GLADSTONE— PARNEI 1. don. He must have part in the fortunes of the people of the country or quit. It cannot always be that the people of Ireland are to be op- pressed. I think the day of tyranny in every form is to pass away, and that the day is soon to come when all men will be blessed with good government and just laws. "The mission of the men sent from Ireland to Parliament is to have for Ireland what we In- dianians enjoy — to claim the right to make her own laws, simply because we can regulate our own affairs better than any one else can regulate them for us ; so Irishmen on their soil, for that simple reason, must be the legislators for Ireland. That was the great argument first asserted in this country. " One hundred years have established the fact that self-government with respect to local affairs is the true system of government in tnis world. "The great trouble in Ireland to-day is the Land. Where there is trouble with the lands in any country, the trouble is exceedingly great. Much has been done in Ireland to make better the conditions of the tenant, but the land trouble still exists, and it must be regulated. It must be regulated as we regulate such matters in Indiana — by legislators from the soil. No question can arise between landlord and tenant in Indiana that is not regulated by our Legislature. So Ireland THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 711 must have local self-government. Who in Indiana & would trust to any other State the legislation for her schools, the building up of her industries? So, according to Mr. Parnell, not only the agri- cultural classes, but the mechanics, the people of the cities and towns, must live, and when Ireland becomes clothed with the right and power of local self-government, these matters will be cared for. This is a doctrine so plainly expressed and so powerful in its application to human interests that it will never stop. It will go on. It is not reasonable that in London the relation of the landlord and the tenant in Ireland shall be fixed. It is against reason and justice that such a prac- tice should permanently prevail. I think this cause will go further than has been yet mentioned. It will result in just what we have — a written Constitution. Ah, that is what I hope to see, Ireland to be governed by a written Constitution. Will it not be a grand sight when, in the city of Dublin, there will meet a constitu- tional convention to form a constitution for Ireland? I observe Mr. Parnell favors only one branch, one parliamentary body. He is afraid of a House of Lords, perhaps, but he could have, as we have here, a Senate in its stead, and thus be saved from errors and faults of legis- lation. I do not know of anything that would give me greater pleasure than to attend that con- stitutional convention in Dublin. I want to live 712 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. until that time. Let us come back to the great question which lies at the foundation of govern- ment, the question of the right of the people to make their own laws, and that no other power has the right to make laws for them. You remember where we stood one hundred years back. You remember in the Declaration of Independence we asserted the right of men to govern themselves. This is the great foundation idea of America, and is now being applied in Ireland, a cause to which you are to give your sympathy and support — the right of man to govern himself and to abolish laws that are inimical to his welfare. In hope that principle was asserted at Bunker Hill, and in glorious triumph it was proclaimed at Yorktown." Although many eminent Americans had, many months previously, in response to letters from that tried patriot, Patrick Ford, of the Irish World, New York, written in strong condemna- tion of England's treatment of Ireland, declaring their belief that " Ireland should be free to-day, at least to the enjoyment of those rights wrested from her years ago, and to the restoration of the land stolen by a despotism which tolerates no equals, has no true friends, always making vassals and slaves of the debtor nations of the world with whom she deals," none of their utterances carried with them the weight and the impress] ve- nessof Mr. Hendricks' deliverance. It gave new hope and fresh courage to the friends of the Irish THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 713 cause, stimulated* the contributions to the Irish Parliamentary Fund, and brought recruits in larcre numbers to the branches of the National League. In a word, his address did more than any*other at that time to make the advocacy of the Irish cause "fashionable," not alone among American citizens, but with those of the wealthy Irish-Americans or descendants of Irish im- migrants, who, for various reasons, had heretofore kept themselves aloof from Irish organizations of all sorts His death, which occurred a few months afterwards, was deeply regretted by the whole Irish race. In their assemblies, public and private, their sorrow was expressed by draping their halls and meeting-rooms with crape, by the adoption of resolutions eulogistic of his life and services by the heartfelt messages of condolence telegraphed to his widow, and by the numerous representative delegations sent from great distances to attend his funeral. Another speech which excited some comment and considerable indignation in England was that which was made in Portland, Maine, on June i, l8 86 by another equally distinguished American, the Hon. James G. Blaine. It was an eloquent definition by an American statesman of " lhe Irish Ouestion." After a brief introduction by the governor of the State, who presided, Mr. Blaine said : "Directly after the published notice of this 714 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. meeting I received a letter from a venerable friend in an adjacent county asking me, as I was announced to speak, to explain if I could, just what the ' Irish Question ' is. I appreciate this request, for, on an issue that calls forth so much sympathy and so much sentiment among those devoted to free government throughout the world, and evokes so much passion among those who are directly concerned in the contest, there may be danger of not giving sufficient attention to the simple elementary facts which enter into the case. " What then is Home Rule ? It is nothing more and nothing less than that which is enjoyed by every State and every Territory of the United States. Negatively, it is what the people of Ire- land do not enjoy. In a Parliament of 670 mem- bers, Great Britain has 567 and Ireland has 103. Except with the consent of this Parliament, in which the Irish members are outnumbered by more than five to one, the people of Ireland possess no legislative power whatever. They cannot incorporate a horse railroad company, or authorize a ferry over a stream, or organize a gas company to light the streets of a city. Apply that to yourselves. Suppose the State of Maine were linked with the State of New York in a joint Legislature in which New York had five members to Maine's one. Suppose you could not take a step for the improvement of your beautiful city, nor the State organize an association of any THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 715 kind, or adopt any measure for its own advance- ment, unless by the permission of the overwhelm- ing majority of the New York members. How long do you think the people of Maine would endure that condition of affairs ? And yet, that illustrates the position which Ireland holds with respect to England, except that there is one aggravating feature in addition which would not apply to New York and Maine; namely, the centuries of oppression which have inspired the people of Ireland with a deep sense of wrong- on the part of England. "If the Irish question were left to the people of the United States to adjust, I suppose we should say, adopt the federal system ! Let Ireland have her legislature, let England have her legislature, let Scotland have her legislature, let Wales have her legislature, and then let the Imperial Parliament legislate for the British Empire. Let questions that are Irish be settled by Irishmen, questions that are English be settled by Englishmen, questions that are Welsh be settled by Welshmen, and questions that are Scotch be settled by Scotchmen. And let ques- tions that affect the whole Empire of Great Britain be settled in a Parliament in which the four great constituent elements shall be impartially repre- sented. That would be our direct, shorthand method of settling the question. Under that sys- tem we have lived and grown and prospered 716 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. for more than two hundred years in the United States of America, continually expanding and con- tinually strengthening our institutions. " I do not forget, however, that it would be polit- ical empiricism to attempt to give the details of any measure that would settle this long conten- tion between Great Britain and Ireland. To prescribe definite measures for a British Parlia- ment would be a presumption on our part as much as for the English people to prescribe definite measures for the American Congress. I have noticed so many errors, even among the leading men of Great Britain concerning the United States, that I have been taught modesty in attempting to criticise the processes and the specific measures of Parliament. I well remember that Lord Palmerston, on a grave occasion during our civil war, informed the House of Commons that 'the President of the United States could not of his own power declare war; that it required the assent of the Senate.' And yet every school- boy in America knows that it is the Congress of the United States, both Senate and House, to which the war power is given by the Constitu- tion of the United States. But Lord Palmer- ston's error was not so bad as another which is said to have occurred in the British Parliament, when a member in an authoritative manner assured the House that no law in the United States was valid until it had received the assent THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 717 of the Legislatures of two-thirds of the several States; and a fellow-member corrected him, saying, ' You are wrong. The American Con- gress cannot discuss any measure until two-thirds of the Legislatures of the States shall have already approved it.' Admonished by these and like instances I refrain from any discussion of the details of Mr. Gladstone's Home Rule Bill. It may not be perfect. It may not give to Ireland all that she is entitled to. I only know that it is a step in the right direction, and that the long- oppressed people of Ireland hail it as a great and beneficent measure of relief. They and their representatives understand it, and more than all, Mr. Gladstone understands it, and that is enough for me. " On the occasion of Lord John Russell's some- what famous motion in the House of Commons, in 1844, to inquire into the condition of Ireland, Mr. Seward said — I mean Lord Macaulay, but I am sure that the memory of neither will be injured by mistaking one for the other — Lord Macaulay said, in one of his most eloquent speeches : ' You admit that you govern Ireland not as you govern England, not as you govern Scotland, but as you govern your new conquests in India ; not by means of the respect which the people feel for the law, but by means of bayonets and artillery and intrenched camps.' If that were true in 1844, I am sure I do not exaggerate 718 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. when I say that the long period of forty-two years which has intervened has served to strengthen rather than to diminish the truth of Macaulay's words. And now, without in any way denying the facts set forth in Macaulay's extraordinary statement, Lord Salisbury comes forward with a remedy of an extremely harsh character. He says in effect that ' the Irish can remain as they are now situated, or they can emigrate.' But the Irish have been in Ireland quite as long as Lord Salisbury's ancestors have been in England, and I presume much longer. His Lordship's lineage is not given in 'Burke's Peerage' beyond the illustrious Burleigh of Queen Elizabeth's day, and possibly his remote ancestry may have been Danish pirates or peasants in Normandy before the Conquest, and centuries after the Irish people were known in Ireland. I repeat, therefore, Lord Salisbury's proposition is extremely harsh. Might we not, indeed, with good reason call it impudent? Would it trangress courtesy if we called it insolent? Would we violate truth if we called it brutal in its cruelty? We have had occasion in this country to know Lord Salisbury too well. He was the bitterest foe that the Government of the United States had in the British Parliament during our civil war. He coldly advocated the destruction of the American Union simply as a measure of increasing the commerce and prosperity of Great Britain. His THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 719 policy for Ireland and his policy towards the United States are essentially alike in spirit and in temper. "Another objection to Mr. Gladstone's policy comes from the Presbyterians of Ulster, in the form of an appeal to the Presbyterians of the United States against granting the boon of Home Rule to Ireland. As a Protestant I deplore this action. I was educated under Presbyterian influences, in a Presbyterian college. I have connection with that church by blood and affinity that began with my life and shall not cease until my life ends. And yet I am free to say that I should be ashamed of the Presbyterian Church of America if it responded to an appeal which demands that five millions of Irish people shall be perpetually deprived of free government because of the remote and fanciful danger that a Dublin Parliament might interfere with the religious liberty of Presbyterians in Ulster. Mr. Chairman, if the Home Rule Bill shall pass, the Dublin Parliament will assume power with a greater responsibility to the public opinion of the world than was ever before imposed upon a legislative body, because, if the Dublin Parliament is formed, it will be formed by reason of the pressure of public opinion from the liberty-loving people of the world. And if the Irishmen who compose it should take one step against perfect liberty of conscience, or against any Protestant 720 GLADSTONE— PARNELL form of worship, they would fall under a con- demnation even greater in its intensity than the friendship and sympathy which their own suffer- ings have so widely called forth. But I have not the remotest fear that any such result will happen. The Catholics and the Presbyterians of Ireland will live and do just as the Presbyterians and Catholics of the United States live and do. They will accord perfect liberty of conscience each to the other, and will mutually be governed by the greatest of Christian virtues, which is charity. " Mr. Gladstone's policy includes another measure. It proposes to do something to relieve the Irish from the intolerable oppression of absentee-landlordism. Let me here quote Lord Macaulay again. Speaking of Ireland, whose territory is less than the territory of the State of Maine, less than thirty-three thousand square miles in extent, Lord Macaulay, in the same speech which I have already quoted, says : ' In natural fertility Ireland is superior to any area of equal size in Europe, and is far more important to the prosperity, the strength, and the dignity of the British Empire than all our distant de- pendencies together; more important than the Canadas, the West Indies, South Africa, Austra- lasia, Ceylon and the vast dominions of the Moguls.' I am sure that if any Irish orator had originally made that declaration in America THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 721 he would have been laughed at for Celtic exaggeration and imagination. "This extraordinary statement from Lord Mac- aulay led me to a practical examination of Ire- land's resources. I went at it in a plain farmer-like way and examined the statistics relating to Ire- land's production. I gathered all my information from British authority, but could get no later ac- counts than for the year 1880 and for the years preceding; and I give you the result of my ex- amination, frankly confessing that I was astounded at the magnitude of the figures. In the year 1880 Ireland produced four million bushels of wheat. But wheat has ceased to be the crop of Ireland. She produced eight million bushels of barley. But barley is not one of the great crops of Ire- land She produced seventy million bushels ot oats a very extraordinary yield considering Ire- land's small area. The next item I think every one will recognize as peculiarly adapted to Ire- land; of potatoes she produced one hundred and ten million bushels, within sixty millions of the whole product of the United States for the same year In turnips and mangels together she pro- duced one hundred and eighty-five million bushels, vastly greater in weight than the largest cotton crop of the United States. She produced of flax sixty millions of pounds, and of cabbage eicrht hundred and fifty millions of pounds, bne produced of hay three million eight hundred 722 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. thousand tons. She had on her thousand hills and in her valleys over four million head of cattle, and in the same pasturage she had three million five hundred thousand head of sheep. She had five hundred and sixty thousand horses and two hundred and ten thousand asses and mules. During the year 1880 she exported to England over seven hundred thousand cattle, over seven hundred thousand sheep and nearly half a million of swine. Pray remember all these came from a territory not quite so large as the State of Maine, and from an area of cultivation less than twenty millions of acres in extent ! But with this magnifi- cent abundance on this fertile land, rivalling the richness of the ancient Goshen, there are men in want of food and appealing to-day to the charity of the stranger, and compelled to ask alms through their blood and kindred in America. Why should this sad condition occur in a land that over- flows with plenty, and exports millions of produce to other countries? According to the inspired command of the great lawgiver of Israel, 'Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.' and St. Paul, in quoting this text in his first epistle to Timothy, added, ' The laborer is worthy of his reward ; ' and yet many of the men engaged in producing these wonderful harvests are to-day lacking bread to satisfy their hunger. "Mr. Gladstone believes, and we hope more than half of Great Britain believes with him, that THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 723 the cause of this distress in Ireland is to be traced in large part to the ownership of the land. Seven hundred and twenty-nine Englishmen own half the land in Ireland. Three thousand other men own the majority of the other half of the agri- cultural land of Ireland. Counting alL the hold- ings, there are but nineteen thousand two hun- dred and eighty-eight owners of land in Ireland, and this in a population of more than five million souls. Produce that condition of affairs in Maine, or in all New England, and the distress here in a few years would be as great as the distress in Ireland to-day. Mr. Gladstone, speaking as a statesman and a Christian, says that this condi- tion of affairs must cease, and that the men who till the land in Ireland must be permitted to pur- chase and hold it. "The story is not yet half told. The tenants and the peasantry of this little island, not so large, mind you, as Maine, pay a rental of sixty-five millions of dollars per annum upon the land. Besides this, Ireland pays an imperial tax of thirty-five millions of dollars annually, and a local tax of fifteen millions more. Thus the enormous sum of one hundred and fifteen millions of dol- lars is annually wrought out of the bone and flesh and spirit of the Irish people, and no wonder that under this burden many lie crushed and down- trodden. "I believe the day has dawned for deliverance 724 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. from these great oppressions. But from the ex- perience of Ireland's past it is not wise to be too sanguine of a speedy result. For one, therefore, I shall not be disappointed to see Mr. Gladstone's measures defeated in this Parliament. The En£- lish members can do it. But there is one thing which the English members cannot do. They cannot permanently defy the public opinion of the liberty-loving people of the civilized world. Lord Hartington made a very significant admis- sion when, in a complaining tone, he accused Mr. Gladstone of having conceded so much in his measure that Irishmen would never take less. Well, I do not know the day, whether it be this year or next year or the year after that, or even years beyond, when a final settlement shall be made; but I have absolute confidence that if Mr. Gladstone's bills are defeated, the settlement will never be made on as easy terms for England as the distinguished Premier now proposes. " They complain sometimes in England of such meetings as we are now holding. They say we are transcending the just and proper duties of a friendly nation. Even if that were so, the Eng- lishman who remember 1862-3-4 should maintain a discreet silence. Yet I freely admit that mis- conduct of Englishmen during our war would by no means justify misconduct on our part now. I do not refer to that as any palliation or as ground for justification if we were doing wrong. I do THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 72-5 not adopt the flippant cry of tit for tat, or the illogical twit of tu quoque. Indeed, there has been nothing done in America that is not strictly within the lines of justice and strictly within the limits of international obligation. Nor is any- thing done in the United States with the intention of injuring or with the remotest desire to injure Great Britain. The English people themselves are divided, and the American people sympathize with what they believe to be the liberal and just side of English opinion. We are no more sympathizing with Ireland as against England in the past than we are sympathizing with Glad- stone against Salisbury in the England of the present. Nor must it be forgotten that England herself, apparently not appreciating her own course towards Ireland, has never failed in the last fifty years to extend sympathy and sometimes the helping hand to oppressed nationalities in Europe struggling to be free from tyranny. When Hun- gary resisted the rule of Austria, Kossuth was as much a hero in England as he was in America. When Lombardy raised the standard of revolt against the House of Hapsburg, the British Min- istry could scarcely be held back from open ex- pression of sympathy. And when Sicily revolted ao-ainst the reiom of the Neapolitan Bourbons, English sympathy was so active that Lord Pal- merston was openly accused of permitting guns from Woolwich Arsenal to be smuggled on to 43 726 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the island of Sicily to aid the insurrection against Kinof Bomba. " The people of the United States, therefore, imitate many examples of England and, quite apart from any consideration, except the broad one of human fellowship, stand forth as the friends of Ireland in her present distress. They do not stand forth as Democrats. They do not stand forth as Republicans. They do not stand forth as Protestants. They do not stand forth as Cath- olics. But they stand forth as citizens of a free republic, sympathizing with freedom throughout the world. " If I had a word of personal advice to give, or if I were in a position to give authoritative coun- sel, it would be this : the time is coming that will probably try the patience and the self-control of the Irish people more severely than they have been tried in any other stage in the progress of their long struggle. And my advice is that by all means and with every personal and moral in- fluence that can be used, all acts of violence be suppressed. Irishmen have earned the consoli- dated opinion of that part of the Christian world that believes in free government. Let them have a care that nothing be done to divide that opinion. Let no act of imprudence or rashness, or personal outrage or public violence produce a reaction. Never has a cause been conducted with a clearer head or with better judgment in its THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 727 Parliamentary relations than that which has been conducted by Mr. Parnell. I regard it as a very fortunate circumstance that Mr. Parnell is a Prot- estant. It has been the singular, and in many respects the happy fortune in every Irish trouble to be so led that generous-minded men the world over might see that it was not sectarian strife, but a struo-crle for freedom and good government. See how often in the past the leading man in Irish agitation has been a Protestant : Dean Swift, Molyneux, Robert Emmet, Theobald Wolf Tone, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Henry Grattan, and I might lengthen the list. These patriots carried the Irish cause high above and beyond all considerations of sectarian difference and founded it on the rights of human nature, as Jefferson de- fined the American cause in our own revolution- ary period. Thus led and thus guarded the Irish cause must prevail. There has never been a contest for liberty by any portion of the British Empire composed of white men that was not suc- cessful in the end, if the white men were united. By union the thirteen colonies gained their inde- pendence. By union Canada gained every con- cession she asked upon the eve of a revolution, and there is nothing to-day which Canada could ask this side of absolute separation that would not be granted for the asking. "I have only one more word to say, and that again is a word of advice. The men of Irish 728 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. blood in this country should keep this question, as it has been kept thus far, out of our own polit- ical controversies. They should mark any man as an enemy who seeks to use it for personal or for partisan advancement. To the sacredness of your cause conducted in that spirit you can, in the lofty language of that most eloquent of Irishmen, Edmund Burke — 'You can attest the retiring generations, you can attest the advancing gener- ations, between whom we stand as a link in the great chain of eternal order. Conducted in that spirit you can justify your cause before earthly tribunals, and you can carry it with pure heart and strong faith before the judgment-seat of God.' " AMERICAN LEGISLATURES AND A COLONIAL PARLIA- MENT SPEAK FOR HOME RULE. An important chapter in the history of the movement in America is found in the recognition given by many of the legislative assemblies of the States of the justice of the Irish nation's plea for self-government. In every case where action was taken by them on this subject their resolu- tions were so worded that they gave high encour- agement to "the Irish-American Cabinet" and the rank and file of the League membership. Iowa was the first State Legislature that sounded the trumpet-call, the echoes of which were taken up and repeated by Rhode Island, Connecticut. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 729 New York, and other great States. On April 9, 1886, the following joint resolution was passed by the Iowa Legislature : "Be it Resolved by the Senate, the House con- curring, that the people of Iowa love liberty and self-government. That they believe that govern- ment by the people under constitutional limita- tions secures to the governed peace, contentment and prosperity. The people of Iowa sympathize with the people of Ireland in their efforts to se- cure self-government at this time. That they ex- tend to them congratulations over the prospect of Home Rule in Ireland, and, too, that a friend so great as Mr. Gladstone has arisen in England to espouse their cause." The minutes of the joint assembly from which that resolution is copied say that it was "concurred in unanimously by a rising vote of the House." On the afternoon of that day the following ca- blegram was sent to Ireland by instruction of the joint assembly : " Des Moines, Iowa, April 9, 1886 — Charles Stewart Parnell, M. P.: The Iowa Legislature, in session, send greeting to Messrs. Parnell and Gladstone on the hopeful outlook of legislative independence for Ireland. "J. A. T. Hull, President Senate. "Albert Stead, "Speaker House of Representatives, "Wm. Larrabee, Governor T 730 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. On Monday, April 12, 1886, the Speaker of the New York State Assembly asked and obtained unanimous consent to offer the following resolu- tions : "Resolved (if the Senate concur), That the peo- ple of the State of New York do hereby tender the Irish people their hearty sympathy in the he- roic struggle they are now making for Home Rule in Ireland. "Resolved, That they view with mingled feelings of gratitude and respect the noble stand taken by England's most illustrious statesman, William E. Gladstone, in defence of popular government for the people and by the people. "Resolved, That we tender our congratulations to the English people on the fact of their having at length a Government possessing the courage and magnanimity to make an effort to do justice to the wronged and long-suffering country." They were unanimously adopted, and on the following day were presented in the Senate, and there also received the same unanimous action. On Tuesday, April 13, 1886, the Connecticut House of Representatives unanimously agreed to a resolution introduced by Mr. Phelan, of Bridge- port, expressing " sympathy with Ireland in her stru^o-le for Home Rule," and indorsing Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone. On Wednesday, April 14, 1886, the following resolutions were passed by the Rhode Island House of Represent- atives: THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 731 " Whereas? The Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Prime Minister, in the face of great prejudice, has announced his intention of introducing a bill granting Home Rule to Ireland ; therefore, the Senate concurring therein, be it " Resolved, That the Legislature of Rhode Island congratulates Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell upon the great step which has been taken. ''Resolved, That we do hereby tender them our best wishes for their success. "Resolved, That the Secretary of State be in- structed to transmit copies of these resolutions to Messrs. Gladstone and Parnell." In the Ohio General Assembly a resolution, with a long preamble, was introduced by John Haley, of Cleveland, on Wednesday, April 14, 1886, and was adopted unanimously. The reso- lution reads : "Resolved, That the proposed measure about to be introduced by the Hon. William E. Gladstone, guaranteeing to Ireland legislative independence, meets with the hearty sympathy of this General Assembly, and that we have full and implicit con- fidence that through the statesmanship of the Chief Premier of England, aided by that patriotic and sagacious leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, the wrongs of the Irish people will soon be righted." Added importance was given in the minds of thoughtful men to Parnell's constitutional struo- gle for Ireland's autonomy by the manly and out- 732 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. spoken action of the British Colonial Parliament of Quebec, Canada, which, amidst the ringing cheers of the House and the applause of the Can- adas, adopted the following : " Whereas, The right of self-government is sa- cred to the Canadian people, and " Whereas, They believe and know, from actual experience, that constitutional government brings strength, peace, union and prosperity to the na- tion ; be it "Resolved, That this House regards with great satisfaction and sympathy the efforts of the Right Honorable W. E. Gladstone to peacefully solve the problem of Home Rule in Ireland without disintegrating the Empire. "Resolved, That the Speaker of this House be directed to communicate a copy of these resolu- tions to the Right Honorable W. E. Gladstone." As I close this section I feel it incumbent on me to make a part of this record the historical fact that almost every prominent member of the United States Senate and House of Representa- tives has, either in his public speeches or in let- ters intended for the public eye, assured the peo- ple at large of his honest conviction that, as Con- gressman Stone, of Missouri, phrased it, he " could not be American and not be for Ireland." What a long array of illustrious names of Amer- ican statesmen, who have spoken on behalf of the Green Isle, looms up before the mental view THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 733 of the writer as he • recalls their patriotic dis- courses: Hon. John Sherman, U. S. Senator for Ohio ; Hon. John A. Logan, U. S. Senator for Illinois ; Hon. C. H. Van Wyck, U. S. Senator for Nebraska ; Hon. Eugene Hale, U. S. Senator for Maine ; Hon. William P. Frye, U. S. Senator for Maine ; Hon. Leland Stanford, U. S. Senator for California ; Hon. G. Stoneman, Governor of California ; Hon. J. Ireland, Governor of Texas ; Hon. Robert E. Pattison, Governor of Pennsylva- nia ; Hon. Wm. Larrabee, Governor of Iowa; Hon. L. F. Hubbard, Governor of Minnesota ; Hon. Geo. F. Hoar, U. S. Senator for Massachu- setts ; Hon. R. L. Gibson, U. S. Senator for Lou- isiana ; Hon. J. R. McPherson, U. S. Senator for New Jersey ; Hon. Philetus Sawyer, U. S. Sen- ator for Wisconsin ; Hon. G. G. Vest, U. S. Sen- ator for Missouri ; General Anson G. McCook, Secretary of the U. S. Senate ; General Phil. Sheridan ; Hon. Henry W. Blair, U. S. Senator for New Hampshire ; Judge William D. Kelley, M. C. for Pennsylvania ; Hon. H. L. Dawes, U. S. Senator for Massachusetts ; Hon. T. A. Hen- dricks, Vice-President of the United States ; Hon. Warner Miller, U. S. Senator for New York ; Hon. Samuel J. Randall, M. C. for Pennsylvania ; Hon. J. H. Reagan, M. C. for Texas ! As I am not compiling a directory of the distinguished men of the United States, I will content myself with saying that the list of these names could be drawn out to nearly an indefinite length. 734 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. TO STRENGTHEN GLADSTONE'S HANDS. On April 20, 1886, President Egan and his na- tional colleagues sent out an address to the offi- cers and members of all the branches in the United States, in which they said : " To-day we, the members of the Irish Na- tional League of America, who have stood by the cause of Ireland and kept the old flag flying when Irish Nationalism was unfashionable, and when success seemed almost hopeless, have just reason to feel proud of the glorious position to which that cause has been advanced. "Through the courage, determination, perse- verance and discipline of our people at home, backed by the support of our organization in America, and the sympathy of the civilized world, the demand of Ireland for the restoration of her national rights has been brought home to Eng- land in a way she dare not longer ignore. Mr. Gladstone, with the genius and courage of a true statesman, has risen to the necessities of the oc- casion, and has introduced into the House of Com- mons two measures — one o-rantincr to Ireland a Parliament of her own, the other providing for the purchase of the Landlord's interest in the lands, and its transfer to the occupying tenants — which, if passed, with certain essential modifications pointed out by Mr. Parnell, will, we believe, bring peace, happiness, and contentment to our long-distracted THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 735 and long-suffering country. Those measures are now assailed by the most powerful and most un- scrupulous combinations, composed of men who, from hereditary prejudice and class interests, are enemies of all human progress and popular rights." "All sides admit the great importance of Amer- ican opinion in influencing the settlement of this vital question. Every Branch of the League should, therefore, without a moment's delay, or- ganize citizens' meetings, composed of the most representative men of all shades of American politics and men of all nationalities, and by that means obtain, in the form of resolutions, such an unequivocal expression of genuine American opinion as will strengthen the hands of Mr. Par- nell and Mr. Gladstone in the coming struggle. " Fellow-workers of the National League, we appeal to you earnestly to close up your ranks, to organize actively, to shun every man who at this important crisis of our country's fate would attempt to divide your strength, or introduce into your councils the demon of discord, and to renew your exertions to aid by honest, active, earnest work in securing that triumph, which now seems so close at hand, of the .great principle for which we are contending — the right of Irishmen ' to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ' in their own land." Within two weeks after the formal publication 7;j<3 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. of that address among the branches what were then styled " Citizens' Committees " sprang up as if by magic in nearly every town, city, and bor- ough. The editors of the leading newspapers took an active hand in their formation, and were undoubtedly the most potent factors in creating and keeping in motion the wave of popular en- thusiasm in favor of righting Ireland's wrongs that at this date swept over the American nation. Monster mass-meetings were held, at which many of the governors of the States and the mayors of cities presided; indorsements of Gladstone's course were cabled over to Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Parnell, and contributions, aggregating hun- dreds of thousands of dollars, were subscribed, partly to show the sincerity of the donors and partly to build up a reserve fund for whatever expenses Mr. Parnell and his co-laborers might require should Mr. Gladstone's measures be de- feated and the "appeal to the country" be neces- sary. The man who was at the bottom of this excite- ment in this country, and whose "fine Roman hand" pointed out to willing assistants the way in which the State Legislatures could be influenced "in passing appropriate resolutions and securing messages of encouragement across the water," was Patrick Eean. The first time I met him was during the Philadelphia Convention. He had just arrived in America from Paris, France, and THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 737 came here prepared to give a faithful account of the immense sums of money that had passed through his hands, all of it given for the cause of Ireland and all of it expended in her service. He remained in Philadelphia for several days after the convention and was, with our friend Tom Brennan the ex-Secretary of the Land League in Ireland, the guest of Phil. J. Walsh, the dry- goods merchant, of that city, who was, in 1886, fore- most among the most energetic members of the Citizens' Committee of Philadelphia in aid of the Irish Parliamentary Fund. The chairman of that committee, by the way, was John Field, of Young, Smythe, Field & Co., one of the most ex- tensive jobbing houses in the United States. At that time, and indeed, until the night before the day on which he was nominated for President of the League at the Boston Convention, Mr. Egan never imagined that he would afterwards be called on to fill the commanding position of a leader of the Irish race in America. The knowledge of the good work he had done on behalf of Ireland, from boyhood, had preceded him to this country and enabled the men and women of the League to form a correct estimate of his character and ability. When, therefore, his name was suggested as Alexander Sullivan's successor, his unques- tionable fitness for the position was at once recog- nized. How well he has filled it the history of his work tells. He was born in Ballymahon, County 738 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Longford, Ireland, in 1841. While quite young the family removed to Dublin, and Patrick en- tered the grain and milling concern that after- wards became the National Milling Company. His ability pushed him rapidly forward. He was considered one of the best book-keepers in Dub- lin. In time he secured an interest in the prop- erty, and finally became superintendent. In 1868 he, in company with Mr. James Rourke, estab- lished a bakery, which grew to be an extensive business in a short time. In 1883 his personal connection with it ceased for reasons that will appear. All his instincts were intensely national, and the condition he found his people in only increased his hatred of the dominant power and filled him with the desire of retributive justice. In i860 he became a member of St. Patrick's Brotherhood. During the few years preceding the '6j movement he was one of the most active though quiet spirits in the organization and prep- aration of "the boys" for what was believed to be a struggle with a reasonable prospect of suc- cess. He readily saw that with the English army in Ireland practically demoralized through the Irish soldiers being members of the Fenian Brotherhood ; with a fairly well-drilled native army ; with reliable reenforcements in England, and with the almost certainty of being able to seize upon stores of arms and ammunition by strategy in Ireland, the Fenians had good grounds THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 739 for hope. The failure of that movement cast a gloom over him, but he did not despair though the blackness of night seemed to have settled on his country. His practical mind set about doing the best that could be accomplished under exist- ing conditions. He was one of the founders of the Amnesty Association, which was organized for the purpose of obtaining the release of the prisoners sentenced for connection with the '67 movement and, in fact, all Irish political prisoners. Between 1868 and 1872 monster demonstrations were arranged and conducted successfully by the association, and these not only served the humane and holy purpose of bringing the patriots from English dungeons, but were eagerly seized upon by the Nationalists, whose energy was untiring, to revive the waning spirit of the masses dis- couraged with the failure. The immense gather- ings were made mediums for the exchange of national sentiment, and laro-e accessions were made to the ranks of the National Party. In 1869 Mr. Egan originated the great Martin election contest, out of which orew the Home Rule movement of Isaac Butt. With John Martin, Isaac Butt, Professor Galbraith, of Trin- ity College, A. M. Sullivan and others, he joined in the organization of the Home Rule League, which, for a time, did good work. In 1874, when Parnell ran for Parliament in County Meath, Mr. Egan practically conducted the canvass, and was 740 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. mainly instrumental in securing Parnell's first success. In 1877 the Home Rule League be- came divided. The " Moderate " Home Rulers were led by Isaac Butt, and meant but little more than an easy gliding along with the current of events. The advanced element, who gave adher- ence to Parnell, were for earnest, active work. They meant to secure by practical and practicable methods real advantages for the Irish people. Egan gave his entire support to Parnell, and the latter was not slow to appreciate his wonderful influence. When Michael Davitt, in 1879, started the Land movement, Mr. Egan actively co-operated with him, and these two, with Thomas Brennan, induced Parnell to take it up. When the forma- tion of the Irish National Land League occurred, in October of the same year, it was Parnell who induced Mr. Egan to accept the treasurership. The Land League prospered to the disgust of the Government. It became so successful as to assume the proportions of a menace. The gov- ernment officials thought they saw in it a con- spiracy, and determined to crush it. The leaders were summarily thrown into prison. Then came the celebrated state trials, lasting fifteen days and extending through portions of December, 1880, and January, 1881. In these Mr. Egan was an active counsellor, as well as a prisoner. As in everything that merited his support, his energy was untiring. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. ' 741 Failing in the state trial, the Government then moved, in February, 1881, to suspend the habeas corpus act, so that they might be able to arrest and imprison whom they pleased, without any form of trial. The Government also begfan to hatch a scheme to seize and confiscate the Leaeue o funds. The leaders thereupon prevailed on Mr. Eo^an to take the funds to Paris and establish head-quarters there, so as to maintain communica- tion with America when the other leaders should be arrested. He assented, and for a year and ten months he remained in that city, to the heavy detriment of his large business in Dublin. As an evidence of the bitterness of the Dublin Castle Government against him, they arrested his part- ner and kept him in prison for four months with- out any grounds whatever, and for no other object than to endeavor to ruin Mr. Egan financially by destroying his and his partner's business. In the end of 1882 Mr. Egan resigned the treasurership of the League, and received the warm thanks of a convention held in Dublin and presided over by Mr. Parnell, for his invaluable services to the cause. He returned to Dublin in December, 1882, and resumed his business, still aiding the League as a member, but his troubles were not over. In February of 1883 he found that the Castle officials were hatching a plot to indict him on charges in connection with the "No-Rent" mani- festo, and knowing that arrest and indictment under 44 742 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the then state of the laws, and especially under the unlimited powers of the Crown in the matter of jury-packing, meant certain conviction, he cleared out, and, after sundry adventures, arrived in New York. He subsequently brought his family to this country, sold out his interest in the Dublin bakeries to his partner, Mr. Rourke, and embarked in the grain business in Nebraska, where he is the proprietor of several elevators. THE THIRD ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE. On the afternoon of Wednesday, August 18, 1 886, President Egan called the Third Annual Con- vention of the Irish National League of America to order in Central Music Hall, Chicago. Among the noted persons present were Michael Davitt ; John E. Redmond, M. P. ; William O'Brien, M. P. ; Thomas Deasy, M. P. ; Alexander Sullivan ; John Devoy ; Edward Byrne, of the Freeman s Journal, Ireland ; Patrick Ford, of the Irish World, New York ; Rev. James A. Brehoney, Manayunk, Philadelphia ; Rev. William Meagher, Philadelphia ; Judge Thomas Moran, Chicago ; Rev. Dr. O'Brien, Toledo, Ohio ; Rev. Geo. W. Pepper, Ohio ; Rev. J. S. McLaughlin, New York ; Timothy Maroney, Louisiana ; Mrs. Delia Parnell, and a large delegation of ladies repre- senting branches and affiliated societies in various sections of the country. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 743 President Egan's opening address was largely a summary of the political happenings in Ireland and En-land, a caustic arraignment of English prejudice, and an earnest exhortation for prudence and harmony during the deliberations of the convention. « Once more" said he, - the elected delegates of the Irish National League of America have come together in national convention to comply with the conditions of the constitution, and to adopt such measures as may seem best for the furtherance of the great and holy cause in which we are engaged. We shall, I am glad to sav, be inspired by the presence and aided by the counsel, of the man who, of all °*e<-s-not even excepting our great leader h.msel -hods the warmest place in the hearts of the Irish exiles, the man whom Charles Stewart Parnell has called the father of the Land League-honest, fearless Michael Davitt. We shall also have the inspiring presence and aid of the patriotic, brave, and faithful delegation from Ireland-my friend, William O'Brien, who has banished more snakes and reptiles from Ireland than any other man since the days of St. Patrick, John Redmond and John Deasy. In your name, in the name ol the Irish National League of America, I welcome these gentlemen to our convention, with a hearty Irish-American cead milk failthe. ludcre Fitzgerald of Cincinnati, Ohio, was tem- porary chairman. He counseled harmony in the 744 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. deliberations of the convention and welcoming- the delegates from Ireland. At the suo-o-estion of Alexander Sullivan, who said it was but a repetition of the course adopted at the Philadel- phia Convention, it was unanimously agreed to "appoint Messrs. O'Brien, Redmond, Deasy and Davitt on the Committee on Resolutions, as repre- sentatives of Ireland ; the purpose of this action being- two-fold : i. In order that the Irish dele- gates may lend their counsel to prevent the pas- sage of any resolution calculated to embarrass the Irish leader. 2. That the world may behold the perfect unity which exists between the Irish and the Irish- Americans." In the evening, as the Committees on Creden- tials, Finance, Resolutions, Permanent Organiza- tions, etc., were unprepared to present reports, the convention listened to a brief and pithy ad- dress by the fearless William O'Brien, M. P., the editor of United Ireland. " I need not tell you," said he, " that our fight in Ireland is by no means over yet, and I need not tell you there never was a convention of the Irish race in America that attracted more anxious attention than centres upon this hall to-day in the sight of every friend and every enemy of Ireland throughout the globe. Our work, as I said, is not over. We have a good deal of rough weather and of rough work before us, I am afraid, in Ireland. By the time we get back there I expect we will find our people THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 745 engaged in a struggle for their lives and for their homes and for the life of our movement. That is not a state of things that particularly dismays us or dismays them. All we ask is that now, as ever, and now more than ever, you should be at our backs in the fight. All we ask is what you have to-day most abundantly granted, and that is, that you will extend to Mr. Parnell, if possible, a larger measure than ever of support and of confidence and of sympathetic consideration in the difficult and trying times that are before us. " What is the secret of his power and of his mastery in the eyes of English statesmen ? Is it his eloquence and his statesmanship ? It is not. It is because they know that now, for the first time in our unhappy history, they are dealing, not with an Ireland in fragments or in sections, but they are dealing with a people united, steady, un- shakable — an indestructible Irish nation, bound together as one man, under a leader whom you and whom I would be proud to follow to the cannon's mouth for Ireland." [The convention rose to a man at this declaration, and cheered for two or three minutes.] Mr. O'Brien con- tinued with great emphasis : "Aye ! Those cheers of yours will ring across the ocean, and I will tell them that they are dealing now with an Ireland that, when Mr. Parnell gives the w r ord to halt or to move forward, the whole Irish nation and whole Irish race will take up and pass along the 746 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. word with the discipline of a grand army on the inarch. [Tremendous cheering- • and cries of 'We will follow you.'] Aye! And they know well that it is forward that grand army is march- ing; forward over the ruins of Landlordism and over the ruins of English domination in Ireland. Forward, like grim death under a' leader who has never yet taken one backward step on the road to Irish independence. That is the secret of our strength and of his strength. To-day, by your conduct here in this assembly, you have given him renewed strength; you have given him strength a thousandfold. "Ah! if you only knew — I am glad to see that to some extent the papers did make you know — how our brutal enemies in the press of London — thank God ! it is only London now and not Eng- land — have acted in this crisis. If you only knew how they are straining for every scrap of gossip about dissensions in this convention; if you only knew how they are watching you at the end of that wire (pointing to the telegraphic instrument on the platform) to-day, throughout the world, and how they would have crowed and exulted if there had been the slightest sign of strife in this tremendous organization. We never would have heard of the end of their screaming that Parnell was no longer the leader of the United Irish race, but only the leader of a faction, discredited and repudiated by the Irish in America. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 747 Thank God, you have answered that to-day. Send a message back that will give joy to the heart of every Irishman in Ireland, from Cork to Donegal, when they read in the morning what you have done here to-day, and when they learn, what is proved abundantly to-day, that from the Rocky Mountains to the Alleghenies the Irish race in America are for Parnell to a man and to the death." On the morning of the second day's session it was unanimously decided that the temporary officers of the convention should hold their places permanently. Secretary Sutton announced that there were 770 Branches of the League in the United States and Canada, all of which were represented by delegates at the convention. The report of the Treasurer, Rev. Dr. O'Reilly, gave a detailed statement of the receipts and expenditures of the past two years. It also presented the follow- ing table of the amounts contributed by the various States. It must be remembered that these amounts are simply the moneys which passed directly through the hands of the reverend treas- urer, and are not to be confounded, in any way, with the hundreds of thousands of dollars sent to Ireland through citizens' committees, societies, or private individuals: States. League Dues. Par. Fund. Arkansas $2600 $1565° Alabama 37 00 California -62469 138560 -_jg GLADSTONE— PARNELL. States. League Dues. Par. Fund. Connecticut $806 69 $12600 54 Dakota Territory 95 00 805 85 Delaware 3000 25500 Florida 37 00 Georgia 23925 234560 Illinois 126950 502892 Indiana 5° °° 276004 Iowa 48525 462635 Kansas 472 40 120197 Kentucky. 28655 3757^5 Louisiana 186 00 4395 65 Maine 12700 64200 Maryland 227 50 . 4788 63 Massachusetts 1859 75 39°34 5 6 Michigan 577 °° 697232 Missouri 289 00 10012 00 Minnesota 516 00 486957 Mississippi 40 00 I OO OO Nebraska 193 5° 6541 30 New Hampshire 50 00 1075 20 New York 688000 6614452 New Jersey 657 70 16414 64 Nevada 925 50 Ohio 501 75 7853 87 Oregon 15 OO 715 Oo Pennsylvania 228447 6685657 Rhode Island 737 97 4221 21 South Carolina. 339 00 Tennessee 598 00 2824 42 Texas 24800 182925 Vermont 24 50 Virginia 152 50 42285 West Virginia 875 00 Wisconsin 134 65 9166 95 District of Columbia 23000 1597 5° Montana 6900 1 802 85 New Mexico 68 00 Utah 30 00 405 90 Washington Territory 1 1 00 Canada and Manitoba 57400 713700 Nova Scotia 80 00 1 1 5 00 Donations 39°4 05 Total $2564558 $31425752 Mr. Brady, of Massachusetts, handed Rev. Dr. O'Reilly a check for $3,000 from Boston. Presi- dent Egan gave him a check for $2,000 from Patrick Ford, of the Irish World, and $443 from THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 74;) Father John Shanley, of St. Paul, Minn. As a mat- ter of public interest I give, herewith, a complete statement of the treasurer's receipts and dis- bursements, from the day on which Rev. Dr. O'Reilly accepted office until the close of this convention. They were procured for me by Roger Walsh from Rev. Dr. O'Reilly's secretary, J. B. McDowd : NATIONAL LEAGUE FUND. — STATEMENT OF RECEIPTS. Erom May i, 1SS3, to August II, 1884: From Branches $24,372 21 From Donations 10,093 7^ Additional Boston Convention 3>5^2 23 From August II, 1884, to August 13, 1886: From Branches 21,741 53 From Donations 904 05 From Patrick Egan (Salary Returned). 6,000 00 $66,673 78 DISBURSEMENTS. From May 1, 1883, to August 11, 18S4: Remitted to Alfred Webb, Ireland .... $24,397 5° Salaries and general expenses 5,336 71 From August 11, 1884, to August 13, 1886: Remitted to Wm, O'Brien, Ireland.. . . 4,847 50 Salaries and general expenses, 2 years. 10,036 33 Salary Pres. Egan, 2 years 6,000 00 50,618 04 Balance on hand $16,055 74 PARLIAMENTARY FUND. STATEMENT OF RECEIPTS. From May 1, 1883, to August 11, 1884: From all sources $4,739 °5 Additional Boston Convention I, III OO From August II, 1S84, to August 13, 1886 : Interest on deposits 175 00 From all sources 314,257 32 $320,282 57 DISBURSEMENTS. Transmitted to Chas. S. Parnell and Trustees of the Par- liamentary Fund 314,452 53 Balance on hand $5,S30 04 750 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Rev. Dr. Geo. C. Betts, of St. Louis, Mo., Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, presented the following report as the platform of the League : " Gentlemen of the Convention : Your Com- mittee on Resolutions respectfully submit the fol- lowing report : " We, the delegates of the Irish National League of America, in convention assembled, firmly believing in the principles of human free- dom and in the right of a people to frame their own laws — a right which lies at the foundation of the prosperity and greatness of this republic, and which has been advantageously extended to the colonial possessions of Great Britain — do hereby "Resolve, i. That we express our heartiest and most unqualified approval of national self-govern- ment for Ireland. "2. That we heartily approve of the course pursued by Charles Stewart Parnell and his Par- liamentary associates in the English House of Commons, and we renew the expression of our entire confidence in their wisdom and in their ability to achieve Home Rule in Ireland. " 3. That we extend our heartfelt thanks to Mr. Gladstone for his great efforts on behalf of Irish self-government; and we express our grati- tude to the English, Scotch and Welsh democracy for the support given to the great Liberal leader THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 751 and his Irish policy during - the recent general elections. "4. That this convention hereby returns its thanks to the American people and press for the generous support which they have given to the cause of self-government in Ireland. " 5. That we record our sense of the remark- able forbearance and self-restraint exercised by our people in Ireland in the face of a cruel and dishonest system of extortion to which they are being subjected by rack-renting landlords, and in view of the license scandalously extended to or- ganized lawlessness in the north of Ireland by partisan officials ; and we commend the laudable desire of the people of Ireland to manage their own affairs in their own way. " 6. That we hereby thank the President, Treas- urer, and Secretary of the Irish National League, for the faithful and efficient manner in which they have discharged the arduous duties of their re- spective stations. " 7. That the following cablegram be forwarded in the name of the Chairman of the Convention to Charles Stewart Parnell : ' Deleeates to the Irish National League Convention of America send greeting from our body, which embraces representative citizens from every State and Ter- ritory in the Union, and also from Canada, and assure you of a cordial indorsement of your pol- icy by a united and harmonious convention.' All of which is respectfully submitted." 752 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. The report was unanimously adopted, and after a number of excellent speeches by John Devoy of New York, Alexander Sullivan of Chicago, John F. Finerty of Chicago, Dr. William B. Wal- lace of New York, Wm. J. Hynes of Chicago, John F. Armstrong of Georgia, and Michael Davitt, the resolutions were unanimously passed by a rising vote. Chairman Fitzgerald here in- troduced John E. Redmond, M. P. for Wex- ford, with the words : " I have now the honor to present to you one of the old fighting-stock of Ireland, who will thank you for passing the reso- lutions which he and his colleagues have ap- proved." Speaking in a deliberate and impressive man- ner, and enunciating every syllable distinctly, the young Irish representative's address elicited storms of applause. "I rise," said he, "in the capacity of a representative of the Parliamentary and National League to thank you for the reso- lutions reported by the committee just unani- mously carried. The duty which devolves upon my colleagues and myself of representing the Irish nation at home at this great gathering of the Irish nation abroad is one in which the honor is great and the responsibility heavy. Perhaps the greatest glory of our nation is to be found in the fact that our people, driven by misfortune and misrule from the land of their fathers, and coming to this land rude and ignorant and poor, have yet THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 753 been able to bear an honorable part in building- up the fortunes of America, and to give to the world undeniable proof that, in addition to the qualities of fidelity and honesty, Irishmen, under a free constitution, can be worthy sons and good citizens of their adopted country. The Irish peo- ple in this great republic, no less American citizens than Irish Nationalists, have arrested the attention and commanded the admiration of the world. The assembly of this day is a proof of devotion to a great cause, perhaps unparalleled in history. The hardships, the oppressions, and the miseries which drove you or your fathers from Ireland have wedded your hearts to Ireland's cause by ties which neither prosperity nor dis- tance nor time can destroy or weaken. No sel- fish interests urge you to support the old cause, devotion to which brought ruin and death upon your forefathers and exile upon yourselves. Sel- fishness and worldly interests all point to another course as the best; but it is the undying glory of Ireland that her exiled sons, in the midst of pros- perity and in light of liberty, have yet found time to absent themselves from felicity awhile to tell her story, and have made it part of their daily life and nightly dream to help in working out her redemp- tion. The Irish soldier, whose sword was conse- crated to the service of America, dreamed as he went into battle of the day when his arm, skilled in the service of his adopted country, might strike 754 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. a blow for Irish liberty. The Irish business man, who found in one of your gigantic cities scope for his enterprise and his industry, looked forward to the day when from his store help might go across the Atlantic to sustain Ireland's champions on the old sod. "The Irish laborer, whose brawny arms have built your railroads and reared your stately pal- aces, in the midst of his labors laid aside his daily and weekly mite to help those who were fighting, time after time, with one weapon or another, in the old cause against the old enemies of Ireland. Rich or poor, high or low alike, the Irish in America have never forgotten the land from whence they sprung, and our people at home, in their joys and their sorrows, in their hopes and in their fears, turn ever for help and encourage- ment and confidence to this great republic upon whose fortunes and whose future rest to-day the blessings of the Irish race. To assist at this great convention of the Irish nation in America, espe- cially to stand here, as we do, as the ambassadors sent here to represent the Irish nation at home, is indeed a supreme honor which we can never over- estimate, and can never forget. But it is also an honor which bears with it indeed an overwhelm- * ing sense of responsibility — the responsibility of showing to you that we who are conducting this movement at home are worthy of your confi- dence, and have a right to claim your continued THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 755 support; the responsibility also of clearly placing before you the conditions upon which alone we can accept that support or value that confidence. " Let me dwell a moment upon these two points. Are we worthy of your confidence, and have a right to claim your continued support? [An- swer: 'Yes!' 'Yes!'] In order to answer this question satisfactorily we must show first that we are guided by the same principle and ani- mated by the same hopes as yourselves : and in the second place that our movement is conducted on a wise and honest policy. What is the princi- ple underlying this movement ? It is the unques- tioned recognition of the nationality of Ireland. We are working not simply for the removal of grievance or the amelioration of the material con- dition of our people. Nothing, I think, is plainer than, if Ireland had in the past abandoned princi- ple, she could easily have bartered her national rights to England, and in return have obtained a certain amount of material prosperity. If only our forefathers had meekly accepted the yoke of an alien rule, Ireland's fetters would have been gilded, and the hand which for centuries has scourged her would have given her as a slave in- dulgences and favors which would have perhaps saved her from sufferings which are without a parallel in the history of oppression. If, at the bidding of England, Ireland had ages since aban- donedlier religion and consented to merge her 756 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. nationality, we might to-day be the sleekest slaves fettered by the bounty of our conquerors. Scot- land, by even a smaller compromise of her na- tional existence, has secured for herself compara- tive prosperity. But Ireland has preferred rags and an unconquered spirit of liberty to favors won by national dishonor. " The principle embodied in the Irish move- ment of to-day is just the same principle which was the soul of every Irish movement for the last seven centuries — the principle of rebellion against the rule of strangers, the principle which Owen Roe O'Neill vindicated at Beuburb, which ani- mated Tone and Fitzgerald, anc | to which Emmet sacrificed a stainless life. Let no man desecrate that principle by giving it the ignoble name of race hatred. Race hatred is at last an unreason- ing passion. I for one believe in the brotherhood of nations, and bitter as the memory is of past wrongs and of present injustice inflicted upon our people by our alien rulers, I assert the principle underlying our movement is not the principle of revenge for the past, but of justice for the future. When a question of that principle arises there can be no such thing as compromise. The Irish leader who would propose to compromise the national claims of Ireland, who would even incline for one second to accept as a settlement of our demand any concession short of the unquestioned recognition of that nationality which has come THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 757 down to us sanctioned by the blood and tears of centuries, would be false to Ireland's history, and would forfeit all claims upon your confidence or support. Such a contingency can never arise, for the man who would be traitor enough to propose such a course would find himself no longer a o leader. No man can barter away the honor of a nation. The one great principle of any settle- ment of the Irish question must be the recogni- tion of the divine right of Irishmen, and Irishmen alone, to rule Ireland. This is the principle in support of which you are assembled to-day ; this is the principle which guides our movement in Ireland. But consistently with that principle we believe it is possible to bring about a settlement honorable to England and Ireland alike, whereby the wrongs and miseries of the past may be for- gotten ; whereby the chapter of English wrongs and of Irish resistance may be closed, and where- by a future of freedom and amity between the two nations may be inaugurated. "Such a settlement we believe was offered to us by Mr. Gladstone, and quite apart from the in- creased strength which Mr. Gladstone's pro- posals, even though temporarily defeated, have given to our cause, we have, I think, reason to rejoice at the opportunity which they afforded to our suffering and exasperated people to show the magnanimity of their natures and the un- alloyed purity of their love of liberty. What a 45 758 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. spectacle Ireland afforded to the world when, at last, one great Englishman arose bold enough and wise enough to do justice to her character! Ages of heartless oppression and bitter wrong, hundreds of thousands, of martyrs to Irish freedom, ages of stupid religious persecution, ages of de- population and state-created famine, never-ending- insult and ruthless calumny — all, in that one mo- ment, were forgotten ; and the feelings uppermost in the hearts of the Irish race at home and abroad were gratitude to the aged stateman who simply proposed to do justice, and anxiety for a 'blessed oblivion of the past.' Who, in the face of the re- ception given to the bill of Mr. Gladstone, cramped and deformed as it was by humiliating safeguards and unnecessary limitations, will dare to say that the principle of our movement is merely race hatred to England? No! Last April Ireland was ready to forget and forgive. She was ready to sacrifice many things for peace, so long as the one essential principle for which she struggled was conceded. She was willing, on the day when the portals of her ancient senate-house were reopened, to shake hands with her hereditary foe and to proclaim peace between the democracies of the two nations, whom the Almighty placed side by side to be friends, but who had been kept apart by the avarice, the passions, and the in- justice of the few. What centuries of oppression had failed to do seemed about to be accomplished THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 761 by one word of conciliation, by one act of justice. Almost one hundred years before a similar opportunity arose. Wolf Tone and the Society of the United Irishmen demanded Catholic eman- cipation and Parliamentary reform, and in 1795 Lord Fitzwilliam came to Ireland to carry out a policy of justice. Then, just as last April, the Irish question was on the very brink of settlement, the passion of revenge died out, ancient wrongs were forgotten, faction faded at the approach of liberty, and for one brief moment the clouds lifted over Ireland. But the moment was brief. Lord Fitz- william was recalled, and Lord Camden went to Ireland and deliberately commenced the policy which culminated in the rebellion of 1 798. Fatally like, in almost all its details, was the crisis of that day to the crisis of to-day. Once again the policy of conciliation has been cast aside by England. The English viceroy who represented the policy of liberty, and who for the first time since 1795 was greeted with the acclamations of the popu- lace in Dublin, has left our shores, and in his place has come one bearing the hated name of Castlereagh. Once again all thoughts of amity with England have been banished from the minds of Irishmen, and to-day we are once more face to face with our hereditary foes. The same cloud has descended once more upon our land, but we have a right to call on the world to remember, when by and by it perhaps shudders at the dark- 762 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. ness and gloom and horror of the scene, how brightly and peacefully the Irish landscape smiled during the brief sunshine of the last few months. The duty of the moment is clear. We have given England the most convincing proof that on the concession of liberty we can be trusty friends; it now remains for us to prove for the thousandth time that as slaves we can be formi- dable foes. "I assert here to-day that the government of Ireland by England is an impossibility, and I be- lieve it to be our duty to make it so. Were our people tamely to submit to the yoke which has been once again placed on their necks they would be un- worthy of the blood which they have inherited from fathers who preferred poverty to dishonor and death to national slavery. But there is no danger of such a disgrace. The national move- ment is in the hands of a man who can be bold as well as cautious, and I claim the confidence and support of the Irish in America, not only be- cause they are animated by the same principle and the same hopes as we are, but because our movement at home is conducted on a wise and honest policy. Judged by the test of success, how does that policy stand? Has our cause for one instant stopped in its progress toward triumph? When last you assembled in conven- tion, two years ago, the Irish party in Parlia- ment did not number more than forty; to-day THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 763 we hold five-sixths of the Irish seats and speak in the name of five-sixths of the Irish people in Ireland. Two years ago we had arrayed against us all English political parties and every English statesman ; to-day we have upon our side one of the great English political parties, which, though its past traditions in Ireland have been evil, still represents the party of progress in England, and the greatest statesman of the day, who has staked his all upon winning for Ireland her national rights. Two years ago England had, in truth, in Mitchel's phrase, the ear of the world. To-day, at last, that ear, so long poisoned with calumnies of our people, is now open to the voice of Ireland. Two years ago the public opinion of the world — aye, and even of this free land of America — was doubtful as to the justice of our movement; to-day the opinion of the civilized world, and of America in particular, is clearly and distinctly upon our side. Has the policy which has wrought this change been a success, and are the men who have raised the Irish cause to its present position worthy of your continued confidence and support? Well, but for the future, what is the policy and who are to be the framers of that policy? "Here I come to the second point I mentioned at the beginning — namely, the condition upon which alone we can value your confidence or ac- cept your support. So long as we are true to the great principle of Irish nationality, resolutely 764 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. refusing either to be bought or coerced from the rigid adherence to the full measure of national right, and so long as we are able to point to our past policy as honest and successful, we say we, and no others, are entitled to decide for ourselves upon Irish soil and upon our own responsibility what our policy for the future is to be. This is the condition upon which you have given your support to us in the past, and it is the condition upon which alone we can accept your support for the future. Of one thing, however, you may rest assured — the policy in Ireland in the near future will be one of fight. The chief of the present English Government recently prescribed as a remedy for Irish discontent twenty years' coercion. He forgot the historical fact that since the act of union there have been eighty-six years' coercion, and that the spirit of the people is sterner and higher to-day than ever it was before. For coercion we are quite prepared, and to coer- cion Lord Salisbury will most assuredly be forced to come, although the policy of the new govern- ment seems to be to try and stave off stern meas- ures for a while. They will, however, soon find out their mistake. "To the concession of justice and liberty there is no alternative but coercion. To imagine that Ireland could jog along peacefully for even six months under the rule of the new Castlereagh is to set down our people as cravens or fools. In THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 7(55 the coming winter the laws of nature itself will forbid the possibility of peace. For the last six months the tenant farmers of Ireland have played a part too little known and appreciated here. They submitted to untold privations and suffer- ings and exactions in patience and in silence, lest by one word or act of theirs they should em- barrass their leaders in Parliament or retard by one moment the concession of Home Rule. The landlords of Ireland noted but totally misunder- stood the meaning of the change of attitude. They mistook forbearance and patriotism for cow- ardice, and the crowbar brigade once more set to work. Still the tenants suffered in silence. Mr. Gladstone proposed a land bill which would have bought out the landlords at an extravagantly high figure, yet the Irish tenants were ready, be- cause it was coupled with the concession of Home Rule, to pay this exorbitant sum as the price to be paid for national freedom. But all motive for forbearance on their part is now gone, the sands have run through the hour-glass, and the old fight between landlord and tenant must revive if the people are not to be swept out of existence while they are waiting for Home Rule. Once more Irish landlords have behaved with unaccount- able folly and stupidity. They have once more stood between Ireland and her freedom, and have refused even an extravagant price for their land, because the offer was coupled with the concession, 766 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. of an Irish Parliament. So be it ; I believe the last offer has been made to Irish landlordism. The ultimate settlement of this question must now be reserved for the Parliament of Ireland, and mean- time the people must take care to protect them- selves and their children. In many parts of Ire- land, I assert, rent is to-day an impossibility, and in every part of Ireland the rents demanded are exorbitant and will not and can not be paid. The old struggle will be revived, and before three months are over the new government will be forced, as of old, in defence of the rents of the landlords, to attempt to forge anew the fetters of coercion. The process will not be an easy one, and, even if successful, we have no reason to fear the worst they can do. For my part, indeed, I think it but right and fitting that so long as Eng- lishmen rule Ireland they should be forced to do so by coercion. "We have to-day no constitution, and it is well that the mask of constitutionalism should be torn from the faces of our rulers and the fact made patent to the world. In this coming struggle, which we honestly believe will be the final one, before victory, we claim the assistance of our fellow-countrymen and the sympathy of all the citizens of this great republic. Gentlemen, I have now done. The memory of this day will live with me while memory lasts. The effects of the work upon which you have been engaged THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 7(57 will, I believe, live and be felt so long as this struggle continues. Your wisdom will guide our policy, your courage will inspire our hearts, your marvellous union will excite our emulation. You have good reason, indeed, to be proud of the proceedings of this day. You are, in truth, en- gaged in a noble and a sacred work — nothing less than championing the weak against the strong, the helpless against the powerful, the afflicted against the prosperous. You have long since earned for yourselves and your adopted country the blessings of the poor, and rest assured, when at last victory sits upon our cause and freedom is again enthroned in Ireland, you also will reap a reward ; for the God of the poor and the oppressed, the God of justice and of mercy, will also increase your prosperity and watch eternally over your liberties." The convention unanimously adopted the re- port of the Committee on Constitution, which was practically the same as that which had been adopted at the Philadelphia Convention. Rev. George W. Pepper, a Methodist Episcopal clergyman from Ohio, delivered a fiery and im- passioned speech, at the conclusion of which he said : " When Parnell finds that he cannot win by peaceful methods, and cables us to come over and help him, I assure you that there will be one vacant pulpit in the United States." There was a hot fight and an exciting oratorical 7fi8 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. wrangle over the election of a president of the national organization. President Egan, Alex- ander Sullivan, of Chicago, T. Brennan, of Ne- braska, Mr. O'Connor, of Elmira, N. Y., Judge Donnelly, of Wisconsin, and others, favored the selection of John Fitzgerald, of Lincoln, Nebraska, while John Devoy, of New York, Michael J. Ryan, of Philadelphia, Dr. William B. Wallace, of New York, Fathers James A. Bre- honey, Thomas Barry, and William Meagher, of Philadelphia, and others, - urged the wisdom of making Hugh McCaffrey, of Philadelphia, the choice of the convention. Mr. McCaffrey, twice emphatically declined to be a candidate and moved to make the nomination of Mr. Fitzgerald unanimous. This, however, his supporters would not listen to, and they insisted on a vote being taken. The following was the vote in detail: States and Provinces. McCaffrey. Fitzgerald. Vermont I Florida. I Minnesota 13 Tennessee 2 21 Rhode Island 8 Wisconsin I 57 Kansas 4 Illinois 2 77 Nebraska 13 New Jersey 18 7 Ohio 5° Ontario '7 Quebec 7 California n Colorado 2 Alabama 4 Connecticut 1 IO Delaware . 4 Georgia IO Indiana , 22 THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 769 States and Provinces. McCaffrey. Fitzgerald. Kentucky 14 Maryland 17 District of Columbia 15 Montana 6 Louisiana 73 Texas 9 Massachusetts 12 32 Michigan 70 Missouri 28 Iowa 17 26 Pennsylvania 107 15 New York 80 63 Total 244 703 On the motion of Mr. McCaffrey the election of Mr. Fitzgerald was declared unanimous. The other officers elected were : First Vice-President, Hugh McCaffrey, of Philadelphia, Pa.; Second Vice-President, Rev. P. A. McKenna, of Boston, Mass. ; Third Vice-President, Patrick Martin, of Baltimore, Md.; Treasurer, Rev. Charles O'Reilly, D. D., Detroit, Michigan; Secretary, John B. Sutton, Lincoln, Nebraska. Chairman Fitzgerald here introduced John Deasy, M. P., who received a hearty welcome from the delegates. His address, like that of Mr. Redmond, was liberally punctuated with the applause of his hearers. At its close he said: " We have had coercion in Ireland every year for the last eighty-six years. We find now that two can play at that game. We defy them with all their brute force, with all their police spies and informers, to get the better of us in the future if they attempt oppression again. We do not care a jot what laws are passed to crush the Irish 770 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. people. We know from past experience that our organization is superior to any effort ot the Eng- lish Government to destroy it. We know that to espouse the Irish cause in Ireland is to run the risk of imprisonment, and perhaps the gallows. We know that the men whose names I see before me (Allen, Larkin and O'Brien) were foully and brutally murdered for espousing the same cause we advocate — and we tell the British Government that there are thousands of men in Ireland pre- pared to follow in their footsteps." Michael Davitt, in summing up the results of the convention said : " I can't, however, deny my- self the pleasure of saying that I began my part of the work leading up to this convention by predicting confidently what the result would be. I have said that a division in this convention would be impossible, because the enemies of Ireland looked for it. I read the other day that Mr. Finerty and myself were at the head of opposing factions, and one of the keenest pleasures of my life has been to witness the disappointment of the enemies of Ireland who have made this and kindred false statements. Mr. Finerty and myself have, in the most friendly way possible, crossed swords ; but I don't know an honester man than Mr. Finerty, nor a more sincere friend to Ireland, either at home or in America. We are not here to dictate to any one, but to explain to you our policy, and to ask our friends to believe in our THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 771 sincerity and fidelity. I have to thank the late administration, Mr. Egan's, on behalf of Ireland and the Parliamentary party, for its service to the Irish cause. By your moderation you will appeal strongly to that American sympathy which has been such a help to us at home. Trust in us to do the best thing in any circumstances to keep the flag flying. We are bound to win, for we have one cause, one movement, one means, one hope and one leader. Thus united, defeat is impos- sible." The following "were appointed as the State Delegates or National Executive Committee : Alabama, Rev. Edward Kerwin ; California, Dr. M. C. O'Toole ; Connecticut, P. W. Wren ; Colorado, Robert Morris ; Louisiana, Timothy Maroney ; Indiana, Michael J. Burns ; Nebraska, Patrick Egan ; Georgia, John F. Armstrong ; Rhode Island, Hugh J. Carroll; Iowa, D. Maher ; Virginia, R. F. O'Beirne; District of Columbia, Thomas H. Walsh; Kentucky, Matthew O'Do- herty ; Delaware, O. J. Hession ; New Jersey, Michael B. Holmes; Kansas, Donat O'Brien; Michigan, Dr. J. E. Scallon; Texas, A. J. Malloy; Wisconsin, James G. Donnelly; Maryland, John Norman ; Missouri, Dr. Thomas O'Reilly ; Massa- chusetts, J. J. Donovan; Minnesota, W. L. Kelly; Montana, D. J. Hennessey ; Pennsylvania, Michael J. Ryan; Ohio, W. J. Gleason ; New York, Dr. Edward Malone ; Illinois, Daniel Corkery; Ontario, 772 GLADSTONE- t>ARNEI. !.. R. B. Teefy; Florida, B. E. McMurry; Mississippi, Edward McGinty ; New Hampshire, James Cash- man ; Oregon Territory, M. J. Griffin ; Tennessee, P. J. Flanigan ; Vermont, B. F. Kelly; Washington Territory, W. D. O'Toole; Quebec, Canada, Charles McCarron ; Manitoba, Canada, H. J. Clorane. John E. Fitzgerald, the newly-elected Presi- dent of the Irish National League of America, was born in County Limerick, Ireland, in the year 1829, and at the age of fifteen years emigrated to the United States. Soon after his arrival he se- cured employment on a farm on Long Island, where he remained for several seasons, for the sum of seven dollars per month. He had within him, however, those principles of endurance, fru- gality, and industry which pointed to a brighter future, and having saved sufficient money to go to the West, he cast his lot, in 1869, in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he has since risen to be one of the most honored, as well as one of the most wealthy men in that State. He is the President of the First National Bank of Lincoln, of the First National Bank of Plattsmouth, of the First National Bank of Greenwood, and of the First National Bank of O'Neill City. Besides his many financial interests, Mr. Fitzgerald owns the Waveland stock farm at Lincoln, comprising nine thousand acres of land, stocked with shorthorn cattle and blooded horses. He is also the Presi- dent of the Nebraska stockyards at Lincoln, THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 773 besides being largely concerned in railroad enter- prises. He built the Burlington and Missouri River route from Plattsmouth west, and is the owner of the extension of railroad from Denver, Colorado, to Baxter Springs, Kansas, now in pro- cess of construction. His is a very busy life, and he has constantly in his employ from two thous- and to four thousand men. Mr. Fitzgerald owes his wealth to a spirit of industry. Some idea may be had of the extent of his fortune when it is stated that his assessment list in Plattsmouth alone amounts to $160,000. Notwithstanding his large property interests he is one of the most modest of men and has a particular aversion to newspa- per notoriety. Surrounded by so many interests to engage his attention, yet he has not forgotten the land of his nativity and has always shown an earnest zeal for the cause of Ireland and his fellow-countrymen. It was, therefore, a merited compliment in electing him to the presidency of the National League. John P. Sutton, the Secretary of the Irish National League of America, was born in Clon- mel, Ireland,' in 1845, about the time of the pota- to-rot, a visitation which caused the gaunt features of famine to spread throughout the land. His parents were Michael Sutton and Mary Ann O'Shaughnessy. His father was, for many years, a grain merchant in Waterford, but emigrated to Quebec, Canada, where he filled a position in the 774 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Union Bank. His son, John P. Sutton, arrived in this country a short time afterwards and entered the United States Army, serving for some time on the western frontier. After acting as Sergeant- Major of the 1 8th U. S. Infantry, he became First Sergeant of Company H of the same regiment, and served in that capacity until he was honorably discharged at the end of his term of enlistment. In 1869 he went to Quebec to visit his family, and shortly afterward married and settled in Canada, where he resided for about sixteen years. While there he served in various positions of trust and honor, and during the last four years of his resi- dence in the Dominion he was engaged as an accountant for Messrs. Ross & Co., the wealthiest mercantile firm in the Province of Quebec. While a resident of Canada he took an active part in Irish National affairs, and was a frequent contributor to the Irish Sentinel, of Quebec, the Irish Canadian, of Toronto, and the Daily Post, of Montreal, besides working for the cause in other ways. He was the first President of the Quebec Branch of the Irish National League of America, and retained that position as long as he remained a resident of the country. He was also among- those who inaugurated the custom of cele- brating Emmet's Day in Quebec, a celebration which continues to be a national festival there. To his efforts, in a great measure, was due the inspiration and enthusiasm which took the place THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 775 of the lethargy which, for a time, appeared to per- vade the Irish people in Canada in regard to the cause of the Nationalists. He was requested by the Executive of the National League to travel through the Dominion and organize branches of the League, and, at the same time, start collections for the Parliamentary Fund. He addressed public meetings at Toronto, Hamilton, and Ottawa, in Ontario, and Halifax in Nova Scotia, besides addressing private meetings of Irishmen in other towns, going as far as St. John's, New Brunswick, and Portland, Maine. The suc- cess attending his labors everywhere proved the wisdom of sending a messenger to the Canadian brethren, and showed that Mr. Sutton was the man above all others for the mission. While at the Boston Convention of the Land League, Can- ada had about five delegates with a financial rep- resentation of under four hundred dollars, and that mainly contributed by the Quebec branches ; yet, at the Chicago Convention, the Canadian del- egates numbered twenty-five, and their contribu- tions reached nearly eight thousand dollars. Besides this amount a large share of Canadian contributions were sent direct to Ireland. This was a grand commentary on the work accom- plished by Mr. Sutton. The Toronto Branch of the League, founded by him, in point of efficiency, is second to none in America, and, if its uncon- genial surroundings are taken into consideration, 46 776 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. it might reasonably claim first place. It raised three thousand dollars in funds, and successfully dispelled the prejudice and ill-will which strove to crush its infancy. On the resignation of the Secretary of the National League, he accepted the position and filled its duties until May, 1886, when he practi- cally resigned (although nominally considered as Secretary) to assume the position of cashier of the Fitzgerald and Mallory Construction Com- pany, and paymaster of the Denver, Memphis and Atlantic Railroad Company. This necessi- tated his removal to south-eastern Kansas. He had no expectation of again assuming the secretaryship of the Irish National League, but at the request of President John Fitzgerald, supplemented by the persuasion of many promi- nent friends, he consented to a re-election. As a consequence he resigned his position with the Construction Company and Railway Company, in order that he might give his whole attention to the work of the League. While in Canada, Mr. Sutton, as already intimated, labored hard for the success of the Irish Cause: The Irish Canadian of Aug. 23, 1885, m referring to the selection of Mr. Sutton as the organizer of the League in Canada, says : " The convention made a happy choice in select- ing Mr. Sutton for this work. He is able, eloquent and fearless, true as steel, and admirably THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 777 adapted for the labor before him — a labor of love in his case — the dream of his life and his highest earthly aspiration. In the long range of our acquaintance — and in our day we have met many of the most devoted of Ireland's sons — we do not remember one more ardently attached — one who clung more tenaciously to the varying fortunes of the Old Land — one more ready, at all times and under all circumstances, to defend it against wrong and uphold its honor, than John P. Sutton. This true-hearted Irishman has suffered for the faith that is in him — has suffered because he had the courage of his convictions — but he is never- theless ready to make himself useful where he can be of service. His brothers at Chicago have O honored him with a sacred trust, and our brothers in Canada should give effect to his mission — which will be in reality giving effect to the efforts of Mr. Parnell and those who are assisting him in the struggle for freedom." One of the letters read at the convention was from the Rev. Patrick Cronin, of Buffalo, N. Y., the well-known editor of the Catholic Union and Times, whose active participation in the work of the Irish National League has made his name a familiar one throughout the country. He was born, March i, 1837, near Adare, County Lim- erick, Ireland, a spot rich in historic ruins, where Gerald Griffin spent many of his young years and wrote some of his beautiful poems. At the age 778 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. of twelve years he came with his father to the United States, and selecting an ecclesiastical life, he received a thorough training. His classical o o studies were pursued at St. Louis University, and his theological course taken at Cape Girardeau, Missouri. In the old cathedral at St. Louis, in December, 1862, he received priestly orders, and was assigned to the Church of the Annunciation, in that city, as an assistant to the Rev. P. J. Ryan, now Archbishop of Philadelphia. His next pas- torate was at Hannibal, Missouri, where he re- mained for four years, during which time his ministrations were largely attended, and he gath- ered about him a laroe circle of friends. He then o returned to St. Louis, and became the pastor of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. He resigned his pastorate in St. Louis to come East in 1870, and took the Chair of Belles-Lettres in the Seminary of Our Lady of Angels, now the literary department of Niagara University. After remaining in that position for two years, he re- moved to Buffalo, New York, in October, 1872, where he has since been attached to St. Joseph's Cathedral. On the 1st of April, 1873, he assumed the editorial charge of the Catholic Union and Times, which was then in its infancy, and which was then, as now, the official journal of the Bishop of Buffalo. From that time forward the paper rapidly increased in its influence for good, and its trenchant editorials soon gained for it an unusual THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE 779 prominence with resultant benefits. This brief allusion to the various positions held by Father Cronin does not, however, convey any adequate idea of the many results achieved during his faith- ful and active life. His work in the cause of Ire- land, aside from his labors in other directions, has won for him a name that shall be handed down with honor to the coming generations. His love for the land of his nativity, and his sympathy for his afflicted countrymen, have been shown in un- numbered instances, and he has been unceasing in his endeavors to lift up the fallen and aid the downtrodden and oppressed. It is not alone in his editorial sphere that Father Cronin has shone. His musical voice has been heard many times on the lecture platform, and his rhetorical eloquence has often held an audience almost spellbound. As a poet, also, he has a wide reputation, many of his productions winning high praise. In 1877 he spent six months abroad in company with Bishop Ryan, and the rich fields of study, offered by a European trip, found in him a ready student. Since his return he has been at the helm of the Catholic Union and Times, and with voice and pen has been doing his share in furthering- the interests of the church and his countrymen. A prominent figure at all the conventions in which I have been a participant was John Boyle O'Reilly, of Boston, Massachusetts, the orator, 7gO GLADSTONE— PARNELL. editor, poet, and patriot. He is still in the prime of a vigorous manhood and has had a most eventful life. He was born in Dowth Castle, County Meath, Ireland, in 1844, and spent his boyhood days there, studying from books with his father and mother. From their store of legends and sonos, and from them, he first learned to love Ireland, a love that has grown brighter as the years have rolled along. When still quite young- he went to England and obtained a position as reporter on the newspapers in the manufacturing districts, where he acquired that intimate knowl- edge of workingmen and that sympathy with them which still clings to him, and is only less strong than his national enthusiasm. But his native land was still first in his heart, and in 1863, when nineteen years old, well educated and with an ardent temperament, he devoted himself entirely to his country's service by enlisting in the Tenth (Prince of Wales) Hussars, Col. Valen- tine Baker's crack regiment. His purpose, how- ever, was not to fight for England, but for Ireland, by propagating the principles of Fenianism. At that time, whenever half a dozen Irishmen were gathered together, one of them, at least, was sure to be a Fenian or Irish Republican, pledged to secure liberty for his country ; and so young O'Reilly had many opportunities, which he never failed to improve, of rekindling the latent spark which lingered in the hearts of his countrymen. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 781 So well did he inspire the throbbing for liberty that the time soon came when it seemed as if the blow might be struck, and Ireland might be free But, as has happened scores of times be- fore in her history, the plot for the deliverance of Ireland was betrayed by a spy, and the men who would have broken her chains were arrested for hio-h treason, and thrown into prison. This was in a i866, and for days all Ireland was in a state of terror, as warrant after warrant was served, and • cell after cell filled with her patriotic sons. Mr. O'Reilly, of course, was one of the first to be taken,, and then came the trials and sentences, and he found himself doomed to imprisonment for life, a dark and dreary prospect to most men, but not to one who believed that he was to sutler for his native land. The punishment, however, was afterwards commuted to a penal servitude of twenty years, although such a change could hardly be called a merciful one. After his arrest and conviction, Colonel Baker, who commanded the Tenth Hussars, exclaimed, "O Reilly^has ruined the best regiment in the British army. The young patriot received his punishment, it it could be called such, without flinching, and as England's prisons were crowded that year, he was successively an inmate of Chatham. Ports- mouth, Portland and Dartmoor At the latter place he and his brother Republicans had the sad pleasure of performing the last offices for 782 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. the American prisoners of war who were shot in cold blood, in 1814, by their British guards. The bodies of the slain had been flung into shallow graves, and when O'Reilly and his comrades were in the prison the bones of the Americans lay bleaching on the ground in one of the prison yards, having been dragged from their resting- place by swine. The Irish Republicans collected the bones and buried them, and upon the rude stone, with which they were allowed to mark the grave, they carved the inscription : "Dulce et de- ' corum est pro patria mori." In 1867 Mr. O'Reilly and his compatriots were banished to Western Australia, "a land blessed by God and blighted by man," as Mr. O'Reilly says, but he learned to love "that fair land and dear land in the south," with its soft climate, and strange scentless flowers and bright songless birds. But his experience on board a convict-ship, as re- lated by himself in a sketch written on his ar- rival in America, in 1869, will, perhaps, give a more vivid idea of the sufferings of himself and his companions. "In October, '6j," says Mr. O'Reilly, "there were in Dartmoor prison six convicts who, to judge from their treatment, must be infinitely darker criminals than even the mur- derous-looking wretches around them. Those men were distinguished by being allotted an extra amount of work, hunger, cold and curses, together with the thousand bitter aids that are brought to THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 783 bear in the enforcement of English prison dis- cipline. At the time I now recall, three of those men were down in the social depths, indeed ; with one exception, they were in prison for life; and even in prison were considered as the most guilty and degraded there. This unusually harsh course was the result of a dream they had been dream- ing for years — as they wheeled the heavy brick cars, as they hewed the frozen granite, as they breathed on their cold fingers in the dark penal cells, in the deep swamp-drain, awake and asleep — always dreaming of liberty! That thought had never left them. They had attempted to realize it, and had failed. But the wild, stealthy thought would come back into their hearts and be cher- ished there. This was the result — hunger, cold and curses. The excitement was dead. There was nothing left now but patience and submission. I have said that the excitement, even of failure, was dead; but another and stronger excitement took its place. A rumor went through the prison — in the weirdly mysterious way in which rumors do go through a prison. However it came is a mystery, but there did come a rumor to the prison — even to the dark cells — of a ship sailing for Australia." The departure of the ship from English shores for the penal colony in Australia is related by Mr. O'Reilly in graphic style. The political prisoners were separated, and he was among the 784 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. former. " I was appointed monitor of our men," says John Boyle, "which appointment gave rise to Dan Bradley's grand prize conundrum, 'Why must we look to O'Reilly for our deliverance? Because he is a Fenian monitor! ' " After being two weeks out, a meeting was called, many projects discussed and three things decided on. The pious and patriotic project re- solved upon was that a prayer should be offered each night for Ireland, and this prayer, as Mr. O'Reilly now recalls, was as follows : " O God, who art the arbiter of the destiny of nations, and who rulest the world in Thy great wisdom, look down now, we beseech Thee, from Thy holy place, on the sufferings of our poor country. Scatter her enemies, O Lord, and con- found their evil projects. Hear us, O God ! hear the earnest cry of our people, and give them strength and fortitude to dare and suffer in their holy cause. Send her help, O Lord ! from Thy holy place. And from Zion protect her. Amen." Amid all the gloom of the convict-ship, Mr. O'Reilly continued to cheer his comrades with hope, and the genius of the gifted young poet and journalist flashed forth every week in the columns of the Wild Goose, a newspaper which he edited for the benefit of his fellow-convicts. " Saturday," he says, " was publishing day. On Sunday afternoon we remained below, sat around the berths, and heard read the Wild Goose, as THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 785 the newspaper was named. We published seven weekly numbers of it. Amid the glim glare of the lamp the men at night would group strangely on extemporized seats. The yellow light fell down on the group of dark forms, throwing a ghastly glare on the pale faces of the men as they listened with blazing eyes to Davis' ' Fontenoy,' or the 'Clansman's Wild Address to Shane's Head.' Ah ! that is another of the grand picture- memories that come only to those who deal with life's stern realities." The story of his escape from Australia affords another interesting chapter in Mr. O'Reilly's eventful life. He was not content to stay in captivity while the spirit of liberty burned within, and hence, in 1869, aided by friends, and after encountering many hardships he escaped from Australia, and after a series of adventures reached Philadelphia. For some time he kept the story to himself, fearing to implicate those who aided him, but at last he told all about his escape. Making off in the night, he started across the Indian Ocean in an open boat without food or drink, and for three days and nights, had not only to fight hunger and thirst, but the sharks that charged on his frail craft. Twice, when at sea, ships bore down upon him and then sailed away again, unmindful of his signals. All this time keen-scented men were on his track and an escaped felon of the lowest type was his 786 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. companion, declaring that, unless, he, too, was taken along he would expose O'Reilly's plan of escape. At last both men were taken aboard the American whaler " Gazelle," of New Bedford, under the command of Captain David R. Gifford. At the Cape, South Africa, O'Reilly's surrender was demanded by a British sea-captain, but his Yankee friend, the captain of the whaler, hid him in his cabin ; and then throwing a grindstone and O'Reilly's hat overboard, he swore that the Irish rebel had jumped into the sea and committed suicide. The British officers on the search having heard the splash, believed the story, and Captain Gifford, lending him twenty guineas, all the money he had, put him on the American ship "Sapphire," of Boston, bound for Liverpool, giving him the papers of a shipwrecked sailor. In September, O'Reilly landed in Liverpool, but soon found himself in danger and sailed for Philadelphia. Shortly after his arrival in the United States he earned money enough to repay the captain of the whaler, and to him dedicated his first volume of "Sonos from the Southern Seas," but a copy of the volume sent to that hu- mane and gallant seaman arrived two hours after the latter had died, in the West India Islands, from yellow fever. On learning this Mr. O'Reilly wrote a graceful and poetic article on the captain, entitled : "A tribute paid too late." On his arrival in Philadelphia he. started at once THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 787 for New York, where he made some money in writing poems and magazine articles ; for such a gifted mind as that possessed by Mr. O'Reilly could not long remain inactive, and his brilliant contributions and poetical writings won for him prompt and nattering recognition, and he soon took rank among the men of letters. He went to Boston in 1870 and naturally found his way to the newspaper office, and soon had a position on the Pilot, of which he is now the editor. He became a naturalized citizen of the Republic, his country- men made him welcome to their homes, and, in a year or two, he found himself prosperous and growing famous. He is a member of the Papyrus Club, the Press Club, and several other literary organizations of Boston. It is, however, as editor- in-chief of the Boston Pilot, one of the oldest Irish Catholic newspapers in the country, he made his fame most enduring, and his conduct of that paper since the wreck of Donahoe's establishment has been alike honorable and successful. He is a contributor to the pages of the North American Review, the Catholic Quarterly Review and other leading magazines. Amid all his literary labors he is still the devoted patriot and finds occasional time to give to the service of the old land. In such work his voice is no less effective than his pen — his words having the same practical incisive and forcible meaning. In his views of the Irish question he is inclined to be conservative, though 788 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. very positive in his support of Parnell. In 1885 Mr. O'Reilly was invited to Ottawa, Canada, to deliver an address on St. Patrick's Day. The Dominion authorities saw no objection ; but when application was made to England for an authori- zation for Mr. O'Reilly to enter the British Dominions, Earl Granville, on consultation with Sir W. Harcourt, declared British territory closed against " O'Reilly, one of the persons convicted for complicity in the Fenian Rebellion of 1866." It is a fact that the cultured Boston poet is down on the British records as an escaped convict, No. 9^34- In regard to his many noble efforts in further- ing the cause of Irish liberty it is hardly necessary to refer. He has lectured in all the principal cities of the country in aid of the Irish Parlia- mentary Fund ; and has made a large number of addresses under the auspices of the Irish National League. In fact, working in season and out of season, in order that the glorious time may be consummated when Ireland shall take her place among the nations of the earth. Mr. O'Reilly is very popular in social circles in Boston. He is a fine athlete, and a man of striking personal appearance, still upon the sunny side of forty, and as strong in body as he is gifted in mind. He is noted for his soldierly bearing, and it is natural enough that his step should be soldierly ; for it is not many years x since the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 789 fingers that now hold his pen were familiar with the sabre hilt, and since the feet that now tread the quiet streets of Boston obeyed the call of the bugle in an English barrack. Change of fortune has not altered him much in manner, and seems to have made little difference in his disposition. He still sits silent in company, immovable except as to his restless dark eyes, until somebody asks him a question ; but then the heavy brows are lifted, the head is raised, and the answer comes usually in the Milesian form of another question, sometimes paradoxical, sometimes a little dog- matic, but always striking. While, as stated, he is a firm believer in Parnell and his methods, there is something more in his ardent nature; he is every inch a patriot, and does not hesitate to ex- press his views of English misrule in plain terms that cannot admit of any possible misconstruction. He scorns to beg amnesty of the British Govern- ment, for when that subject was recently broached by some of his admirers in the old land, he very promptly cabled to them the instructions: " Kindly withdraw the name of O'Reilly." He is a credit to his race, an honor to his country, an ornament to journalism — possessed of indomitable will, pluck and energy, and what is a proud tribute to his noble character and genius is, that in Bos- ton, where he still lives, no name stands higher among American men of letters. It would be almost superfluous to refer to his 790 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. many literary labors. His poem on the Statue of Liberty has been so widely read and admired, together with his other works, that the name of John Boyle O'Reilly has become familiar from one end of the land to the other. A gifted and estimable wife is the companion of his literary labors. Of his country he sings: " My first dear love, all dearer for thy grief! My land that has no peer in all the sea For verdure, vale or river, flower or leaf — If first to no man else, thou'rt first to me. New loves may come with duties, but the first Is deepest yet — the mother's breath and smiles; Like that kind face and breast where I was nursed Is my poor land — the Niobe of Isles." "Priests who could furnish the surety of two freeholders for their peaceful conduct," writes Charles Gavan Duffy, of Ireland, "The House of Hanover," "and did not outrage good-taste by showing themselves in public, were permitted to perform their functions in by-streets and back places ; provided always that they are careful to ring no bell and erect no steeple, these indul- gences being .absolutely incompatible with the safety of church and throne." There is a fine church going up in Chicago, Saint Gabriel's, whose steeple will be built and whose bell will be rung for one of the truest sons of Ireland in America, one whose name, face and voice are familiar in the land of his fathers as well as in that of his THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 791 birth. Maurice J. Dorney would have found even the moderate irksomeness of the toleration of the House of Hanover intolerable, and the more rigorous days of an Elizabeth or a William would have made his another name on the glorious roll of Irish martyrdom. He was born in Spring- field, Massachusetts, in 1 85 1 . His acute mind and decided traits of character marked him for the priesthood, and after graduation at St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, he was ordained priest by Bishop Foley in the cathedral of Chicago in 1874. For two years his zeal was devoted to Saint John's parish in that city, and then he was sent to Lock- port, Illinois, as parish priest, remaining there until 1880, when the needs of the new population in the south-western part of Chicago induced Archbishop Feehan to recall him for city work. Under his guidance his people are erecting the edifice whose bell and steeple will be a striking feature of that bustling region ; and the commo- dious- school-house that rises near the church indicates that Father Dorney is as interested in the intellects of his flock as in their spiritual wel- fare. The studies which a thoroughly practical priest must make in the poverty that fills our great cities are well calculated to make him in- quire into the causes which have sent to our country so much of poverty among a people naturally virtuous and universally hard-working. Of all men in the United States who should be 47 792 GLADSTONE— PA RNELL. sympathizers with the divinely planted instincts of liberty in a race, the priest has the best oppor- tunity for knowing that it is English government in Ireland that has sown poverty over that fertile land, and that it was brutal laws, ingeniously devised, that prostrated those natural industries whose destruction is the chief cause of the Irish .want of mechanical skill. . It was inevitable that a man of Father Dorney's mind and sympathy should not only perceive the economic truth at the bottom of all Irish misery, but that he should strive to aid the race from which he sprang to efface the inheritance of misery English govern- ment has bestowed upon so many generations of the Irish people. Father Dorney's services to the Irish cause, modest, unwearying and effective, led to his election as President of the Land League in Illinois, in 1881. When it was found that he had been chosen a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention of 1883, there was a general desire that his genial countenance, sonorous voice, happy humor and trained faculties should be employed in the chair of that imposing and difficult assem- bly. No one who saw r him in that position will ever forget the skill and tact with which du- ties exceedingly delicate were discharged. He had to guide that vast body through the most dangerous passages in its course ; and a steadier hand or clearer head never held a helm through deeps or shallows. When he visited Ireland two THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 793 years ago, he received everywhere the cordial and orateful greeting to which he was so well entitled. Bright as a newly coined dollar, honest and fearless in his outspoken exposure of frauds, how- ever great, or of parasites, however loathsome and despicable, a young man with a future before him, and one who has already held positions of honor and grave responsibility in Irish organizations, is Michael J. Ryan, of Philadelphia, Pa. He was born in that city on the 13th of June, 1862. His father, James Ryan, who died in 1878, was one of the leaders of the Fenian Brotherhood, and a centre of the Philadelphia, Brian Boru, and Grat- tan Circles. His son, imbued with the same pa- triotic feelings, early evinced a love for Ireland and her institutions, and in September, October and November, 1885, he travelled through the Western and Southern States, lecturing in aid of the National League, going as far as Minneapolis in the North-west, and in the South-west travel- ling as far as San Antonio, Texas. At the Chicago Convention he was unanimously chosen as Chair- man of the Pennsylvania delegation, and was also selected as the State Delegate, one of the best evidences of the respect in which he is held among those with whom he lives. When a meeting of citizens was called in Inde- pendence Hall, Philadelphia, to raise money to further the cause of Parnell and his co-laborers, the mayor of the city was called upon to preside, 794 GLADSTONE-PARNELL. and Mr. Ryan was honored with the Secretary- ship, while the treasurer was Anthony J. Drexel, the leading banker of this country. Mr. Ryan was afterwards chosen Secretary of the Citizens' Com- mittee, and as a result of their labors the sum of thirty-five thousand dollars was raised and trans- mitted to Rev. Dr. O'Reilly, the Treasurer of the League in America. In the fall election of 1886 Mr. Ryan was the nominee of the Democratic Party for the First Congressional District of Pennsylvania, although not of the required age when he received the honor. Although the district is Republican by a large majority, Mr. Ryan had the courage to en- ter the canvass, and though defeated, as he ex- pected, yet he polled a large and complimentary vote. Mr. Ryan is a member of the Philadelphia Bar in active practice, and gives promise of great usefulness to the cause of Ireland. "A man in the gap" has always been our friend, Rev. Geo. W. Pepper, a highly respected minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who in his every look and motion shows the energy and activity of the educated intelligent Irishman. He was born fifty-two years ago in the townland of Ballinagarrick, near the village of Gilford, and not far from Portadown, in the County Down, Ireland. Although he has been a resident of the United States the greater portion of his life, he has been and still is one of the warmest ad- THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 795 vocates for Home Rule in his native land. His father was an Episcopalian in faith, and master of an Orange Lodge, which to this day meets in the same house where Mr. Pepper was born. His father died while Mr. Pepper was quite young, and hence he was brought up by his mother, who in faith was a Presbyterian, but in politics a Republican, and in 1848 was a devoted supporter of the glorious Young Irelanders. His mother died in 1853, and in the following year he came to America and immediately entered Kenyon College, Ohio, for the purpose of studying theology. After remaining there one year, he became connected with the North Ohio Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was stationed at the town of Keene. He continued in the regular work of the ministry until the outbreak of the Civil War, when he thought it was his duty to fly to the aid of his adopted country, first as Captain and then as Chaplain. He served until the close of the war, participating in a number of engagements, and took part in the " March to the Sea." While in the army he also acted as correspondent for the Louisville Courier-Journal, the Cincinnati Commercial, and sent a number of letters to the New York Times. Upon leaving the army he re-entered the ministry of the M. E. Church, filling a number of leading pulpits in Ohio, and still continues in the 796 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. sacred office. Several years ago he made a visit to Ireland, and, in the town where he was born, lectured upon " America and the Americans.'' The next day he was visited by two policemen and warned to leave the country. He pulled out his passport with the signature of James G. Blaine as Secretary of State, and threatened that if he was arrested he would telegraph to him, when they immediately retired. Mr. Pepper is one of the most graceful am! impassioned speakers that has ever appeared upon a public platform. He is a true orator, full of fervor and eloquence, and he speaks with a force and earnestness that rarely fails to carry conviction. He is, without doubt, one of the most widely-known and popular lecturers on Ireland in this country. Mr. Pepper has lectured in all the States of the Union, and had large audiences in California. Coming east after his visit to the Pacific slope, he was for a time the guest of Mackay, the Bonanza Kino-. He tried to induce the latter to offer fifty millions of dollars towards the purchase of Ireland from England; but while he is an Irishman, "his love of country "said Mr. Pepper; "was hardly strong enough to carry him that far." Mr. Pepper has enjoyed the friendship of some of the world's greatest men. At Belfast he first met General Thomas Francis Meagher, and had the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance with him until his death. THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 797 In 1868. he received from Charles Sumner a letter on the Irish question, in which he said : »I regret the condition of affairs in Ireland, which is indeed deplorable, and I am glad to see that the subject is beginning to engage the atten- tion of British statesmen. Justice to Ireland is a British necessity. In every effort for Irish inde- pendence and human rights, there is but one side for my sympathy and aspiration." In an address which Mr. Pepper made before the Methodist Conference of Ohio on « The Cause of Ireland " the greatest enthusiasm prevailed, and when he had concluded his address, the Rev. Horace Place arose, and offered the following resolution : » Resolved— Having listened with pleasure and delight to our brother, Rev. Geo. W. Pepper, of Ashland, in his powerful and eloquent address upon the all-engrossing cause of Ireland, we, as members of this Conference, do hereby heartily endorse Home Rule as a grand step towards Irish independence, and that we thank God that the areat statesman. Wm. E. Gladstone, is crowning his long and distinguished career by propos- ing so wise, so just, and so beneficial a measure.' The presiding elder, Rev. G. H. Hughes, who was President, put the resolution, the whole audi- ence rising to their feet. The Rev. Mr. Barron then sang the « Harp." It was a grand scene, and no Irish audience could rival the enthusiasm that was there manifested. 798 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. Mr. Pepper is married and has six children, three boys and three girls. His wife's name was Christiana Lindsay ; and his youngest son, Charles Meagher Pepper, is in charge of the Washington- Chicaeo Tribune Bureau. Hugh McCaffrey, of Philadelphia, Pa., the candidate against John Fitzgerald for President of the National League, was born on the 17th day of June, 1843, near Banbridge, County Down, Ireland. His father being a farmer, young McCaffrey attended the nearest country school, about two miles distant from his home, and re- ceived a good public school education. Being an ambitious youth, he consulted his parents as to the best method of improving his position in life, and they counselled him to emigrate to America, where his older brother, Arthur, had already gone. He complied with the advice of his parents, and in September, 1859, being then in his seventeenth year, he sailed for the land of liberty. On arriv- ing in New York, he immediately proceeded to Philadelphia, where he met his brother, who put him at file-making, a trade which was then in its infancy in the United States. On reaching his majority he took out naturalization papers, and then started in business for himself. By industry and diligent attention he prospered, and in three years took his brother John into partnership, and the firm, which still exists under the title of the THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 799 Pennsylvania File Works, became " McCaffrey & Bro." From his earliest years, Mr. McCaffrey has taken an active interest in the affairs of his native land, and at all times the strings of his purse have been unloosed when aid was needed for the great cause of Ireland. He was present at the first meeting called in Philopatrian Hall, Philadelphia, to organize the Land League, and afterwards became a member of the Red Hand Branch. In the spring of 1882, when Mr. Michael Davitt came to America, Mr. McCaffrey, with two others, was chosen to represent the Philadelphia Central Union at Mr. Davitt's reception, in New York. He was also elected Treasurer of the Central Union, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Michael Patton, and held that position until the reorganization of the Land League, on its merging into the National League. Robert M. McWade, the President of the new organiza- tion, or municipal council, appointed him to repre- sent the council at the interview held with Presi- dent Arthur, in Washington, against pauper immigration. When Mr. Alexander Sullivan, the then Presi- dent of the League, called for subscriptions to the Parliamentary Fund, Mr. McCaffrey, if not the second, was at least the third person to respond, and on April 23, 1884, forwarded his check for one hundred dollars. When Robert M. McWade. 800 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. at the end of the year 1884, resigned the presi- dency of the municipal council and positively de- clined the honor of a re-election, Mr. McCaffrey was chosen as his successor, and still retains that important position. During his administration, he has labored earnestly to have Irishmen agree, no matter what their personal views might be, that they would sacrifice them for the good of the movement in Ireland; and has counselled all to support Mr. Parnell and the Parliamentary Fund. On the occasion of the lecture of Hon. A. M. Keiley, at the Academy of Music, in Philadelphia, for the same fund, Mr. McCaffrey subscribed $150; while at the citizens' meeting in the City Councils' Chamber, in January, 1886, he and his brother John gave the sum of $500. He was also one of the committee of fifty which raised $35,000 in six weeks for the fund; and he, with John H. Campbell, Esq., and others arranged the " getting up " of the meeting of English, Scotch and Welsh citizens, at St. George's Hall, Philadelphia, on July 12, 1886, to sympathize with Mr. Glad- stone and Home Rule in Ireland. Besides this, Mr. McCaffrey was elected one of the delegates to represent the Philadelphia Municipal Council at the Chicago Convention, in August, 1886; and in various other ways have his friends attested his devotion to the cause of Ireland. Another Philadelphian, who has the honor of being at the head of the Ancient Order of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 801 Hibernians in this country is Maurice F. Wilhere. He was born in* the County Donegal, Ireland, October 30, 1854, and in company with his mother and sisters immigrated to this country in 1859 (one year subsequent to the death of his father, whose ashes repose in the Green Isle). The family landed in Philadelphia and have since made it their home. The subject of this sketch was the youngest of the children, and received his education in St. John's Parochial School and in the Manayunk Boys' Grammar School, from which he was admitted to the High School, but resigned, being more anxious to contribute to the support of his widowed mother, and trusting to leisure hours to make up the deficiency of a more advanced scholastic course. Mr. Wilhere was appointed superintendent of the Stamp Department in the Philadelphia Post Office in 1885, which position he has filled with the same ability and good management which characterized him in every sphere of life in which he moved. A Democrat in American politics, whose views are not curbed by party lines, and recognizing that the glory of the Republic is in its toleration of every man's honest opinions, he carries with him alike the respect of his own party, and the friendship of those who differ from him in political creed. For a period of eight years he has been Chairman of the Democratic Committee of his District, and for 802 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. four years represented the Fourth Senatorial District in the State Executive Committee. It is said that every man has a hobby, and it may be truthfully said of Mr. Wilhere that his leanings have been always in the direction of Irish societies. At the age of fifteen years, he first entered an Irish society and ever since has actively engaged in the propagation of organization among the Irish race. Ever alive to the duties and re- sponsibilities imposed upon him, he deservedly can claim recognition as having faithfully devoted time and labor for the advancement of his con- victions. As an instance of this, with all his duties, both public and private, he has been for sixteen years Secretary of St. Patrick's Society in his parish, and for a period of twelve years has been a delegate and officer of the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union of America. For six years he has been Vice-President of this great and useful organization, and succeeded the Hon. A. M. Keiley as President, after that gentleman's appointment as Minister to Austria. While fully convinced of the utility of benevo- lent organizations, he saw that the cause of Ireland could only be brought prominently before the world by organized power and methods ; consequently, when the Land League agitation started, he threw his whole soul into the move- ment. Those who remember the early struggles THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. y League, spoke of his unexpected and unsolicited elevation to the presidency of the organization, and said : " It is admitted that the numerical strength in the House of Commons of the Irish Parliamentary Party is largely due to the untiring- efforts of the League in America. The large amount of money transmitted at opportune times by your reverend and distinguished treasurer for the parliamentary fund attests the efficiency of your organization. Your zealous labors also served as an incentive to other patriotic citizens who forwarded large contributions to the same fund. But, urgent as was the necessity that brought forth such generous responses to the parliamen- tary fund, there now exists a more urgent demand on the Irish race throughout the world. Love of kindred and the highest dictates of humanity invoke prompt and decisive action. On the 2 2d of this month the Tory Government of England decided, by the rejection of Mr. Parnell's land bill, on the eviction and consequent starvation or banishment of thousands of men, women and children. Mr. Gladstone has truthfully said that every such eviction is equal to a sentence of death. Alas, many a single eviction resulted in several deaths ; but this was prior to the organi- zation of the Irish National League. And I am greatly mistaken in the present temper of the Irish race and other friends of humanity if that barbarity will ever again be permitted on God's creatures anywhere. 814 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. " Until recently the sad story of Ireland was only known to her sons ; now it is uppermost in the minds of all Christendom. The outspoken sympathy of the world is with her children in their struggle for home and liberty. Hence Lord Salisbury and his government will soon discover that they can neither starve, exterminate, nor subdue by coercion, the Irish people. The fight is on. Evictions for the non-payment of impossible rents have commenced. God's creat- ures are being rendered homeless and turned out on the roadside. But they shall not die the death planned for them by heartless tyrants. " I therefore appeal to every man and woman with Irish blood coursing in their veins to aid in resisting this inhuman brutality. Let every branch of the League at once start an anti-evic- tion fund, and send the contributions to the National Treasurer, Rev. Charles O'Reilly, De- troit, Mich. Branches should be started in every town and village in the country ; in the work- shops and on the railroads. Rich and poor should unite in this humane and patriotic work. " Organization is necessary to resist organized tyranny. Let the twenty millions of the scattered Irish race, whose hearts beat true to Erin and liberty, unite under the leadership of Charles Stewart Parnell in the Irish National League, and present a united and determined front to that Government whose Queen only a few days ago THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE #15 intimated that the blood and treasure of her empire would defend Home Rule in Bulgaria, while denying Home Rule to Ireland, and while she is content with appointing a ' commission of inquiry ' into the system of Irish landlord rob- bery. Let the good work commence at once. State delegates should lose no time in organizing their several States, while municipal councils and branch officers should be untiring in their efforts to increase the roll of membership. Secretaries of branches will please notify the National Sec- retary, John P. Sutton, Lincoln, Neb., of all re- mittances to the National Treasurer, and all changes in branch officers. " I respectfully request of the American press a continuance of the invaluable assistance hereto- fore rendered the League, and I most earnestly ask the Irish-American press to arouse our countrymen to the imperative necessity of united, decisive, and prompt action in aid of the anti- eviction fund. I append an appeal from Honora- ble Charles Stewart Parnell, whose forcible terms should awaken a response in the heart of every friend of the oppressed, and more especially in those of my fellow-countrymen. "I remain yours faithfully, " John Fitzgerald. "President Irish National League of America " 816 gladstone— parnell. " Avondale, County Wicklow, "September 25, 1886. " To John Fitzgerald, Esq. " Dear Sir : The rejection of the Tenants' Relief Bill, the scarcely veiled threats of the Irish Secretary, and the alarming increase in the num- ber of evictions, clearly indicate the commence- ment of a combined movement of extermination against the tenant farmers of Ireland by the En- glish Government and the Irish landlords. I lose no time in advising you of the imminence of a crisis and a peril which have seldom been equalled even in the troubled history of Ireland. I know that it will be the highest duty and the most honorable task which can engage the attention of my countrymen in free America to do what in them lies to frustrate the attempt of those who would assassinate our nation, and to alleviate the sufferings of those who, unhappily, must be the numerous victims of the social war which has been preached by the rich and powerful govern- ment of England against our people. "In sending us that moral and material assist- ance which has never been wanting, has never been stinted, from your side of the Atlantic, you will perform two most important and valuable func- tions : you will encourage the weak to resist and bear oppression, and you will also lessen and alleviate those feelings of despair in the minds of THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 817 the evicted which have so often and so unhappily stimulated those victims to recourse to the wild spirit of revenge. In doing so you will assist in preserving for our movement that peaceable character which has enabled it to win its most recent and almost crowning triumph, while you will strengthen it to bear oppression and encour- age our people until the final goal of legislative independence has been won. " Yours faithfully, Charles S. Parnell." Lord Randolph Churchill and his Tory Cabi- net, after repeated consultations, finally adopted a scheme of coercion, to be put in force in every part of Ireland where the Irish National League had, through its members, shown any signs of vitality. It was publicly stated and nowhere denied that this scheme comprised the seizure of O'Brien's patriotic newspaper, United Ireland, the proclamation and attempted extinction of the Irish National League, the arrest of the League's officers, and the arrest of all persons who advised the tenant-farmers to resist eviction or who acted as trustees of Anti-Eviction Funds. The landlords were also, it was reported, to be aided at all hazards by the constabulary and the military in the enforcement of their writs of eviction, in all cases where the tenants refused to pay more than what they considered a fair and just rental for their farms. President Fitzgerald, seeing the 818 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. necessity for immediate action on the part of the exiled race on the American continent, in a stir- ring despatch dated Nov. 30, 1886, called upon the State Delegates to wheel their respective branches into line and prepare for a hot and ex- citing campaign. " The Tory Government of Great Britain has," he said, " once more evinced its in- capacity to govern Ireland by other means than coercion. Our brethren in Ireland are again called to show by courage, suffering and self-sacrifice that they are the heirs of their fathers' heroism. The time has come when we should prove by our actions that our hearts beat in unison with theirs in a common love for Ireland and liberty. A few weeks since we promised that, should England again have recourse to coercion, we would stand by them. We must now redeem that pledge. Public meetings are proclaimed ; soldiers are be- ing crowded into the country to overcome and, should opportunity offer, to slaughter the people ; prison-cells await the nation's leaders, and every engine of oppression and unconstitutional legisla- tion is about to be used to prop up tyranny and injustice and to crush the legitimate aspirations of Ireland. " We must see to it that our promise of assist- ance was no idle boast. State Delegates are called upon to proceed at once to the work of or- ganizing the League in their respective States and Provinces. They should use every means to THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. gl 9 increase the membership of existing branches and establish new ones, and should urge the officers of branches within their jurisdiction to devise means to promptly raise funds and forward them to the National Treasurer, Rev. Charles O'Reilly, D. D., Detroit, Michigan, in aid of the Anti-Evic- tion Fund. "We must not stand idle in the face of the present crisis. Experience has proved the futility of coercion to crush a determined and united people with the loyal aid of her exiled children. Ireland will come out of this struggle unconquered, unconquerable, victorious." The hearty and unanimous replies that poured in on him from Canada and from every State and Territory in the United States, assured him that he could count with certainty upon the loyalty, patriotism, and substantial sympathy of the State Delegates and of the people everywhere. As I pen the closing lines of this work, Anti-Eviction Fund Committees, composed of men and women of various shades of religious belief and of as many different nationalities as are found in this free country of ours, are springing up, as if by magic, on all sides. The great heart of America throbs in sympathy with the suffering children of Ireland in their efforts for the amelioration of her unhappy condition. Merchants and bankers, farmers and mechanics, manufacturers and mem- bers of the learned professions, clergymen and $20 GLADSTONE— PARNELL. laymen, all conspire in this noble cause and unite in giving generously of their means to support this Anti-Unfair-Rent Fund, and to aid the men " at home," " Men who their duties know, But know their rights, and, knowing, dare maintain." H 104 89, l^Sss^fet^ m^ Ix'Sm -*Jt